Midnight

by Stephen Leather

  She walked into the hallway and up the stairs to her first-floor flat. He followed her and waited while she unlocked the door. ‘Home sweet home,’ she said.

  She showed him where the kitchen was and he put the carrier bags on the counter. She got a bottle of Frascati from the fridge and picked up two glasses. ‘White okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Great,’ he said, taking off his overcoat and scarf and draping them over the back of a chair. ‘Why don’t I open that for you?’

  She gave him the bottle and he picked up a corkscrew then followed her through into the sitting room. There was an LCD television and a leather sofa and an armchair. All the furniture had come with the flat. Chance sat down on the sofa and opened the wine. ‘So, what do you do, Mia?’ he asked.

  She frowned, not understanding the question. ‘Do?’ she repeated.

  ‘Your job,’ he said, stretching out his long legs. ‘What do you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m on the social,’ she said.

  Chance nodded approvingly. ‘And you can afford this? It’s a nice place.’

  ‘It’s covered by housing benefit,’ she said. ‘The neighbours aren’t happy because they have to pay for theirs but I’m entitled, so screw them.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  ‘It’s because of the economy, innit?’ she said. ‘The landlord couldn’t find any tenants so he kept cutting the rent, and then it got so cheap the council said they could cover it with housing benefit, so here I am.’

  ‘You get income support?’ he asked as he poured wine into the two glasses.

  She nodded. ‘Disability because of my nerves. A hundred and sixty a week, which isn’t bad. Plus another seventy for mobility.’

  ‘And it beats working,’ he said. ‘You should have kids. You’d get more money and the council will find you a bigger place.’

  ‘I thought of that,’ she said, lighting a cigarette. She offered him the pack but he shook his head.

  ‘I bet you did,’ he said. He pushed one of the glasses towards her.

  She smiled coyly. ‘Are you putting yourself forward for the job?’ she asked.

  ‘I might just do that,’ he said, and flashed her his movie-star smile.

  She sipped her wine. ‘That coin thing – you’re serious?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s not a thing, it’s my life.’

  ‘Why? Why do you do it?’

  ‘I told you. So that the coin makes decisions for me. Because if I don’t make decisions myself then it all comes down to fate. I believe that everything is pre-ordained and there’s no such thing as free will.’

  She frowned, unable to follow his train of thought.

  ‘It’s only by throwing in an element of randomness that you can gain control of your life,’ he continued. ‘Everybody should do it. They’d find themselves truly free.’ He raised his glass to her. ‘Here’s to you, Mia. And here’s to the coin. Because if it wasn’t for the coin, I wouldn’t be here with you now.’

  ‘That’s true,’ she said. She reached over and clinked her glass against his.

  They both drank, then Chance stood up and walked over to the window. The street below was lined with cars but there were few pedestrians. He reached for the strings that controlled the blinds and gently closed them. ‘I always prefer blinds to curtains, don’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘I guess so,’ she said, flicking ash into a ceramic ashtray in the shape of a lucky clover. She patted the sofa. ‘Come and sit down,’ she said.

  He put his hand into his pocket and took out the fifty-pence coin. He tossed it. And smiled to himself when he saw the way it had landed. He looked up and grinned at her as he put away the coin.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘What did you decide?’

  He walked towards her. ‘It’s a secret,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘You’re terrible,’ she said. ‘You can’t let a coin rule your life.’

  ‘Oh yes, I can,’ he said. He bent down and kissed her on the top of her head.

  ‘At least give me a hint,’ she said. She stubbed out her cigarette and then sat back and held out her hands.

  He chuckled as he reached into his pocket. ‘Let’s just say that it’s not your lucky day, darling.’ His hand reappeared, holding a cut-throat razor. She opened her mouth to scream but before she had even taken a breath he had slashed the blade across her throat and arterial blood sprayed over the wall.

  5

  Jenny McLean was tapping away on her computer when Nightingale walked in and tossed his raincoat over the chair by the door. ‘I hate the Welsh,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a bit racist, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Catherine Zeta-Jones seems quite sweet. And Richard Burton. What an actor.’

