New York Night

by Stephen Leather

  ‘It was a funny thing to say, that’s all. Mothers lifting cars.’

  Nightingale shrugged again but didn’t say anything.

  ‘I can’t help thinking that you know more than you’re letting on.’

  ‘I don’t know much more than you, Cheryl.’

  ‘We both know that’s not true. I was looking at you when Andy was telling us what happened at the hotel. You weren’t surprised. He told you that a teenage boy took out an entire SWAT team and you just stood there and nodded like it was the most natural thing in the world. So I’m asking you again, Jack, what the fuck is going on?’

  Nightingale took a drink from his beer bottle, then stared at the label. A man with a moustache and a starched collar stared back. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said.

  Perez drank her shot, slammed the empty glass on the bar and bit into another slice of lemon. The barman was already picking up the tequila bottle.

  ‘Donaldson wasn’t himself,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘No shit, Sherlock.’

  The barman put a fresh shot and lemon slice in front of Perez and took away her old glass and dish.

  ‘Something has taken over his body. Something that allowed him to be stronger and faster.’

  ‘You’re saying he’s possessed?’

  ‘There’s something controlling him, yes.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not buying that.’

  ‘And I’m not selling it. You asked. I’m being honest. If you want we can stick with the angel dust theory. But we both know Donaldson isn’t a druggie.’

  ‘And you think he’s possessed?’

  ‘Something like that, yes. Something changed him, obviously. Teenagers generally don’t smile while they’re taking out armed SWAT teams.’

  ‘So we need an exorcism? A priest? Is that what you’re saying?’

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘Possession is when a spirit takes control. Usually they’re low level spirits so some holy water and few Latin chants does the trick. But this boy isn’t possessed by a spirit.’

  ‘What then?”

  ‘Spirits can enter humans. That’s what possession is. Usually the human has to be in a weakened state or have emotional problems. That’s why it’s often teenage girls who are possessed. To be honest, true cases of possession are rare. But they happen.’ He took a long pull on his beer before continuing. ‘I think Donaldson has been invaded by something else. A devil. A demon from Hell.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Nightingale? Devils? Demons?’

  ‘You’re a Catholic. You believe in Heaven and Hell?’

  ‘We’re not here to argue what I do and don’t believe in. You’re trying to tell me that a devil has… has what? Taken over his body?’

  ‘Spirits are here, all around us. You and I can’t see them, most of the time anyway. Usually they’re sad souls that are trapped here and either can’t or won’t move on. Often they want something. Sometimes the best way of dealing with them is to find out what they want and do it for them.’ Perez opened her mouth to speak but Nightingale held up his hand. ‘What has happened to Donaldson is way more serious than simple possession. There are demons in Hell who want out. Some demons can move back and forth at will but the vast majority are as trapped as the souls in torment. The problem is that a demon – most of them anyway – have to be summoned. Someone has to call them by name and usually use their sigil. Their sign. Once summoned, a devil can leave Hell and enter our world. The problem for the trapped devils is that there are billions of them. So how can one arrange to be summoned? One voice among so many?’

  Perez frowned. She was clearly having trouble following what Nightingale was saying. Then her eyes widened. ‘Is that how come Dee-anne Alexander was able to throw her fat pig of a stepfather around? She was possessed?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘And the mutilations are part of this?’

  ‘Carving the sigils into the bodies is part of it, yes.’

  She drained her glass and winced as she bit into the lemon.

  ‘Maybe you should take it slowly,’ he said.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘You’re driving.’

  ‘No, I’m sitting in a bar drinking. I can Uber it home and pick up my car tomorrow. But thank you for your concern.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘And stop saying sorry.’

  He raised his bottle in salute. ‘I’ll try.’

  The barman put a new drink in front of her and she nodded her thanks. ‘So you’re saying that Matt Donaldson carved a sigil into Kate Walker’s flesh?’

