‘Everyone should have a hobby,’ said Nightingale, dropping the files onto the desk. ‘These are his most recent financial records. Can you see what he was up to in the months before he died?’ He went back to the filing cabinets. The records for the year he was born were in the third. He pulled out the four files.
‘He was buying books, big-time,’ said Hoyle, holding up a receipt from a Hamburg bookstore. ‘He paid a million and a half euros for something called The Formicarius in January.’
‘A million and a half euros for a book? It’s no wonder all his money went.’
‘Published in 1435, according to this. But that’s just one. There’s a receipt here for six hundred thousand dollars, another for a quarter of a million pounds. A stack of receipts from China that I can’t read. And, from the look of it, they were all about witchcraft or demonology. Occult stuff.’ Hoyle gestured at the bookshelves. ‘That’s where all his money went. He spent millions putting this library together.’
Nightingale put the files on the desk. ‘He wasn’t building a library. He was buying information.’
‘I don’t follow,’ said Hoyle.
‘He didn’t care about the books, he wanted the information in them.’ Nightingale sat down in a leather winged chair. ‘Here’s what I think. He did a deal with the devil when I was born. Or, at least, he thought he did a deal.’
‘Jack…’
Nightingale held up a hand to silence his friend. ‘Whether he did or he didn’t do isn’t the issue. What matters is what was going through his mind. And so far as he was concerned he’d sold my soul. Then, as he said on the DVD, he had a change of heart. He wanted out of the deal, but for that he needed information.’ He pointed at the bookshelves. ‘He thought the answer lay somewhere in those.’
‘You’re not starting to believe this mumbo-jumbo, are you?’
‘I’m trying to empathise with Gosling,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m trying to think the way he was thinking. If I can get inside his head, maybe I can make sense of this. Maybe I can work out why he killed himself.’
‘Why does it matter?’
‘He was my father.’
‘In name only,’ said Hoyle. ‘You never knew him. So why does it matter? And why are you looking for your genetic mother?’
Nightingale didn’t reply.
‘You think this all might be true, don’t you?’ asked Hoyle, quietly.
‘Don’t be soppy,’ said Nightingale.
‘You want to ask her if Ainsley Gosling sold your soul to the devil.’
Nightingale shook his head and opened a file. It was full of bank statements, used cheque books and receipts. ‘I don’t think he sold my soul. But I think he believed he did. There’s a difference. Besides, I haven’t got a mark.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Nightingale sighed. ‘They say that if your soul belongs to the devil, you carry a mark. Like a tattoo.’
‘“They”?’
‘The people who believe in this crap,’ said Nightingale. ‘It was in that book I took with me last time. It was written by some top Satanist. In it he says that if the devil has your soul, you have a pentagram tattoo somewhere on your body. And I haven’t. You’ve seen me in the changing rooms enough times.’
‘That’s true. Not a pretty sight, it has to be said.’
‘But no pentagram. So, it’s all bollocks.’ He flicked through a cheque book. The dates in it were from the year that he had been born.
‘Damn right, it’s bollocks,’ said Hoyle. He held up another receipt. ‘He bought a dozen books from a shop in New Orleans for a total of half a million dollars – all about voodoo. You know, you should be able to sell them – you’d make a fortune.’
‘Assuming I can find someone crazy enough to buy them,’ said Nightingale. He handed the cheque book across the desk to Hoyle. ‘Thirty-three years ago, Ainsley Gosling paid twenty thousand pounds to a woman called Rebecca Keeley.’
Hoyle studied a cheque. ‘That was a lot of money back then.’
‘It’s a lot of money now,’ said Nightingale.
‘What do you think the going rate for a baby was?’
‘Twenty grand sounds about right to me. I’ll see if I can track her down.’
Hoyle tapped the file he’d been working through. ‘What I don’t see in these files are his household accounts. Utility bills and payments to staff. It’s all big payments. He must have left the small stuff to a manager.’