  ‘Let me be more specific. Welsh cops. I hate Welsh cops.’

  ‘Yes, I rather gather that you got on the wrong side of Superintendent Thomas. He didn’t seem a happy bunny at all on the phone yesterday. I definitely got the impression that you weren’t winning friends and influencing people in the valleys.’

  Nightingale strode through to his office and picked up the mail that Jenny had left on his desk. ‘Any chance of a coffee?’

  ‘I hear and obey, oh master.’

  Nightingale dropped down into his high-backed fake-leather chair and swung his feet up onto his desk. He flicked through the mail. Three bills, a threatening letter from the VAT man, a CV from a former soldier who had been injured in Iraq, a mail shot offering him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sign up for an investment seminar where he would learn how to be a millionaire within five years, and a letter from a fitness centre down the road offering him twenty per cent off a year’s membership plus the offer of three sessions with a personal trainer.

  Jenny carried his mug of coffee over to him and put it on the blotter in front of the computer. As she sat down on the edge of his desk she noticed the plaster on the side of his head. ‘What happened?’

  Nightingale picked up his mug and sipped his coffee. ‘I cut myself shaving.’

  ‘I’m serious, Jack.’ She reached out to touch the plaster but Nightingale moved his head away.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘The official report probably says that I head-butted the cop’s baton.’

  ‘A policeman hit you? Why?’

  ‘Let’s just say that my trip to Wales didn’t go as planned,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t tell him about the séance, did you?’

  ‘I didn’t think that would be a good idea,’ said Nightingale. ‘He wanted to know what I was doing in her house. I told him that I thought she was my sister but then he tried to pin me down on where I’d got the info from. I figured that telling him my dead partner gave me the intel at a séance probably wouldn’t get a sympathetic hearing.’

  ‘But why were the police involved anyway?’ she said. ‘You were just going to talk to her, right?’

  ‘That was the plan,’ he said. ‘But she went and spoiled it by killing herself.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hanged herself, just before I got there. Didn’t Thomas tell you any of this when he called you?’

  ‘He was only interested in why you’d gone to Abersoch. I said you’d been tipped off about your sister and then he asked me about Robbie. I figured that something was up so I told him you knew about Constance, but I said I didn’t know who gave you her name.’

  ‘Smart girl.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I called you but your mobile was off.’

  ‘They’d taken my phone off me,’ said Nightingale. ‘They took bloody everything off me, as it happens. Kept me in a forensic suit all afternoon and I didn’t get back to London until after midnight.’

  ‘Why did she kill herself?’

  ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘There was no note, and according to the cops she wasn’t depressed. I got there, the door was open, I went inside, she was hanging from the banisters. And the Welsh cops are adamant that she’s not my sister.’

  Jenny frowned. ‘But she was the only Constance in A
bersoch. I checked.’

  ‘Robbie got it wrong, then,’ said Nightingale. ‘Or somebody was pushing the pointer thing on the Ouija board.’

  ‘There were only the two of us, Jack, and I certainly wasn’t pushing.’

  ‘And there’d be no point in me sending myself on a wild goose chase,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘So what went wrong? We did everything we were supposed to do with the Ouija board, didn’t we? We got through to Robbie and Robbie said your sister was in Abersoch.’

  ‘Strictly speaking, we asked him where my sister was and we got two words. Constance and Abersoch. And that’s all we got. Maybe talking to the recently departed isn’t an exact science.’ He sipped his coffee again. ‘Or maybe the cops are wrong. I never knew that I was adopted, right? I was thirty-two years old before I found out that Ainsley Gosling was my real father. He did my adoption in total secrecy and he’d have done my sister’s adoption the same way. He hid his trail and he hid it well.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll give it a day or two and go back to talk to her parents. I need to nail it down for sure.’ He put his coffee mug back on the desk. ‘Much happen while I was away?’

  ‘You had a phone call from that solicitor in Hamdale. Ernest Turtledove.’