  Nightingale nodded. ‘That sigil would be to summon a particular devil. I think someone primed Donaldson to be a vessel for the demon. I need to find out who the demon is, then I’ll have a chance of defeating it.’

  ‘Primed? What do you mean, primed?’

  ‘I’m guessing that he was lured in. Through that kid’s game, Charlie Charlie. The game is like a gateway. Same way that cannabis is a gateway drug. You smoke cannabis and then maybe you move on to cocaine or crack or whatever floats your boat. Kids get drawn into Charlie Charlie and some of them move on to Ouija boards and séances and eventually Satanism. Devil worship.’

  ‘You’re saying that Kate Walker primed him?’

  ‘I think so, yes. The demon contacted her through Charlie Charlie then the Ouija board.’

  ‘That makes no sense at all,’ said Perez. ‘You’re saying that Kate did the priming but Donaldson killed her?’

  ‘Not Donaldson. The demon. The demon took over Donaldson and murdered Kate. Then went on to murder the parents.’

  ‘And what about Leon Budd? Do you think a demon killed him, too?’

  Nightingale nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘But not the same demon?’

  ‘No. A different one. Hence the different sigils.’

  Perez cursed under her breath. ‘This just gets better and better,’ she sighed, and downed another shot.

  CHAPTER 29

  It was close to midnight when Perez finally decided she had swallowed enough tequila. She sounded sober but there was a glassy look in her eyes and she stumbled as she climbed off her stool. She fumbled in her coat and pulled out a phone. ‘Uber me,’ she said, giving it to him.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘The address is in there,’ she said. Nightingale tapped on the smartphone and opened the Uber app. Five minutes later a white Toyota Prius pulled up outside the bar. Nightingale flicked his cigarette away and helped her into the back. ‘Good night,’ she slurred.

  ‘Forget it, I’ll see you home,’ said Nightingale, and climbed in after her.

  The driver was Middle Eastern with a neatly trimmed beard and a gold tooth in the front of his mouth that glinted when he smiled at Nightingale in the mirror. ‘She okay?’

  ‘Bit too much to drink,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Bull fucking shit,’ said Perez, leaning her head against the passenger window.

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ said Nightingale.

  The driver already had Perez’s address programmed into his GPS and the traffic was light so they made good time but Perez was fast asleep by the time the Prius pulled up in front of her building. He patted her cheek softly. ‘Wake up, Cheryl.’

  Her eyelids fluttered open. ‘Hey,’ she said.

  Nightingale helped her out of the car and held her up as the Prius drove away. They were in a tree-lined road with four-storey brown stone houses. ‘Which is yours?’ he asked.

  ‘That one,’ she said, stabbing with her finger. ‘Basement.’

  Nightingale helped her down a metal stairway that led to a black door. ‘Keys?’ he asked.

  Perez fumbled in her pocket and brought out a key ring with four keys on it. The first key he tried didn’t fit but the second did and as he pushed open the door a burglar alarm began to beep. There was a console on the wall and he took Perez over to it. She tapped out the four-digit code and the beeping stopped. He left
her leaning against the wall while he shut and bolted the door, then helped her along the hallway to a sitting room with a long low grey sofa in front of a big screen TV. He helped her onto the sofa and she murmured something and then lay down. ‘Terrific,’ said Nightingale.

  There was a kitchen at the far end of the hallway and he took a bottle of water from the fridge and took it back to the sitting room. Perez was already snoring.

  There was one bedroom. He flicked on the light switch. In the middle of the room was a wooden sleigh bed, the duvet carelessly thrown over it. There was a pile of clothes on the floor next to a wicker laundry basket and three coffee mugs on a bedside table, along with a bottle of Aspirin and an asthma inhaler. Nightingale put the bottle of water next to the mugs, pulled back the duvet and went back to the sitting room, where Perez’s snoring was now slower but louder. He lifted her up. As he carried her to the bedroom she put her arms around his neck and snored into his chest. He laid her on the bed, covered her with the duvet and switched off the light.