‘His driver, maybe,’ said Nightingale. ‘He only had three people working for him towards the end.’
Hoyle pulled out a piece of paper. ‘You know he had a Bentley?’
Nightingale shook his head.
‘An Arnage,’ said Hoyle. ‘Nice motor.’
‘But nothing here for the driver?’
‘No pay slips, no national insurance, no tax details.’
‘He probably didn’t want his staff down here so the household accounts must be somewhere else.’
Hoyle checked his watch. ‘I’m going to head off,’ he said. ‘Gotta be in the factory by six. You sure you’re okay?’
‘I keep flashing back to my uncle’s house. And I keep thinking that maybe if I’d gone straight around to see them… Yeah, I’m fine. I’m leaving now myself. I’m on a case this evening.’
Hoyle stood up. ‘Anything interesting?’
‘Divorce. Wife playing offside. Makes a change – usually I’m following the husband.’ Hoyle was still holding a file. ‘Are you going to take that with you?’
‘Thought I might, yeah. If I find anything interesting I can run the names through the PNC.’
‘Go ahead, knock yourself out,’ said Nightingale.
They went up the stairs together and Nightingale switched off the lights, then shut the panel behind them. He locked the front door and they stood looking up at the building.
‘It’s an awesome house, Jack,’ said Hoyle. ‘Be a great place to raise a family.’
‘Bloody hell, Robbie! Can you imagine the upkeep? I’ll have to sell it, pay off whatever taxes they hit me with and the mortgage, and if I’m lucky I’ll have enough left to buy a packet of fags.’
‘I’m just saying, it must be nice to be rich.’
‘No argument there.’
‘How did old man Gosling make his money?’
‘No idea,’ Nightingale said. ‘Maybe we’ll find out somewhere in his records.’
‘I never said I was sorry, about your dad dying.’
‘No great loss,’ said Nightingale. ‘I didn’t know him. Never met him. He was nothing to me so there’s no grieving to be done. I did that when my parents died – for a long time. With Gosling it’s confusion rather than grief. I just don’t understand what was going through his mind, why he gave me up for adoption – why he did what he did.’
Hoyle held up the file he was holding. ‘Maybe we’ll find the answer in one of these.’
Nightingale nodded. ‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘I really hope so.’
27
The problem with divorce work, as Nightingale knew all too well, was that the deceived spouse always wanted proof. It wasn’t enough just to say that he’d seen a man and woman enter a hotel and that they’d stayed there for an hour. The client wanted photographs or a video, hard evidence that could be waved in the face of the guilty party. The problem with photographs was that good cameras were bulky, and you needed a telephoto lens for decent shots – hotels, even cheap ones, didn’t take kindly to men in raincoats skulking around their reception areas with them.
Nightingale’s green MGB was too conspicuous for surveillance work and the company credit card was close to its limit, so he had borrowed Jenny McLean’s Audi A4. He wasn’t sure how his assistant could afford such an expensive car, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask her directly in case she mistook his curiosity for jealousy. He’d parked outside the hotel and listened to a radio discussion programme while he waited for Mrs McBride to arrive for her assignation. She was a
s regular as clockwork, using the same hotel on the second and last Monday of each month. She always drove there with her lover and parked in a multi-storey a short distance away. She would check in and get the key to the room, then phone the man on his mobile. Nightingale had watched them two weeks earlier but Joel McBride wouldn’t take his word for it and was insisting on photographic evidence.
Nightingale saw Mrs McBride coming around the corner and switched off the radio. He climbed out of the Audi and locked it. He was holding a black-leather attache case and pointed it at her as he pressed a hidden button in the handle. A lens in the side was connected to a digital video recorder inside the case.
Mrs McBride was smiling as she talked into her mobile phone, her high heels clicking on the pavement. She was an attractive blonde in her thirties, about five feet six with good legs. She was so engrossed in her call that she didn’t give Nightingale a second glance as she walked past him. The briefcase recorded sound and vision and he was close enough to hear her say ‘darling’ and tell whoever it was that she would see them soon.
