Nightshade: The Fourth Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller jn-4

by Stephen Leather

  Hopkins shot up out of his chair and beat the superintendent to the kitchen door. They hurtled down the hallway, shoving a white-overalled SOCO out of the way.

  The younger of the paramedics was standing at the stop of the stairs, beaming from ear to ear. He flashed the detectives two thumbs up. ‘She’s okay!’ he shouted. ‘She’s bloody well okay!’

  37

  A Sky TV crew had arrived outside the house just as the paramedics were pushing Bella out on the trolley. They wanted to film her being taken to the ambulance, but by the time they had the camera out she was already inside. As the ambulance sped off, the reporter hurried over to Wilkinson with her crew in tow. Wilkinson knew her, she’d been covering the Bella Harper abduction from Day One. Her name was Carol Khan and she was one of the more professional reporters he’d dealt with, so he decided to give her a statement.

  ‘Superintendent Wilkinson, can you tell us what’s happened?’ she asked, holding the microphone under his chin. The lanky cameraman had the lens aimed at Wilkinson’s face and he automatically raised his chin, knowing from experience that with his head down he had several rolls of fat around his neck.

  ‘I can tell you that Bella Harper is alive and well and will shortly be reunited with her parents,’ he said. ‘Two people are in custody and that’s all I can say at the moment.’

  ‘Can you tell us if she has been sexually assaulted?’ asked the reporter.

  ‘Bella is on her way to hospital and she’ll be examined there,’ said the superintendent.

  ‘The people in custody, what can you tell us about them?’

  ‘At the moment nothing, other than that we are not looking for anyone else in connection with this incident and that I am happy that Bella is safe. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the public and the media for all their help. It was their assistance that helped us bring this investigation to a positive conclusion.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ asked the reporter, but the superintendent shook his head.

  ‘That’s all for now,’ he said. ‘There will be a fuller statement later today.’

  The cameraman lowered his camera and the reporter flashed Wilkinson her most winning smile. ‘What about off the record, Rory? What’s happening?’

  ‘Off the record, the guy’s name is Eric Lucas and that’s his house. We’ll be bringing him out in a bit. He was in the process of drowning Bella when two of our officers gained access to the house. Lucas seems to have been helped by his girlfriend, a woman called Candice Matthews. Nothing known on either of them. If you want to hang around we’ll open up the garage door fully. The van they used is inside.’

  ‘We can film them when you bring them out?’

  ‘Yeah, but we’ll be covering their faces, you know that.’

  ‘Don’t suppose I could persuade you not to,’ she said, and laughed.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ said Wilkinson. ‘I’m sure the DCC will have a full press conference at the Training HQ at Netley later today.’ The Netley HQ building was where Hampshire police’s media team was based and it had a large auditorium that was tailor-made for major press conferences.

  A second ambulance had arrived and two more paramedics were attending to Lucas and his girlfriend in the house. Wilkinson was still waiting for confirmation that they were fit to be taken straight to the station.

  He ducked under the police tape and took out his mobile phone as he walked around to the rear of the house. He called the deputy chief constable’s number and his secretary put him straight through. ‘Bella Harper’s alive, sir,’ he said.

  ‘She’s what?’

  ‘The call we got that she was dead turns out to have been a false alarm,’ said Wilkinson. ‘She’s in an ambulance on her way to hospital as we speak. But she’s fine. She’s talking to the paramedics, all her vital signs are okay, they say she’s in shock but other than that …’

  ‘We were told she was dead. The press office is just about to put out a statement offering our condolences.’

  ‘Well, there’s definitely no need for that, sir. Like I said, she’s fine.’

  ‘How did that happen? How could they get it so wrong?’

  ‘The men who went into the house found Bella being drowned in the bath. They got her out and did CPR but thought that she’d stopped breathing. When the paramedics arrived, they checked and she was okay.’

  ‘That makes no sense to me, but I’m not about to start looking gift horses in the mouth,’ said the DCC. ‘What about the media?’

