Stephen Leather - Nightfall

Jenny’s jaw dropped. ‘What?’

‘My uncle Tommy. He hanged himself.’

‘Why?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘He didn’t leave a note. I spoke to him during the week and said I’d drive up to Altrincham for Sunday lunch so they were expecting me. He sounded fine then. But when I got there, they were dead.’

‘Jack, that’s terrible. That’s…’ She sat down. ‘I don’t… it doesn’t…’ She shook her head. ‘This is unreal.’

‘It’s real, all right,’ said Nightingale. ‘I spent yesterday talking to the Manchester cops.’

‘The cops?’

‘It was a murder-suicide, Jenny. The cops have to investigate, but it’s open and shut. My aunt’s blood was all over him and she’d scratched his face. There was no one else involved.’

‘But why? Why would he kill his wife?’

‘I’ve no idea. I’d told them I wanted to talk about my parents, whether I was adopted or not.’

‘And they were okay on the phone?’

‘They sounded a bit nervous, but they invited me for lunch.’

‘I can’t believe this,’ said Jenny.

‘I’m having trouble coming to terms with it myself,’ said Nightingale.

‘They weren’t having problems or anything?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Jack, you don’t think this is connected to Gosling, do you?’

‘It didn’t occur to me, Jenny.’ Actually, that was a lie because as soon as Nightingale had seen the bloody letters on Uncle Tommy’s bathroom mirror he had known that he was in some way connected to the death of his aunt and uncle. But he couldn’t figure out what that connection was. When he’d first seen the words scrawled in blood he’d thought he was dreaming. He’d stared at the message in horror, imagining that at any minute he’d be in Underwood’s office and the man would crash through the window and fall to his death. But it was no dream, he didn’t wake up, the words were real and his uncle and aunt were dead. Nightingale had no idea why he was hearing people telling him he was going to hell, and even less why his uncle would write it on the bathroom mirror before killing himself. But until he had worked out what was going on, he didn’t intend to worry Jenny.

‘Did you tell the police about Gosling?’ she asked.

‘I thought it would just make a complicated situation even more so.’ Nightingale swung his legs off his desk. ‘It was one hell of a weekend,’ he said. ‘I spent Friday night in the cells.’

‘You what?’

‘I was done for drink-driving on Friday night.’

‘Oh, Jack… You said you weren’t going to drive.’

‘And I wasn’t. Swear to God, when I left the wine bar I had no intention of getting behind the wheel. I don’t know what came over me.’

‘So now what happens?’

Nightingale took another sip of his coffee. ‘I didn’t hit anyone but I’m going to lose my licence so I’ll need to find somewhere to keep the MGB.’

‘I’ll look after it for you,’ said Jenny.

‘Have you got a garage?’

‘I can leave it with my parents. My dad can take it out every week, keep the battery charged. Those old cars seize up if you don’t drive them.’

Nightingale smiled. ‘We call them classics rather than old cars,’ he said. ‘Does he know what he’s doing?’

‘He’s got two old Jags and a frog-eyed Sprite. Sorry, classic Jags. And a Jensen-Healey.’

‘You never told me that.’

‘You never asked, Jack. My dad used to work for Jaguar. He was an accountant and until he retired he was on the board.’

Nightingale put down his mug. ‘You constantly amaze me,’ he said.

‘Mutual,’ said Jenny.

‘How goes the translation?’

Jenny shuddered. ‘It’s full of some very weird stuff.’

‘How weird?’

Jenny leaned forward. ‘Have you got a tattoo?’

‘A tattoo? What – “I love Mum”, that sort of thing?’

‘A pentagram. Either a tattoo or a mark that looks like a pentagram.’ She sat back in her chair. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous but, according to Mitchell’s diary, anyone whose soul belongs to the devil has a mark, a pentagram, hidden somewhere on their body.’

‘You’re right, it sounds ridiculous,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m thirty-two years old, and if I had a tattoo I’d know about it.’

‘So you’ve nothing to worry about, then,’ said Jenny. She started to get up but Nightingale waved her back into her chair.

‘Whoa, horsey,’ he said. ‘Are you saying that if I do have a mark I should worry?’

‘You said you haven’t.’

‘But if I had, do you think I’d have something to worry about?’

‘I think I’m reading the ramblings of a deeply disturbed mind. That of a sad bastard with too much time on his hands.’

Nightingale raised his mug in salute. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said. ‘You had me worried for a moment.’

‘Worried about what?’

‘That you were starting to take this nonsense seriously.’ He took another sip of coffee. ‘Do you still have that pal at the Department for Work and Pensions?’

‘Sure. Why?’

‘Can you get her to run a check and see if Sebastian Mitchell’s still alive and kicking?’

‘If he is, he’ll be in his eighties. Maybe older.’

‘Be nice to know if he’s still around. Or if he met a sticky end, too.’

Nightingale unlocked the front door of Gosling Manor and flicked the light switch. The massive chandelier glowed with more than two dozen bulbs. He had paid the bill on Friday and the electricity company had promised to have the power reconnected over the weekend. ‘Excellent,’ he said. He switched off the light. It wasn’t yet noon and the hallway was flooded with natural light from a skylight in the double-height ceiling. He walked through to the main drawing room and flicked the light switches there to check that they were working, then went back into the hall and looked up at the CCTV camera that covered the main entrance. A small red light on the side glowed weakly.

He went back into the drawing room and saw, out of the window, something move by the trees, a shadow that slipped behind a massive oak. Nightingale stared at it, wondering what it was. It was too tall to have been a dog or a fox, too small for a man. It might have been a child, but what would a child be doing in the grounds? He lit a cigarette and continued to stare at the tree. The grounds of Gosling Manor would be a magnet for local kids, he realised. Lots of trees to climb, places to build dens, and with the house empty, there’d be no one to chase them away. If it had been in a city it would have been vandalised already, windows smashed and graffiti sprayed across the doors and walls. Even though country children were different from their inner-city counterparts, Nightingale knew it would be a matter of time before someone broke in. An empty house was just too tempting a target, even when it was in the middle of nowhere. He needed either a night watchman or a security company making regular visits. If squatters moved in, the house would be that much harder to sell. The grounds needed maintaining, too. The lawns were still immaculate but grass grew and it would need cutting before long. And someone would have to rake up all the dead leaves.

Nightingale sighed. It would cost him a small fortune to carry out even basic maintenance on the huge house, money he didn’t have. And there was bound to be a sizeable inheritance-tax bill. Even if he were to sell the house quickly, he reckoned he’d be lucky to see more than a few thousand pounds once he’d paid off the mortgage, the taxman and the estate agent. He blew smoke and briefly considered setting fire to the building and claiming on the insurance. Except there probably wasn’t any insurance. Gosling hadn’t insured his mortgage payments, so he almost certainly hadn’t insured the house against fire.