She pushed through the double doors into Reception and Nightingale followed her. As she walked up to the desk, he moved to a sofa and sat down, keeping the lens pointed at her. She handed over her credit card and filled in the registration form, then took her room key and headed for the lifts. Nightingale got up and walked slowly after her, pretending to have a conversation into his mobile. He waited until the lift doors were about to close after her before he stepped in. ‘I’m just getting into the lift,’ he said into his phone. ‘I’ll call you back.’ He put it into his pocket and looked at the button she’d pressed. ‘Same floor,’ he said. He smiled but he didn’t feel like smiling. He hated lifts with a vengeance but there were times when he had no other choice than to trust his fate to the wires and pulleys that kept him suspended above the ground.
She flashed him an uninterested smile and watched the numbers as they winked on and off. When they reached the floor she walked quickly down the corridor. Nightingale followed, keeping well back. She had a room in the middle of the corridor so he walked past her, tilting the case to keep her in the camera’s view. He heard her unlock the door and close it. He walked to the end of the corridor, turned and stepped around the corner, keeping the briefcase aimed at the room where Mrs McBride was. He didn’t have to wait long. He heard the lift doors open and took out his phone, held it to his ear with his left hand and aimed the attache case down the corridor with the right.
Mrs McBride’s lover walked briskly down the corridor, tapping a copy of the Evening Standard against his leg. He was wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit that had the look of Savile Row and carrying a cashmere coat over one arm.
Nightingale walked towards him slowly, muttering into his phone, keeping the case pointing towards the man as he knocked on Mrs McBride’s door. She opened it and kissed him, then dragged him inside just as Nightingale drew level with the door. His timing was perfect.
He went back outside and sat in the Audi. Two hours later he videoed the man leaving on his own and walking along the street towards the tube station. Five minutes after that he got a nice shot of Mrs McBride walking out of the hotel, looking like the cat that had got the cream.
28
Jenny looked up from her computer when Nightingale walked in, swinging his attache case. ‘How did it go?’ she asked.
‘Perfect,’ said Nightingale. He put the case on her desk, clicked the double locks and opened it. He removed the memory card from the side of the camera and gave it to Jenny. ‘Run off a couple of DVDs, might need a bit of editing.’
‘No problem,’ said Jenny. ‘How’s my car, by the way?’
‘I had a bit of a run-in with a delivery van, scraped the side.’
‘You did not!’
Nightingale grinned. ‘Joke,’ he said. ‘Would I take any risks with your pride and joy? Now, did you get the credit-card records? They were obviously regulars at the Hilton. Be handy to show how often they go there.’
‘Yes, but my contact’s asking for more money.’
‘Because?’
‘Because he says they’re clamping down – Data Protection Act and all that. Now he wants three hundred a go.’
‘There’s enough in petty cash, right?’ said Nightingale, lighting a cigarette.
Jenny flashed him a sarcastic smile. ‘We haven’t had any petty cash for the last three months. I paid him myself.’
‘Put it on Mr McBride’s bill,’ he said.
‘My DWP pal wants more too.’
‘What is it with these people?’ Nightingale sighed. ‘They shouldn’t even be selling us information in the first place.’
‘I think that’s why the price keeps going up,’ said Jenny.
‘But she came through, did she?’
‘She managed to track down Rebecca Keeley. She’s in a nursing home, apparently. But nothing on Mitchell. He isn’t on any of the databases. Never paid tax, never been on the electoral roll, never seen a doctor. The original invisible man.’
‘Well, I hope we’re not paying for that,’ said Nightingale.
‘We’re paying for the checks, Jack, not the results.’
‘So what’s the story on Keeley? It’s an old folks’ home, is it?’
‘Hardly,’ said Jenny. ‘She’s only fifty.’
Nightingale’s brow furrowed. ‘Fifty? That means she was seventeen when she gave birth.’
