I Know Who Did It (A Jack Nightingale Short Story) (2 page)

She laughed.
‘Actually, I’ll take the compliment,’ she said. ‘I was brought in to liven
things up. The school was getting a bit staid and I was very much the new
broom.’

Nightingale
looked at the last photograph in the line. It was Ms Cunningham’s predecessor,
a grey-haired man in his fifties with deep furrows in his brow and black-framed
spectacles. He had the look of a teacher who still believed in corporal
punishment, and probably relished it. According to the brass plate he had held
the job for twelve years. He looked along the line of pictures. The head at the
time of Emily Campbell’s death was also a man. Charles Nelson was round-faced
and balding with a small chip in one of his front teeth. He was smiling like a
kindly uncle. The date on the brass plate suggested he had left the school the
year after Emily had died.

Nightingale put
his hand against the wall and shook his head from side to side.

‘Are you all
right?’ asked Ms Cunningham.

‘I feel a little
dizzy, actually,’ said Nightingale. ‘I don’t suppose I could have a drink of
water, could I?’

‘Of course,’ said
Ms Cunningham. She hurried out of the office. Nightingale took out his phone
and snapped a quick photograph of Charles Nelson and was back in his chair when
Ms Cunningham returned with a glass of water. She stood over him as he drank.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘I’m been feeling
a bit rough all day,’ lied Nightingale. ‘Maybe I’m coming down with a virus.’
He handed her back the glass and smiled. ‘But I think I’m well enough for the
tour.’

Ms Cunningham
looked at her wristwatch. ‘I have a meeting coming up, but my secretary will
show you around.’ She took Nightingale through to the outer office and
introduced him to the stern-faced lady who had given him the brochure. Her name
was Sally and once she began taking Nightingale around her stern face vanished
and she became quite chatty. She was very knowledgeable about the school and
its history and Nightingale could barely get a word in as she talked away. She
showed him around the classrooms and sporting facilities, and then upstairs to
the bedrooms. The girls slept four to a room in bunk beds in bright, airy
rooms. ‘I’m sure your daughter will love it here,’ said Sally. ‘It’s a magical
place. And such a good mix of children. We have a lot from China and Russia,
but they’re all from good families.’

She took him out
of the room and closed the door. ‘That’s pretty much the full tour,’ she said,
‘but is there anything else you’d like to see?’

‘There is one
thing,’ he said. ‘I know it sounds crazy but my wife has a thing about
spirits.’

Sally frowned.
‘Spirits?’

‘Well, ghosts.
She’d heard that a girl died on the premises.’

‘Oh, that was
years ago. It was in the seventies.’

‘What happened?
Do you know?’

‘It was long
before my time, obviously,’ she said. She began walking down the corridor
towards the stairs. ‘All I know is what I was told by the caretaker when I
first came to work here. Mr McGowan, he’s long since retired. He said a young
girl killed herself. Cut her wrists, I think.’ She shuddered. ‘Poor thing.’

‘And where did it
happen, exactly?’

She frowned again
as she looked across at him. ‘Why would you ask a question like that?’ she
said.

‘I know it’s
crazy,’ he said, and flashed her his most boyish smile. ‘But as I said, my wife
has a thing about spirits. She wouldn’t want Zoe sleeping in a room where
someone had died.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t a
bedroom. I’m sure of that.’

‘Where was it,
exactly?’

‘It was a store
room.’ She gestured down the corridor. ‘It’s used for storing spare mattresses
and things these days. Back then I think it was empty.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘I suppose so,’
she said. She walked down the corridor and opened a door on the left.
Nightingale looked over her shoulder. It was a windowless room, about twelve
feet by ten feet, and as Sally had said it was full of mattress and surplus
furniture. The walls were painted white and the floor was bare boards. ‘The
children never come in here, your wife has absolutely nothing to worry about.’

‘Did Mr McGowan
ever tell you why the girl was in there when she died?’