  Nightingale frowned. Turtledove was the man who had turned his life upside down when he broke the news that William and Irene Nightingale weren’t Jack’s real parents and that he was actually the son of a Satanist and devil-worshipper, who committed suicide after naming Nightingale as his sole heir. ‘What did he want? Is it about the estate?’

  ‘Said he needed to see you. I asked but he wouldn’t say what it was about. He said that it was private.’

  ‘I’m not schlepping all the way out to Hamdale on a whim,’ said Nightingale. ‘Can you get him on the phone for me?’

  Jenny went through to her office to make the call. A few minutes later she shouted that Turtledove was on the line.

  ‘Mr Nightingale?’ said the solicitor hesitantly, as if he was expecting someone else.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nightingale. ‘My assistant said that you needed to see me.’

  ‘That’s right. Something has come up.’

  ‘What, exactly?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t go into details over the phone,’ said the solicitor. ‘I really need to see you in person.’

  ‘You’re more than welcome to come to my office, Mr Turtledove.’

  The solicitor sighed. ‘I don’t travel, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘My leg, you know. I can’t drive, and you know what public transport is like.’

  ‘It’s a long trip either way, Mr Turtledove. Can you at least tell me what it is that’s so important that you need to see me in person?’

  ‘I have to give you something.’

  ‘Why didn’t you give it to me three weeks ago when I first came to see you?’

  ‘Because it has only recently come into my possession,’ said the solicitor. ‘I do apologise for this, Mr Nightingale, but I have been given strict instructions and I have to follow them.’

  ‘What is it you have to give me?’

  ‘It’s an A4 envelope.’

  ‘Why not courier it to me?’

  ‘I really can’t, I’m afraid. As I said, I do have strict instructions.’

  ‘This is connected to Ainsley Gosling, I assume?’

  ‘I assume so, too,’ said Turtledove. ‘Can you be here this afternoon?’

  6

  Hamdale was just a dot on the map and it wasn’t much bigger in real life: a cluster of houses around a thatched pub and a row of shops that would have been out of business if Tesco or Asda opened up within twenty miles. Nightingale left his green MGB in the pub car park and smoked a Marlboro as he walked to Turtledove’s office, which was wedged between a post office and cake shop. He stood outside the cake shop as he finished his cigarette. The cakes were works of art, birthday cakes in the shapes of football pitches and teddy bears, layered wedding cakes with ornate icing, cakes shaped like cartoon characters. A sign in the window announced the shop’s internet address and the fact that they could do next-day delivery anywhere in the United Kingdom but not Northern Ireland. A pretty brunette in a black and white striped apron smiled at him and Nightingale smiled back. He tossed his cigarette butt into the street and pushed open the door to the solicitor’s office. A bell dinged and Turtledove’s grey-haired secretary looked up from her old-fashioned electric typewriter.

  ‘Mr Nightingale, Mr Turtledove’s expecting you,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he said.

  She started to get up but Nightingale waved for her to stay put. ‘I know the way,’ he said.

  He opened the door to Turtledove’s inner sanctum. The solicitor was sitting behind a large oak desk piled high with files, all of them tied up with red ribbon. There was no sign of a computer in the office, or of anything that had been manufactured within the last fifty years. There was a single telephone on the desk, a black Bakelite model with a rotary dial, and a rack of fountain pens with two large bottles of Quink ink, one black and one blue.

  ‘Mr Nightingale, so good of you to come,’ said Turtledove, pushing himself up out of his high-backed leather chair.

  ‘I just hope it’s worth my while,’ said Nightingale.

  Turtledove extended a wrinkled, liver-spotted hand. It might have been Nightingale’s imagination, or poor memory, but the solicitor looked a good ten years older than the last time they’d met. The lines on his face seemed deeper, his eyes more watery and his teeth yellower. He used a wooden walking stick with a brass handle in the shape of a swan’s head to steady himself as he shook hands with Nightingale. Even his tweed suit seemed older and shabbier, the elbows almost worn through and the trousers baggy at the knees. ‘Please, sit down,’ said the solicitor as he limped back around to his chair.