  Back in the kitchen he made himself a coffee and found some Chinese leftovers in the fridge so he sat on the sofa and ate cold Kung Pao Chicken and rice. Half an hour later he was fast asleep on the sofa.

  CHAPTER 30

  Nightingale opened his eyes to find Cheryl Perez looking down at him. ‘Black or white?’ she asked.

  ‘Huh? What?’

  ‘Your coffee? Black or white?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘White. No sugar.’

  She disappeared and returned a couple of minutes later with his coffee. He sat up and took it.

  ‘I didn’t dream that stuff about devils and demons, did I?’ she said, sitting down on a chair opposite him. She sipped her coffee.

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘We can’t tell anyone, can we?’

  ‘Well we can try, but no one will believe us. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince people he never existed.’

  ‘That’s from that movie, The Usual Suspects.’

  ‘They got it from a French philosopher, guy by the name of Charles Baudelaire. “The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist”, is what he actually said. He produced a lot of quotable quotes. “I have always been astonished that women are allowed to enter churches, what talk can they have with God?” is another of his.’

  ‘Sounds like a sweetheart.’ She forced a smile. ‘Thanks for putting me to bed last night. I don’t remember a thing.’

  ‘I decided against putting you in your pyjamas.’

  ‘Thanks for that, too. I was pretty far gone.’

  ‘That many neat tequilas in a row will do that to a girl,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, well it was one hell of a night.’ She reached for the remote control, switched on the TV and flicked through to a local news channel. ‘They’ll catch Donaldson eventually. He made a stupid mistake last time with the credit card, he’ll show up again.’

  ‘Seeing how easily he shrugged off an armed SWAT team, I’m not sure they’ll be able to bring him in,’ said Nightingale. ‘Not alive, anyway.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘We wait, I guess.’

  ‘That’s it? That’s your plan?’

  ‘I’ll see if I can track down who these devils are.’

  ‘And how do you plan to do that, exactly?’

  ‘There’s someone I can ask.’

  ‘A CI?’

  Nightingale smiled at the thought of describing a demon from Hell as a confidential informant. ‘Sort of,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘She’s fussy about who she talks to.’

  CHAPTER 31

  Nightingale popped into a library on 67th Street and waited for ten minutes until a computer with internet access became free. A homeless man with a straggly beard and a length of string around his waist as a belt for his stained coat stood up, grabbed a canvas rucksack and walked away muttering to himself. Nightingale took the man’s place. His nostrils were immediately assailed by the departed man’s body odour and there were wet stains on some of the keyboard keys. He used the hem of his raincoat to wipe down the keys before he started typing. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. Googling ‘Wicca supplies New York’ gave him a dozen or so possibilities and he chose the nearest, just a twenty minute walk away.

  He stood up and an old woman with two full carrier bags who had apparently lost all her teeth took his place. Nightingale used the restroom to wash his hands before walking to Alchemy Arts Supplies, smoking two cigarettes on the way. The store was on the second floor of a former industrial building. There was an elevator but Nightingale took the stairs. It looked more like a discount warehouse than a shop with all the stock piled haphazardly on wooden and metal shelving units that ran the length of the building. There were metal baskets and trollies. Nightingale took a trolley and pushed it slowly down the central aisle. Some of his requirements were easy. White candles, for example. They had more than a dozen shapes and sizes in stock. There were literally hundreds of crucibles and bowls to choose from in everything from lead to crystal, many of them hand-made. He put a large lead crucible into the trolley. Chalk was easy, consecrated salt was harder to find but they had several varieties, along with a whole selection of items that had been blessed by named priests, including crucifixes and holy water. The blessed items were in a locked glass-fronted cabinet and he had to get a salesperson to help him. A young man with a badge that said his name was Zak and that he was happy to help unlocked the cabinet and waited while Nightingale took what he wanted.