  ‘Sky TV are here. That’s it so far.’

  ‘And the suspects?’

  ‘They’re both a bit banged up but they should be okay to take straight to the station.’

  ‘And they’re bang to rights?’

  ‘Inspector Hopkins found Lucas with his hands around Bella’s throat,’ he said.

  ‘But no warrant, that’s correct?’

  ‘They heard her scream, sir. The lack of a warrant won’t be an issue.’

  ‘You’ll be handling the interrogation?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then I don’t need to tell you to do it by the book, superintendent. No slip-ups.’

  ‘Understood, sir,’ said Wilkinson. He ended the call. He would be handling the interrogation but he was sure that the DCC would be leading the press conference, all smiles now that Bella was alive.

  38

  Nightingale pushed open the office door and held up the two cups of Costa coffee. ‘For my favourite assistant,’ he said.

  Jenny was standing in front of the television. She looked over at him and grinned. ‘My cup runneth over,’ she said. ‘Though I have to point out that I’m your only assistant.’

  Nightingale hung up his coat and went over to stand by her. The television was tuned to Sky News and a reporter was talking to camera in front of a suburban house. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘They found that little girl. Bella Harper.’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Yes, thank God.’

  ‘How many days was it? Four? That’s really unusual. If they’re not found within forty-eight hours …’

  ‘Well, in this case it worked out for the best. I’m so happy for the parents. They must be so relieved.’ She went back to her desk and muted the sound. ‘So how did it go with the little old lady?’

  ‘According to Mrs Steadman, that Satanic altar is just window dressing. Either McBride did it with next to no knowledge of what Satanism is about, or someone tried to frame him.’ He sat down opposite her.

  ‘There’s no doubt that he killed those children,’ said Jenny. ‘None at all.’

  ‘I meant frame him for the devil-worship thing. How are you getting on with the kids?’

  ‘All good,’ she said. She stood up and took her coffee over to the whiteboard. ‘And you were right. All the children who were killed were from single-parent families.’

  Nightingale joined her. ‘That can’t be a coincidence, can it?’

  ‘More than half of all marriages end in divorce, but couples with children tend to stay together more than those who don’t. So you’d expect half of the eight to be in single-parent families.’

  Nightingale frowned and rubbed his chin. ‘But why would he deliberately set out to kill kids with just one parent?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I don’t see that it can be a coincidence. Having said that, it still doesn’t explain why he only shot two girls in the first classroom. I haven’t been able to check them all, but I did cross-check some of the pupils with the electoral roll and there must have been half a dozen or more kids from one-parent families in that first room that he didn’t shoot.’

  ‘Okay, so all the children that he shot were from one-parent families, but there were children from one-parent families that he didn’t shoot?’

  ‘Exactly. But I’m not sure that helps us come up with a motive.’ She waved at the photographs. ‘Do you notice something else?’

  Nightingale studied the photographs. ‘Five girls, thre
e boys. Blonde hair, dark hair, one redhead. Eye colour?’

  ‘Some have blue eyes, some have brown.’

  ‘Short hair, long hair. Straight hair, curly.’

  ‘It’s more what you don’t see,’ said Jenny.

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘I don’t get it.’ He stared at the photographs, then threw up his hands. ‘Got it. They’re all Caucasian.’ He turned to look at Jenny. ‘He was targeting white kids? Is that what you think?’

  ‘I though that might be significant until I checked the school roll. There are very few Asians or Afro-Caribbeans at the school. In fact Berwick is the most ethnically homogeneous district in the country. In the last census, 99.6 per cent of the population recorded themselves as white.’

  ‘So if it’s not racial, what is it? What am I missing?’

  ‘At the risk of being judgemental, how about the fact that they’re all good-looking kids?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The girls are pretty, the boys are good-looking, there isn’t a fat, spotty or funny-looking one in the bunch.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘No, I’m deadly serious. You take any group of kids these days and probably a third are overweight. Another quarter are, shall we say, challenged in the looks department. I know that’s cruel, but it’s a fact of life. Some kids are good-looking, some aren’t. I know that all parents think their kids are perfect, but when you take a step back you know that isn’t true.’ She waved at the whiteboard. ‘These kids are all the sort you see in TV commercials.’