‘It really wasn’t
something we talked about,’ she said. ‘And as I said, it was a long, long time
ago.’ She closed the door and took Nightingale downstairs. She said goodbye to
him at the main entrance and Nightingale thanked her and headed out. As he
walked over to his MGB he saw Ms Cunningham looking at him through the window
so he resisted the urge to light a cigarette. He climbed in and drove off.

* * *

Robbie Hoyle
phoned just
as
Nightingale was driving away from the
school. He pulled up at the side of the road and took the call. ‘How was the
jumper?’ asked Nightingale.

‘Cry for help,’
said Hoyle. ‘Husband had left her, one of her kids is on drugs, her benefits
have been cut. She just wanted to talk to somebody. You know how it is.’

‘Yeah,’ said
Nightingale. Sometimes people just wanted a shoulder to cry on, and if someone
had no friends or family to, then a police negotiator would do. People who
really wanted to kill themselves usually just went ahead and did it. Anyone who
waited for a police negotiator to turn up more often than not wanted someone to
talk to. ‘Is she going to be okay?’

Hoyle sighed.
‘She’s back home but her husband is still off, her boy is still a junkie and I
put a call in to the benefits office but you know what they’re like. She’s on
anti-depressants so they might calm her down.’ He sighed again. ‘So, that case.
You know it was a suicide, right?’

‘That’s what I
was told.’

‘So why the
interest in a forty-year-old suicide?’

‘I’ve a client
who wants answers. I just need a chat with one of the investigating officers
because it was all paper back then.’

‘The guy you need
is Inspector David Mercer. Retired fifteen years ago. I’ve got an address. He
lives not far from Winchester.’

‘You’re a star,
Robbie.’

* * *

David Mercer’s
house was a three-bedroom semi-detached on the outskirts of Winchester, with neatly-tended
red roses growing around a small patch of grass, and a caravan parked in the
driveway. Nightingale left his car in the road and walked past the caravan to
ring the door bell. A grey-haired woman answered the door. She was a small
woman, just over five feet tall. Her face was wrinkled but her eyes were a
piercing blue and she stared up at him fearlessly. ‘If you’re trying to get me
to change my electricity supplier, you’re wasting your time,’ she said.

‘I’m not,’ he
said. ‘Are you Mrs Mercer?’

‘Yes?’

Nightingale
flashed her his most reassuring smile. ‘Is your husband in? David Mercer?’

‘Why?’

‘I’d like to talk
to him about an old case.’

‘Are you police?’

‘I used to be.’

She wrinkled her
nose. ‘Private?’

Nightingale
nodded. ‘Is he home?’

‘He’s sitting
with the fishes.’

‘What? Is that
like a Mafia thing?’

‘I beg your
pardon?’

‘Sleeping with
the fishes?’

She shook her
head in confusion. ‘Sleeping? Who said anything about sleeping? He’s sitting
with the koi in the garden. It’s his hobby. He spends more time with the fish
than he does with me.’

Now it was
Nightingale’s turn to be confused. ‘Koi?’

‘Koi. Carp. Big
fish.’ She sighed and pointed at the kitchen. ‘Outside.’

Nightingale
thanked her and let himself out through the kitchen door. Ron Mercer was sitting
on a wooden bench by the side of a large pool surrounded by rocks and pebbles.
He was a small man, bent over a Tupperware container full of brown pellets and
he was tossing them a few at a time into the water. More than a dozen brightly
coloured fish were snapping at the food.

‘Inspector
Mercer?’ asked Nightingale.

Mercer peered up
at him with watery eyes. His skin was as wrinkled as old leather and he had a
large mole on his nose that looked pre-cancerous. There was a flesh-coloured
hearing aid tucked behind his right ear. ‘No one’s called me that in years,’ he
said. His voice was surprisingly powerful, deep and authoritative. ‘You in the
job?’

‘Used to be,’
said Nightingale. He nodded at the bench. ‘Mind if I join you?’

‘Go ahead,’ said
Mercer. Nightingale sat down and Mercer held out the Tupperware container.

Nightingale took
out a handful of pellets and began throwing them one by one into the water.

