Nightshade: The Fourth Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller jn-4

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Why did you come up here on Saturday?’ asked Nightingale.

  McBride pointed at half a dozen cardboard boxes stacked up against the wall. ‘He kept his spare parts up here,’ he said.

  Nightingale took more photographs of the altar. The base was a plank of wood across three stacks of six bricks. There were black candles and metal crucibles on the plank. Wax had melted and hardened in rivulets that reached from the plank to the metal floor. Hanging from the wall above the centre of the plank was a goat’s skull with twisted horns. To the left of the skull was a bunch of dried herbs hanging from a nail and on its right was a metal pentagram. ‘And this wasn’t here when you came up?’

  ‘I’d hardly have missed it,’ said McBride.

  Nightingale walked up to the altar and took more photographs. There was a red paste in one of the crucibles that might have been dried blood. And a knife with what looked like dried blood on the blade. ‘Strange that the police didn’t take any of this away,’ said Nightingale. ‘And it doesn’t look as if they took fingerprints.’

  ‘They didn’t say anything to me about it,’ said McBride. ‘First I knew about it was when I saw the photographs in the papers. I drove around and sure enough it was here. But as I said, it wasn’t here on the Saturday. Jimmy sent me up to get some parts and the only thing up here was the boxes.’

  There was a large box of Swan Vesta matches on the altar. Nightingale picked it up and slid it open. There were a dozen or so spent matches among the unlit ones. Nightingale put the box down. All the candles had been used and the altar was covered with melted wax that had hardened. To the left of the altar there was a stack of papers under what appeared to be a lump of coal. Nightingale pulled out the papers and flicked through them. They seemed to be printouts from various Satanic websites.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked McBride.

  Nightingale rolled the papers up and put them into his raincoat pocket. ‘It looks like it’s been here for a while.’

  ‘Well, I can assure you that it wasn’t here last Saturday.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Nightingale. He took more photographs with his phone. ‘Which means that whoever did it went to a lot of trouble to make it look as if your brother set it up some time ago.’

  ‘Does it look like a Satanic altar to you?’

  Nightingale leaned over to get a closer look at a pentangle that had been drawn on a sheet of paper in what appeared to be dried blood. ‘It does, yes. But I’m going to get a professional’s opinion.’

  ‘A professional?’

  ‘Someone who’s a bit more familiar with this.’

  ‘I thought you were,’ said McBride.

  ‘The basics, yes. But I’m going to run it by someone who really knows her stuff.’

  McBride pointed at the lead crucible in front of Nightingale. ‘That’s blood, isn’t it?’

  ‘It might be,’ said Nightingale. He pulled two plastic evidence bags from his pocket. He put the crucible in one and the knife in the other. ‘I’ll get it checked out.’ He turned to look at McBride. ‘Your brother, was he religious?’

  ‘He went to church, but not regularly. Why?’

  ‘Does he have a Bible in the house?’

  ‘I’m not sure? Why?’

  ‘Because if he was a dyed-in-the-wool Satanist he wouldn’t have one. Can we have a look around?’

  ‘Not a problem,’ said McBride. ‘Are you done here?’

  ‘Just a few more pictures,’ said Nightingale. He took half a dozen more shots of the altar, then pocketed his phone. ‘I have to say, it’s weird that the police didn’t take this away. Or at least rope it off as a crime scene.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe they do things differently up here.’

  ‘They’ve done almost nothing in the way of an investigation so far as I can see,’ said McBride. ‘They haven’t even spoken to me.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Well, I went to see them after they took away his computer because they’d smashed in the front door. But they weren’t interested in anything I had to say.’

  ‘They didn’t ask about the altar or what sort of person he was?’ McBride shook his head. ‘Or ask if anything was troubling him?’

  ‘Not a dicky-bird,’ said McBride. ‘They couldn’t wait to get me out of the station.’

  Nightingale rubbed the back of his neck. There was clearly something very wrong with the way the Northumbria police were handling the investigation.

