His uncle sighed but didn’t answer.
‘We have to talk about this, Uncle Tommy,’ said Nightingale.
‘Aye, lad. I guess so.’
‘How about I drive up to Altrincham on Sunday? About ten in the morning?’
His uncle put his hand over the receiver and said something to his wife. ‘Linda says come for lunch, Jack. She’ll do one of her roasts.’
‘Lunch it is.’
‘Jack, look… I’m sorry about all this.’
‘Let’s talk on Sunday, Uncle Tommy. It’ll be easier face to face.’
Nightingale was already at his desk when Jenny walked in. She waved through the doorway as she dropped her bag onto her desk, slipped off her trainers and changed into a pair of Chanel high heels with pretty bows on the back. ‘The early worm,’ she said.
He was studying the book he’d taken from the basement in Gosling Manor and looked disapprovingly over the top. ‘A bit of respect would be nice,’ he said, ‘me being management and all. I couldn’t sleep. Came back to watch the DVD again.’
‘Are you worrying about it?’
‘My father tells me he’s sold my soul to a devil and blows his head? Don’t you think I should be a bit concerned?’
‘He was probably deranged.’
‘And I’m his offspring. What if it’s hereditary?’
‘What if what’s hereditary?’
‘He went mad. Maybe he was schizophrenic. Manic-depressive. I don’t know. But if he was my father then maybe I’ll go crazy too.’
Jenny gestured at the dirty mugs on his desk. ‘I think you might be suffering from an excess of caffeine, Jack.’
‘It’s not the coffee,’ said Nightingale. ‘The more I look at the man in the DVD the more I see myself in him.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Jenny.
‘It’s the eyes. I look into his eyes and it’s like staring into a mirror.’
‘He doesn’t look anything like you.’
‘You don’t know what I’ll look like when I’m his age.’
‘He was fat, he looked like he’d spent a lifetime boozing and taking God knows what drugs, and he looked sick.’
‘And bald,’ said Nightingale.
‘And bald. Though I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’
‘Gosling was bald. That means I’ll go bald, too.’
Jenny grinned. ‘No, it doesn’t,’ she said. ‘The baldness gene crosses the sexes. Didn’t you do biology at school?’
‘I must have been off on the day we did baldness. How does it go again?’
Jenny sighed and picked up the dirty mugs. ‘You’ll inherit the hair of your mother’s father,’ she said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea who your real mum was? If what Gosling said is true, she might be out there.’
‘I know,’ said Nightingale, ‘but I wouldn’t have the first idea how to find her. I doubt he went through an agency.’
‘We could try hospital records for the day you were born. That would be a start.’
‘If Gosling was doing this secretly, he wouldn’t have used a hospital,’ said Nightingale. ‘For all we know I could have been born in Gosling Manor. Oh, yeah, while I remember, how much is in the company account?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘I’m going to use the credit card to pay the electricity bill at Gosling Manor. Just under a grand. Can we cover it?’
‘Barely,’ said Jenny. ‘We dipped into the red again last month.’
‘We’ve got an overdraft facility of five hundred quid, right?’
‘We used that, then went into the red,’ said Jenny.
‘Mrs Brierley’s cheque should clear tomorrow.’
‘Assuming it doesn’t bounce like last time,’ said Jenny.
‘That was because her shit of a husband emptied their account,’ said Nightingale. ‘The new cheque was on hers. It’ll be fine.’
‘You’re not planning to live there, are you?’
Nightingale laughed. ‘If you’d seen the size of the place, you wouldn’t even ask,’ he said. ‘It’s huge. It’s a couple of hundred yards from the kitchen to the main bedroom.’
‘Gosling lived there alone, didn’t he?’
‘I’m not sure. I think he must have had staff living in, for cleaning if nothing else. And it needs a team of gardeners. That’s another reason I couldn’t live there – I couldn’t afford the upkeep.’
‘So why have the power connected?’
‘Robbie and I found the basement and I want to go through it properly. It was hard by torchlight. And the estate agents will need the electricity on when they start showing people around.’
