Stephen Leather - Midnight

She smiled back. ‘You’re not a serial killer, are you?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I am.’ His face broke into a grin. ‘Mia, you’re crazy.’

‘I think you’re right,’ she said. ‘It’s just that you’re too good to be true. I don’t know when the last time was that a man offered to carry my bags.’

‘It’s a pleasure,’ he said. ‘And you don’t have to invite me in. I can take a rain check.’

She opened the door but kept her hand on the key. He was right. She wasn’t under any pressure. It was totally her choice and whatever happened was her decision. She didn’t usually take strange men back to her home. But then most of the men who approached her were pigs, out for only one thing. Chance was different; there was no doubt about that. He was better looking, better dressed, and was obviously way smarter than anyone she knew. She smiled at him again and he flashed his movie-star smile back at her. Something her mother always said sprang into her mind. Opportunity knocks only once. If she turned him down now, she might never see him again. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I’ve got wine in the fridge. You can help me drink it.’

She walked into the hallway and up the stairs to her first-floor flat. He followed her and waited while she unlocked the door. ‘Home sweet home,’ she said.

She showed him where the kitchen was and he put the carrier bags on the counter. She got a bottle of Frascati from the fridge and picked up two glasses. ‘White okay?’ she asked.

‘Great,’ he said, taking off his overcoat and scarf and draping them over the back of a chair. ‘Why don’t I open that for you?’

She gave him the bottle and he picked up a corkscrew then followed her through into the sitting room. There was an LCD television and a leather sofa and an armchair. All the furniture had come with the flat. Chance sat down on the sofa and opened the wine. ‘So, what do you do, Mia?’ he asked.

She frowned, not understanding the question. ‘Do?’ she repeated.

‘Your job,’ he said, stretching out his long legs. ‘What do you do for a living?’

‘I’m on the social,’ she said.

Chance nodded approvingly. ‘And you can afford this? It’s a nice place.’

‘It’s covered by housing benefit,’ she said. ‘The neighbours aren’t happy because they have to pay for theirs but I’m entitled, so screw them.’

‘Exactly,’ he said.

‘It’s because of the economy, innit?’ she said. ‘The landlord couldn’t find any tenants so he kept cutting the rent, and then it got so cheap the council said they could cover it with housing benefit, so here I am.’

‘You get income support?’ he asked as he poured wine into the two glasses.

She nodded. ‘Disability because of my nerves. A hundred and sixty a week, which isn’t bad. Plus another seventy for mobility.’

‘And it beats working,’ he said. ‘You should have kids. You’d get more money and the council will find you a bigger place.’

‘I thought of that,’ she said, lighting a cigarette. She offered him the pack but he shook his head.

‘I bet you did,’ he said. He pushed one of the glasses towards her.

She smiled coyly. ‘Are you putting yourself forward for the job?’ she asked.

‘I might just do that,’ he said, and flashed her his movie-star smile.

She sipped her wine. ‘That coin thing — you’re serious?’

He nodded. ‘It’s not a thing, it’s my life.’

‘Why? Why do you do it?’

‘I told you. So that the coin makes decisions for me. Because if I don’t make decisions myself then it all comes down to fate. I believe that everything is pre-ordained and there’s no such thing as free will.’

She frowned, unable to follow his train of thought.

‘It’s only by throwing in an element of randomness that you can gain control of your life,’ he continued. ‘Everybody should do it. They’d find themselves truly free.’ He raised his glass to her. ‘Here’s to you, Mia. And here’s to the coin. Because if it wasn’t for the coin, I wouldn’t be here with you now.’

‘That’s true,’ she said. She reached over and clinked her glass against his.

They both drank, then Chance stood up and walked over to the window. The street below was lined with cars but there were few pedestrians. He reached for the strings that controlled the blinds and gently closed them. ‘I always prefer blinds to curtains, don’t you?’ he asked.

‘I guess so,’ she said, flicking ash into a ceramic ashtray in the shape of a lucky clover. She patted the sofa. ‘Come and sit down,’ she said.

He put his hand into his pocket and took out the fifty-pence coin. He tossed it. And smiled to himself when he saw the way it had landed. He looked up and grinned at her as he put away the coin.

‘What?’ she said. ‘What did you decide?’

He walked towards her. ‘It’s a secret,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘You’re terrible,’ she said. ‘You can’t let a coin rule your life.’

‘Oh yes, I can,’ he said. He bent down and kissed her on the top of her head.

‘At least give me a hint,’ she said. She stubbed out her cigarette and then sat back and held out her hands.

He chuckled as he reached into his pocket. ‘Let’s just say that it’s not your lucky day, darling.’ His hand reappeared, holding a cut-throat razor. She opened her mouth to scream but before she had even taken a breath he had slashed the blade across her throat and arterial blood sprayed over the wall.

J enny McLean was tapping away on her computer when Nightingale walked in and tossed his raincoat over the chair by the door. ‘I hate the Welsh,’ he said.

‘That’s a bit racist, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Catherine Zeta-Jones seems quite sweet. And Richard Burton. What an actor.’

‘Let me be more specific. Welsh cops. I hate Welsh cops.’

‘Yes, I rather gather that you got on the wrong side of Superintendent Thomas. He didn’t seem a happy bunny at all on the phone yesterday. I definitely got the impression that you weren’t winning friends and influencing people in the valleys.’

Nightingale strode through to his office and picked up the mail that Jenny had left on his desk. ‘Any chance of a coffee?’

‘I hear and obey, oh master.’

Nightingale dropped down into his high-backed fake-leather chair and swung his feet up onto his desk. He flicked through the mail. Three bills, a threatening letter from the VAT man, a CV from a former soldier who had been injured in Iraq, a mail shot offering him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sign up for an investment seminar where he would learn how to be a millionaire within five years, and a letter from a fitness centre down the road offering him twenty per cent off a year’s membership plus the offer of three sessions with a personal trainer.

Jenny carried his mug of coffee over to him and put it on the blotter in front of the computer. As she sat down on the edge of his desk she noticed the plaster on the side of his head. ‘What happened?’

Nightingale picked up his mug and sipped his coffee. ‘I cut myself shaving.’

‘I’m serious, Jack.’ She reached out to touch the plaster but Nightingale moved his head away.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘The official report probably says that I head-butted the cop’s baton.’

‘A policeman hit you? Why?’

‘Let’s just say that my trip to Wales didn’t go as planned,’ he said.

‘You didn’t tell him about the seance, did you?’

‘I didn’t think that would be a good idea,’ said Nightingale. ‘He wanted to know what I was doing in her house. I told him that I thought she was my sister but then he tried to pin me down on where I’d got the info from. I figured that telling him my dead partner gave me the intel at a seance probably wouldn’t get a sympathetic hearing.’