  A lanky young blonde girl with a badge that said her name was Wind was standing by the cash register. She smiled brightly as he pushed the trolley towards her and he saw that she was wearing brightly-coloured braces on her teeth. ‘Any chance of you having a birch branch?’ he asked.

  ‘Several,’ said Wind. ‘All freshly cut.’ She took him down the aisle and showed him a shelf with more than a dozen branches from a number of different trees. ‘They have dates on the tags showing when they were cut,’ said Wind.

  Nightingale selected a small birch branch that had been cut the previous day.

  ‘You’re doing a protective circle,’ she said, casting her eye over the contents of his trolley.

  ‘I am indeed.’

  ‘Not many people go to the bother of consecrated chalk and a birch branch. Belt and braces.’

  ‘Better safe than sorry, I always say.’

  ‘And the crucible. Interesting. Looks like a summoning.’

  Nightingale pushed his trolley down the aisle but she kept pace with him. ‘You’re from England?’ she asked.

  Nightingale nodded but didn’t reply.

  ‘What’s the scene like there?’

  Nightingale wrinkled his nose. ‘I tend to avoid scenes,’ he said. ‘More of a lone wolf.’

  ‘I can respect that,’ she said. ‘If there’s anything else you need, I’ll be at the register.’ She walked away, her long blonde hair flicking from side to side.

  He found a whole section devoted to herbs in jars and bottles of various sizes and he took what he needed. On the way back to the register he passed a section devoted to cleaning products. Usually he used whatever was at hand but as it was available he took packs of soap, shampoo and brushes and put them in the trolley.

  Wind had picked up on the fact that Nightingale wasn’t in a chatty mood so she totalled up his purchases in silence. The total amount flashed up on the register’s screen and Nightingale handed over one of Joshua Wainwright’s credit cards. New cards arrived every month and when they did he would destroy the old ones. They came in a variety of names and backed by different banks but he had never had one refused and never bothered to ask if he had a credit limit. She handed the card back and he scribbled an illegible signature on the electronic pad by the register. Payment done she helped bag hi
s purchases and then finally spoke. ‘Come again,’ she said.

  CHAPTER 32

  Nightingale was carrying his supplies into the office when his cellphone rang. It was Wainwright. ‘There’s been another one, Jack. In New Jersey. Happened two days ago. The victim was a girl. Another teenager. Sara Moseby. The body was cut and slashed but you can make out the sigil on her back if you look carefully.’

  Nightingale cursed under his breath.

  ‘If you get over there this afternoon you can see the body for yourself. I have a contact in the Hunterdon County Medical Examiner’s Office. I’ll text you the name and the address.’

  ‘I’ll call Perez.’

  The line went dead. Nightingale had Perez’s number on speed dial and she answered on the third ring. ‘Joshua wants us to take a look at a body out in New Jersey,’ he said.

  ‘Any body in particular?’

  ‘There’s been another murder, similar to the first two. He’s arranged for us to take a look at the corpse.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘The office.’

  ‘I’ll be outside in thirty minutes.’

  When Perez rolled up in her car, Nightingale was standing outside the office holding two Starbucks coffees. He climbed in and gave her one of the coffees then took out his phone. ‘I’ve got the address,’ he said. ‘Do you have a GPS?’

  ‘Never use it,’ said Perez. ‘I’m New York born and bred, I don’t need a computer to tell me where to go.’

  ‘Have you been to Hunterdon County before?’

  ‘I’ve been all over New Jersey. You can’t work homicide or serious crimes in Manhattan and not be going back and forth over the Hudson. ‘You’ve seen The Sopranos, right? Half the Mafia lives in New Jersey. Hunterdon County Medical Examiner’s Office is in Flemington, right?’

  ‘Wescott Drive,’ said Nightingale.

  It was mid-afternoon when they arrived at the Medical Examiner’s office. It formed part of the Hunterdon Medical Centre, a sprawling community hospital complex to the north of Flemington.