  They went back down the stairs and out of the barn, then walked around the back of the farmhouse. There was a large, well-tended vegetable garden and beyond it a chicken house the size of a railway carriage. Nightingale winced as the acrid smell of the chickens hit his nostrils. The chickens inside began to cluck and squawk, as if they realised there were strangers around. McBride unlocked the back door of the farmhouse and took Nightingale into the kitchen. There was a large green Aga stove, a weathered pine table and chairs, and an overstuffed armchair next to which was a pile of farming magazines. There was a metal gun cabinet on one wall. The cabinet was open and empty. ‘How many guns did your brother have?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Three, I think,’ said McBride. ‘He took one to the school and the police took away the other two.’

  ‘He never had a problem with his licences?’

  ‘Not that I know of. But they’re pretty easy for farmers to get. There are foxes and crows and all sorts of vermin. I wouldn’t have a gun in the house, but for Jimmy it was just a tool.’

  ‘So they took the guns and the computer. Anything else?’

  ‘The ammunition. But that was about it. I’ve got a receipt somewhere.’

  There were two dog bowls by the back door, one half full of water. ‘He had dogs?’

  ‘Two,’ said McBride. ‘I’m taking care of them at the moment.’

  Nightingale walked out of the kitchen and along a stone-flagged hallway. On the walls were framed watercolours, mainly flowers, that appeared to have been done by an amateur artist.

  ‘Jimmy’s study is on the right,’ said McBride.

  The curtains were drawn in the study and Nightingale pulled them open. There was a desk on which there was a printer and two wire baskets full of invoices and paperwork. There was a space where a computer had obviously stood. There were more watercolours on the walls.

  ‘Did your brother paint?’ asked Nightingale.

  McBride shook his head. ‘Our mother,’ he said. ‘Jimmy hardly changed a thing when our parents passed away. Their bedroom is just the way it was when they lived here, and he sleeps in the same bedroom he slept in as a kid. He’s left mine the way it is, too.’

  ‘What sort of computer did your brother have?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘I don’t know. A Dell, maybe.’

  ‘Was it a desktop or a laptop?’

  ‘A desktop. With a monitor and a separate keyboard and a printer. They only left the printer.’

  Nightingale looked over at the printer. Next to it were half a dozen photographs in frames. Two young boys were in most of the pictures. McBride noticed Nightingale’s interest. ‘My boys,’ he said. ‘They worshipped Jimmy. They were like his surrogate kids. That’s why what he did made no sense.’

  Nightingale nodded sympathetically. ‘Have you asked for it back? The computer?’

  ‘I went to the station but they said that they were working on it.’

  ‘Who did you talk to?’

  ‘Some detective. An inspector. Stevenson his name was. To be honest he was a bit short with me, gave me the impression that I was bothering him.’

  ‘I’ll have a go. He might be more forthcoming with me.’ He pointed at a Cisco internet router on a table next to a fax machine. ‘I thought you said he didn’t have an internet connection.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ said McBride. ‘It’s not plugged in. He couldn’t get it to work. The kids got me to buy it for him last birthday so that they could be Facebook friends with him but he couldn’t get the hang of it. He kept saying he’d
get someone in to connect it, but he never did.’

  Nightingale went over and peered behind the table. The router wasn’t plugged in.

  ‘He still used faxes for business,’ said McBride. ‘He didn’t even have an email address. I mean, who doesn’t have an email address in this day and age?’

  Nightingale nodded but didn’t reply. Truth be told, Nightingale didn’t have an email address either. If he needed to talk to someone he preferred to do it face to face or on the phone. There was a bookcase against one wall and Nightingale went over to it. There were two shelves filled with Reader’s Digest condensed books and several hundred romantic novels by writers such as Catherine Cookson and Barbara Cartland.

  McBride saw the look of confusion on Nightingale’s face at the choice of reading matter. ‘They were our mum’s,’ he said. ‘She died ten years ago. Cancer. Our dad died a couple of years later. Jimmy never left home. He ran the farm with Dad and then took it over when he died. The house is pretty much as it was when we were kids here.’ He laughed ruefully. ‘Like I said, my bedroom is just as it was. Same wallpaper, same blankets on the bed. Bit of a time warp really.’

