Midnight: The Second Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller (18 page)

39

R
obyn sat back, her hands on the table. ‘You are shitting me,’ she said. ‘You’re trying to run some sort of con on me.’ She looked over at the guard, who was still leaning against the drinks vending machine, out of earshot. ‘I can’t believe they let you in here.’

‘It’s God’s truth,’ said Nightingale, leaning towards her. ‘Though I guess that’s not exactly appropriate under the circumstances.’

‘Have you got any money on you? Any coins?’

‘Sure.’

She gestured at the vending machines. ‘Get me a coffee. Black. No sugar.’

‘That’s how I take mine,’ said Nightingale.

‘That’s how half the population drink it,’ she said scornfully. ‘It doesn’t mean we’re joined at the hip.’

She glared at him as he got up from the table. He slotted a pound coin into the machine and pressed the button for black coffee. He asked the guard if she wanted one but she shook her head.

‘I wouldn’t say no to a Kit-Kat, though.’

‘Who would?’ asked Nightingale. He gave her the Kit-Kat and then got a second coffee. Robyn was still glaring at him when he carried them back to the table.

‘You’re running some sort of long con,’ she said as he sat down. ‘You’re setting me up for something.’

‘Robyn, you’re serving five life sentences and everything you own would fit in a supermarket carrier bag. Why would I be conning you?’

She leaned forward and stared at him. ‘My biological father was a Satanist and he left you a huge mansion in Surrey?’

‘That’s the gist of it, yes.’

‘Why didn’t he leave me anything? I mean, a big house wouldn’t be much use to me in here but I could do with a few quid.’

‘He didn’t know where you were or who your adoptive parents were,’ said Nightingale. ‘He tried to find you but couldn’t. I only tracked you down because I had access to the national DNA database.’

‘And he worshipped the devil?’ She sneered and shook her head. ‘Maybe that’s where the crazy gene came from.’ She sipped her coffee and grimaced. ‘You know one of the things I miss most about being in here?’

Nightingale raised his plastic cup. ‘Decent coffee?’

She grinned. ‘Bloody right. It’s horrible, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve had better,’ agreed Nightingale. ‘A lot better.’

Robyn put her chin in her hands. ‘Why are you really here, Jack? Is there something else you want to tell me?’

Nightingale blew smoke up at the ceiling as he wondered how much he should tell her. She seemed rational enough but he wasn’t sure if that was an act or not. He shrugged. ‘I thought we should meet. That’s all.’

‘Are you worried that you might be crazy?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because I’m in an asylum. And if you’re right and we share the same DNA then maybe you’re crazy, too. Because this whole Satanism devil-worship thing does suggest that you might have the odd screw loose.’

‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

‘Liar,’ she said. ‘I can see it in your eyes that you’re lying. How do I know the whole thing’s not a lie? How do I know this isn’t some stupid therapy that Keller wants to try on me?’

‘Like I said, I don’t gain anything by lying to you. Have you got a few million quid tucked away that no one knows about?’

‘I wish.’

‘So try to trust me on this. We’re siblings. Same father, different mothers.’

She rubbed her face. ‘Do you know who our mothers are? Our birth mothers?’

‘I met mine,’ said Nightingale. ‘I don’t know who yours was.’

‘How did you find her?’

‘Through Gosling’s records. I traced her to a nursing home.’

‘Can you do the same and track down my mother? My birth mother?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Nightingale. He sipped his coffee. It was bitter and tasted of chemicals. ‘Can I ask you something, Robyn?’

She shrugged. ‘I guess,’ she said. ‘Seeing as how you’re my long-lost brother.’

He looked at her with slightly narrowed eyes. ‘What they said you did . . . to those kids. Did you do it?’

‘I’m in here, aren’t I?’

‘There are plenty of innocent people in prison. That’s why they have appeals.’

‘What do you want me to say? That it’s all a terrible misunderstanding? That I’m innocent and there’s been a miscarriage of justice?’

‘Something like that, yeah.’

She grinned, jutting her chin up and wrinkling her nose. ‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ she said. ‘But yeah, I did it. Killed them, all five of them.’ She paused. ‘Allegedly.’

40

D
r Keller slowly stirred his tea and nodded at the plate of biscuits in front of Nightingale. ‘Please, help yourself,’ he said.

Nightingale picked up a custard cream and dipped it into his tea. ‘She doesn’t seem like a killer,’ he said.

The doctor continued to stir his tea. ‘Sociopaths are adept at concealing their true natures,’ he said. ‘Every emotion they display is learned behaviour. They have no true emotions but if they are smart they learn to mimic them.’