‘You’re assuming she’s your mother, Jack. And that’s a very big assumption. All you have is that Gosling gave her some money at about the time you were born.’
‘Twenty thousand pounds was a lot of money back then,’ said Nightingale. ‘He must have been paying her for something important.’
‘She could have sold him a painting. Or a piece of furniture.’
‘He was meticulous with his records. Every cheque stub was filled in with either a reference number or a description of what he’d paid for. But the one for Keeley just had the amount with no explanation.’
‘I’m just saying, don’t get too excited. It might turn out to be nothing.’
‘Message received and understood,’ said Nightingale. ‘So why’s she in a home if she’s only fifty?’
‘I don’t know, but I’ve got an address,’ she said, handing him a sheet of paper. ‘Shall I get Mr McBride in so that you can give him the bad news – and his bill?’
‘Might as well,’ said Nightingale, studying the piece of paper she’d given him. The Hillingdon Home was in Hampshire, and there was no indication of what sort of outfit it was. Underneath the address there was a phone number, and the name of the administrator, a Mrs Elizabeth Fraser.
‘His wife paid for the hotel room, did you realise that?’ asked Jenny.
‘Yeah, I saw her handing over her card. Unbelievable, isn’t it? She sleeps with the boss and pays for it. What’s he got that I haven’t?’
‘Charm for a start,’ said Jenny.
29
‘Go on, number five!’ bellowed Nightingale, waving his betting slip. ‘Go on, my son!’
‘His name’s Red Rover,’ said Hoyle, at his shoulder.
‘He doesn’t know his name,’ said Nightingale. ‘Go on, number five!’
The greyhounds reached the second bend in a tight pack with number five somewhere in the middle. Nightingale had put twenty pounds on it to win for no other reason than that he’d liked the way the dog seemed to be smiling as it was walked around by its trainer.
Hoyle had put fifty pounds on number six, and as the dogs sped into the final stretch he cursed: number six was bringing up the rear.
‘Come on, number five!’ shouted Nightingale.
A black dog, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth, seemed to hit a second wind and hurtled into the lead. It crossed the finishing line just yards behind the mechanical hare. Number five came in third. Nightingale screwed up his betting slip. They were at Wimbledon Stadium in south London. It had been Hoyle’s idea – he had been a regul
ar visitor before he was married but now he barely managed two or three evenings a year. ‘Which do you fancy in the next race?’ asked Nightingale, studying his race card.
‘Old Kentucky,’ said Hoyle.
‘I think having the word “old” in his name isn’t a great start,’ said Nightingale.
‘Won his last four races,’ said Hoyle. ‘Come on, drinks are on me if he loses.’
They joined a queue to place their bets. ‘I got an address for that woman, the one Gosling gave twenty grand to,’ said Nightingale. ‘Some sort of home in Hampshire.’
‘You really think she might be your mother?’
‘She’s the only lead I’ve got.’
‘Are you going to see her?
‘I’ve got to, Robbie.’
‘You don’t have to, you could let sleeping dogs lie.’ He grinned. ‘No pun intended.’
Nightingale kept his eyes on the list of runners.
‘Are you going to see her because she’s your mother? Or because of this devil’s contract thing?’ asked Hoyle, lowering his voice to a whisper.
‘I just want to meet her.’
‘What if she doesn’t want to meet you?’
Nightingale frowned at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She gave you up for adoption thirty-three years ago. She hasn’t made any attempt to contact you during that time, and the last thing she’s going to expect is you turning up on her doorstep.’
Nightingale reached the front of the queue and handed a twenty-pound note to the cashier, a rotund woman in her fifties with blue-rinsed hair and green eye-shadow. ‘Old Kentucky in the next race,’ he said.
The woman smiled at him through the protective Perspex screen. ‘You’re going to hell, Jack Nightingale.’
‘What?’ said Nightingale, his fingers gripping the race card so tightly that his knuckles whitened. ‘What did you say?’ He knew what she’d said – he’d heard her quite distinctly. There was no mistake.
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