Midnight: The Second Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller (20 page)

44

J
enny walked into Nightingale’s office carrying a mug of coffee. He had taken the top drawer from his desk and emptied the contents over the floor. He was down on his knees rooting through the papers, notebooks and cigarette lighters and muttering to himself.

‘What are you looking for?’ she asked, putting the mug down next to his computer terminal.

Nightingale sat back on his heels. ‘Remember the money that I got from Joshua Wainwright last time?’

‘Two million euros? I’m not likely to forget that.’

‘Yeah, well, Wainwright gave me a copy of the receipt with his phone number on it. Now I can’t find the bloody thing.’

‘I filed it,’ she said. ‘With the rest of the company receipts.’

‘Are you serious?’ he said. He could see from the look on her face that she was. ‘Your efficiency never ceases to amaze me,’ he said. He began to refill the desk drawer.

Jenny went back to her office and retrieved the receipt from the filing cabinet by her desk. She photocopied it, returned the original to its file and gave the copy to Nightingale. ‘Are you going to see him again?’

‘Yeah, thought I’d show him the list of what we’ve found so far and have a chat. Kill two birds.’ He nodded at a printout on his desk. ‘There’re a couple of hundred books there and with any luck he’ll want to buy a few.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘We could do with some cash, right? What with me still having to pay the mortgage on Gosling Manor and all.’

‘We’re owed more than two thousand pounds from clients but that’s about it,’ she said. ‘We’ve lost a lot of work with you concentrating on your sister.’

‘It’s got to be done, Jenny,’ said Nightingale, leaning back in his chair. ‘If I don’t help her, who will?’

‘Was the cop any use last night?’

‘Yeah, he was okay. He said he’d try to get an address for her parents.’

‘And then what?’

‘I’ll pay them a visit.’

Jenny perched on the edge of Nightingale’s desk. ‘Jack, are you sure that’s a good idea?’

‘They might know something,’ said Nightingale.

‘What do you think they might know?’

‘Maybe they met Gosling. Maybe he told them what he’d done.’

Jenny looked pained.

‘I’ll wear my kid gloves. Softly softly.’ He put down his coffee mug. ‘I’ve got to follow up any lead I can. No one else gives a toss about her, Jenny. They’ve put her in an asylum and thrown away the key.’

‘Because she killed kids, Jack.’ She shuddered. ‘I can’t think of anything worse, can you? Killing kids?’

Nightingale sighed. ‘I can’t argue with you,’ he said.

‘Because you know I’m right.’

Nightingale threw up his hands. ‘What do you think I should do? Walk away?’

‘Would that be so bad?’

‘She’s my sister.’

‘She’s your half-sister, a woman that you’ve met once in your life, who decided of her own volition to murder innocents. And you want to do what? Save her soul? Jack, if there’s any justice in the world she’ll burn in Hell for what she’s done.’ She stood up, her eyes blazing. ‘Her soul is damned anyway; you’re just whistling in the wind.’

Nightingale reached for his cigarettes.

‘You know they’re a crutch,’ she said. ‘Whenever you’re faced with something that makes you feel uncomfortable, you smoke.’

Nightingale tapped out a cigarette, slid it between his lips and lit it. ‘I smoke because I like to smoke,’ he said. ‘Anyway, this isn’t about me smoking. It’s about me wanting to help my sister.’ He threw up his hands. ‘I know that you’re talking a lot of sense, I know that there’s probably nothing I can do to help her, but I have to try.’

‘Why, Jack?’

Nightingale groaned. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say. She’s my sister. That’s the only answer I can give you.’

‘She’s killed children,’ said Jenny flatly.

‘And she’s behind bars for that. Okay, it’s a hospital and not a prison, but she’s still locked up. But what’s going to happen to her soul, that’s different. Gosling put her in that position, he did a deal for her soul, and now she’s all on her own. She has no idea what she’s up against. if I don’t help her then who will? She’s my sister, Jenny. The only family I’ve got. And I’m all she’s got.’

‘You keep saying that, but she’s not really your sister, in the same way that Gosling wasn’t really your father.’

‘We share the same DNA. That means we’re related.’

‘But up until three weeks ago you hadn’t heard of either of them,’ said Jenny. ‘Family isn’t about DNA, Jack. It’s about growing up together; it’s about connections, a shared history. You keep telling me that Bill and Irene Nightingale were your real parents, even though you know your DNA came from Gosling and your birth mother. Rebecca Keeley.’

‘Gosling paid Keeley twenty thousand pounds to have me and she gave me up the day that I was born, so I don’t think that qualifies her for maternal privileges. And the fact that Gosling sold my soul to a devil negates any dead daddy feelings I might ever have had.’

‘Exactly,’ said Jenny. ‘They’re not family.’

‘But my sister’s different. None of this is her fault. Gosling did to her exactly what he did to me. She can’t help herself but maybe I can.’

‘How? How do you expect to help a killer locked up in a secure mental hospital?’

Nightingale flicked ash into the ashtray at his side. ‘I didn’t say I know what to do, just that I have to do something.’ He groaned. ‘Jenny, you wouldn’t understand, you’re an only child.’

Jenny’s jaw dropped. ‘What?’

‘You don’t have any siblings, so you wouldn’t understand.’

‘Jack, I’ve got a brother. Five years older than me.’

Nightingale grimaced. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘The reason you don’t know is because you’ve never asked,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry. Really.’

Jenny folded her arms. ‘Here’s a question for you. How many Jack Nightingales does it take to screw in a light bulb?’