‘They act, is that what you mean? They pretend to be happy or sad or angry?’

Dr Keller nodded. He put his spoon on the saucer so carefully that it made no sound. ‘In a nutshell, yes.’

‘She seems so normal. Even made a few jokes.’

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ said Dr Keller. ‘I’m not suggesting that she’s a danger to you or to anyone else in this institution. But she is insane. I can assure you of that.’

‘Why do you say that? She looks and sounds normal, so how do you, as a professional, come to the conclusion that she’s mad?’

Dr Keller chuckled quietly. ‘Mr Nightingale, we would never put it as crassly as that.’

‘But that’s what you mean, isn’t it? You’re saying she’s as mad as a hatter despite the outward appearance.’

‘She killed five children, Mr Nightingale. And she has expressed absolutely no remorse.’

Nightingale put his biscuit into his mouth, chewed and swallowed.

‘Did she talk to you about the killings?’ asked the doctor.

‘Only to admit that she’d done it.’

‘No explanation, no asking for understanding or forgiveness?’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘Just said that she’d killed them.’

‘That, right there, is textbook sociopathic behaviour,’ said the doctor. ‘A normal person would be full of guilt and remorse. Or would at least offer up some sort of explanation for their actions. But Robyn tells us as little as she apparently told you. Yes, she did it, she killed those five children, but she won’t say one word about what drove her to it.’

‘And that’s par for the course?’

‘I’d say that it applies to a third of the inmates here, yes. She has therapy sessions, one on one with medical staff, and group sessions with other inmates present, and, while she’s pleasant and sociable, she never opens up.’

‘But it’s not denial, is it? If it was denial she would be saying that she didn’t do it, right?’

‘Correct,’ said Dr Keller. He sipped his tea, watching Nightingale over the top of his cup.

‘Earlier, you said there was no cure.’

‘That’s right. She’s hard-wired as a sociopath and nothing we can do can change that. There’s no operation that will alter the way she thinks, and there’s no miracle drug that we can use. She is what she is, I’m afraid.’

‘So she’ll never be released?’

‘I would think it highly doubtful,’ said the doctor.

Nightingale picked up another custard cream and dunked it into his tea. ‘I know this is going to sound stupid, but there’s no doubt that she did it, is there?’

Dr Keller’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘Well, the thing is that, because she pleaded guilty, there wasn’t a lot of information released to the court. She pleaded guilty to five murders and received five life sentences. But there were no details of what she did or how she did it. Her legal team didn’t speak in mitigation, so the media only got the bare facts.’

‘And you think there might have been a miscarriage of justice?’ Dr Keller shook his head. ‘First of all, she pleaded guilty. Second of all, she continues to admit her guilt. And third of all . . .’ He leaned forward. ‘I’ve seen the files, Mr Nightingale. I know what she did and, considering the circumstances under which she was arrested, I can assure you there is no doubt as to her guilt.’

‘Red-handed?’

‘Literally. She was awash in the boy’s blood.’

‘She used a knife – that was in the papers.’

‘She gutted him like a pig,’ said the doctor. ‘But first she slit his throat so deeply that his head was almost severed.’

‘Fingerprints? DNA?’

‘The knife was in her hand when the police turned up. And as I said, she was covered in his blood.’

‘How did the cops know where she was?’ asked Nightingale.

‘That I don’t know,’ said the doctor. ‘But they found her with the body. Covered in blood, holding the knife.’

‘And the other killings?’

‘All children. All gutted. And she confessed to the lot.’

‘But never said why she did it?’

Dr Keller shook his head. ‘Not a word.’

Nightingale took his pack of Marlboro out of his raincoat pocket, but put it away when he saw the look of disapproval on the doctor’s face. ‘This is going to sound a little off the wall, but was there any sort of occult slant to the killings?’

Dr Keller frowned. ‘I don’t follow you.’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘Pentagrams, Satanic ritual, witchcraft symbols.’

‘You’re wondering if the devil made her do it?’

Nightingale shrugged again. ‘Killing five kids. It sort of sounds like human sacrifice, doesn’t it?’

‘It sounds like the actions of a serial killer.’

‘But it’s unusual for serial killers to kill kids, isn’t it? Especially female serial killers. If there are kids involved then there’s usually a sexual motive, right?’

Dr Keller nodded hesitantly. ‘Well, yes, I suppose so. Child killers are generally middle-aged males and more often than not the killings follow on from sexual activity, either as a way of heightening sensations or through fear of being caught.’

