Nightfall jn-1

by Stephen Leather

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I was thinking that maybe it’s somewhere that can’t be seen. On my head, maybe, under my hair.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Yeah, I do think you’re stupid.’

  Nightingale smiled thinly. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Well, at least checking your baby pictures with a magnifying glass beats shaving your head,’ said Jenny.

  Nightingale held it over the photograph and bent close to it. ‘There’s nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Of course there’s nothing,’ said Jenny. ‘The whole idea’s ridiculous.’

  Nightingale turned the page and began to check the rest of the photographs.

  ‘Jack, give it a rest,’ said Jenny.

  Nightingale opened his mouth to reply but before he could speak the office door was thrown open by an angry woman. It took him a couple of seconds to work out who it was and that he’d last seen her through the lens of his video camera leaving the hotel where she’d met her lover. It was Mrs McBride. Before Nightingale could react she rushed over and slapped him across the face. His mug fell from his hands and hot coffee splattered across the floor. ‘Hey!’

  He was off balance and before he could get off the desk she slapped him again. ‘You bastard!’ she shrieked.

  Jenny reached for the phone. ‘I’m calling the police,’ she said.

  Mrs McBride ignored her. ‘He killed himself, you bastard. Are you happy now?’

  ‘Who?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Who do you think? My husband. He killed himself because of you.’ She raised her hand to slap him again but then she burst into tears and slumped to the ground, racked with sobs.

  Jenny put down the phone and went around the desk to comfort her. At first Mrs McBride shook her off, but eventually she allowed herself to be led to the sofa. Jenny gave her a tissue and sat down next to her. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  Nightingale picked up the mug and dropped a few sheets of copy paper onto the spilled coffee. It wasn’t the first time he’d been attacked by an angry spouse, and he doubted it would be the last.

  ‘He drowned himself,’ said Mrs McBride. ‘In the canal. He left me a note.’ She dabbed her eyes. ‘He said he loved me and couldn’t live without me.’ She looked up at Nightingale. ‘Why did you do it?’ she asked tearfully.

  ‘He was a client,’ said Nightingale. ‘I was working for him.’

  ‘You bastard,’ she said, but this time there was no venom in her voice, only despair.

  ‘You were being unfaithful,’ said Nightingale, quietly. ‘Your husband had a right to know.’

  ‘My husband was dead below the waist,’ said Mrs McBride. ‘We hadn’t had sex for five years. Five bloody years. What should I have done? Become a nun?’

  ‘Mrs McBride, I’m sorry but that’s not my problem. Your husband wanted to know where he stood.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha,’ said Mrs McBride.

  Nightingale flushed when he realised what he’d said. ‘You know what I meant,’ he said. ‘He suspected you were being unfaithful. He wanted to know the truth.’

  ‘I was his wife – that’s the truth. I stood by him all the time he was in the hospital. I stuck with him in sickness and in health. That’s the truth.’

  ‘You were being unfaithful,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Jack…’ said Jenny.

  ‘I was having sex, that’s all!’ hissed Mrs McBride. ‘I’m a woman, not a block of bloody wood. I needed sex and I found a man who’d give me sex and you went and told Joel. You bloody well told him and now he’s dead!’ She began to cry and Jenny put an arm around her.

  ‘Mrs McBride, I’m sorry for your loss…’ said Nightingale.

  ‘It’s your fault he’s dead,’ she said.

  ‘Did he say that?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘He didn’t have to. He said in the note that he couldn’t live without me, and that he knew I was going to leave him.’ She looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. ‘Is that what you told him? Did you tell him I was going to leave him?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him anything of the sort,’ said Nightingale. ‘I just gave him my report.’

  ‘He said in his note that he couldn’t bear to live without me, but I was never going to leave him.’ She grabbed at Jenny’s hands. ‘You have to believe me.’

  ‘I do,’ said Jenny.

