‘A lot.’
‘And four garages. How cool is that?’ Hoyle walked around to the boot of the car, his feet squelching on dead leaves. He opened it, took out two torches and tossed one to Nightingale. ‘Come on, give me the tour, then.’
Nightingale took out his key and opened the front door. ‘Wipe your feet,’ he said.
‘You sound just like my wife,’ said Hoyle.
‘I just don’t want you walking dead leaves around my house,’ said Nightingale.
‘Now you definitely sound like her.’ Hoyle laughed and wiped his feet on the large mat in front of the door. ‘Happy now?’
They walked inside, playing their beams around the hallway. Nightingale led the way to the huge drawing room and pointed his at the massive fireplace. ‘That’s where the envelope was,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t there when the cops came so someone else must have a key.’
‘Where’s all the furniture?’ asked Hoyle.
‘He must have sold it,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m guessing he sold everything before he died, except the furniture in the bedroom.’
‘You could have some great parties in here.’
‘You could have a half-decent game of five-a-side football,’ said Nightingale.
Something scraped across the floor upstairs and both men jumped. ‘What the hell was that?’ said Hoyle.
‘Probably a cat,’ said Nightingale. ‘There was a cat upstairs last time I was here.’
‘Didn’t sound like a cat,’ said Hoyle.
‘Do you want to leave?’
‘Hell, no, we’re here now,’ said Hoyle. ‘Show me where he topped himself.’
Nightingale led him back into the hallway and up the staircase. ‘What are you going to do with the place?’ asked Hoyle.
‘Sell it, I guess,’ said Nightingale. ‘Pay off the mortgage, see what’s left. Why – do you want to make me an offer?’
‘You could think about developing it,’ said Hoyle. ‘Turn it into flats. There’s a big market for these old buildings when they’re done right.’
‘It’d be sacrilege to split it into flats, a beautiful house like this,’ said Nightingale. ‘I don’t know how easy it’ll be to find a buyer, though.’
‘The rich are always rich,’ said Hoyle. ‘Recession or boom, they always have money. Sell it to a Russian oligarch or a Saudi prince and let them enjoy it.’
‘I was thinking, back in the bar, it might be a con.’
‘A con?’
‘They’re setting me up for something. Telling me the house is mine, then hitting me for money somehow.’
‘Have you got any money?’
Nightingale laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But maybe they don’t know that. Can you do me a favour and check out the solicitor for me? His name’s Ernest Turtledove. He’s based in a village called Hamdale.’
Something screamed out in the fields and both men stopped dead. ‘Fox?’ said Hoyle, hopefully.
‘I hope so,’ said Nightingale. He shone his torch along the landing. ‘This way.’ He headed down the corridor towards the master bedroom.
Hoyle ran his beam along the ceiling, the light making the miniature chandeliers sparkle. He stopped when he saw the CCTV camera. ‘Smile,’ he said. ‘We’re on Candid Camera.’
‘They’re all over the place,’ said Nightingale, ‘but no alarms from what I can see. Just the cameras.’
‘Which means what, do you think?’
The two men paused, their torches pointing at the camera.
‘Which means he wasn’t worried about burglars. It was more about watching the house, inside and out.’
‘Maybe not,’ said Hoyle. ‘If you’ve got comprehensive CCTV coverage, you don’t need an alarm. Any burglar worth his salt would know he’d be filmed and give the place a wide berth.’
‘Unless they wore masks,’ said Nightingale. ‘You’re missing the point, Robbie. He was scared of someone, but it wasn’t burglars. And whoever he was scared of wouldn’t be put off by an alarm.’
Hoyle walked down the corridor to take a closer look at the camera. ‘It’s not working,’ he said.
‘Why would it be?’ said Nightingale. ‘The power’s off.’ He went to stand next to Hoyle. There was a small red light on the side of the unit but it wasn’t glowing.
Hoyle ran his torch along the ceiling and down the wall. ‘I don’t see any wiring,’ he said. ‘Could be a wireless system. I wonder where the monitors are?’
‘I didn’t see any downstairs, and there was nothing in the bedroom.’
