Stephen Leather - Nightshade

‘So what are you saying, now you think it was some devil-worship thing?’

‘He picked up the shotgun and got to the school at nine o’clock,’ said Nightingale. ‘If he’d got there at ten we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?’

‘But his brother was definite, wasn’t he? James McBride wasn’t a Satanist.’

‘Yeah, but Satanists don’t tend to advertise themselves, do they? If James was in league with the Devil there’s a pretty good chance he wouldn’t tell his brother.’

‘What do you want to do, Jack? He wants you to prove his brother wasn’t a Satanist but everything in the papers says he was. And if you’re right and the nine nine nine thing is significant …’ She shrugged.

‘He wants to know why his brother did what he did,’ said Nightingale. ‘I get paid whatever I find out. The altar was definitely wrong and I think the computer stuff is a definite red herring but the nine nine nine can’t be a coincidence.’

‘Of course it can,’ she said. ‘Look at the conspiracy theories over the Twin Towers. September eleven. Nine one one. And that’s the American emergency services number.’

‘It’s not the same thing,’ said Nightingale.

‘You’ve got to be careful reading something into random numbers, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘What do you think then?’

‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ said Jenny. ‘Mr McBride’s going to want proof at the end of the day. And at the moment all we have is supposition.’ She pointed at the photograph of the adult. ‘That’s the teacher who died, right?’

‘Deputy headmaster,’ said Nightingale. ‘Simon Etchells.’

‘Single parent?’

‘Married but no kids,’ said Nightingale. ‘You have to wonder why McBride shot this guy but none of the other teachers.’

‘Maybe he tried to stop him.’

‘Maybe. But I don’t see him getting aggressive with a man with a shotgun. They tend to produce the opposite effect. That’s why the shotgun is the weapon of choice for bank robbers and the like. It’s all about intimidation and a shotgun is just about the most intimidating gun there is.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m not sure, yet,’ said Nightingale. ‘But he went into four classrooms and there was a teacher in each one. The teacher would have been the first person he saw. Yet he didn’t shoot them. He shot kids. The same in the gymnasium. There was a gym teacher there but McBride ignored him and shot two kids before the police arrived. According to the papers, the cops arrived when the shooting was going on. They heard a shot outside the school, and another when they went inside. Two shots. So that would be the two kids he killed in the gym.’ He tapped the photograph of Zach Atkins and another of a dark-haired boy with an impish grin. ‘Zach Atkins and Noah Woodhouse. But here’s the thing. It took the cops a good three or four minutes to move through the school to the gym. And as soon as they got there, McBride took his own life. Here’s the big question. Why did he stop shooting?’

‘Ran out of cartridges?’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘There were several dozen in his knapsack. He could have shot more kids. And fired at the cops.’

‘What are you suggesting, Jack?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But the way he behaved makes no sense to me. If he wanted to lash out at the world, why shoot kids? He could have gone into the council offices and shot dozens of people. Or the pub. Or the shops. He targeted the school.’

‘That happens,’ said Jenny. ‘Look at Dunblane. That bastard killed sixteen children. And that Norwegian right-wing nutter, Breivik, he massacred seventy-seven people and most of them were kids.’

Nightingale walked over to the window and then turned to face the board. He folded his arms as he studied his handiwork. ‘Okay, so let’s suppose that for whatever reason McBride set out to kill children. Why shoot the deputy headmaster but then ignore the rest of the teachers? If he was just after kids he could just threaten to shoot the deputy and the guy would have shat himself.’

‘Lovely image.’

‘It’s true, though. He chose to shoot the deputy, but he didn’t shoot the teachers. And why move from classroom to classroom? If the aim was to kill kids, all he had to do was to walk into a single classroom and keep shooting. He had all the ammo he needed, he’d be standing at the only door, he could fire and reload to his heart’s content. There were more than thirty kids in that first classroom, but he only shot one.’

‘Maybe he stepped out to reload.’

‘Maybe. But then he could have gone back into the same classroom. But he didn’t. Plus, there’s the fact he walked past two classrooms full of kids before he started shooting. Why would he do that? Why not just go into the first classroom in the corridor?’

Jenny shrugged and didn’t say anything.

‘When he does go into a classroom, he shoots a girl. Ignores the teacher. According to the teacher he walked into the room, fired once then turned and walked out. He walks across the corridor into the second classroom where he shoots two more little girls. Ruth Glazebrook and Emily Smith. Again he doesn’t shoot the teacher. Just blows the little girls away and then he’s out. He walks along the corridor, reloads, and in the next classroom shoots a boy and a girl. Then across the corridor to shoot a girl. Then he crosses the corridor to shoot another kid. The Polish girl, Manka. Six children in four different classrooms.

‘At that point he walks to the gymnasium. The teachers use that as an opportunity to get the kids out of the classrooms. That’s about the time the police arrive. McBride reloads and walks into the gymnasium. The gym teacher manages to get the fire exit open and starts ushering the kids out. McBride shoots two of the kids, then stops. There’s an interview with the gym teacher in the Sunday Mirror . He says he saw McBride standing in the middle of the gym after he’d fired the second shot. He didn’t reload, he just stood there and watched as the kids ran out of the fire exit. Again, if he’d wanted to keep killing he could have done. He had all the ammo he needed. But he didn’t. He stood there and waited until the cops arrived and then he sat down and blew his own head off.’

Jenny nodded as she looked at the whiteboard. ‘He wasn’t shooting at kids in general, that’s what you mean.’ She frowned. ‘He was shooting specific children?’

‘Maybe,’ said Nightingale.

‘And you think he was shooting at children from one-parent families?’ She turned to look at him. ‘That doesn’t make any sense, does it?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘That’s why I need you to check the family circumstances of the rest of the children who died,’ he said. ‘But yeah, it doesn’t make any sense.’

They were interrupted by the phone ringing. Jenny hurried over to her desk to take the call and scribbled some notes on her pad. When she’d finished she replaced the receiver and looked up at Nightingale. ‘Pig’s blood,’ she said. ‘That’s what was in the crucible. And the knife.’

‘Interesting,’ said Nightingale.

‘Is that significant?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But I know someone who will be able to tell me.’

Joanna Pullman’s doorbell rang and she looked up from her magazine. ‘Now who could that be?’

Her husband Melvin was sitting at the dining table, staring at a chess set. He belonged to the local chess club and they had a match coming up against their long-time rivals in nearby Cadham. ‘You could always answer it and find out,’ he said. He picked up a knight, tapped it against the side of his head, and then replaced it.