Nightshade: The Fourth Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller jn-4

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Don’t wake them up yet, they were up late last night.’

  ‘Go back to bed, honey.’

  There was a tenseness to his voice and Sally realised something was wrong. She reached the door but froze when she saw three-year-old Darren lying on his back, his eyes wide and staring. She knew instinctively he was dead – there was an emptiness in his eyes and his tongue was protruding from his mouth. Sally gasped and she covered her mouth with her hands. Her whole body began to shake.

  She reached out with her left hand and pushed the door open. It scraped on the carpet, and then she saw her husband, bent over Gary’s crib. He had a pillow pressed over Gary and he was pushing it down hard. ‘Go back to bed, honey,’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she screamed, pushing the door wide open. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  John ignored her and continued to press on the pillow. She ran over to him and grabbed at his arm. ‘Get off him!’ she screamed. She pulled hard and the pillow came away. Gary was as dead as his brother, his eyes open and lifeless, his mouth forming a perfect circle. Sally reached for him, tears pricking her eyes. ‘What have you done?’

  Before she could pick up Gary, John seized her by the throat, his fingers digging into her trachea, cutting off her breath. ‘It’s better like this,’ he said. ‘It’s better they don’t suffer.’

  Sally tried to speak, but his grip was too tight. There was a look in his eyes she’d never seen before. It wasn’t anger, or hatred, it was something cold and hard, as if they had turned to glass in their sockets.

  ‘It’s going to be okay, honey. Jesus says so.’ He nodded earnestly. ‘Really, he says so.’ His left hand joined the right and he squeezed tighter. Her throat was burning and her chest was heaving but she couldn’t get any air into her lungs. Sally didn’t know enough human anatomy to realise it wasn’t the lack of air that was killing her, it was the fact that her husband’s hands had cut off the blood supply to her brain. She tried to beg him to let her go, but even if she could have formed the words she knew there was nothing she could say that would stop him. The last thought that went through her mind was that at least her boys hadn’t suffered.

  44

  Jenny was at her desk tapping away on her keyboard when Nightingale walked in. It was clear from the look on his face that something was wrong. He didn’t take off his raincoat, just dropped down onto the chair opposite hers. ‘He’s dead,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s dead?’

  ‘Danny McBride. The client.’

  Jenny’s jaw dropped. ‘Please tell me that’s a sick attempt at humour.’

  Nightingale sat down. ‘I wish it was a joke.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He hanged himself, or someone hanged him. I had a quick look around and I didn’t find a note. And the last time I saw him he didn’t seem the suicidal type.’

  Jenny put her hand over her mouth. ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Why are you only telling me this now? Why didn’t you call me yesterday?’

  ‘It wasn’t something I wanted to share on the phone.’

  ‘I can’t believe it. He seemed like such a nice man.’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘And his poor kids. And his wife.’

  ‘I know.’

  Jenny folded her arms. ‘I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.’

  ‘I’m as shocked as you are,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘What did the police say?’

  Nightingale looked pained. ‘I’m not sure if they know yet.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He shrugged. ‘I couldn’t call it in, could I? Then I’d be right in the middle of it. The cops are already pissed off at me, it’ll only get worse if they think I had a hand in McBride’s death.’

  ‘Jack! What, you found the body and you just left it there?’

  ‘What else could I have done? The last time I made waves I got hit over the head and driven off the road. If I’d drawn attention to myself …’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows what might have happened. So yes, I put my tail between my legs and skulked away. Discretion being the better part of valour and all that crap.’

  ‘And what about his family? Who’s going to tell them?’

  ‘Someone will find him eventually,’ said Nightingale. ‘His wife will report him missing and I’m pretty sure the cops will check the farm. It’d be the obvious place to look.’

  ‘But you said it was suicide. I don’t understand why you couldn’t just report it to the police.’

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘He was hanged but he wasn’t suicidal. You met him. He was fine. And like I said, there was no note.’

  ‘So what are you saying? Someone killed him and made it look like suicide?’