‘Must be somewhere,’ said Hoyle. ‘They wouldn’t take them away and leave the cameras behind.’
Nightingale walked back to the master bedroom and opened the door. ‘This is where he killed himself.’
Hoyle flashed his torch across the ceiling. ‘No CCTV cameras in here,’ he said. He went into the bedroom, his torch lighting the walls and ceiling. ‘They’ve done a hell of a job cleaning this up, haven’t they?’
‘It was a professional clean-up crew,’ said Nightingale, following him into the room.
‘If ever I kill anyone, I’ll use them to clean up afterwards,’ said Hoyle. ‘They’ve got rid of all the splatter. And there’s no staining on the floor at all.’ He frowned. ‘What about the pentagram?’
‘I guess that was chalk and they just rubbed it off,’ he said. ‘I think this is where he lived, during his last few days. There was no furniture anywhere else in the house. This was the nerve centre, I guess.’
‘So, why no monitors?’ said Hoyle. ‘If he was holed up here, he’d need the monitors close by. Otherwise they’d be useless.’
‘What are you thinking, Robbie? He was here under siege, waiting for somebody?’
Hoyle grinned. ‘Somebody,’ he said. ‘Or something.’ He made a ghostly face, waggled his hands in the air and moaned.
‘A man died here, Robbie, let’s not forget that.’
‘He killed himself,’ said Hoyle, suddenly serious. ‘And anyone who does that loses any sympathy I might have had. Killing yourself is the coward’s way out, Jack, because it leaves the living to clear up the mess you’ve made.’
‘You don’t know the facts,’ said Nightingale.
‘I know that he’s dumped a whole load of grief on you,’ said Hoyle. ‘He claimed to be your father but didn’t have the decency to tell you face to face. He could at least have had a sit-down with you, answered any questions that you had and then gone ahead and done the dirty deed.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘There’s no maybe about it,’ said Hoyle. ‘Only cowards commit suicide.’
‘Sometimes it takes guts,’ said Nightingale, quietly. ‘Sometimes it’s the only way out.’
‘Well, there’s no way I’d top myself and leave my girls wondering why,’ said Hoyle.
‘He did explain,’ said Nightingale. ‘That’s what the DVD was for.’
‘You’re not buying this, are you?’ said Hoyle, scornfully. ‘You don’t really think that on your birthday a devil’s going to come and take your soul?’
Nightingale scowled. ‘Of course not.’
‘There you are, then. The DVD’s a load of crap. He was a nutter and, genetic father or not, he’s just trying to screw with your mind from beyond the grave.’
‘Because?’
‘He was a nutter, Jack. There’s no “because” with a nutter.’ He nodded at the door. ‘Come on, let’s have a look downstairs.’
Nightingale followed Hoyle down the staircase. Hoyle ran his hands over the panelled wall. ‘This is quality workmanship,’ he said. ‘No Polish builders here – it’s the real thing. The wood alone’s worth thousands. How old do you think it is?’
‘The cops said sixteenth century,’ said Nightingale. ‘It was called something else then, named after the local squires.’
‘Hey, do you think owning this makes you the new squire? Maybe you’ll get to deflower the local virgins. Any idea how much land goes with it?’
‘I did
n’t ask,’ said Nightingale.
‘Could turn it into a golf course, maybe,’ said Hoyle. ‘This would make a great clubhouse.’
They went into the kitchen. Hoyle opened a door to find a pantry lined with empty shelves while Nightingale opened another to reveal a tiled room that had been plumbed for a washing-machine but, like the rest, had been stripped bare. Beyond the pantry there were three small rooms. There were marks on the walls where posters and pictures had once been fixed, and Nightingale decided they had been staff quarters. A door led to the back garden. There were three locks, two bolts and a CCTV camera aimed at it. ‘That one’s not wireless,’ said Hoyle, aiming his torch at the camera. ‘See the wire there?’
Nightingale squinted up at it. A black wire at the rear of the camera unit burrowed into the plaster. ‘Which means what?’ he asked.
‘Which means that the monitors are somewhere downstairs, probably,’ said Hoyle. ‘Have you checked all the rooms?’
‘Not yet,’ said Nightingale.
