Stephen Leather - Nightfall

‘Did he ever mention me?’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘He didn’t mention that he had a son?’

‘Never.’

‘You said he was a valued customer,’ said Nightingale. ‘Exactly how much was he worth?’

Collinson sat back in his executive chair and patted his hair, as if he was checking that the comb-over was still in place. ‘That’s confidential, I’m afraid. I can’t reveal details of a client’s account.’

Nightingale reached into his jacket pocket, took out a photocopy of Ainsley Gosling’s will and gave it to him. ‘I’m his sole beneficiary, so anything he has will come to me.’

Collinson licked his upper lip as he studied the document. Then he put it on the desk and leaned back in his chair again. ‘To be honest, Mr Nightingale, I don’t think there will be much coming your way. During the last years of his life, Mr Gosling spent most of his funds.’

‘On what?’

Collinson chuckled. ‘We don’t ask our customers what they spend their money on,’ he said.

‘The house is worth a lot.’

‘It’s heavily mortgaged,’ said the bank manager.

‘But you said Gosling was rich.’

‘That’s what you inferred, Mr Nightingale,’ said Collinson.

‘All right, a valued customer, you said. But you’re saying he died penniless?’

‘Not penniless, no,’ said Collinson. ‘But last year he took out a large mortgage on the house and during the two years prior to that he withdrew the bulk of the funds he was holding with us. The credit crunch didn’t help, of course – the house fell in value, as did his stock portfolio.’

‘There was no furniture in the house, did you know that?’

‘It was fully furnished the last time I visited. Beautiful things, mostly antiques. And a very valuable collection of paintings.’

‘Well, it’s all gone now,’ said Nightingale. ‘How much money did he have with you before he started withdrawing it?’

‘I wouldn’t be able to get the figure without looking at his file,’ said the bank manager. ‘I’m not sure I can do that, even with you being his heir.’

‘Approximately,’ said Nightingale. ‘A ballpark figure.’

‘Ballpark?’ Collinson stared up at the ceiling as if the numbers were written there. ‘I’d say twelve million pounds in cash. A million or so in Krugerrands and gold bullion. A stock portfolio amounting to some fifteen million pounds, give or take.’ He looked back at Nightingale. ‘I’d say somewhere in the region of twenty-eight million pounds.’

‘And the mortgage?’

‘Two million,’ said Collinson.

‘So you’re saying that in just a few years Ainsley Gosling went through thirty million pounds and you’ve no idea what he spent it on?’

‘More than that, I’m afraid,’ said the bank manager. ‘We only handled his UK assets. My understanding is that there were funds in the United States, Central Europe and Asia, notably Hong Kong and Singapore.’

‘Amounting to how much exactly?’

Collinson shrugged. ‘I don’t have exact figures for his overseas assets, but it would certainly be in excess of one hundred million pounds.’

Nightingale sat stunned. ‘A hundred million?’

‘In excess of.’

‘And it’s all gone?’

‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

‘There’s no suggestion that he was being blackmailed or had a drug or gambling problem?’

‘We don’t make a habit of prying into the private lives of our clients, Mr Nightingale,’ said Collinson, disdainfully, as if Nightingale had just accused him of shop-lifting.

‘Just so long as you have their money?’

‘Exactly,’ said the bank manager, missing the sarcasm.

Nightingale wanted a drink and time to think. He drove back to London, left the MGB in the multi-storey car park close to his office, then slipped into one of his favourite local pubs. It was a gloomy place that had yet to be given a corporate makeover – no fruit machine, no olde-worlde menu with microwaved lamb shanks and chilli con carne, just a long bar and a few tables and a grizzled old barman who didn’t look at him or try to start a conversation. As he walked to the bar he called Jenny on his mobile. ‘I’m in the Nag’s Head,’ he said. ‘I need some thinking time.’

‘Yeah, alcohol is renowned for helping the thought process,’ she said acidly.

‘Come and join me.’

‘I’m trying to sort out our accounts due,’ said Jenny. ‘If we don’t get the cash-flow sorted we won’t be able to pay our VAT.’

‘Now you’re making me feel guilty,’ said Nightingale.

‘I doubt that,’ she said. ‘Keep your mobile on. If anything crops up I’ll give you a call.’

Nightingale ordered a bottle of Corona and sat at the bar. If what Gosling had said was true, his parents had lied to him virtually from the day he was born. There had never been so much as a hint from them that he wasn’t their child. Two boys in his class at primary school had been adopted, and he had talked to his mother about it, but she had never given any indication that she wasn’t his biological mother. Nightingale couldn’t understand why they hadn’t told him he was adopted. There was no shame in it, and he wouldn’t have loved them any the less, but now the truth had come out and he wasn’t able to ask them why they had lied because they were dead and gone. Or was it all a massive confidence trick? Was Turtledove part of it? Was the idea to convince Nightingale that the house was his, then ask him to put money up front? He smiled to himself. If it was a con, it would be a waste of time because Nightingale had little in the way of cash to be parted from.

He sipped his Corona. He was drinking it from the bottle with a slice of lime shoved down the neck. Someone had told him once that the lime was there to keep away the flies, but Nightingale liked the bite it gave the beer.

A hand fell on his shoulder and he jumped. Beer sloshed over his hand and he cursed. He turned to see Robbie Hoyle grinning at him. ‘Bloody hell, Robbie, do you have to creep up on me like that?’

Hoyle slid onto the stool next to him. ‘Jumpy,’ he said.

‘I’m not jumpy. I just don’t like being crept up on that’s all. How did you know I was here?’

‘The lovely Jenny said you were drowning your sorrows.’ He took a manila envelope from his inside pocket and waved it in front of Nightingale’s face. ‘I was going to drop off the stuff you wanted but then I figured I could do with a drink myself. I didn’t realise you were so skittish.’

‘What do you want, Robbie?’ asked Nightingale.

‘A Porsche, a villa in Malaga, a mistress with huge tits and a dad who owns a brewery, all the normal sort of crap.’

‘To drink, you soft bastard. What do you want to drink?’

Hoyle nodded at the barman. ‘I’ll have a red wine, preferably from a bottle with a cork.’ He slid the envelope across the bar to Nightingale. ‘Here’s the info about the Gosling suicide,’ he said. ‘It was a strange one and no mistake. You were right about the magic circle. It’s called a pentagram and it’s supposed to offer you protection against things that go bump in the night. That’s what the report says, anyway. They ran it by an occult expert. Apparently quite a few people who dabble in the occult end up topping themselves.’

Nightingale opened the envelope and slid out four large photographs. It was the bedroom in Gosling Manor, but not as he’d seen it when he went to the house. The bed was there, and the chair, but sprawled between the two was the bloated body of the man in the DVD, his head a bloody mess, a shotgun across his legs. The bed, the chair and the body were surrounded by a five-pointed white star that had been drawn on the floor, and at the points of the star there were large church candles. Wax had dripped down them and solidified in pools around their brass holders. Inside the pentagram, brass bowls contained what looked like ashes.