  ‘When McBride took me to the farm, he unlocked the gate and we drove down to the farm, leaving the gate open. When I found McBride his car was parked by the farmhouse but the gate was padlocked.’

  ‘So someone else padlocked the gate afterwards?’

  Nightingale nodded. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But who? Who would have done that?’

  ‘That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it? I’m guessing someone who realised that he had hired me, someone who wants to hide the truth about McBride’s brother and what he did at the school.’

  ‘But that means it must be someone who knew you were on the case.’

  Nightingale rubbed his chin. ‘That thought had occurred to me,’ he said. ‘It could be the cop I spoke to, or the coroner’s officer. Who was also a cop. Or the detective that Robbie put in touch.’

  Jenny’s jaw dropped. ‘Are you saying the police are behind this?’

  ‘I don’t know, not for sure anyway. But I don’t want to be sitting in a police cell waiting to find out.’ He shrugged. ‘But it might not be a cop. I chatted to the locals in the pub and we don’t know who the cops spoke to.’

  Jenny ran her hands through her hair. ‘What are you going to do, Jack?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘But we don’t have a client any more. That’s it, right?’

  ‘I don’t see why. He paid us two grand in advance. What are we supposed to do? Give it back? We at least owe him two grand’s worth of work. Besides, I want to know what’s going on, because something is clearly rotten in the state of Berwick.’

  ‘Now you’re misquoting Shakespeare?’

  ‘I’m under a lot of stress,’ he said. He pulled an evidence bag from his pocket. Inside were a plastic-handled screwdriver and two spanners. Like the knife, they’d had to travel in the hold on the flight from Edinburgh to London. ‘I got these in the barn – it looked like he used them when he was working on his tractor.’

  Jenny took the bag from him. ‘What about your prints?’

  Nightingale took a sheet of paper from her printer and pressed the fingers of both hands down onto it. He folded it and put it into another evidence bag. ‘There you go.’

  ‘You’re such a professional.’

  ‘That’s what they say. Coffee?’

  ‘Are you asking or making?’

  ‘I’m making.’

  ‘Then I’d love one.’

  45

  ‘Well, this is a nice surprise,’ said Sandra’s mother, as Sandra kissed her on the cheek. ‘Dad’ll be so sad to have missed you. He’s fishing down at the canal.’

  ‘I’ll be back, Mum. But I wanted a chat with you.’

  ‘Tea,’ said her mother. ‘The kettle’s on. Come on through.’ She took Sandra down the hall and fussed around the tea things as Sandra sat down at the table and looked out over the back garden. It wasn’t the house that she’d been brought up in; her parents had downsized ten years earlier when the last of her brothers had finally moved out. They’d sold their five-bedroom house, bought a small bungalow with a manageable garden and put the rest of the money into shares, providing them with a comfortable retirement.

  ‘How’s my lovely
granddaughter?’ asked Sandra’s mother.

  ‘She’s fine. It’s almost as if it never happened. She doesn’t talk about it, and we don’t ask her.’

  ‘When is she coming home?’

  ‘Hopefully tomorrow. Friday at the latest. She wants to go now, but the doctors say they want to keep her in a while longer. But they have promised she’ll be back home by the weekend.’

  ‘How is she … inside?’ She rubbed her own stomach and winced as if she was in pain.

  ‘The doctors say she’s fine. They did all sorts of tests and she’s all clear, you know, for HIV and things. And there’s no damage, just bruising. They gave her a shot so that she won’t get pregnant.’ Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked them away. ‘Nine years old and they’re worried she might be pregnant. How awful is that?’ She took a deep breath. ‘She’ll be fine. It’s best we don’t talk about it. It needs to be forgotten so that we can all move on with our lives.’

  ‘There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t say a prayer of thanks to God, you know that?’ She poured boiling water into a earthenware teapot, complete with a red knitted tea cosy. Sandra had made the tea cosy at school almost twenty years ago and presented it to her mother on Mother’s Day. ‘It was a miracle, a true miracle.’

