Stephen Leather: Nightshade: The Fourth Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller

As Nightingale waited in line to collect his rental car, a young girl was being abducted at the other end of the country. Bella Harper was nine years old and she had been wandering around a shopping centre with her mother. Mrs Harper had only taken her eyes off her daughter for a few minutes but it had been long enough. Bella’s abductor was a woman and she had enticed Bella out of the store by telling her that her mother had fallen ill and had been taken to a first aid room. Once out of the store the woman was joined by a man, and together they took Bella to a van in the multi-storey car park. It was only as they approached the van that Bella realised something was wrong, but it was too late. The woman pressed a damp cloth over her face and Bella lost consciousness before she was bundled into the back of the van.

As Nightingale started the engine of his rented Vauxhall Insignia, Bella was being driven towards the house where she would spend the next three days. The man driving the van had abducted young girls before and had honed his technique to a fine art. Bella was bound and gagged and lying under a tarpaulin in the back of the van. The house he was taking her to had been well prepared. There was food and clean clothing for the girl, and DVDs to keep her occupied when he wasn’t attending to her. And there were large black plastic bags to wrap her in when he’d finished playing with her and a spade to dig the hole in the New Forest where he planned to bury her.

Bella was the fifth child that the man and his girlfriend had abducted. The previous four were all dead and buried. They had never even come close to being caught, and the man doubted that they ever would. It was all about the planning.

As the van drove into the garage and the woman pulled down the door to shield them from prying eyes, Nightingale was driving south to Jimmy McBride’s farm. Jenny had been as good as her word – the car rental people had pre-programmed the location into his sat-nav and a female voice that always sounded slightly disapproving directed him to his destination.

He crossed from Scotland into England with no fanfare or change in scenery, and shortly after three o’clock he pulled up at a five-bar gate next to which was a sign that read ‘Three Hill Farm’. There was a grey Peugeot parked next to the barbed wire fence and the driver climbed out. It was McBride’s brother, wearing a tweed cap and Barbour jacket. He shook hands with Nightingale and thanked him for coming. He took a set of keys from his coat pocket and unlocked the padlock on the gate. He pushed it open and the two men drove down to the farm buildings. There was a large stone farmhouse with a steeply sloping slate roof, a two-storey corrugated iron barn streaked with red from rusting bolts, and a large white silo with the look of a stubby intercontinental ballistic missile.

McBride parked his Peugeot in front of the farmhouse. Nightingale pulled up next to him and climbed out. ‘There’s no one here?’ he asked McBride. A black and white cat was sitting at the front door of the farmhouse and it mewed hopefully at the two men.

‘My brother worked the farm on his own,’ said McBride. ‘He used contract labour when he needed it but other than that he was here alone.’

There were two dull bangs off in the distance and Nightingale flinched. McBride smiled. ‘Shotgun,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a farmer taking care of rabbits or crows. You hear them all the time out here.’

Nightingale took out his cigarettes and lit one. He offered the pack to McBride but he shook his head. ‘I gave up, years ago,’ he said.

‘Sorry,’ said Nightingale. He held up his cigarette. ‘You don’t mind if I do?’

McBride waved his hand dismissively. ‘They’re your lungs,’ he said.

Nightingale lit his cigarette and put the pack away. ‘What’s going to happen to this place?’

‘My brother left it to me in his will,’ said McBride. ‘But I’m not a farmer and my kids are too young. My son says he wants to be a farmer but I can’t see me hanging on to it for ten years or so.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess I’ll just have to sell it.’

‘Your brother made a decent living from the farm?’

McBride smiled ruefully. ‘You never hear a farmer who isn’t complaining,’ he said. ‘But he was never short of a bob or two. Once he realised that the EU would pay him not to grow things, he never looked back.’

‘So he didn’t have any money problems?’

McBride shook his head. ‘He had six figures in the bank,’ he said.

Nightingale blew smoke up at the leaden sky. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Your brother seems to have had the life he wanted. Why would he suddenly go off the rails the way he did?’

‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t have hired you, would I?’ said McBride. He pulled a set of keys from his coat pocket. ‘I’ll show you around.’

‘Let’s start with the barn. I’d like to see the altar,’ said Nightingale.

McBride put the keys back in his pocket and walked over to the barn. Nightingale followed, the wind tugging at his raincoat. McBride pulled open a large metal door. It was on rollers but it was twice his height and he struggled to keep it moving. Nightingale grabbed the handle and helped. Together they pulled it open, revealing a cavernous space with a concrete floor and metal beams overhead from which hung half a dozen fluorescent lights. To the right of the barn were a tractor and a couple of ploughs, and against the wall was a rack of agricultural tools. To the side of the door was a long workbench and beyond it was a run of metal stairs that led up to a metal mezzanine level.

McBride pointed up the stairs. ‘Up there,’ he said.

Nightingale stubbed out his cigarette and then went up the stairs slowly, holding onto a metal rail. The stairs were fixed to the metal siding of the barn and they wobbled silently as he made his way up. The altar was at the far end of the mezzanine. Nightingale took out his mobile phone. Jenny had given him the iPhone as a birthday present and he still wasn’t quite sure how to work it. He bit down on his lower lip as he tapped at the screen trying to put it into camera mode. ‘You don’t know anything about iPhones do you?’ he asked McBride, who had climbed up the stairs to join him.

McBride held out his hand and Nightingale gave it to him. ‘What are you trying to do?’

‘I want to take pictures.’

‘You want camera mode,’ said McBride. He tapped the screen a couple of times and handed it back to Nightingale. ‘Press the camera button thing.’ Nightingale took several photographs as McBride stood by and watched.

‘Why did you come up here on Saturday?’ asked Nightingale.

McBride pointed at half a dozen cardboard boxes stacked up against the wall. ‘He kept his spare parts up here,’ he said.

Nightingale took more photographs of the altar. The base was a plank of wood across three stacks of six bricks. There were black candles and metal crucibles on the plank. Wax had melted and hardened in rivulets that reached from the plank to the metal floor. Hanging from the wall above the centre of the plank was a goat’s skull with twisted horns. To the left of the skull was a bunch of dried herbs hanging from a nail and on its right was a metal pentagram. ‘And this wasn’t here when you came up?’

‘I’d hardly have missed it,’ said McBride.

Nightingale walked up to the altar and took more photographs. There was a red paste in one of the crucibles that might have been dried blood. And a knife with what looked like dried blood on the blade. ‘Strange that the police didn’t take any of this away,’ said Nightingale. ‘And it doesn’t look as if they took fingerprints.’

‘They didn’t say anything to me about it,’ said McBride. ‘First I knew about it was when I saw the photographs in the papers. I drove around and sure enough it was here. But as I said, it wasn’t here on the Saturday. Jimmy sent me up to get some parts and the only thing up here was the boxes.’