Stephen Leather - Nightshade

‘Yeah, I remember.’

‘Well, there’s another list that hasn’t been made public. And the rumour is that there are some very top people on it, a lot of Scottish bigwigs. Some serious names. The rumour is that the London cops are getting ready to blow the thing wide open.’

‘And the Northumbria cops have been left out of the loop?’

‘Totally. Which suggests they don’t trust us.’

‘But no rumours about Stevenson?’

‘None that I’ve heard. So I’ll give you his address, but then that’s the end of it. And we never had the conversation.’

‘That’s fine with me,’ said Nightingale. ‘Give me the address and then forget we ever spoke.’

Simpson gave him the address and Nightingale scribbled it down on his newspaper. After he ended the call, Nightingale stood up and opened his office door. Jenny didn’t look up as he walked in and continued to ignore him as he walked up to her desk. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why I was being an arsehole.’

She nodded but didn’t look up at him.

‘I over-reacted, I’m sorry.’

‘Okay.’

‘I know he’s your godfather, and I realise he was only trying to help. I guess I just get possessive when it comes to cases. Tell him I’m sorry, will you?’

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘He’s a really nice guy, Jack. You’d like him if you got to know him.’

‘I’m sure I would,’ lied Nightingale. ‘How about I make you a coffee, to make up?’

‘Or you could buy me a Costa? And a chocolate muffin.’

‘I could do that,’ said Nightingale. ‘Oh, I’ll be out of the office tomorrow. I’m back up to Berwick.’

‘Do you want me to book you a train?’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘I’m going up with Eddie Morris. We’ll use his car.’

‘Eddie Morris housebreaker and burglar?’

‘That’s the one. But make that alleged housebreaker and burglar, he’s never actually been convicted.’

‘What are you up to, Jack?’

Nightingale tapped the side of his nose. ‘Best you don’t know,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want to make you an accessory before the fact.’

Miss Rider looked up as the classroom door opened. It was Bella. Miss Rider expected the headmistress to pop her head around the door but Bella was alone. The heads of the three dozen children in the room swivelled to stare at Bella. ‘Sit down, Bella,’ said the teacher. ‘We’re just talking about fractions.’

Bella walked over to her table and sat down. Miss Rider went over to her whiteboard. She was trying to get the children to rank a series of fractions in order of size but it was proving to be an uphill struggle. She looked over at Bella. The girl had her hands clasped together on the table in front of her and her head down so that her hair was hanging over her face.

‘So, Bella, which is bigger, a quarter, which is one over four, or a sixth, which is one over six?’

Bella didn’t say anything.

‘Bella, did you hear me?’

Two girls at the table by the window began to talk.

‘Hush now,’ said Miss Rider. ‘Let’s hear the answer from Bella.’

Tommy Halpin stood up and pointed out of the window. ‘Tommy, come on now, sit down.’ Tommy had what his parents called Attention Deficit Disorder but Miss Rider put down to a complete lack of discipline at home. The boy ignored her and continued to point.

‘Tommy, please, we’ve spoken before about how your disrupting the class isn’t fair to everyone else.’

‘It’s Mrs Tomlinson,’ said Tommy excitedly. ‘On the roof.’ He turned to look at Miss Rider. ‘Why is she on the roof, Miss Rider?’

Miss Rider frowned and hurried over to the window. The children took it as a signal that they could go too and everyone rushed over to see what was going on.

The headmistress was on the roof of the administration block. Her hair and skirt were flapping in the wind and as Miss Rider watched, the headmistress slowly raised her arms to the side as if she was being crucified.

‘What is she doing, Miss?’ asked Tommy. ‘Is she playing at Superman?’

‘She’s a lady, she can’t be Superman,’ said Kylie James, who was one of the most pedantic children Miss Rider had ever come across.

‘Children, I need you to all sit down,’ said Miss Rider in her most authoritative voice. Her pupils ignored her.

Mrs Tomlinson took a deep breath, tilted her head back, and began to scream the Lord’s Prayer. ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.’ She fell forward as she shouted and the wind ripped the remaining words from her mouth as she fell, her arms still out to the side. It was a perfect swan dive, except that below wasn’t a swimming pool, there was just the unyielding tarmac surface of the school playground.

‘Oh my God!’ screamed Miss Rider. She watched in horror as the headmistress plunged to the ground. Something snaked behind her and Miss Rider realised that it was a rope. The headmistress had tied one end of the rope around the neck and the other end to something on the roof.

‘She’s bungee jumping!’ shouted Tommy, and at that exact moment the rope snapped tight and Mrs Tomlinson flipped head over heels and then the head parted from the body in a shower of blood and the two parts fell to the ground. The body hit first with a dull wet thud that they all heard through the classroom window and the head landed a fraction of a second later and rolled across the playground like a miskicked football.

Some of the children screamed and Kylie burst into tears. Miss Rider flinched and turned away, her stomach heaving. As she retched over the floor she realised that Bella was the only child still sitting at her table, her head down and her hands clasped in front of her.

Eddie Morris opened one eye and looked at the speedometer. ‘You can put your foot down, you won’t hurt it,’ he said. ‘German engineering.’

It was Tuesday morning and the BMW was powering along the A1 at a steady seventy miles an hour. They had shared the driving since leaving London in Morris’s brand new Series 5. ‘I don’t want a speeding ticket,’ said Nightingale. ‘That’s why we’re driving and not flying, I don’t want anyone to know that we’re up here.’

‘It’s one hell of a drive,’ said Morris, folding his arms and stretching out his legs.

‘I’m paying you by the hour, aren’t I? And by the look of this motor, the housebreaking business is booming.’

Morris grinned. ‘Can’t complain. I’ve been doing really well since I started targeting Russians and Arabs. They always have a lot of cash and jewellery in their houses, and as a lot of it is hooky they don’t call the cops.’

‘Be careful with the Russians, mate.’

‘They’re not all mafia, Jack. But most of them are dodgy.’

Nightingale had insisted that they drive up to Berwick and had agreed to share the driving. They had to use the BMW because Nightingale’s classic MGB wasn’t up to a 700-mile round trip. Morris had picked Nightingale up in Bayswater at five o’clock in the morning. They had made good time, stopping only for fuel and coffee, and they reached Berwick at one o’clock in the afternoon. Nightingale had Morris call Stevenson from a phone box to check that he was in his office, then they drove around to the policeman’s house on the outskirts of the town.

It was a terraced house of grey stone, with a white door that opened off the pavement. ‘I hate terraces,’ said Morris. ‘Front and back overlooked and the neighbours are right on top of you.’ He nodded at the burglar alarm box between the two upstairs windows. ‘See that?

‘Alarms never worry you, Eddie. Not bog-standard ones like that. Are you going to go in the front or the back?’