  ‘It was,’ agreed Sandra.

  ‘And Will? How is he?’

  Sandra nodded. ‘He’s okay. He’s taken time off work, he doesn’t want to let Bella out of his sight. He’s in the hospital with her now. I get the feeling that he blames me. He doesn’t say anything, of course, but I can see it in his eyes.’

  ‘I’m sure he doesn’t. It wasn’t your fault, it was those …’ She shuddered. ‘Those animals. How could they do that to a little girl?’

  Sandra shook her head. ‘The police say they think he’s done it before. They’re talking to the girl to see if she’ll give evidence against him. Will gets so angry when he sees anything about them on television. He wants them dead. Says hanging’s too good for them.’

  ‘Well, he’d be right about that,’ said her mother. ‘Killing’s too good for them, though. They need to be made to suffer for every day they have left. They won’t of course. It’ll be Sky TV and PlayStations and probably conjugal visits. Prison today isn’t really prison. They’re like holiday camps.’

  ‘I don’t think I can face a trial, Mum. The police say they hope that they will just plead guilty and then Bella won’t have to give evidence. I couldn’t bear the thought of her having to talk about what they did to her.’ She shook her head fiercely. ‘I don’t want her going through that.’ She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself down and then forced a smile. ‘Mum, I’ve got to ask you something and I know it’s going to sound silly, but …’ She threw up her hands. ‘I should just spit it out, shouldn’t I? Did I ever have a sister? A sister called Eadie?’

  Sandra could see from the look of horror on her mother’s face that she’d struck a nerve. ‘Did your father say something?’

  ‘No, Mum. I just need to know, did I have a sister?’

  Tears filled her mother’s eyes and she dabbed at them with a teacloth. ‘Why are you asking now?’ she sniffed.

  Sandra got up and walked over to her mother and hugged her. ‘It just came up, Mum. I need to know.’

  Sandra’s mother trembled and Sandra found herself patting her on the back to reassure her. ‘It’s okay, Mum.’ She flashed back to when she’d been a teenager and she’d been dumped by her first boyfriend. Her mum had hugged her and patted her back in exactly the same way and told her that everything was going to be all right, that there were plenty of fish in the sea and that one day she’d meet the man of her dreams. She’d been right. Will was the love of her life. ‘Come on, sit down, I’ll make the tea.’

  Her mother sat down and kept dabbing at her eyes as Sandra poured tea into two mugs. She sat down and waited until her mum had sipped her tea before asking her again about Eadie.

  ‘She lived for about an hour,’ said her mother. ‘Barely that.’ She sighed. ‘She was eight weeks premature and didn’t stand a chance, really. I knew that as soon as I saw her.’ She held out her right hand. ‘The doctor held her like that, with one hand. She was so tiny. And she didn’t even open her eyes. They put her in one of those incubator things, but I could see from the looks on the faces of the nurses that she wasn’t long for the world. We’d already decided on the name. Eadie. Your dad’s grandmum was Eadie. I know it’s old-fashioned, but that’s what he wanted and what your dad wants he usually gets.’ She dabbed at her eyes again. ‘She would have been our first.’ She shook her head. ‘No, she WAS our first. She was my first baby but I only got to hold her after she’d died. They wrapped her in a white cloth and said that I could hold her as long as I wanted. They meant it, too. I held her for hours and no one said a word.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘Tell you what? That I had a baby and she died? What good would that have done? You all came along later.’

  ‘That’s so sad.’ Sandra felt tears pricking her eyes.

  ‘She didn’t suffer. She just wasn’t meant to be born. Your dad said she’d gone back to be with the angels.’

  ‘Did you bury her?’

  ‘The hospital arranged a cremation and they had a vicar there.’ She wiped her eyes and smiled. ‘Not a day goes by when I don’t think about her,’ she said. ‘In a way I’m glad you know. It wasn’t a secret, it was just that your dad and I decided it was something we should keep to ourselves.’ She sipped her tea again. ‘What made you ask about Eadie now? After all these years?’