  Mrs McBride looked at Nightingale. ‘When he told me he knew, I was glad in a way. I’d been feeling as guilty as sin for weeks and wanted to tell him myself. But when he showed me the video you’d given him, I couldn’t face him. I went to stay with my friend Lynn to give him time to cool down, but then I was going to explain everything and tell him I still loved him, but now I can’t because he’s dead and that’s your fault.’

  ‘Did he tell you about my investigation?’

  ‘He showed me the video you gave him. And the phone records. But it wasn’t until I found your name in his cheque book that I knew who’d done it.’ She dabbed her eyes. ‘How can you live with yourself, doing what you do?’

  ‘It’s my job, Mrs McBride.’

  ‘You could have talked to me and I could have explained. I’d have ended it with Ronnie – he’s married anyway. You knew that, didn’t you? His wife makes him sleep in the spare room and he just wanted to touch someone, to share a bed with them. Ronnie was never going to leave her and I was never going to leave Joel.’

  ‘There’s nothing more I can say, Mrs McBride, other than that I’m sorry for your loss.’

  ‘Sorry doesn’t cut it,’ said Mrs McBride. ‘You killed my husband, and you’re going to hell.’

  ‘Your husband killed himself, Mrs McBride. You know that and so do

  I.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can live with yourself. You’re scum – you make money from the suffering of others. You should be ashamed of yourself.’

  She burst into tears and Jenny gave her a box of tissues. Mrs McBride threw it at Nightingale. ‘I don’t want your bloody tissues! I want my husband!’ she shouted.

  Nightingale looked helplessly at Jenny. ‘Go away and I’ll handle her,’ she mouthed. Nightingale did as he was told. He went outside and lit a cigarette. A lot of what the angry woman had said was just plain wrong, he knew, but one thing she had said was definitely true: he was ashamed of himself.

  40

  Six uniformed constables carried Robbie Hoyle’s coffin to the grave, followed by Anna and Sarah. They were both dressed in black and held single red roses. The twins had stayed at home with Anna’s sister. More than three hundred people had crowded into the church, most of them police officers. Superintendent Chalmers gave one of the eulogies. He talked about Hoyle’s career, his family and his life outside work, and told a couple of anecdotes about Hoyle’s early days on the beat that had the congregation smiling and nodding. Chalmers clearly spoke from the heart, and his voice cracked a couple of times. The cynic in Nightingale wanted to think that he was faking it but he came to realise that Hoyle’s death had hit the man hard.

  Anna gave one of the readings, holding her head up, projecting her voice and smiling across at her daughter. Several tough CID detectives had tears in their eyes.

  Nightingale was wearing a dark blue suit and a black tie and Jenny a black cashmere coat over a black dress, her hair held back with a black Alice band. They were standing on a gravel path, about fifty feet from the grave. The six officers lowered the coffin into the ground as the vicar read from the Bible.

  ‘When I die, I don’t want to be buried,’ whispered Nightingale.

  ‘You should say that in your will,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I haven’t got one.’

  ‘Well, draw one up,’ she said. ‘You’ve got your flat in Bayswater and you’ve got Gosling Manor. You have to leave it all to somebody.’

  ‘I don’t care who gets it,’ he said. ‘My parents are gone and I’ve no kids.’ He grinned. ‘I’ll leave it all to you.’

  ‘Yo
u will not,’ she said.

  ‘There’s nobody else close to me,’ he said.

  ‘Find a charity, then,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to profit from your death, Jack. It’s bad enough my parents always telling me that I’ll be set up for life when they go. I don’t want that from you as well.’

  ‘I don’t need a will, then.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ she said. ‘Otherwise your assets get divided up according to some legal formula. If you’re married, the surviving spouse gets it. If you have kids, they get a share. And if there’s no wife and kids it goes to the parents, and if they’re not around any other relatives get it. Trust me, you need a will.’

  ‘Anyway, the will isn’t the point. The point is that I don’t want to be buried, okay?’

  ‘Message received,’ she said. ‘Do you want to donate your body to medical science instead? I’m sure your liver would be worth looking at.’