‘And in my sister’s case there was no evidence of sexual assault?’

‘None at all,’ agreed Dr Keller.

‘So, if there was a reason, maybe in her mind she might have been sacrificing them. And the fact that she used a knife, that suggests a ritual, doesn’t it?’

‘I doubt that your sister would have had access to a firearm, so that really only leaves knives, strangulation or beating with a blunt object,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m not sure that the knife is significant.’

‘Knives are personal, and planned,’ said Nightingale. ‘She must have taken the knife in advance, which means she must have had a reason for killing the children. She wasn’t acting on impulse or out of anger. She planned it.’

‘You seem to know a lot about murder,’ said the doctor.

‘I was a policeman, in a former life.’

‘A detective?’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘Firearms officer, but I was also a negotiator. I did a fair amount of psychology as part of my training.’

‘Well, what you say is true, except that your sister is a sociopath so the general rules don’t always apply. She might simply have killed because she wanted to, and the normal constraints that would prevent you or me from killing weren’t there to stop her. She had the impulse to kill and she followed it. You and I and the rest of what we call normal people don’t act on our violent impulses. We learn to control them. That mechanism is missing from the psyche of a sociopath. Killing, to them, can be a natural impulse equivalent to eating or defecating.’

‘But going back to my original question, there was nothing vaguely Satanic about what she did?’

Dr Keller pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘If anything, it was the opposite.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Her last victim. Timmy Robertson. She killed him in a church. On an altar, I believe.’

41

‘
S
o you didn’t tell her?’ asked Jenny, deftly picking up a prawn with her chopsticks and dipping it into a small dish of hot sauce. ‘You went all that way and you still didn’t tell her that Gosling sold her soul and yours? And that on her thirty-third birthday it’s so long and good night?’

Nightingale shrugged. He tried to pick up a piece of beef but the oyster sauce made it slippery and it fell onto the white paper tablecloth to add to the dozen or so food stains that proved testimony to his lack of chopstick skills. ‘You chose Chinese just because you know I can’t handle these things, didn’t you?’

They were eating in a restaurant close to Jenny’s mews house, one of her favourites. Nightingale had hit heavy traffic on the way back from Nottinghamshire and phoned her on his mobile to tell her that he’d be late and to arrange to see her for dinner.

‘I chose Chinese because I offered to buy you dinner and because I like Cantonese food,’ said Jenny. She smiled brightly. ‘I can get you a fork if you want.’

‘I’ll struggle on,’ said Nightingale.

‘Don’t think I didn’t notice that you changed the subject. Why didn’t you tell her that a devil was coming to claim her soul on her thirty-third birthday? That Gosling had traded her soul and that there’s nothing she can do about it?’

Nightingale sighed. ‘How could I tell her, Jenny? She looked at me like I was crazy when I told her that I was her half-brother. And even after I’d told her about the DNA evidence she was doubtful. If I’d told her that Gosling had sold her soul to a devil before she was born she’d have had me thrown out. Or committed. Can you imagine what the doctors would have done if they’d known? They’d have put me in a jacket with long sleeves before you could say “paranoid schizophrenic”.’

An elderly waitress dressed in black Chinese pyjamas brought a steel bowl of bok choi in garlic sauce over to the table. She spoke to Jenny in guttural Chinese and Jenny answered. The old woman cackled and walked away, as bow-legged as an elderly mariner.

‘You were talking about me, weren’t you?’ asked Nightingale, trying unsuccessfully to pick up another piece of beef.

‘She asked me if you were my new boyfriend and I said I’d rather crawl across broken glass than go on a date with you.’ She popped a piece of chicken into her mouth. ‘It sounds better in Cantonese.’

‘New boyfriend?’ said Nightingale. ‘What happened to the last one?’

Jenny jabbed her chopsticks at him. ‘My love life is a closed book to you, Jack Nightingale, and it’s going to stay that way. And you’ve changed the subject again.’

‘I thought the conversation had just progressed,’ said Nightingale. ‘Moved on.’

‘I know what progressed means,’ said Jenny.

‘I was using repetition for emphasis,’ said Nightingale.

‘No, you were using it to distract me,’ she laughed. ‘And it’s not working.’

Nightingale sipped his Tsingtao beer. ‘My sister’s in an insane asylum,’ he said. ‘They call it a secure mental facility but it’s an asylum. I’m not sure that telling her that her soul has been promised to a demon from Hell is actually going to help her.’