‘That’s the plan? Sell it?’
‘I’m going to have to because there’ll be inheritance tax to pay. Turtledove doesn’t know how much but it’ll be a lot.’
Jenny looked at the clock on the wall. ‘You haven’t forgotten Mr McBride, have you?’
‘McBride?’
‘The gentleman whose wife’s having an affair with her boss, remember?’
‘What time’s he due?’
‘Ten.’
‘Time for another coffee, then,’ he said.
‘What are you reading?’ asked Jenny, as she went over to the machine. She put down the dirty mugs and picked up a clean one.
‘A book,’ said Nightingale. ‘And I’m not reading it, I’m staring at it, trying to make sense of the letters, which isn’t the same thing.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Jenny. She poured him some coffee and brought it through to his office.
Nightingale handed it to her. ‘See for yourself,’ he said.
Jenny opened it. It was full of handwritten scrawl, some in dark blue ink, some in black, and some in what looked disconcertingly like dried blood. Dotted among the text there were sketches of circles and pentagrams. Jenny tried reading a sentence at random but she couldn’t make any sense of it. It certainly wasn’t English, or any other language she recognised.
‘At first I thought I might have caught dyslexia,’ said Nightingale. He sipped his coffee, then reached for the whisky bottle.
Jenny moved it out of his reach without taking her eyes off the book. ‘You don’t catch dyslexia,’ she said, frowning over the spidery writing. ‘Where did you get this from?’
‘I picked it up in the house last night,’ said Nightingale. ‘Old man Gosling’s basement is packed with books and stuff… weird stuff. I thought that might have been his diary but I can’t make head or tail of it. I thought it must have been written backwards, but even if you read it from right to left it still doesn’t make sense.’
Jenny looked up. ‘I’ve got it,’ she said.
‘The suspense is killing me,’ said Nightingale. ‘What have you got?’
‘It’s not written backwards, it’s mirror writing. There’s a difference.’
‘So you have to read it in a mirror? How on earth did he manage that?’
‘You can teach yourself to write that way. Leonardo da Vinci used to do it, so that no one could read his papers.’ Jenny fetched a small mirror from her bag, sat down opposite Nightingale and held the book so that a page was reflected.
Nightingale shook his head. ‘It still doesn’t make sense.’
‘It’s not English, that’s why.’
He took the mirror from her and tried to read a sentence. ‘What is it? Italian?’
‘Latin.’
‘My comprehensive was a bit light on dead languages,’ said Nightingale. ‘Can you translate it?’
Jenny rolled her eyes. ‘Didn’t you read my CV when you hired me?’
‘I was too busy looking at your legs,’ said Nightingale. ‘Can you tell me what it says?’
‘Eventually,’ said Jenny.
A sudden knock at the door startled them. Jenny hurried to open it. Joel McBride, a middle-aged man in a wheelchair, looked up at her. He was in his late forties with lank brown hair,
flecked with grey, that kept falling into his eyes. He was wearing a scarlet windbreaker and black leather gloves with the fingers cut off. Nightingale decided that his bulging arm muscles were the result of pushing himself around. ‘I’m sorry I’m early but the taxi got the pick-up time wrong,’ said McBride.
‘No problem,’ said Nightingale, getting up from his chair. ‘As my lovely assistant just reminded me, the early worm catches the bird. There’s something we need to discuss.’
‘About my wife?’ said McBride.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Nightingale.
16
Nightingale ordered another Corona, his third, and wondered whether it was worth going outside the wine bar for a cigarette but decided that on balance he’d prefer to continue to watch a recording of a Manchester United-Liverpool match on a big LCD TV with the sound turned down. Nightingale’s father, his real father, the man who had brought him up, had been a big United fan and had taken him to hundreds of games over the years. Bill Nightingale had been a season-ticket holder for as long as he could remember and Jack’s yearly birthday present from the age often had been his own season ticket. It was father-and-son time, and going to the games had marked some of the happiest times of his childhood. His father had helped him collect autographs of the first-team players, standing with him in all weathers outside the players’ entrance, passing the time by testing each other on the names of all the squads going back to the early nineteen fifties. Nightingale had gone once or twice after his parents had died, but it had never felt the same and he hadn’t renewed his ticket. ‘I knew I’d find you here,’ said a voice at his shoulder. It was Jenny.
