Midnight

by Stephen Leather

  Dr Keller’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, the thing is that, because she pleaded guilty, there wasn’t a lot of information released to the court. She pleaded guilty to five murders and received five life sentences. But there were no details of what she did or how she did it. Her legal team didn’t speak in mitigation, so the media only got the bare facts.’

  ‘And you think there might have been a miscarriage of justice?’ Dr Keller shook his head. ‘First of all, she pleaded guilty. Second of all, she continues to admit her guilt. And third of all . . .’ He leaned forward. ‘I’ve seen the files, Mr Nightingale. I know what she did and, considering the circumstances under which she was arrested, I can assure you there is no doubt as to her guilt.’

  ‘Red-handed?’

  ‘Literally. She was awash in the boy’s blood.’

  ‘She used a knife – that was in the papers.’

  ‘She gutted him like a pig,’ said the doctor. ‘But first she slit his throat so deeply that his head was almost severed.’

  ‘Fingerprints? DNA?’

  ‘The knife was in her hand when the police turned up. And as I said, she was covered in his blood.’

  ‘How did the cops know where she was?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘That I don’t know,’ said the doctor. ‘But they found her with the body. Covered in blood, holding the knife.’

  ‘And the other killings?’

  ‘All children. All gutted. And she confessed to the lot.’

  ‘But never said why she did it?’

  Dr Keller shook his head. ‘Not a word.’

  Nightingale took his pack of Marlboro out of his raincoat pocket, but put it away when he saw the look of disapproval on the doctor’s face. ‘This is going to sound a little off the wall, but was there any sort of occult slant to the killings?’

  Dr Keller frowned. ‘I don’t follow you.’

  Nightingale shrugged. ‘Pentagrams, Satanic ritual, witchcraft symbols.’

  ‘You’re wondering if the devil made her do it?’

  Nightingale shrugged again. ‘Killing five kids. It sort of sounds like human sacrifice, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It sounds like the actions of a serial killer.’

  ‘But it’s unusual for serial killers to kill kids, isn’t it? Especially female serial killers. If there are kids involved then there’s usually a sexual motive, right?’

  Dr Keller nodded hesitantly. ‘Well, yes, I suppose so. Child killers are generally middle-aged males and more often than not the killings follow on from sexual activity, either as a way of heightening sensations or through fear of being caught.’

  ‘And in my sister’s case there was no evidence of sexual assault?’

  ‘None at all,’ agreed Dr Keller.

  ‘So, if there was a reason, maybe in her mind she might have been sacrificing them. And the fact that she used a knife, that suggests a ritual, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I doubt that your sister would have had access to a firearm, so that really only leaves knives, strangulation or beating with a blunt object,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m not sure that the knife is significant.’

  ‘Knives are personal, and planned,’ said Nightingale. ‘She must have taken the knife in advance, which means she must have had a reason for killing the children. She wasn’t acting on impulse or out of anger. She planned it.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about murder,’ said the doctor.

  ‘I was a policeman, in a former life.’

  ‘A detective?’

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘Firearms officer, but I was also a negotiator. I did a fair amount of psychology as part of my training.’

  ‘Well, what you say is true, except that your sister is a sociopath so the general rules don’t always apply. She might simply have killed because she wanted to, and the normal constraints that would prevent you or me from killing weren’t there to stop her. She had the impulse to kill and she followed it. You and I and the rest of what we call normal people don’t act on our violent impulses. We learn to control them. That mechanism is missing from the psyche of a sociopath. Killing, to them, can be a natural impulse equivalent to eating or defecating.’

  ‘But going back to my original question, there was nothing vaguely Satanic about what she did?’

  Dr Keller pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘If anything, it was the opposite.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Her last victim. Timmy Robertson. She killed him in a church. On an altar, I believe.’

  41

  ‘So you didn’t tell her?’ asked Jenny, deftly picking up a prawn with her chopsticks and dipping it into a small dish of hot sauce. ‘You went all that way and you still didn’t tell her that Gosling sold her soul and yours? And that on her thirty-third birthday it’s so long and good night?’