‘Let’s have a look-see,’ said Hoyle. They went back to the drawing room, then along a corridor to a large room lined with teak bookshelves and cabinets. ‘The library?’ said Hoyle.
‘Looks like it,’ said Nightingale.
Beyond it there was another drawing room with a huge fireplace and then a smaller room that must have once contained a snooker table because the wooden scoreboard was still on one wall and a rectangular light fitting hung from the centre of the ceiling. There was a CCTV camera over the door.
Hoyle went back into the corridor. ‘The house is old, so the cameras must have gone in after the panelling, right?’
‘Obviously,’ said Nightingale.
Hoyle turned his torch on him, and he held up a hand to shield his eyes. ‘So they couldn’t have pulled the panelling away without damaging the wood, could they?’ He ran his torch along the pristine walnut panels. ‘This is all quality joinery,’ he said. ‘You can’t just pull them off and stick them back.’
‘So?’
‘So I don’t think they can have run the wires from the downstairs cameras along the hallway. They couldn’t have done it without damaging the panelling.’
Nightingale frowned. ‘Okay. So, wireless upstairs and wired down here. But the wires don’t run along the corridor.’ Realisation dawned. ‘There’s a basement,’ he said.
‘Exactly,’ said Hoyle. ‘They ran the wiring straight down.’
They went back to the main hallway. ‘If there were stairs to the basement, wouldn’t they be here?’ asked Nightingale.
Hoyle walked along the panelling, tapping it every few feet. Each tap produced the same dull thud.
‘Are you looking for a secret panel?’ asked Nightingale.
‘Have you got any better ideas?’ Hoyle carried on tapping.
‘Why would he need to hide the entrance to his own basement?’
‘Who knows what was going through his head? We’ve already decided he was a nutter, right?’ He carried on tapping the panelling.
‘We don’t even know if there is a basement,’ said Nightingale.
‘Old place like this is bound to have one,’ said Hoyle. ‘They used to build their foundations really deep.’ He moved along the hallway and tapped again. This time the sound was hollow. Hoyle grinned and tapped again. There was definitely a different timbre, almost an echo.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ said Nightingale. He tapped the wall near him. A dull thud. Hoyle tapped. The hollow echo.
Hoyle ran the tips of his fingers around the panelling, then pushed. Nothing moved.
‘Try pulling,’ said Nightingale.
Hoyle did so. There was a click and a section of the wall swung open. ‘Open, Sesame,’ he whispered. He grinned at Nightingale in triumph. ‘What would you do without me, Jack?’
12
Nightingale followed Hoyle down to the basement. The stairs were wooden and there was a brass banister on the left. He kept his hand on it and felt for each stair with his foot before trusting his weight on it. Their torches picked out books, shelves and shelves of them, mostly leather-bound.
‘Why did he put his library here?’ said Nightingale.
‘Because he was a nutter,’ said Hoyle. ‘Nutters do nutty things.’
They stopped halfway down and shone their torches around. The basement appeared to run the full length of one wing of the house. The bookshelves continued and, running down the centre of the space, there were two lines of display cabinets. There was a sitting area with two large red leather chesterfields and a coffee-table piled with more books. A huge desk was covered with newspapers. There was an antique globe that was almost four feet high and a vast oak table with more than a dozen candles on it. Molten wax had dripped down it and pooled on the floor.
‘This is just weird,’ said Nightingale.
‘It looks like he spent a lot of time down here,’ said Hoyle. ‘Come on, let’s have a look around.’
Hoyle headed down the stairs. Nightingale wrinkled his nose. There was a musty smell in the air that left a nasty taste in his mouth. It wasn’t just the smell of old books or soot from the candles, it was bitter and acrid. When he swallowed, his stomach lurched and he had to fight to stop himself throwing up.
Hoyle reached the bottom and walked between the two rows of cabinets. ‘Jack, you’ve got to see this,’ he called.
Nightingale joined him beside a glass-sided cabinet, whose shelves were filled with human skulls of different sizes, some so small they could have come only from infants, others adult-sized, yellowed with age, the teeth stained brown and ground down from years of wear and tear.