‘I wasn’t exactly hiding, and it’s the closest bar to the office,’ he said. He checked his watch. It was just before eight o’clock. ‘Why aren’t you home?’
She held up the Waitrose carrier-bag. ‘I was in the office, reading the Gosling diary,’ she said. ‘I got caught up in it.’ She put the bag down on the bar and ordered a glass of white wine from the barman. ‘Can we sit at a table?’ she asked Nightingale. ‘I always feel like a lush standing at the bar.’
‘I feel like a lush too, but where am I going to find one at this time of night?’ said Nightingale. He grinned and indicated an empty table. ‘You grab yourself a seat and I’ll get your drink.’
Jenny threaded her way through the tables and sat down. She put the bag in front of her and helped herself to a breadstick. Nightingale took her wine and his bottle of Corona to the table and sat opposite her.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘You’ve been quiet, that’s all.’
‘I’ve been working.’
‘How many beers have you had?’
Nightingale chuckled. ‘What are you, the alcohol police?’
‘You’re not driving, are you?’
Nightingale raised his glass. ‘No, Jenny, I’m not driving.’
‘And you’re sure you’re okay?’
He sipped some beer. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Fine and dandy.’ He nodded at the Waitrose bag. ‘Have you managed to make sense of that?’
Four women in power suits burst into laughter at the table next to them. They were all in their early thirties, wearing too much makeup and jewellery, and weighing each other up with humourless eyes. Nightingale had them pegged as office colleagues, not friends. He made eye contact with one and she sneered at him dismissively. Nightingale smiled to himself, unfazed by her contempt.
‘What are you grinning at?’ asked Jenny.
‘I’m just happy that you’re the way you are and not like those harpies over there.’
‘Harpies?’
‘Those hard-faced bitches in their power suits, drinking bubbly and baring their fangs.’
‘That sounds a tad misogynistic,’ said Jenny.
‘I love women,’ said Nightingale.
‘That’s so not true,’ said Jenny. ‘You like some women, you tolerate the rest.’
‘I open doors for them, I give up my seat on buses.’
‘On behalf of womankind, thank you so very much.’ She sipped her wine. The women at the other table laughed again and one shouted at a waiter to bring another bottle of champagne. ‘Having said that, I do see what you mean,’ she said. She put down her glass and took the book out of the carrier-bag. ‘So, here’s the scoop. This wasn’t written by Ainsley Gosling. He would have been reading it.’
Nightingale raised an eyebrow. ‘So, who did write it?’
‘So far as I can tell it’s the diary of somebody called Sebastian Mitchell. The first entry is in 1946. The most recent was twelve years ago. There are notes in the margin that aren’t in mirror Latin so I’m guessing Gosling wrote them.’ She put it on the table. ‘I’ve only read bits – it’ll take for ever to read the whole thing. My Latin’s rusty and it’s a pain having to read it in the mirror. But I can tell you that this guy Mitchell was some sort of Satanist. You’ve heard of Aleister Crowley, right?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘He was a big-time Satanist. Mitchell studied under him. Crowley died in 1947, the year after Mitchell started writing his diary, but while Crowley enjoyed his infamy, Mitchell preferred to hide his light under a bushel and this was never meant for publication.’
‘It says all that in the diary?’
‘It mentions Crowley, yes, but the diary isn’t about him. It’s about how Mitchell was trying to summon devils. A sort of “how to” book, detailing what he did, the pitfalls and perils, what worked and what didn’t.’
‘This keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?’
‘Just because it’s written down it doesn’t mean it’s true. I kept a diary until I was fifteen, full of adolescent ramblings.’