‘If it’s true, she has the right to know.’

Nightingale’s eyes narrowed. ‘If it’s true? What do you mean?’

‘Don’t get all defensive, Jack,’ she said.

‘No, I want to know what you mean.’

‘Jack, please . . .’

‘You do believe me, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Look at me, Jenny.’ He leaned towards her. ‘I’m serious, look at me. I’m having enough trouble convincing myself that this is actually happening. If you don’t believe me, then I might just have to accept that I’m going crazy.’

She looked into his eyes and smiled. ‘I believe you, Jack. Hand on heart, scout’s honour, cross my heart and hope to die, by all that’s holy, blah blah blah. I believe you.’

He smiled. ‘Thank you.’

‘It was a slip of the tongue. But it’s the fact that I do believe you that makes me so sure she has the right to know. If it was nonsense then it wouldn’t matter either way.’

‘Suppose I tell her and it pushes her over the edge?’ asked Nightingale.

‘She killed five kids,’ said Jenny. ‘That boat has pretty much sailed.’

‘Okay, but I tell her and then what? She’s locked up; there’s nothing she can do. She’s going to spend two years sitting in a cell knowing that she’s going to Hell.’ He sipped his beer again.

‘So she’s better off spending that time in ignorance?’

‘What can I do?’ He put down his chopsticks. ‘Look, I don’t want to tell her what the problem is until I can offer her a solution. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. And at the moment I don’t have anything approaching a solution.’

‘But you’ve got a plan, right? You’ve always got a plan.’

‘I’m going to talk to the detective who ran her case,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’ll take it from there. He’s already said he’ll see me tomorrow.’

‘That’s not much of a plan, is it?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘Honey, right now it’s all I’ve got.’

When they’d finished, the elderly waitress brought over a white plate with two Chinese cookies and the bill. Jenny slid the bill out from under the cookies and pushed the plate towards Nightingale.

‘I’ll pass,’ he said.

‘Chicken,’ said Jenny, taking one of the cookies and crushing it with her fingers. She fished out a small slip of paper, read it, smiled, and held it out to him. ‘He who knows he has enough is rich.’

‘Bit sexist,’ said Nightingale. ‘There’s an even-money chance that a woman’s going to be reading it.’

‘You’re such a spoilsport.’ She held out the plate for him.

Nightingale shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘Tempting fate.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve been getting enough shitty messages from beyond the grave recently. I can do without one in my fortune cookie.’ He nodded at the plate. ‘You open it for me. As part of your secretarial duties.’

‘I think it’s bad luck to open someone else’s fortune,’ she said.

‘Jenny, bad luck is the only sort of luck I’ve been having lately,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you opening my cookie is going to make it any worse.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said. She cracked open the cookie and looked at the fortune inside. Her eyes widened and she sat back in her chair. ‘Oh my God,’ she gasped, putting a hand up to her mouth.

‘What?’ said Nightingale, leaning forward. ‘What does it say?’

‘It’s horrible,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It’s so, so horrible . . .’

‘Jenny, show me,’ said Nightingale, holding out his hand.

Jenny’s face broke into a grin. ‘You’re so bloody gullible sometimes,’ she said, waving the fortune in his face. ‘You need to relax.’ She held it with both hands and read it to him. ‘Your life will be happy and peaceful.’ She laughed. ‘I think this one’s mine.’ She gave it to Nightingale and he shook his head as he read it.

‘I’d settle for happy and peaceful,’ he said. ‘Who writes these things?’

Jenny shrugged. ‘They’re supposed to make you feel good,’ she said. ‘If you feel good you’ll come back to the restaurant. Positive reinforcement.’ She put three twenty-pound notes onto the plate.

‘At least let’s split it,’ said Nightingale, reaching for his wallet.

‘I said I’d buy you dinner,’ said Jenny. The old waitress came over and Jenny told her that she should keep the change. As they headed for the door, a young Chinese man with gelled hair and a single diamond earring handed Jenny her coat and helped her on with it.

A small Chinese girl, who barely reached Nightingale’s shoulder, gave him his raincoat. He smiled at her but she stared stonily at him, her eyes as dark as polished coal. ‘Your sister is going to Hell, Jack Nightingale,’ she said, her voice flat and robotic.

‘What?’ said Nightingale. ‘What did you say?’

The girl’s face creased into a smile showing grey teeth and receding gums. ‘I say hope see you again,’ she said.

Jenny put a hand on his arm. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I’m not hopeful about that happy and peaceful forecast.’