Stephen Leather - Nightfall

‘You’re not planning to live there, are you?’

Nightingale laughed. ‘If you’d seen the size of the place, you wouldn’t even ask,’ he said. ‘It’s huge. It’s a couple of hundred yards from the kitchen to the main bedroom.’

‘Gosling lived there alone, didn’t he?’

‘I’m not sure. I think he must have had staff living in, for cleaning if nothing else. And it needs a team of gardeners. That’s another reason I couldn’t live there – I couldn’t afford the upkeep.’

‘So why have the power connected?’

‘Robbie and I found the basement and I want to go through it properly. It was hard by torchlight. And the estate agents will need the electricity on when they start showing people around.’

‘That’s the plan? Sell it?’

‘I’m going to have to because there’ll be inheritance tax to pay. Turtledove doesn’t know how much but it’ll be a lot.’

Jenny looked at the clock on the wall. ‘You haven’t forgotten Mr McBride, have you?’

‘McBride?’

‘The gentleman whose wife’s having an affair with her boss, remember?’

‘What time’s he due?’

‘Ten.’

‘Time for another coffee, then,’ he said.

‘What are you reading?’ asked Jenny, as she went over to the machine. She put down the dirty mugs and picked up a clean one.

‘A book,’ said Nightingale. ‘And I’m not reading it, I’m staring at it, trying to make sense of the letters, which isn’t the same thing.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Jenny. She poured him some coffee and brought it through to his office.

Nightingale handed it to her. ‘See for yourself,’ he said.

Jenny opened it. It was full of handwritten scrawl, some in dark blue ink, some in black, and some in what looked disconcertingly like dried blood. Dotted among the text there were sketches of circles and pentagrams. Jenny tried reading a sentence at random but she couldn’t make any sense of it. It certainly wasn’t English, or any other language she recognised.

‘At first I thought I might have caught dyslexia,’ said Nightingale. He sipped his coffee, then reached for the whisky bottle.

Jenny moved it out of his reach without taking her eyes off the book. ‘You don’t catch dyslexia,’ she said, frowning over the spidery writing. ‘Where did you get this from?’

‘I picked it up in the house last night,’ said Nightingale. ‘Old man Gosling’s basement is packed with books and stuff… weird stuff. I thought that might have been his diary but I can’t make head or tail of it. I thought it must have been written backwards, but even if you read it from right to left it still doesn’t make sense.’

Jenny looked up. ‘I’ve got it,’ she said.

‘The suspense is killing me,’ said Nightingale. ‘What have you got?’

‘It’s not written backwards, it’s mirror writing. There’s a difference.’

‘So you have to read it in a mirror? How on earth did he manage that?’

‘You can teach yourself to write that way. Leonardo da Vinci used to do it, so that no one could read his papers.’ Jenny fetched a small mirror from her bag, sat down opposite Nightingale and held the book so that a page was reflected.

Nightingale shook his head. ‘It still doesn’t make sense.’

‘It’s not English, that’s why.’

He took the mirror from her and tried to read a sentence. ‘What is it? Italian?’

‘Latin.’

‘My comprehensive was a bit light on dead languages,’ said Nightingale. ‘Can you translate it?’

Jenny rolled her eyes. ‘Didn’t you read my CV when you hired me?’

‘I was too busy looking at your legs,’ said Nightingale. ‘Can you tell me what it says?’

‘Eventually,’ said Jenny.

A sudden knock at the door startled them. Jenny hurried to open it. Joel McBride, a middle-aged man in a wheelchair, looked up at her. He was in his late forties with lank brown hair, flecked with grey, that kept falling into his eyes. He was wearing a scarlet windbreaker and black leather gloves with the fingers cut off. Nightingale decided that his bulging arm muscles were the result of pushing himself around. ‘I’m sorry I’m early but the taxi got the pick-up time wrong,’ said McBride.

‘No problem,’ said Nightingale, getting up from his chair. ‘As my lovely assistant just reminded me, the early worm catches the bird. There’s something we need to discuss.’

‘About my wife?’ said McBride.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Nightingale.

Nightingale ordered another Corona, his third, and wondered whether it was worth going outside the wine bar for a cigarette but decided that on balance he’d prefer to continue to watch a recording of a Manchester United-Liverpool match on a big LCD TV with the sound turned down. Nightingale’s father, his real father, the man who had brought him up, had been a big United fan and had taken him to hundreds of games over the years. Bill Nightingale had been a season-ticket holder for as long as he could remember and Jack’s yearly birthday present from the age often had been his own season ticket. It was father-and-son time, and going to the games had marked some of the happiest times of his childhood. His father had helped him collect autographs of the first-team players, standing with him in all weathers outside the players’ entrance, passing the time by testing each other on the names of all the squads going back to the early nineteen fifties. Nightingale had gone once or twice after his parents had died, but it had never felt the same and he hadn’t renewed his ticket. ‘I knew I’d find you here,’ said a voice at his shoulder. It was Jenny.

‘I wasn’t exactly hiding, and it’s the closest bar to the office,’ he said. He checked his watch. It was just before eight o’clock. ‘Why aren’t you home?’

She held up the Waitrose carrier-bag. ‘I was in the office, reading the Gosling diary,’ she said. ‘I got caught up in it.’ She put the bag down on the bar and ordered a glass of white wine from the barman. ‘Can we sit at a table?’ she asked Nightingale. ‘I always feel like a lush standing at the bar.’

‘I feel like a lush too, but where am I going to find one at this time of night?’ said Nightingale. He grinned and indicated an empty table. ‘You grab yourself a seat and I’ll get your drink.’

Jenny threaded her way through the tables and sat down. She put the bag in front of her and helped herself to a breadstick. Nightingale took her wine and his bottle of Corona to the table and sat opposite her.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘You’ve been quiet, that’s all.’

‘I’ve been working.’

‘How many beers have you had?’

Nightingale chuckled. ‘What are you, the alcohol police?’

‘You’re not driving, are you?’

Nightingale raised his glass. ‘No, Jenny, I’m not driving.’

‘And you’re sure you’re okay?’

He sipped some beer. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Fine and dandy.’ He nodded at the Waitrose bag. ‘Have you managed to make sense of that?’

Four women in power suits burst into laughter at the table next to them. They were all in their early thirties, wearing too much makeup and jewellery, and weighing each other up with humourless eyes. Nightingale had them pegged as office colleagues, not friends. He made eye contact with one and she sneered at him dismissively. Nightingale smiled to himself, unfazed by her contempt.

‘What are you grinning at?’ asked Jenny.

‘I’m just happy that you’re the way you are and not like those harpies over there.’

‘Harpies?’

‘Those hard-faced bitches in their power suits, drinking bubbly and baring their fangs.’