‘I was a firearms
officer in the Met,’ said Nightingale, ‘And a negotiator. Jack Nightingale. He
offered his hand and Mercer shook. He had a firm grip. Mercer let go of
Nightingale’s hand and joined him in throwing food to the fish. ‘They’re
expensive, right?’ said Nightingale. ‘Most expensive fish in the world, I
heard.’

‘Can be,’ said
Mercer. ‘They can go for thousands. Some of these are worth a couple of
hundred.’

What makes them
valuable? I’m guessing it’s not the taste.’

‘You don’t eat
these lovelies,’ said Mercer. ‘Most of the value is in the colour and the
pattern. The most valuable is the fish that most resembles the Japanese flag
– a red spot on a white background. The closer the red spot is to the
head, the more valuable.’

‘You like feeding
them, huh?’

‘I’m checking
them,’ said Mercer. ‘I check them all every day, This food is designed to float
so they have to come to the surface to feed. That way I can see if they’ve got
ulcers or parasites. They recognise me, you know. When I walk up to the pond,
they come to the edge to be fed. But the wife, they ignore her.’ He chuckled.
‘That drives her crazy, it does.’

Nightingale threw
a couple of pellets and
a
large orange fish snapped up
both of them.

‘They eat
according to the temperature,’ said Mercer. ‘The warmer it is, the more they
eat. And in the middle of winter they don’t feed, other than to nibble a bit of
algae from the bottom.’ He threw in some more food. ‘They can live for more
than a hundred years, if you look after them.’ He chuckled. ‘They’ll outlive me
for sure.’ He began to cough and dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief. ‘So
what do you want, Jack? I’m assuming you want something?’

‘An old case of
yours,’ said Nightingale. ‘Forty years ago. Emily Campbell. She died at the
Rushmore Boarding School.’

Mercer frowned,
his liver-spotted hand lying on top of the fish pellets. ‘Emily Campbell,’ he
repeated.

‘She was sixteen.
One of the pupils.’

Mercer shook his
head. ‘I remember the name, but the case was closed. She killed herself, right.
It was a suicide.’ He shuddered. ‘Are you a smoker?’

Nightingale
grinned. ‘Sure am. You?’

‘Used to be. The
wife made me stop ten years ago.’

Nightingale took
out his cigarettes and offered the pack to Mercer. ‘I won’t tell her if you
don’t,’ he said. He lit the cigarette and one for himself. Both men blew smoke
contentedly up at the sky. Mercer looked nervously over at the house.

‘It was
definitely suicide?’ asked Nightingale.

Mercer looked
back to him, eyes narrowed. ‘You think I’m senile?’

‘No, but it was a
long time ago. What can you tell me about the case?’

Mercer frowned.
‘Young girl, she cut herself. Bled to death. There was a black magic thing
going around at the time and she was a vulnerable kid.’

‘Black magic?’

‘You know how
kids like to mess with that sort of thing. There was some magic circle drawing
on the floor.’

‘And no one else
was involved?’

‘The door was
locked from the inside. The staff had to break in to get to her.’

‘Were photographs
taken at the time?’

‘Of course.’

‘Where would they
be now?’

‘Long gone,’ said
Mercer.

‘The files
weren’t kept?’

‘No computers
back then, everything was paper,’ said Mercer. ‘It wasn’t a case so it would
have been thrown away. No point in keeping it.’

‘What about your
notebooks?’

‘My notebooks.’

‘Every cop I know
keeps his notebooks,’ said Nightingale. ‘I did for sure. You never know when an
old case might come back to bite you in the arse.’

Mercer laughed.
‘That’s the truth,’ he said. He gestured at the house. ‘In the attic. But I’ve
not looked at them for years.’

Nightingale
grinned. ‘Would you mind?’

‘Are you serious?
For a forty-year-old suicide?’

‘It’d be a big
help.’

Mercer bent down,
stubbed out his cigarette on the soil and buried it. He nodded at Nightingale.
‘You’d better do the same. My wife would have made a great murder squad
detective.’