  Nightingale ran his hand through his hair. ‘So he was targeting good-looking kids from single-parent families?’

  Jenny nodded. ‘You can see where I’m heading with this, right?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Children from single-parent families are more likely to be abused. They’re more vulnerable.’

  ‘So you think that McBride had been abusing these kids and decided to kill them?’

  ‘I think that needs looking at, yes.’

  ‘His brother said he was great with kids.’

  ‘Yeah, well, just because he didn’t abuse his own nephews doesn’t mean he wasn’t a child molester.’

  Nightingale sighed. ‘The brother isn’t going to be happy about this. We prove that his brother wasn’t a devil-worshipper by showing that he was a paedophile.’

  ‘He wants the truth,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I’m not sure that he does. He might think he does but how’s he going to react if we tell him that his brother was a paedophile?’ He sipped his coffee as he looked at the photographs on the whiteboard. Jenny was right. They were all good-looking kids. He stared at the photograph of Grace Campbell. Long, curly chestnut hair. A snub nose. Smiling for the camera. Was it possible that she had been abused? She looked happy, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. ‘We don’t know for sure that these children were abused,’ said Nightingale. ‘We’re going to have to be very careful here.’

  ‘What about the post-mortems?’ asked Jenny. ‘They were all sudden deaths, so by law there has to be a post mortem, right?’

  Nightingale nodded. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So talk to the coroner. If the kids were being abused, he’d know.’

  ‘It’ll mean going back to Berwick. I doubt he’s going to say anything over the phone.’

  Jenny smiled brightly. ‘I’ll book you a ticket. And there’s something else you might want to do while you’re up there.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘The lab still have the crucible and the knife. Why don’t I get them to check them for fingerprints and DNA?’

  ‘DNA’s expensive,’ said Nightingale. ‘Don’t forget that when the two grand has gone we’re not going to be getting to be getting any refreshers.’

  ‘Just fingerprints, then. We can compare them to McBride’s prints and we’ll know if he set up the altar or not.’

  ‘You think he’d go to the trouble of setting up a fake black magic altar?’

  ‘I don’t know. But if it wasn’t him, at least we’d have the prints of whoever did, and that might be a start.’

  Nightingale nodded thoughtfully. She was right.

  ‘You touched them with your bare hands, right?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about prints, I was more concerned about the blood.’

  ‘Sure, but we’ll need your prints to rule you out. And while you’re up in Berwick you could get something with McBride’s prints. Something that only he could have touched.’

  ‘Two birds with one stone?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  39

  Sandra Harper held her husband’s hand and squeezed it. ‘I can’t believe it, I can’t believe we got her back.’

  Will Harper looked over at their daughter, lying in the ICU bed connected to a machine that beeped softly, proof if they needed it that Bella was alive and well. The doctor looking after her, a bald Indian with a kindly face and an unpronounceable surname, had said Bella was in ICU purely as a precaution. Once the twenty-four-hour observation period was over she would be moved into a general ward, with every possibility of her going home before the end of the week. ‘If I get my hands on the bastard that …’ He gritted his teeth and left the sentence unfinished.

  His wife squeezed his hand. ‘We got her back, Will. That’s all that matters. I don’t know what I would have done if …’ Tears pricked her eyes and she blinked them away.

  ‘I just want one minute alone with him in a room, that’s all,’ he said. ‘And that bitch with him. How can a woman help a man rape a child, Sandra? Can you answer me that?’

  Sandra shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I hope they throw away the key,’ Will muttered. ‘And I hope while they’re in prison they get the shit kicked out of them. They hate nonces in prison.’

  Bella opened her eyes and Sandra jumped. ‘She’s awake.’ She jumped up and hurried over to the bed. Bella smiled up at her. ‘Hi, Mummy.’