‘How sick is this?’ said Hoyle. ‘He collected skulls.’
Nightingale bent down to peer at them. Most of the skulls had small irregular holes in the back as if they had been pierced with a chisel or smashed with a hammer. ‘They didn’t die of natural causes,’ he said.
‘Could have been done post-mortem,’ said Hoyle.
‘I hope so,’ said Nightingale.
They walked along to the next cabinet. It was filled with knives – knives with curved blades, knives with handles carved in the form of exotic creatures, knives with twin blades, knives made of wood, ivory, every sort of metal. Some had what appeared to be dried blood on their blades, others were chipped and scratched. A few were decorated with strange writing. ‘Most of these are illegal, antiques or not,’ said Nightingale.
Hoyle went to the next cabinet, which held crystal balls. He shone his torch over them and the light refracted into a dozen rainbows. Nightingale moved to the wall and ran his light across some books. Only a few had titles on their spines. He pulled one out at random. A title was etched into the front cover: Sacrifice and Self-Mutilation. He opened it. It had been printed in 1816 in Edinburgh. He flicked through. There were illustration plates that made his stomach turn – black-and-white drawings of people being tortured and butchered. He put the book back and took out the one next to it. It was in Spanish, and bound in what looked like lizard skin. He couldn’t make sense of what it was about but the illustrations inside were of strange and mythical creatures, winged dragons and twin-headed snakes. He pulled out a few more volumes. All were old, their pages well thumbed and creased, and many bore handwritten notes in the margins. Most were concerned with witchcraft or black magic.
Nightingale flinched as something crashed behind him. He whirled around, dropping the book he’d been holding. Hoyle was gazing down at dozens of glass fragments. ‘Bloody hell, Robbie, what are you playing at?’ Hoyle didn’t reply. Nightingale picked up the book and put it back on the shelf. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘It was one of the crystal balls,’ said Hoyle. ‘I dropped it.’
‘I can see that,’ said Nightingale. He picked up one of the smaller balls and weighed it in the palm of his hand. ‘But these are solid crystal,’ he said. ‘They shouldn’t shatter.’
‘That one was different,’ he said. ‘It was full of smoke or mist, lik
e it was moving all the time.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘I saw something,’ said Hoyle, quietly, ‘in the mist.’
‘What? What did you see?’
Hoyle prodded one of the curved splinters with his shoe.
‘Robbie, what did you see?’
‘It’s stupid. Nothing.’
‘Robbie?’
Hoyle swallowed. ‘I saw myself.’
‘Your reflection?’
‘No, like I was inside the glass. In the mist. I was standing in the middle of a road…’
‘Come on, Robbie, you’re winding me up.’
Hoyle shook his head. ‘I was standing in the middle of the road and a taxi hit me. A black cab.’
‘Robbie…’
Hoyle looked at him. ‘I’m serious, Jack. The cab went right over me.’
‘It’s dark down here, Robbie. You were shining the torch on it – the light must have played tricks on you.’
‘I know what I saw,’ said Hoyle.
‘Crystal balls are mumbo-jumbo nonsense,’ said Nightingale. He stared at the one he was holding. ‘Show me the future, O Magic Ball,’ he moaned. ‘Tell me what lies ahead.’ He ran his torch across the ball and the light fractured into a rainbow. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should try another channel.’ He grinned at Hoyle. ‘Do you think I could get Sky Sports on this?’ Hoyle tried to smile, but Nightingale could see that his friend was unsettled. He put the crystal ball back into the display case. ‘How many books do you think there are? Thousands? Tens of thousands?’
‘A lot,’ said Hoyle.
‘He can’t have read them all, surely.’
‘Maybe he was a speed reader,’ said Hoyle. ‘Maybe they’re investments. Maybe he bought them by the yard and never read them.’
They walked along the display cases. ‘He was a collector, that’s for sure,’ said Nightingale. There was a case of what appeared to be shrunken heads, leathery fist-sized lumps with straggly hair and pig-like noses. In the next they found chunks of rock, which Nightingale realised were fossils. He peered closer. They looked like birds but had long claws and teeth.
‘Vampire bats?’ asked Hoyle, only half joking.
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