  Nightingale flashed her a tight smile. ‘I’m not having bloody medical students poking around with my innards,’ he said. ‘Cremation will do just fine.’

  ‘Cremation it is,’ said Jenny. ‘What shall I do with the ashes?’

  ‘Whatever you like,’ said Nightingale. ‘Speaking of which, do you think it’s okay to smoke in a churchyard?’

  ‘I think legally you’d be okay but it’s pretty bad form. How about an egg-timer?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I’ll have your ashes put in an egg-timer. Then you’ll be one of the few men in the country who’s actually useful in the kitchen.’

  The policemen finished lowering the coffin. The three on the left dropped their end of the slings and the three on the right pulled them out. Anna let her rose fall onto the coffin and encouraged Sarah to do the same.

  ‘Scatter them over the pitch at Old Trafford,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t want to be in the ground – I don’t want to rot slowly, and I don’t want a gravestone for people to look at.’

  ‘Jack, you’re thirty-two, you’ve got years ahead of you. Provided you stop smoking and drinking.’

  ‘Unless Gosling was telling the truth. In two weeks’ time I’ll be thirty-three. Two weeks today, in fact.’

  ‘Today’s Thursday,’ said Jenny. ‘Your birthday’s Friday the twenty-seventh.’

  ‘Yeah, but I figure that means my soul’s up for grabs just after midnight on the twenty-sixth, right?’

  ‘I don’t know how prompt devils are,’ said Jenny. ‘Anyway, it’s all nonsense and you know it. Come on, we have to go to the reception.’

  ‘I can’t face that,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Well, at least let’s say goodbye to Anna. You can’t just leave without saying anything.’

  Anna was being comforted by Robbie’s mother. ‘She’s got enough on her plate,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’ll call around tomorrow.’

  As Nightingale turned to go he spotted Derbyshire and Evans, the two detectives who had called into his office. He went over to them. ‘Did you guys know Robbie?’ he asked.

  ‘Met him once on an interview course at Hendon,’ said Evans. ‘Never worked with him, though.’

  ‘Bloody nightmare,’ said Nightingale. ‘I still can’t believe it. Anything happening with the taxi driver?’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘The way things stand at the moment, we can’t even do him for careless driving. He wasn’t on his mobile, he hadn’t been drinking, he wasn’t speeding. It really was an accident, plain and simple.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  Evans narrowed his eyes. ‘Why?’

  Nightingale faked a smile. ‘The Federation rep asked if I’d give Anna a hand filling out the insurance forms and they need details of the accident.’

  Evans nodded. ‘Barry O’Brien,’ he said. ‘He lives out in Hammersmith. He was fully insured, clean licence and everything, so I don’t see there’ll be any problems.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Physically fine – he was wearing his seatbelt – but he’s really shaken.’

  ‘He should be,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Evans. ‘He was in a right mess when we saw him. He’d never had an accident before, and he’s been driving a cab for over thirty years. He’s taking it really badly.’

  Nightingale thanked them and headed for the exit. Jenny linked her arm through his. ‘You just lied to him, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘There are no insurance papers.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just know. You can’t lie to the police, Jack.’

  ‘Yes, you can. It’s practically a national pastime,’ said Nightingale. ‘Everyone lies to the cops.’

  ‘But why do you need to know who the driver was?’

  ‘I want to talk to him.’

  ‘Because?’

  Nightingale sighed. ‘Because he killed my best friend and I want to know what happened.’

  ‘They told you what happened. It was an accident. Robbie was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘Yeah, well, cops don’t always tell the truth,’ said Nightingale. ‘I need to hear it from the horse’s mouth.’ They walked out of the graveyard. ‘I can’t work, Jenny, not today. Let’s go and get drunk.’

  ‘I’ve a better idea,’ said Jenny. ‘Why don’t you show me Gosling Manor?’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Jenny. ‘I want to see if it’s as big as you say it is.’

  Nightingale grinned. ‘Jenny, size isn’t everything, you know.’

  ‘Actually,’ she smiled, ‘it is, pretty much.’