  Tears ran down Sandra’s face. ‘Oh my God, my God, my God. Thank you.’

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’

  ‘I’m here, honey,’ said Will. He reached out and held her hand, careful not to disturb the drip.

  ‘You look tired,’ said Bella.

  ‘We haven’t been sleeping much,’ said Will. ‘We were worried about you.’

  ‘I’m okay, Daddy. I want to go home.’

  ‘Soon, honey. The doctors want to check you’re okay.’

  Sandra smoothed her daughter’s forehead. She was cool to the touch, much cooler than usual. ‘How do you feel, Bella?’

  ‘I feel fine, Mummy. I don’t need to stay here.’

  ‘You’ll be home soon, honey. ‘

  ‘Tell the doctor I’m okay.’

  ‘We will, honey, as soon as he gets back.’

  A male nurse popped his head around the door. ‘Everything okay?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s awake,’ said Will.

  ‘I’ll get the doctor,’ said the nurse, and he hurried off.

  ‘Can I have a drink of water, Daddy?’ asked Bella.

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘Or a Coke? Can I have a Coke?’

  ‘You can have whatever you want, honey,’ said Will.

  ‘There’s a machine in the corridor,’ said Sandra. She carried on smoothing Bella’s forehead as Will went off in search of her Coke.

  ‘I love you, Mummy,’ whispered Bella.

  Sandra felt tears run down her face but she didn’t want to take her hand away from Bella’s forehead, so she didn’t wipe them away.

  ‘Don’t be sad, Mummy.’

  ‘I’m not sad, honey. I’m happy.’

  ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

  Sandra smiled down at her. ‘I know.’

  ‘I saw an angel, Mummy.’

  ‘When, darling?’

  ‘When I was with those people. The bad people that hurt me.’

  ‘You saw an angel?’
/>
  Bella nodded. ‘When I went to sleep in the bath. I went to sleep and then I woke up and I saw an angel.’

  Sandra shook her head. ‘That wasn’t an angel, honey. That was a paramedic. He came with an ambulance. He brought you back to us.’

  Bella smiled. ‘No, Mummy. It was a real angel. With wings and everything. He was nice to me and he said everything was going to be all right.’

  ‘Well, your angel was right, darling. Because now everything is all right.’

  ‘The angel said I didn’t have to go to Heaven.’

  ‘He said that?’

  Bella nodded earnestly. ‘He said it wasn’t my time. But he said before I went back there were some people I had to see.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yes, Mummy. He took me to see Grandpa Arthur. And Auntie Eadie.’

  Sandra frowned. ‘Who are they, honey?’

  ‘You don’t know? Grandpa Arthur is the father of Daddy’s father. And Auntie Eadie was your sister.’ Bella giggled. ‘Did you forget?’

  ‘I must have,’ said Sandra. She was genuinely confused at what her daughter was telling her, because while Sandra had three siblings, they were all boys. She didn’t have a sister called Eadie, dead or alive.

  ‘They talked to me and then they took me to see Jesus.’

  ‘Jesus?’

  ‘Yes, Mummy. I went to see Jesus with the angel and Grandpa Arthur and Auntie Eadie. I spent ages talking to him. He is such a kind man. Like Father Christmas, but his beard was brown.’

  ‘That’s nice, honey.’

  ‘Then Jesus said it was time to go back and the angel took me and I woke up and that’s when I saw the paramedic. I know the paramedic wasn’t the angel. The angel was Michael.’

  ‘Michael?’

  ‘He’s an archangel, Mummy. That’s a really important angel. He said I was very special because Jesus only speaks to special people.’

  40

  Nightingale phoned Danny McBride as he grabbed a coffee at Heathrow Terminal 1 and arranged to meet him at the farm later that day. He flew to Edinburgh, picked up a rental car and drove to the Northumberland coroner’s office in Church Street. He managed to find a parking space close by and smoked a cigarette at the main entrance before going inside.