Stephen Leather: Nightshade

Nightingale took out his cigarettes and lit one. He offered the pack to McBride but he shook his head. ‘I gave up, years ago,’ he said.

‘Sorry,’ said Nightingale. He held up his cigarette. ‘You don’t mind if I do?’

McBride waved his hand dismissively. ‘They’re your lungs,’ he said.

Nightingale lit his cigarette and put the pack away. ‘What’s going to happen to this place?’

‘My brother left it to me in his will,’ said McBride. ‘But I’m not a farmer and my kids are too young. My son says he wants to be a farmer but I can’t see me hanging on to it for ten years or so.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess I’ll just have to sell it.’

‘Your brother made a decent living from the farm?’

McBride smiled ruefully. ‘You never hear a farmer who isn’t complaining,’ he said. ‘But he was never short of a bob or two. Once he realised that the EU would pay him not to grow things, he never looked back.’

‘So he didn’t have any money problems?’

McBride shook his head. ‘He had six figures in the bank,’ he said.

Nightingale blew smoke up at the leaden sky. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Your brother seems to have had the life he wanted. Why would he suddenly go off the rails the way he did?’

‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t have hired you, would I?’ said McBride. He pulled a set of keys from his coat pocket. ‘I’ll show you around.’

‘Let’s start with the barn. I’d like to see the altar,’ said Nightingale.

McBride put the keys back in his pocket and walked over to the barn. Nightingale followed, the wind tugging at his raincoat. McBride pulled open a large metal door. It was on rollers but it was twice his height and he struggled to keep it moving. Nightingale grabbed the handle and helped. Together they pulled it open, revealing a cavernous space with a concrete floor and metal beams overhead from which hung half a dozen fluorescent lights. To the right of the barn were a tractor and a couple of ploughs, and against the wall was a rack of agricultural tools. To the side of the door was a long workbench and beyond it was a run of metal stairs that led up to a metal mezzanine level.

McBride pointed up the stairs. ‘Up there,’ he said.

Nightingale stubbed out his cigarette and then went up the stairs slowly, holding onto a metal rail. The stairs were fixed to the metal siding of the barn and they wobbled silently as he made his way up. The altar was at the far end of the mezzanine. Nightingale took out his mobile phone. Jenny had given him the iPhone as a birthday present and he still wasn’t quite sure how to work it. He bit down on his lower lip as he tapped at the screen trying to put it into camera mode. ‘You don’t know anything about iPhones do you?’ he asked McBride, who had climbed up the stairs to join him.

McBride held out his hand and Nightingale gave it to him. ‘What are you trying to do?’

‘I want to take pictures.’

‘You want camera mode,’ said McBride. He tapped the screen a couple of times and handed it back to Nightingale. ‘Press the camera button thing.’ Nightingale took several photographs as McBride stood by and watched.

‘Why did you come up here on Saturday?’ asked Nightingale.

McBride pointed at half a dozen cardboard boxes stacked up against the wall. ‘He kept his spare parts up here,’ he said.

Nightingale took more photographs of the altar. The base was a plank of wood across three stacks of six bricks. There were black candles and metal crucibles on the plank. Wax had melted and hardened in rivulets that reached from the plank to the metal floor. Hanging from the wall above the centre of the plank was a goat’s skull with twisted horns. To the left of the skull was a bunch of dried herbs hanging from a nail and on its right was a metal pentagram. ‘And this wasn’t here when you came up?’

‘I’d hardly have missed it,’ said McBride.

Nightingale walked up to the altar and took more photographs. There was a red paste in one of the crucibles that might have been dried blood. And a knife with what looked like dried blood on the blade. ‘Strange that the police didn’t take any of this away,’ said Nightingale. ‘And it doesn’t look as if they took fingerprints.’

‘They didn’t say anything to me about it,’ said McBride. ‘First I knew about it was when I saw the photographs in the papers. I drove around and sure enough it was here. But as I said, it wasn’t here on the Saturday. Jimmy sent me up to get some parts and the only thing up here was the boxes.’

There was a large box of Swan Vesta matches on the altar. Nightingale picked it up and slid it open. There were a dozen or so spent matches among the unlit ones. Nightingale put the box down. All the candles had been used and the altar was covered with melted wax that had hardened. To the left of the altar there was a stack of papers under what appeared to be a lump of coal. Nightingale pulled out the papers and flicked through them. They seemed to be printouts from various Satanic websites.

‘What do you think?’ asked McBride.

Nightingale rolled the papers up and put them into his raincoat pocket. ‘It looks like it’s been here for a while.’

‘Well, I can assure you that it wasn’t here last Saturday.’

‘I believe you,’ said Nightingale. He took more photographs with his phone. ‘Which means that whoever did it went to a lot of trouble to make it look as if your brother set it up some time ago.’

‘Does it look like a Satanic altar to you?’

Nightingale leaned over to get a closer look at a pentangle that had been drawn on a sheet of paper in what appeared to be dried blood. ‘It does, yes. But I’m going to get a professional’s opinion.’

‘A professional?’

‘Someone who’s a bit more familiar with this.’

‘I thought you were,’ said McBride.

‘The basics, yes. But I’m going to run it by someone who really knows her stuff.’

McBride pointed at the lead crucible in front of Nightingale. ‘That’s blood, isn’t it?’

‘It might be,’ said Nightingale. He pulled two plastic evidence bags from his pocket. He put the crucible in one and the knife in the other. ‘I’ll get it checked out.’ He turned to look at McBride. ‘Your brother, was he religious?’

‘He went to church, but not regularly. Why?’

‘Does he have a Bible in the house?’

‘I’m not sure? Why?’

‘Because if he was a dyed-in-the-wool Satanist he wouldn’t have one. Can we have a look around?’

‘Not a problem,’ said McBride. ‘Are you done here?’

‘Just a few more pictures,’ said Nightingale. He took half a dozen more shots of the altar, then pocketed his phone. ‘I have to say, it’s weird that the police didn’t take this away. Or at least rope it off as a crime scene.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe they do things differently up here.’

‘They’ve done almost nothing in the way of an investigation so far as I can see,’ said McBride. ‘They haven’t even spoken to me.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Well, I went to see them after they took away his computer because they’d smashed in the front door. But they weren’t interested in anything I had to say.’

‘They didn’t ask about the altar or what sort of person he was?’ McBride shook his head. ‘Or ask if anything was troubling him?’

‘Not a dicky-bird,’ said McBride. ‘They couldn’t wait to get me out of the station.’

Nightingale rubbed the back of his neck. There was clearly something very wrong with the way the Northumbria police were handling the investigation.

They went back down the stairs and out of the barn, then walked around the back of the farmhouse. There was a large, well-tended vegetable garden and beyond it a chicken house the size of a railway carriage. Nightingale winced as the acrid smell of the chickens hit his nostrils. The chickens inside began to cluck and squawk, as if they realised there were strangers around. McBride unlocked the back door of the farmhouse and took Nightingale into the kitchen. There was a large green Aga stove, a weathered pine table and chairs, and an overstuffed armchair next to which was a pile of farming magazines. There was a metal gun cabinet on one wall. The cabinet was open and empty. ‘How many guns did your brother have?’ asked Nightingale.