  Nightingale shrugged. He tried to pick up a piece of beef but the oyster sauce made it slippery and it fell onto the white paper tablecloth to add to the dozen or so food stains that proved testimony to his lack of chopstick skills. ‘You chose Chinese just because you know I can’t handle these things, didn’t you?’

  They were eating in a restaurant close to Jenny’s mews house, one of her favourites. Nightingale had hit heavy traffic on the way back from Nottinghamshire and phoned her on his mobile to tell her that he’d be late and to arrange to see her for dinner.

  ‘I chose Chinese because I offered to buy you dinner and because I like Cantonese food,’ said Jenny. She smiled brightly. ‘I can get you a fork if you want.’

  ‘I’ll struggle on,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Don’t think I didn’t notice that you changed the subject. Why didn’t you tell her that a devil was coming to claim her soul on her thirty-third birthday? That Gosling had traded her soul and that there’s nothing she can do about it?’

  Nightingale sighed. ‘How could I tell her, Jenny? She looked at me like I was crazy when I told her that I was her half-brother. And even after I’d told her about the DNA evidence she was doubtful. If I’d told her that Gosling had sold her soul to a devil before she was born she’d have had me thrown out. Or committed. Can you imagine what the doctors would have done if they’d known? They’d have put me in a jacket with long sleeves before you could say “paranoid schizophrenic”.’

  An elderly waitress dressed in black Chinese pyjamas brought a steel bowl of bok choi in garlic sauce over to the table. She spoke to Jenny in guttural Chinese and Jenny answered. The old woman cackled and walked away, as bow-legged as an elderly mariner.

  ‘You were talking about me, weren’t you?’ asked Nightingale, trying unsuccessfully to pick up another piece of beef.

  ‘She asked me if you were my new boyfriend and I said I’d rather crawl across broken glass than go on a date with you.’ She popped a piece of chicken into her mouth. ‘It sounds better in Cantonese.’

  ‘New boyfriend?’ said Nightingale. ‘What happened to the last one?’

  Jenny jabbed her chopsticks at him. ‘My love life is a closed book to you, Jack Nightingale, and it’s going to stay that way. And you’ve changed the subject again.’

  ‘I thought the conversation had just progressed,’ said Nightingale. ‘Moved on.’

  ‘I know what progressed means,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I was using repetition for emphasis,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘No, you were using it to distract me,’ she laughed. ‘And it’s not working.’

  Nightingale sipped his Tsingtao beer. ‘My sister’s in an insane asylum,’ he said. ‘They call it a secure mental facility but it’s an asylum. I’m not sure that telling her that her soul has been promised to a demon from Hell is actually going to help her.’

  ‘If it’s true, she has the right to know.’

  Nightingale’s eyes narrowed. ‘If it’s true? What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t get all defensive, Jack,’ she said.

  ‘No, I want to know what you mean.’

  ‘
Jack, please . . .’

  ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Look at me, Jenny.’ He leaned towards her. ‘I’m serious, look at me. I’m having enough trouble convincing myself that this is actually happening. If you don’t believe me, then I might just have to accept that I’m going crazy.’

  She looked into his eyes and smiled. ‘I believe you, Jack. Hand on heart, scout’s honour, cross my heart and hope to die, by all that’s holy, blah blah blah. I believe you.’

  He smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It was a slip of the tongue. But it’s the fact that I do believe you that makes me so sure she has the right to know. If it was nonsense then it wouldn’t matter either way.’

  ‘Suppose I tell her and it pushes her over the edge?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘She killed five kids,’ said Jenny. ‘That boat has pretty much sailed.’

  ‘Okay, but I tell her and then what? She’s locked up; there’s nothing she can do. She’s going to spend two years sitting in a cell knowing that she’s going to Hell.’ He sipped his beer again.

  ‘So she’s better off spending that time in ignorance?’

  ‘What can I do?’ He put down his chopsticks. ‘Look, I don’t want to tell her what the problem is until I can offer her a solution. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. And at the moment I don’t have anything approaching a solution.’

