Stephen Leather: Nightshade

‘Three, I think,’ said McBride. ‘He took one to the school and the police took away the other two.’

‘He never had a problem with his licences?’

‘Not that I know of. But they’re pretty easy for farmers to get. There are foxes and crows and all sorts of vermin. I wouldn’t have a gun in the house, but for Jimmy it was just a tool.’

‘So they took the guns and the computer. Anything else?’

‘The ammunition. But that was about it. I’ve got a receipt somewhere.’

There were two dog bowls by the back door, one half full of water. ‘He had dogs?’

‘Two,’ said McBride. ‘I’m taking care of them at the moment.’

Nightingale walked out of the kitchen and along a stone-flagged hallway. On the walls were framed watercolours, mainly flowers, that appeared to have been done by an amateur artist.

‘Jimmy’s study is on the right,’ said McBride.

The curtains were drawn in the study and Nightingale pulled them open. There was a desk on which there was a printer and two wire baskets full of invoices and paperwork. There was a space where a computer had obviously stood. There were more watercolours on the walls.

‘Did your brother paint?’ asked Nightingale.

McBride shook his head. ‘Our mother,’ he said. ‘Jimmy hardly changed a thing when our parents passed away. Their bedroom is just the way it was when they lived here, and he sleeps in the same bedroom he slept in as a kid. He’s left mine the way it is, too.’

‘What sort of computer did your brother have?’ asked Nightingale.

‘I don’t know. A Dell, maybe.’

‘Was it a desktop or a laptop?’

‘A desktop. With a monitor and a separate keyboard and a printer. They only left the printer.’

Nightingale looked over at the printer. Next to it were half a dozen photographs in frames. Two young boys were in most of the pictures. McBride noticed Nightingale’s interest. ‘My boys,’ he said. ‘They worshipped Jimmy. They were like his surrogate kids. That’s why what he did made no sense.’

Nightingale nodded sympathetically. ‘Have you asked for it back? The computer?’

‘I went to the station but they said that they were working on it.’

‘Who did you talk to?’

‘Some detective. An inspector. Stevenson his name was. To be honest he was a bit short with me, gave me the impression that I was bothering him.’

‘I’ll have a go. He might be more forthcoming with me.’ He pointed at a Cisco internet router on a table next to a fax machine. ‘I thought you said he didn’t have an internet connection.’

‘He didn’t,’ said McBride. ‘It’s not plugged in. He couldn’t get it to work. The kids got me to buy it for him last birthday so that they could be Facebook friends with him but he couldn’t get the hang of it. He kept saying he’d get someone in to connect it, but he never did.’

Nightingale went over and peered behind the table. The router wasn’t plugged in.

‘He still used faxes for business,’ said McBride. ‘He didn’t even have an email address. I mean, who doesn’t have an email address in this day and age?’

Nightingale nodded but didn’t reply. Truth be told, Nightingale didn’t have an email address either. If he needed to talk to someone he preferred to do it face to face or on the phone. There was a bookcase against one wall and Nightingale went over to it. There were two shelves filled with Reader’s Digest condensed books and several hundred romantic novels by writers such as Catherine Cookson and Barbara Cartland.

McBride saw the look of confusion on Nightingale’s face at the choice of reading matter. ‘They were our mum’s,’ he said. ‘She died ten years ago. Cancer. Our dad died a couple of years later. Jimmy never left home. He ran the farm with Dad and then took it over when he died. The house is pretty much as it was when we were kids here.’ He laughed ruefully. ‘Like I said, my bedroom is just as it was. Same wallpaper, same blankets on the bed. Bit of a time warp really.’

There was a Bible on one of the lower shelves and Nightingale pulled it out.

‘That was our father’s,’ said McBride.

‘He was religious?’

‘Sure. Church of Scotland. Mum, too. But Dad pretty much gave up on religion after Mum died. It wasn’t an easy death and it pretty much destroyed his faith.’ McBride shrugged. ‘He didn’t even want a Christian funeral service.’

‘But he kept the Bible?’

McBride nodded. ‘I guess so. Maybe he forgot it was there.’

Nightingale replaced it. ‘What I don’t see is anything that suggests your brother was interested in black magic.’

‘I never saw anything like that. I suppose he could have hidden them.’

‘Could we have a look?’

‘You mean search the house?’

‘If he really was a Satanist then there’d be books or other paraphernalia. It’s a complicated business.’

McBride looked at his watch. ‘Okay, let’s do it,’ he said. ‘But I’ll have to call the wife and let her know that I’ll be late.’

There was a wooden plaque on the wall next to the bookcase and Nightingale walked over to get a better look. There was a pentangle in the middle and below it, a pair of compasses. McBride joined him. ‘I’ve never noticed that before,’ he said. ‘Is it a witchcraft thing?’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘It’s a Masonic thing.’ He pointed at a small brass label at the bottom of the plaque. ‘That’s the name of his lodge.’

‘He never mentioned it.’

‘It’s no big deal — a lot of farmers are Masons. Mainly they’re a social and charitable group. A lot of cops used to be Masons but it’s fallen out of favour in the last few years.’ He went over to the desk and put his hand on a drawer, then straightened up and looked at McBride. ‘With your permission, I’d like to search the house, from top to bottom.’

‘Looking for what, actually?’

‘Anything that suggests your brother really was a Satanist. If he was then there’d be things he wouldn’t want anyone else to see.’

‘The police have been through the house, they searched all the rooms when they took away the computer and the guns.’

‘Yeah, well, the cops aren’t always as thorough as they should be,’ said Nightingale. ‘Let’s see how I get on.’

Nightingale spent the best part of four hours searching the farmhouse, from a dusty attic filled with old furniture and long-forgotten clothes and odds and ends, down through all the rooms and ending up in a cold damp basement which contained a fridge-freezer full of pork and lamb, presumably from the farm’s stock. But at no point did he find anything that gave a clue to Jimmy McBride’s state of mind or suggested that he was in any way interested in Satanism. There was something disconcerting about the bedrooms. The main bedroom with an en-suite bathroom had obviously belonged to the parents — their clothes were still in the wardrobes and there were bottles of make-up and perfume on an old oak dressing table. The bedroom where Danny McBride had slept had posters of rock groups and racing cars on the walls and fishing tackle in one corner, and Nightingale found a collection of dirty magazines at the bottom of a chest of drawers that was still full of underwear, socks and T-shirts.

McBride’s own bedroom was a throwback to the fifties, with heavy dark wood furniture and more watercolours on the walls. On a bedside cabinet there was a copy of Farmer’s Weekly , next to a framed photograph of a middle-aged man wearing thick-framed spectacles and a flat cap, a stocky woman with tightly permed hair and two young boys grinning at the camera. The McBride family.

Nightingale went through every cupboard, every wardrobe, lifted the carpets and checked behind every picture. He checked the toilet cisterns and looked for loose floorboards. He found nothing that suggested McBride was anything other than a hard-working farmer, albeit one with a limited social life.