‘Now, that I’d like to read,’ said Nightingale. ‘Gosling was using this book. It was open on his desk – it might well have been the last thing he read. I need to know what he was thinking about before he killed himself.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Is there stuff in there about selling souls?’
‘Jack, you know that’s nonsense.’
‘I need to know what he believed,’ said Nightingale. ‘It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s nonsense, what matters is what he believed. Is there stuff in there about selling the souls of children?’
‘It’s a handwritten diary, Jack. Mitchell could have been as crazy as…’ She left the sentence unfinished and reached for her glass.
‘As my genetic father?’
Jenny avoided his eyes. ‘I’m not saying he was crazy. But he did kill himself – there’s no getting away from that.’
‘What does it say about selling souls, Jenny?’
Jenny sighed. ‘You have to summon a devil,’ she said. ‘Not the devil, but one of his minions. In the book, Mitchell describes the different sorts of devils and what they do. So, if you want to sell a soul you have to call up one of his minions.’
‘How do you know which devil to summon?’
‘You’re not taking this seriously, are you?’
‘Just tell me what the book says.’
Jenny nodded slowly. ‘Okay. According to Mitchell, there are sixty-six princes under the devil, each commanding 6,666 legions. And each legion is made up of 6,666 devils.’
Nightingale frowned as he struggled to do the calculation in his head. ‘There are three billion devils in hell?’
‘It’s a big place,’ said Jenny. ‘Look, Jack, Mitchell was delusional – the book’s proof of that. No one in their right mind believes in a hell full of devils.’
Nightingale drained his beer and waved at a waitress for another bottle. ‘Here’s the thing, Jenny. The way I see it, there are two possibilities. One, he sold my soul to a devil, and on my thirty-third birthday my life as I know it will be over.’
‘Which is nonsense.’
The waitress arrived with his next Corona. Nightingale took the bottle and raised it to Jenny. ‘Which is nonsense,’ he agreed. ‘Two, he w
as as mad as a hatter. There was something wrong with him, paranoid schizophrenia, early Alzheimer’s, bipolar, I don’t know.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘A few bricks short of a wall.’
‘You’re still worrying about the heredity thing?’
‘And you think I shouldn’t be?’
‘I think it’s obvious he was having problems,’ said Jenny. ‘That doesn’t mean you will.’
‘Mental problems, Jenny. And mental problems can be hereditary. My father was mad so I might be headed that way too.’ He pointed at the book in front of her. ‘Anyone who wrote that must be crazy, and anyone who believed in it must have been even crazier. My dad blew his head off with a shotgun. Maybe…’ His voice tailed off.
‘What, Jack? What is it?’
‘I was a negotiator – you know that. Everyone thinks that negotiators are like they are on TV, running around talking to hostage-takers, getting villains out of banks and persuading them to hand over their guns before anyone gets hurt. But it’s not like that. Most of the time it’s domestics that have got out of hand or it’s sad buggers wanting to kill themselves – or to be talked out of killing themselves.’ He took a long pull on his beer. ‘Christ, I want a cigarette.’
‘That’s the beauty of the legislation,’ said Jenny. ‘You’re only allowed one pleasure at a time.’
‘Sometimes they just want someone to talk to,’ Nightingale went on. ‘There was one woman out in Tower Hamlets – every time she had a fight with her husband she’d pick up a knife, sit in her garden and threaten to cut herself. A negotiating team would go out, and after an hour or two and a few cigarettes she’d give us the knife and start crying and saying she loved her husband even though he belted her every time he had a few drinks inside him.’
‘She wasn’t really suicidal?’
‘She just wanted someone to talk to, and by threatening to harm herself, she got it. I saw her three times over the years. Knew what brand of fags to take her and what buttons to press when I got there. Emma, her name was. She’s probably still at it.’ He sipped his beer, then took another long pull. ‘It wasn’t hard to empathise with her. She was trapped in a life she hated, with a man who showed emotion through violence, and she’d had half a dozen miscarriages that were probably because of the drink, the drugs and the smoking. You could understand what was upsetting her. And once you understand you can negotiate. You can tell them what they want to hear.’
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