Stephen Leather - Nightshade - The Fourth Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller

‘Woman trouble?’

‘He was gay, and gays don’t tend to top themselves over a love affair gone wrong.’

‘Do the cops have a theory?’

‘To be honest, mate, it’s a suicide plain and simple. They’re not going to bust a gut trying to find out why.’

‘Case closed?’

‘It’s not even a case. The Bella Harper thing made them prick up their ears but that’s all.’ Robbie sipped his lager. ‘You heard about the headmistress, right?’

‘Bella’s headmistress?’

‘Yeah. She hanged herself. Her bloody head came right off, Jack. She tied a rope around her neck and jumped off the school building. You won’t have heard about the dentist yet, though. The cops are keeping that under wraps until all the relatives have been informed.’

‘What happened to the dentist? This is Bella’s dentist, right?’

Robbie nodded. ‘Guy called Malcolm Walton. Goes home and stabs his wife to death. Sits down and finishes his dinner. When his two teenage kids come home he butchers them. Then he goes into the kitchen and starts smashing wine glasses. Half a dozen of them. Uses a rolling pin to crush the glass and then swallows it. All of it. Not a nice way to die, Jack.’

Nightingale stared at his friend in horror.

‘So I’m guessing this isn’t a series of coincidences,’ said Robbie. ‘You ask me to see if anyone close to Bella Harper has died in strange circumstances and I find them piling up like a serial killer’s convention. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’

‘You won’t believe me, Robbie.’

‘Try me.’

Nightingale sat back in his seat, ran his hands through his hair and groaned. ‘If I tell you, you’ll think I’m crazy.’

‘That ship sailed some time ago. Who is your client?’

‘There’s no client.’

‘Pro bono? You’re helping someone out for free?’

‘Sort of.’ He picked up his Corona again. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ve been told. That doesn’t mean I believe it, okay?’

‘Okay.’

Nightingale groaned again. ‘This is going to sound stupid, I know.’ He took a deep breath. ‘A friend of mine, someone I’ve known for a while, someone I trust, told me that Bella Harper has been possessed.’

‘Possessed? By what? A ghost? A devil?’

‘By something. Something bad. And this friend said that whatever it is wants to do … Bad things.’

‘Bad things?’

‘She wasn’t specific. In fact she wasn’t specific about much, just that something had possessed Bella. I wanted to see if she was right or not.’

‘The girl’s with her parents, Jack. If there was something wrong, they’d have seen it.’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

‘I don’t believe in ghosts and that nonsense but surely, if there was a demon or something there’d be signs.’

‘I know as much about possession as you do. I was just asking around to see if it was possible.’

‘Several people who came into contact with her have killed themselves, that’s true enough. But how does a nine-year-old girl come to be responsible for that?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. The nurse was definitely murder-suicide.’

‘You spoke to the Sussex cops?’

‘I did a bit of detecting on my own.’

‘Bloody hell, Jack, be careful. They throw away the key for impersonating a cop these days.’

‘I played it by the book, more or less,’ said Nightingale. ‘I went to see the neighbour. She told me that the nurse suffocated his family and then slashed his wrists. But before that he was a loving father and husband.’

‘People snap. Happens all the time. And most murders are domestic, that’s a fact of life.’

Nightingale nodded. ‘I know. But something must have kicked him off. Same with this guy Barker. You don’t just one evening decide to drink drain fluid.’

‘And you’re suggesting that Bella Harper was involved.’ He shook his head. ‘Both times she was tucked up in her hospital bed when it happened.’

‘I get that,’ said Nightingale.

‘So what’s your friend claiming, that a little girl somehow forced them to kill themselves?’

‘Maybe that’s what the whispering was about. You can’t hear what she says at the end.’

Robbie’s eyes widened and he put down his lager. ‘What, you’re saying she hypnotised him? A nine-year-old girl hypnotised Barker to go away and drink drain cleaner?’

‘She whispered something to him. About Jesus. So what the hell was that about?’

Robbie threw up his hands. ‘Mate, what could she possibly have said that would have led him to kill himself two hours later? She’s a kid.’

‘I said you’d think I was crazy.’

‘If you’re actually considering this then yeah, you are out of your mind.’ He leaned forward again. ‘Look, people snap and kill themselves. Sometimes they take out their anger on someone else before they do it. Shit happens. You were in the job, you know that.’

‘So what’s the connection with the girl?’

‘Maybe there is no connection,’ said Robbie. ‘Maybe it’s a coincidence. A nasty little coincidence.’

‘I hope so.’

They both drank in silence for a while.

‘It’s not a coincidence, is it?’ said Robbie eventually.

‘I don’t think so, no.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah. And some.’

‘We can’t tell anyone, can we?’ said Robbie. ‘No one’s going to believe us. And it would pretty much kill my career dead.’

‘Even if they did believe it, and that would be one hell of an if, what could they do? Arrest a nine-year-old-girl? And charge her with what?’

‘You know about this spooky stuff? Can’t a priest do an exorcism or something?’

‘I’m told not. Whatever is inside her isn’t a spirit as such. It’ll take more than a few Hail Marys and some Holy Water.’

‘Like what?’

Nightingale picked up his Corona and drank as his mind raced. He didn’t want to lie to his friend, but there were some things better not said. Killing a child was definitely high up on that list, even if the child was already dead. He put down his bottle. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But before we get to the stage of doing something we need to be one hundred per cent sure.’

‘What are you thinking?’

‘If there are two, there could be more. If there are more …’

‘Then we’ll know for sure. But that doesn’t take us any further forward, does it? Even if we have absolute proof that a nine-year-old girl can make grown men kill themselves, what do we do?’

Nightingale nodded but didn’t say anything. Robbie wouldn’t have to do anything. It would be down to Nightingale. Mrs Steadman had made it painfully clear what he was supposed to do – thrust knives into the eyes and heart of Bella Harper.

‘Is this connected to what’s going on up in Berwick?’ asked Robbie.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What about Marcus Fairchild?’

Nightingale shook his head.

‘Your life is bloody complicated, Jack.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Nightingale. ‘I need a cigarette.’

They went outside to the terrace overlooking Kensington Gardens and sat near a propane heater. ‘You know the history of this place?’ Nightingale asked Robbie.

Robbie shook his head.

‘It’s been around for ever,’ said Nightingale, lighting a cigarette. ‘The sixteen hundreds anyway. They used to bring prisoners here for a drink before taking them over to Marble Arch to the hanging tree.’

‘Nice,’ said Robbie.

‘That was back in the day when they hanged you for stealing a loaf of bread or looking at the squire wrong.’ He shrugged. ‘The good old days.’ He took another long pull at his cigarette. ‘Did you turn up anything about Fairchild?’