  Sandra drank from her own mug as her mind raced. Telling her mum the truth would raise more questions than it would answer. How had Bella known about Eadie? She put down her mug. ‘It was a dream, Mum.’

  ‘A dream?’

  Sandra nodded. ‘Just a dream.’

  46

  Will was sitting next to Bella’s bed when Sandra walked into the room. There was a tray on the cupboard on the other side of the bed, and Sandra lifted the plastic from the plate. There were two pale burgers, a spoonful of anaemic corn and three roast potatoes. Sandra could understand why Bella hadn’t touched the food. She replaced the cover and smiled at her husband. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘We’re good,’ said Will.

  ‘I want to go home,’ said Bella.

  ‘Soon, honey,’ said Sandra. ‘The doctors have to be sure that everything’s okay.’

  ‘Everything IS okay,’ said Bella firmly. ‘I want to be able to sleep in my own bed.’

  ‘I’ll talk to the doctors,’ said Sandra. She pointed at the tray. ‘How about I order you some fast food? A pizza? Or I can go and get you KFC or Burger King if you want.’

  Bella shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You have to eat, honey.’ Sandra looked across at her husband. ‘Do you want to get a coffee?’

  Will stood up and looked down at Bella. ‘Are you okay if your mum and I go and get a coffee?’

  Bella reached for the remote and began changing the channels on the wall-mounted TV. ‘Sure.’

  Will and Sandra walked down the corridor towards the lifts. ‘The police want us to do a press conference,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The woman from the press office said it was some quid pro quo thing they had with the media. They help us publicise the search for Bella and when she’s found we give interviews.’

  ‘I suppose that’s fair,’ said Sandra. ‘If it hadn’t been for the publicity the neighbours wouldn’t have phoned and …’ She left the sentence unfinished.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Will. He pressed the button to call the lift. ‘And at least it’s good news, right? We just thank the police and the public. She said it might mean that they’ll leave us alone then.’ The lift arrived and they got in. Will pressed the button for the ground floor.

  ‘What did she mean? Leave us alone?’

  ‘You know what the tabloids are like. They�
��d have paparazzi hanging outside our house, following her to school, all that nonsense. But if we have a press conference and everyone gets their photographs and our quotes then they won’t bother us.’

  Sandra frowned and ran a hand through her hair. ‘Do you believe that?’

  ‘I think we’ll still have paparazzi around but what she says about the quid pro quo is fair. We do owe them, especially the TV people.’

  They arrived at the ground floor and walked to the canteen.

  ‘What did she say, your mum?’

  ‘You won’t believe it,’ said Sandra. ‘Mum and Dad did have another daughter, but she died at birth. They’d never mentioned it. To anyone.’

  Will stopped and stared at her open-mouthed.

  ‘I know. It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? She never said anything, all these years.’

  ‘And the baby was called Eadie?’

  Sandra nodded. ‘It was a family name.’

  ‘How the hell did Bella know?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ she said. ‘Have you talked to your dad? About his father?’

  ‘He’s not answering his phone. You know what he’s like. Let’s get our coffee and I’ll try again.’

  They joined the queue at the counter, picked up coffee and muffins, and took them to a free table. They sat down, and Will took out his mobile phone and phoned his father. This time his father answered. ‘Is everything okay?’ asked his father immediately. ‘Is Bella okay?’

  ‘She’s fine, Dad.’

  ‘I’m coming to the hospital tomorrow.’

  ‘There’s no need, Dad. She’ll be home soon. Really, she’s fine. Look, I have a quick question for you. What was your dad’s name?’ Will’s grandfather had died not long after his father had been born, felled by a major stroke after twenty years of smoking two packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day.

  ‘Arthur,’ said Will’s father. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Somebody was asking, that’s all. Look, I’ve got to go, I’ll let you know as soon as Bella’s home.’ He ended the call and stared at his wife in astonishment. ‘Bella was right,’ he said. ‘Grandpa Arthur. How could she know?’