  There was a Bible on one of the lower shelves and Nightingale pulled it out.

  ‘That was our father’s,’ said McBride.

  ‘He was religious?’

  ‘Sure. Church of Scotland. Mum, too. But Dad pretty much gave up on religion after Mum died. It wasn’t an easy death and it pretty much destroyed his faith.’ McBride shrugged. ‘He didn’t even want a Christian funeral service.’

  ‘But he kept the Bible?’

  McBride nodded. ‘I guess so. Maybe he forgot it was there.’

  Nightingale replaced it. ‘What I don’t see is anything that suggests your brother was interested in black magic.’

  ‘I never saw anything like that. I suppose he could have hidden them.’

  ‘Could we have a look?’

  ‘You mean search the house?’

  ‘If he really was a Satanist then there’d be books or other paraphernalia. It’s a complicated business.’

  McBride looked at his watch. ‘Okay, let’s do it,’ he said. ‘But I’ll have to call the wife and let her know that I’ll be late.’

  There was a wooden plaque on the wall next to the bookcase and Nightingale walked over to get a better look. There was a pentangle in the middle and below it, a pair of compasses. McBride joined him. ‘I’ve never noticed that before,’ he said. ‘Is it a witchcraft thing?’

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘It’s a Masonic thing.’ He pointed at a small brass label at the bottom of the plaque. ‘That’s the name of his lodge.’

  ‘He never mentioned it.’

  ‘It’s no big deal – a lot of farmers are Masons. Mainly they’re a social and charitable group. A lot of cops used to be Masons but it’s fallen out of favour in the last few years.’ He went over to the desk and put his hand on a drawer, then straightened up and looked at McBride. ‘With your permission, I’d like to search the house, from top to bottom.’

  ‘Looking for what, actually?’

  ‘Anything that suggests your brother really was a Satanist. If he was then there’d be things he wouldn’t want anyone else to see.’

  ‘The police have been through the house, they searched all the rooms when they took away the computer and the guns.’

  ‘Yeah, well, the cops aren’t always as thorough as they should be,’ said Nightingale. ‘Let’s see how I get on.’

  11

  Nightingale spent the best part of four hours searching the farmhouse, from a dusty attic filled with old furniture and long-forgotten clothes and odds and ends, down through all the rooms and ending up in a cold damp basement which contained a fridge-freezer full of pork and lamb, presumably from the farm’s stock. But at no point did he find anything that gave a clue to Jimmy McBride’s state of mind or suggested that he was in any way interested in Satanism. There was something disconcerting about the bedrooms. The main bedroom with an en-suite bathroom had obviously belonged to the parents – their clothes were still in the wardrobes and there were bottles of make-up and perfume on an old oak dressing table. The bedroom where Danny McBride had slept had posters of rock groups and racing cars on the walls and fishing tackle in one corner, and Nightingale found a collection of dirty magazines at the bottom of a chest of drawers that was still full of underwear, socks and T-shirts.

  McBride’s own bedroom was a throwback to the fifties, with heavy dark wood furniture and more watercolours on the walls. On a bedside cabinet there was a copy of Farmer’s Weekly, next to a framed photograph of a middle-aged man wearing thick-framed spectacles and a flat cap, a stocky woman with tightly permed hair and two young boys grinning at the camera. The McBride family.

  Nightingale went through every cupboard, every wardrobe, lifted the carpets and checked behind every picture. He checked the toilet cisterns and looked for loose floorboards. He found nothing that suggested McBride was anything other than a hard-working farmer, albeit one with a limited social life.

  After he’d finished searching the basement he went upstairs to the kitchen, where the brother was sitting at the table nursing a mug of coffee. He was staring out of the window at the yard and he turned to look at Nightingale. ‘I made a coffee, do you want one?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m okay,’ said Nightingale, sitting down at the table.

  ‘Find anything?’

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not a blind thing. Who’s looking after the livestock?’