  ‘What do you have for me, Mr Turtledove?’ asked Nightingale.

  The solicitor lowered himself into his chair with a soft groan. ‘I’m afraid I have to ask you for some form of photo identification,’ he said.

  ‘You know who I am, Mr Turtledove. I was here just three weeks ago. I’m Ainsley Gosling’s sole heir, remember?’

  ‘Please, Mr Nightingale, bear with me. I am instructed to confirm your identity before I give you the envelope.’

  ‘Where did this envelope come from?’ asked Nightingale, pulling his wallet from his trouser pocket.

  ‘From the same law firm that sent me your late father’s will,’ said Turtledove.

  Nightingale fished out his driving licence and gave it to the solicitor. Turtledove studied it for a few seconds and then handed it back. He pulled open the top drawer of his desk and took out an A4 manila padded envelope.

  ‘I don’t understand why you couldn’t just post or courier it to me,’ said Nightingale. He took it from the solicitor. There was a typewritten receipt clipped to one corner.

  ‘Please sign and date the receipt,’ asked Turtledove, handing Nightingale one of his fountain pens. He sat back in the chair and steepled his fingers under his chin. ‘It wasn’t so much your identity that I was asked to confirm,’ he said. ‘It was more that I had to check that you were still . . .’ He winced before finishing the sentence. ‘. . . alive,’ he said. ‘My instructions were that I was to confirm that you were still living and hand you the envelope personally.’

  Nightingale signed the receipt and slid it, and the pen, across the desk towards the solicitor.

  ‘And if I wasn’t alive?’ said Nightingale. ‘What then?’

  ‘Then I was told to put the envelope and the DVD through a shredder and burn the shreddings.’ He frowned. ‘Is that what they call the waste that has gone through a shredder? Shreddings?’

  Nightingale was surprised the elderly solicitor even knew what a shredder was. ‘I’ve no idea, Mr Turtledove,’ he said. He looked at the padded envelope. ‘There must have been a covering letter, because if there wasn’t you wouldn’t have known about the stipul
ation that you had to confirm that I was still in the land of the living.’

  Turtledove nodded. ‘Yes, yes of course, there was a covering letter. Now let me see, where did I put it?’ He frowned again and began rearranging the files on his desk. Little puffs of dust burst into the air like miniature explosions and he began to cough. He took a handkerchief from the top pocket of his jacket and coughed into it. Nightingale saw flecks of blood on the white linen before Turtledove slipped the handkerchief back into his pocket.

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Turtledove?’ asked Nightingale.

  The solicitor forced a smile. ‘I’m fine, Mr Nightingale,’ he said. ‘Just old.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Angela!’ he called. ‘Come in here, please.’ Turtledove gestured with his hand at the door. ‘My wife and secretary,’ he said.

  ‘Keeping it in the family,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘She’s a trained book-keeper, and makes the perfect cup of tea,’ said Turtledove. ‘I’d be lost without her.’

  The door opened and Mrs Turtledove looked at her husband over the top of her gold-rimmed spectacles and smiled. ‘You yelled?’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, my love,’ said Turtledove. ‘The envelope we were sent for Mr Nightingale – I can’t find the letter that came with it.’

  ‘I haven’t filed it yet, so it should still be in the in tray,’ said Mrs Turtledove.

  The solicitor began rifling through papers in a wire tray. His wife sighed. ‘The other in tray, dear,’ she said.

  The solicitor pulled a face and started sorting through another stack of papers.

  ‘It was delivered by a courier, was it?’ Nightingale asked Mrs Turtledove.

  ‘A motorcycle courier,’ she said.

  ‘A local firm?’

  ‘I hadn’t seen him before,’ said Mrs Turtledove. ‘In fact, he didn’t take his helmet off and he had a black visor so I don’t actually know what he looked like. But it wasn’t a firm we’ve used before, I know that.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you remember the name? Of the company?’