  ‘But you’ve got a plan, right? You’ve always got a plan.’

  ‘I’m going to talk to the detective who ran her case,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’ll take it from there. He’s already said he’ll see me tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s not much of a plan, is it?’

  Nightingale shrugged. ‘Honey, right now it’s all I’ve got.’

  When they’d finished, the elderly waitress brought over a white plate with two Chinese cookies and the bill. Jenny slid the bill out from under the cookies and pushed the plate towards Nightingale.

  ‘I’ll pass,’ he said.

  ‘Chicken,’ said Jenny, taking one of the cookies and crushing it with her fingers. She fished out a small slip of paper, read it, smiled, and held it out to him. ‘He who knows he has enough is rich.’

  ‘Bit sexist,’ said Nightingale. ‘There’s an even-money chance that a woman’s going to be reading it.’

  ‘You’re such a spoilsport.’ She held out the plate for him.

  Nightingale shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘Tempting fate.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve been getting enough shitty messages from beyond the grave recently. I can do without one in my fortune cookie.’ He nodded at the plate. ‘You open it for me. As part of your secretarial duties.’

  ‘I think it’s bad luck to open someone else’s fortune,’ she said.

  ‘Jenny, bad luck is the only sort of luck I’ve been having lately,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you opening my cookie is going to make it any worse.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she said. She cracked open the cookie and looked at the fortune inside. Her eyes widened and she sat back in her chair. ‘Oh my God,’ she gasped, putting a hand up to her mouth.

  ‘What?’ said Nightingale, leaning forward. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It’s horrible,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It’s so, so horrible . . .’

  ‘Jenny, show me,’ said Nightingale, holding out his hand.

  Jenny’s face broke into a grin. ‘You’re so bloody gullible sometimes,’ she said, waving the fortune in his face. ‘You need to relax.’ She held it with both hands and read it to him. ‘Your life will be happy and peaceful.’ She laughed. ‘I think this one’s mine.’ She gave it to Nightingale and he shook his head as he read it.

  ‘I’d settle for happy and peaceful,’ he said. ‘Who writes these things?’

  Jenny shrugged. ‘They’re supposed to make you feel good,’ she said. ‘If you feel good you’ll come back to the restaurant. Positive reinforcement.’ She put three twenty-pound notes onto the plate.

  ‘At least let’s split it,’ said Nightingale, reaching for his wallet.

  ‘I said I’d buy you dinner,’ said Jenny. The old waitress came over and Jenny told her that she should keep the change. As they headed for the door, a young Chinese man with gelled hair and a single diamond earring handed Jenny her coat and helped her on with it.

  A small Chinese girl, who barely reached Nightingale’s shoulder, gave him his raincoat. He smiled at her but she stared stonily at him, her eyes as dark as polished coal. ‘Your sister is going to Hell, Jack Nightingale,’ she said, her voice flat and robotic.

  ‘What?’ said Nightingale. ‘What did you say?’

  The girl’s face creased into a smile showing grey teeth and receding gums. ‘I say hope see you again,’ she said.

  Jenny put a hand on his arm. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I’m not hopeful about that happy and peaceful forecast.’

  42

  Bernie Maplethorpe laughed and slapped the bar with the palm of his hand. ‘That’s funny, Chance, that’s a bloody hoot,’ he said. ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘On the internet,’ said Chance. He nodded at the beer pumps. ‘Do you want another pint?’

  ‘Why don’t we toss for it?’ said Maplethorpe. ‘You can use your magic fifty-pence piece.’

  ‘It’s not magic, Bernie,’ said Chance.

  ‘You said it made decisions for you.’

  ‘It chooses,’ said Chance. ‘There’s a difference. I give it two choices, and fate decides the outcome.’ He clapped Bernie on the back. ‘Anyway, I’m done for the night. Do you want a lift home?’

  ‘You’re driving?’

  ‘You’re starting to sound like my wife,’ said Chance. ‘What have I had, three pints? That’s nothing.’

