Stephen Leather - Nightfall

Nightingale arrived shortly after nine o’clock and his secretary was already at her desk. Jenny McLean was in her mid twenties, with short blonde hair and blue eyes that always reminded Nightingale of Cameron Diaz. Jenny was shorter than the actress and smarter, educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, then Cambridge, and fluent in German, French and Japanese. Her family owned a country pile with five hundred bedrooms and twelve acres, or vice versa, chased foxes and shot wild birds at the weekend. Nightingale had absolutely no idea why she worked for him. He’d placed an advert in the local paper and she’d walked off the street with her CV and told him she’d always wanted to work for a private investigator, that she could type and knew her way around Microsoft Office. He’d wondered at first if she was an undercover agent for the Inland Revenue, checking on his tax returns, but she’d worked for him for more than a year and now he didn’t know how he’d manage without her. She smiled brightly and nodded at the door to his office. ‘Mrs Brierley’s already here,’ she said.

‘Can’t wait to hear the bad news, huh?’ said Nightingale. He didn’t like divorce work. He didn’t like following unfaithful husbands or wayward wives, and he didn’t like breaking bad news to women who cried or men who threatened violence. He didn’t like it, but it paid the bills and he had a lot of bills to pay.

‘Can I get you a coffee or a tea, Mrs Brierley?’ he asked, as he walked into his office.

Joan Brierley was in her early fifties, a heavy-set woman with dyed blonde hair, too much makeup and lines around her mouth from years of smoking. She declined and held up a packet of Benson amp; Hedges. ‘Do you mind if I…?’ she said.

Nightingale showed her his Marlboro. ‘I’m a smoker too,’ he said.

‘There aren’t many of us left,’ she said.

‘Strictly speaking, this is my workplace so I should fine myself a thousand pounds every time I light up,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m lucky that my secretary doesn’t mind or she’d sue me for all I’m worth.’ He reached over to light her cigarette, then his own.

‘On the phone you said you had bad news,’ said Mrs Brierley. ‘He’s been cheating, has he?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Nightingale.

‘I knew it,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘When money started disappearing from our joint account, I knew it.’

‘I filmed them,’ said Nightingale, ‘so you could see for yourself. I followed them to a hotel but he’s also visited her house when her husband was away.’

‘She’s married?’

Nightingale nodded.

‘Why would a married woman want to steal another woman’s husband?’ said Mrs Brierley.

It was a question Nightingale couldn’t answer. ‘I’ve got his mobile-phone records. He calls her three or four times a day and sends her text messages.’ He slid over a stack of photocopies. ‘The messages say it all, pretty much.’

Mrs Brierley picked them up. ‘How did you get these?’

‘Trade secret, I’m afraid,’ said Nightingale. He had contacts working for most of the mobile-phone companies; they would give him anything he wanted, at a price.

She scanned them. ‘He loves her?’ she hissed. ‘He’s been married to me for twenty-four years and he loves her?’

Nightingale went to his DVD player and slotted in a disk. He sat down again as Mrs Brierley eyed the screen. The camerawork wasn’t great but Nightingale had been hired to do surveillance, not produce a Hollywood movie. He’d taken the first shot from behind a tree. Brierley arrived in his dark blue Toyota, a nondescript man in a nondescript car. He had a spring in his step as he walked to the hotel’s reception desk, holding a carrier-bag from a local off-licence. Nightingale had managed to get closer to the hotel entrance and had filmed Brierley signing in and being given a key.

The next shot was of the woman arriving. He’d got a good shot of her parking her BMW and had followed her to the entrance. Like Brierley, she didn’t look around and clearly wasn’t worried that she might have been followed.

Mrs Brierley stared at the screen, her mouth a tight line.

The final shot was of Mr Brierley and the woman leaving the hotel together. He walked her to her car, kissed her, then went to his Toyota.

Nightingale pressed the remote control to switch off the DVD player. ‘Your husband paid in cash but I have a copy of the receipt.’ He slid it across the desk towards his client, but she was still staring at the blank television screen, the cigarette burning between her fingers. ‘The woman’s name is Brenda Lynch. She’s-’

‘I know who she is,’ said Mrs Brierley.

‘You know her?’

‘She’s my sister.’

Nightingale’s jaw dropped. ‘Your sister?’

‘Didn’t you know?’ said Mrs Brierley. She forced a smile. ‘Some detective you are. Lynch was my maiden name.’ She took a long drag on her cigarette, held the smoke in her lungs, then exhaled slowly.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Nightingale.

She waved away his apology, as if it was an annoying insect. ‘How much do I owe you, Mr Nightingale?’

‘Miss McLean outside has your bill,’ said Nightingale.

Mrs Brierley stubbed out what remained of her cigarette in the ashtray on his desk.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Nightingale, again.

‘There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,’ she said, and stood up. ‘You did a very professional job, Mr Nightingale.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘Thank you.’

Nightingale opened his door for her. ‘Mrs Brierley would like her bill, Jenny,’ he said.

‘I have it here,’ she said, and handed it to her. Mrs Brierley took out her cheque book as Nightingale went back into his office.

He flopped into his chair and stubbed out the remains of his cigarette. He might not enjoy breaking bad news to people, but it was part of the job. If a husband or a wife suspected that their spouse was up to no good, ninety-nine times out of a hundred they were right. In Mrs Brierley’s case it had been unexpected withdrawals from their current account, late nights supposedly at the office and a new brand of aftershave in the bathroom. He noticed that she had left the phone records and the hotel receipt and thought about going after her but decided against it – perhaps she didn’t want them. He wondered what she would do now that she knew the truth. She would almost certainly divorce her husband, and probably split up her sister’s family as well. She had three children and two still lived at home so she’d probably keep the house and Mr Brierley would end up in a rented flat somewhere, either with or without his sister-in-law for company.

Nightingale went back to his desk and started reading Metro, the free newspaper that Jenny had brought with her. Shortly afterwards he heard Mrs Brierley leave. There was a soft knock on his door and Jenny pushed it open. She was holding a pot of coffee. ‘You read my mind,’ he said.

‘It’s not difficult,’ she said. ‘You don’t ask much from life. Curries, cigarettes, coffee.’

‘The breakfast of champions,’ he said.

She poured coffee into his mug. ‘She took it quite well, didn’t she?’

‘She cried, which is a good sign. It’s when they go quiet that I start thinking about knives and hammers and things that go bump in the night.’

‘I gave her the card of a good divorce lawyer.’

‘Very thoughtful of you.’ Nightingale sipped his coffee. Jenny made great coffee. She bought the beans from a shop in Mayfair and ground them herself.

‘I felt sorry for her,’ said Jenny, sitting on the edge of his desk.

‘There are two sides to every case,’ said Nightingale. ‘We only get to hear the one that pays us.’