  ‘I’ve brought in a contractor from Sunderland,’ said McBride. ‘None of the neighbours wanted to help, not after what Jimmy did.’ He shrugged. ‘Can’t blame them, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re going to sell it?’

  ‘I’m going to have to,’ said McBride. ‘I can’t see how me or my family can stay in the area, not after this.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘It’s not as if I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘If it had been my kids who had been killed, I’d never forgive anyone connected to the killer. You just can’t, can you? Every time you saw them you’d remember what happened, it’d be like rubbing salt into the wound.’

  ‘It’s a nightmare, I know. In a way your brother has it easy. He’s dead, he’s out of it.’

  McBride nodded. ‘It’s my kids I feel sorry for. They’re going to carry it with them for the rest of their lives, that their uncle was a mass murderer.’ He sipped his coffee.

  ‘The policeman who took away your brother’s computer. Have you got a number for him?’

  ‘I’ve got his card, I think.’ He fished in his wallet and took out a Northumbria Police business card. He gave it to Nightingale. ‘What’s next?’

  ‘I’ll try to see this guy and see if I can get the computer back. I’m hoping to get a contact in the police who’ll give me some background info. And tomorrow I’ll see if I can get a look at the school. I’m heading back to London tomorrow and I’ll get a lab to check the blood on the crucible and knife.’

  ‘What do you think, Mr Nightingale? You’ve seen the house, you’ve seen what’s in the barn. What do you think drove my brother to kill those children?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr McBride. I’ll have a better idea by tomorrow.’

  As it turned out, Inspector Colin Stevenson was considerably less forthcoming than Nightingale had hoped. He was a big man with a double chin and a gut that suggested a fondness for beer. He was clearly unhappy at having Nightingale in his office on a Friday afternoon. He sneered at Nightingale’s business card and then tossed it onto his desk. The detective’s office was a small cubby-hole with a window overlooking the police station’s car park. ‘So why does Mr McBride need a private detective?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s a few questions about the case that he would like answering,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘We’ve been more than happy to communicate with Mr McBride,’ said the detective. ‘But to be fair, I don’t see that there are any questions that need answering. His
brother took his shotgun and killed a teacher and eight children in cold blood and then he turned his gun on himself.’ He shrugged. ‘Case closed.’

  ‘Mr McBride would like to have his brother’s computer returned.’

  ‘Why?’

  Nightingale frowned. ‘Why? If the case is closed then it’s no longer evidence.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said the inspector.

  ‘Well now, that’s not strictly true, is it?’ said Nightingale. ‘You’re not a judge. You’re an investigating officer.’

  ‘But I’ll be the one who decides when something is no longer evidence.’ He folded his arms defensively. ‘That computer is staying where it is.’

  ‘Like you said, the case is closed. Why do you need it?’

  ‘The inquest has yet to be heard,’ said the inspector. ‘What’s on the computer shows the state of his mind.’

  ‘Which is?’

  The detective smiled thinly. ‘I’m not a psychiatrist,’ he said.

  Nightingale smiled amiably. ‘Okay, how about this? It says in the papers that you found evidence of Mr McBride visiting various Satanic websites.’

  ‘I can’t comment on that.’

  ‘You already have. Or someone from your office has. It was all over the papers.’ Nightingale was finding it hard to keep smiling.

  ‘That may be so, but under the Data Protection Act I can’t reveal any details of what might or might not be on his computer.’

  ‘But you found Satanic stuff on the computer?’

  ‘I can’t comment on that.’

  ‘The papers said that McBride had visited various Satanic websites and was researching devil-worship.’

  The detective shrugged carelessly. ‘Again, I can’t comment on that.’

  ‘Someone doesn’t appear to have had any problems talking to the press.’

  ‘What the papers choose to publish is nothing to do with me,’ said the detective. He looked at his watch. ‘I think I’ve given you more than enough of my time, Mr Nightingale.’

  ‘Then I’d better cut to the chase,’ said Nightingale. ‘The press have been told that McBride’s computer was full of Satanic stuff and that he’d been visiting websites dealing with devil-worship and child sacrifice.’