  41

  Jenny climbed out of the MGB. ‘You weren’t joking – it is a mansion,’ she said. ‘How many rooms?’

  ‘A lot,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘I expected gargoyles and turrets and stuff but it’s really nice,’ she said. ‘And the gardens are spectacular.’ She stood with her hands on her hips, admiring the house. ‘It’s chocolate-box pretty, isn’t it? Not the sort of house you’d expect a Satanist to live in.’

  ‘It was built by the local squire, apparently.’

  ‘What is it – seventeenth century?’

  ‘Sixteenth, the cops said. But it’s been added to over the years. You should have a look around the back – there’s a lake. And stables. How does it compare to the McLean ancestral pile?’

  Jenny smiled. ‘Ah, now you’re talking,’ she said. ‘My parents’ place is a bit special.’

  ‘As special as this?’

  ‘I’m not playing the who’s-got-the-biggest-house game, Jack, but this is lovely, really lovely. You’re very lucky to have it.’

  ‘Yeah, but I can’t see how I can keep it,’ said Nightingale. He walked over to the garage, which was to the right of the main building. There were four metal doors that opened upwards but all were locked. CCTV cameras at either end covered all the doors and the area in front of them.

  ‘He was big on security,’ observed Jenny.

  ‘Inside and out,’ said Nightingale. He went to the far side of the garage. There were two windows, dusty and covered with cobwebs. He peered through the first but all he could see was a bare concrete floor, discoloured from years of spilled oil. He moved to the second, cupped his hand over his forehead and squinted through the glass. There was a long wooden workbench but no tools. A pulley and chains hung from a metal girder running the full length of the interior and there was a dark area at the far end, which looked like a pit.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ asked Jenny, joining him at the window.

  ‘A Bentley,’ said Nightingale. ‘Apparently that’s what Gosling drove. Or, rather, that’s what he was driven around in.’ He moved away from the window. ‘Empty,’ he said. ‘Just like the house.’

  ‘Maybe he sold it,’ said Jenny.

  ‘He seems to have sold everything else.’

  ‘Except the books,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Except the books,’ agreed Nightingale. �
�Come on, I’ll give you the tour.’

  They walked to the front door and Nightingale unlocked it. He bowed and waved her inside. ‘Wow, would you look at that chandelier!’ she said. ‘And this floor is Italian marble, right?’

  ‘Only the best for Ainsley Gosling,’ said Nightingale, closing the door.

  ‘And there’s no furniture?’

  ‘Just a bed and a chair in the master bedroom.’

  ‘That’s where he…?’

  ‘Killed himself? Yeah. But you wouldn’t know by looking at the room – it’s been cleaned. Not a speck of blood.’ He waved his hand around the hall. ‘So, can you see the secret panel?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The secret panel. Gosling was the only one who knew how to get down to the basement.’

  Jenny walked slowly along the length of the hallway, running her hand along the wooden panelling. ‘How did you find it, if it’s so secret?’

  Nightingale waxed an imaginary moustache and did his best Hercule Poirot impersonation. ‘Because I am ze great detective,’ he said.

  ‘Robbie found it, right?’

  ‘It was a joint effort,’ said Nightingale. He pressed the panel that led down to the basement and it clicked open. He flicked the light switch. ‘Be careful, the stairs are quite steep,’ he said. ‘And keep hold of the handrail.’

  He followed her down the stairs. ‘This is amazing,’ said Jenny. ‘There must be thousands of books here. Are they all witchcraft and devil stuff?’

  ‘Seem to be.’

  ‘Are you going to sell them all?’ she asked, as she pulled one out of the middle of a shelf. ‘Ah,’ she said, before he could answer. ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

  She held up the book so that he could see the title. Dissecting Humans.

  ‘No way,’ he said.

  Jenny leafed through it. ‘Complete with illustrations,’ she said. ‘I think it’s a medical text. At least, I hope it is.’ She put it back on the shelf and started walking through the display cases. ‘It’s half library, half museum.’