  ‘It puts you over the limit,’ said Bernie.

  ‘Now you’re definitely starting to sound like the missus,’ laughed Chance. ‘I’ll take it easy and I’ll stick to the back roads.’ He slid off the bar stool. ‘Now do you want a lift or not?’

  ‘Yeah, go on.’

  Bernie headed out of the pub with his new-found friend. Chance took his keys from his pocket and clicked the fob. The lights of a black Range Rover flashed.

  ‘Bloody hell, mate, that’s a flash motor,’ said Bernie. ‘What did you say you do for a living?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Chance, opening the car door and climbing in. ‘I wheel and deal, duck and dive, anything that makes a quick buck.’

  ‘How much would a car like this cost?’ asked Bernie, getting in and settling into the buttery-soft leather seat.

  ‘A lot,’ said Chance. He grinned across at Bernie. ‘But I nicked it.’

  ‘You did not.’

  ‘Won it in a poker game,’ said Chance, starting the engine.

  Bernie laughed. ‘I’m never sure when you’re joking and when you’re not,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t take life too seriously, Bernie, that’s what I always say.’

  Ten minutes later Chance brought the car to a stop outside Bernie’s neat three-bedroom semi.

  ‘Do you want to come and meet the wife?’ asked Bernie. ‘I’ve beer in the fridge.’

  Chance took his fifty-pence coin from his pocket and tossed it. It came up heads. ‘Yeah, why not?’ he said.

  ‘You’re serious? You let the coin decide whether or not to come in for a beer?’

  Chance nodded. ‘You should try it, Bernie. It’s liberating.’ He climbed out of the Range Rover.

  The two men walked together up the path to the house. Bernie unlocked the door. ‘Honey, it’s me,’ he called. ‘I’ve brought a friend with me.’

  A young woman with permed hair and square-framed glasses appeared from the sitting room. She was overweight and wearing a denim dress that was at least two sizes too small for her. She had a face that was almost square,
with several double chins, and flabby forearms that wobbled as she walked down the hallway.

  ‘This is Maggie, my better half,’ said Bernie, hugging her. ‘Maggie, this is Chance.’

  ‘Have you been getting my husband drunk?’ asked Maggie in a strident Belfast accent.

  Chance flashed her a disarming smile. ‘I don’t think he needed any help,’ he said. His smile widened. ‘He’s not drunk, Maggie. Two beers, that’s all we had.’

  ‘But now we’re home and dry I’ll crack open a couple of cans,’ said Bernie, heading for the kitchen. ‘Take a seat, Chance.’

  ‘Bernie, your dinner’s in the oven,’ whined his wife. She sighed theatrically. ‘He always does this to me. Says he’ll be home and then stays in the pub.’

  ‘It was my fault, Maggie,’ said Chance. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll just head off.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ said Bernie, returning with two cans of Harp lager. He tossed one to Chance. ‘You’ve got time for a beer. You can tell Maggie the joke about the two Arabs and the camel.’ He put his arm around Chance’s shoulders and ushered him into the sitting room.

  There were two grubby sofas either side of a cheap wooden coffee table piled high with celebrity magazines and mail-order catalogues. Bernie pushed Chance down onto one sofa and dropped onto the other.

  Maggie pushed her husband to the side and sat down next to him. ‘What sort of name is Chance, anyway?’ she said, squinting at him through her glasses.

  Chance smiled amiably. ‘It’s more of a nickname.’ He put his can of lager onto the coffee table, took out his fifty-pence coin, kissed it softly, then tossed it into the air. He caught it with his right hand and slapped it down onto the back of his left, then took his right hand away and smiled again.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Maggie asked her husband.

  ‘He uses the coin to make decisions,’ explained Bernie.

  ‘He what?’ Maggie frowned. ‘What sort of decisions?’

  Chance was already getting to his feet. He had the coin in his left hand and he reached into his jacket with his right.

  ‘Are you going, mate?’ asked Bernie. He grinned at his wife. ‘The coin probably told him it was bedtime.’