Nightingale looked out of the window and didn’t reply.

‘Just the one,’ continued Jenny. ‘He holds up the bloody bulb and waits for the world to revolve around him.’

Nightingale held up his hands. ‘You’re right. I can be a bit self-centred at times.’

‘Self-obsessed,’ she said. ‘Which is another way of saying that you don’t care about anyone other than yourself. That’s why I don’t understand this sudden urge to save a woman that you barely know.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t understand it myself, Jenny. I just know that I have to try. She’s all I have.’ He grinned at her. ‘Present company excepted.’

45

J
oshua Wainwright said that he was passing through the UK on Sunday afternoon on his way to Switzerland. Nightingale arrived at Biggin Hill airport in Kent just after three-thirty and already the sky was darkening. He showed his driving licence to a bored security guard, who checked his name against a list on a clipboard. The guard pointed towards a car park next to a large glass-sided building. ‘You can park over there,’ he said. ‘Go through into reception and they’ll tell you where the jet is.’ The guard raised the barrier so that Nightingale could drive his MGB through.

Inside the general aviation terminal an equally bored receptionist pointed towards Wainwright’s Gulfstream jet, parked in front of a hangar. ‘Mr Wainwright’s plane will be leaving within the hour,’ she said.

‘I know, it’s all a bit rushed,’ said Nightingale. ‘He’s a regular visitor, right?’

‘At least once a month,’ she said. ‘Usually at the weekend.’

‘Beats flying economy, doesn’t it?’

‘You’ve got that right,’ said the receptionist.

‘How much would Wainwright’s plane cost, do you think?’

The receptionist wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s a Gulfstream G550,’ she said. ‘Anywhere between forty-five and seventy million dollars.’

Nightingale whistled. ‘It’s a different world, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Think how many years you’d have to work to earn that much money.’

‘Years? Lifetimes, more like. It’s a funny old world, innit? Most of us are working all the hours God sends to make ends meet but there are people flying around in private planes and living the life of Riley.’

‘Who was Riley, anyway?’

The woman shrugged. ‘Probably a banker,’ she said. ‘Those bastards, they run the economy into the ground and then us taxpayers pay to bail them out.’ She jerked a thumb at Wainwright’s jet. ‘He’s not a banker, is he?’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘Nah, I don’t think so.’ He smiled at her and went outside. The lights were on in the cockpit of the Gulfstream and Nightingale saw two pilots deep in conversation. There was a set of steps leading up to the open hatch and Nightingale climbed them slowly. As he got to the top, a blonde stewardess with waist-length shampoo-commercial hair appeared. She was wearing a stylish grey suit and blood-red high-heeled shoes.

‘Mr Nightingale?’ she said.

‘That’s me,’ said Nightingale.

She showed him into the cabin. Joshua Wainwright took a foot-long Cuban cigar from his mouth and grinned when he saw Nightingale.

‘Jack, how the hell are you?’ he asked in his mid-Western drawl. He had a New York Yankees baseball cap on his head and a thick gold chain around his neck from which dangled a fist-sized letter J that looked as if it was solid gold. Wainwright swung his feet off a white leather footstool, stood up and shook hands with Nightingale. He was a couple of inches shorter than Nightingale with skin as black as strong coffee and the muscular upper arms of a man who either lifted a lot of weights or injected steroids. From the strength of Wainwright’s grip, Nightingale figured it was the former.

‘All good,’ said Nightingale.

Behind Wainwright was another model-pretty flight attendant in a grey suit, this one a brunette with razor-sharp cheekbones and piercing blue eyes. She smiled at Nightingale as if he was judging a beauty pageant and she was a front-runner.

‘Drink, Jack?’ asked Wainwright.

‘I’m driving,’ said Nightingale.

Wainwright waved him to one of the leather seats. He sat down and flicked cigar ash into a massive crystal ashtray. His face was smooth and unlined and Nightingale would have been hard pushed to put his age at more than twenty-five. ‘Just the one?’

Nightingale grinned. ‘A Corona would be good,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind me drinking a Mexican beer?’

‘Hey, what they did at the Alamo is old news,’ said Wainwright. ‘You can’t spend your life looking back. It’s like the whole slavery thing. You’ve got to move on.’

‘You don’t look like someone who’s been held back on any front,’ said Nightingale.

‘That’s the truth,’ agreed Wainwright. He sucked on his cigar and then blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘I was glad to get your call, Jack. The last time we met I was a bit worried.’

‘Because?’

‘Because you were talking about Gosling selling your soul.’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘All’s well that ends well,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I’m still here.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ said the American.

Nightingale took a computer printout from his jacket pocket and gave it to the American. ‘My secretary’s been through about five hundred of the books in my late father’s library,’ he said. ‘We haven’t bothered with anything that looked like it was mass-produced – I figured if there’d been substantial print runs you’d already have them. This list is the old stuff, leather-bound, antique. Some of them are hundreds of years old.’

The blonde stewardess handed Nightingale a bottle of Corona with a sliver of lime in the neck. He smiled his thanks and pushed the lime down into the bottle.

Wainwright sucked on his cigar as he studied the list. He raised his eyebrows. ‘This one, De Lamiis. It’s a first edition it says here.’

‘Then that’ll be right,’ said Nightingale. ‘My assistant is thorough.’

‘It says published in 1489, but there were two editions that year, both marked as firsts. It’s the woodcuts that I’m interested in.’ Wainwright looked up from the printout. ‘You need to check if there are small upturned crosses in the bottom corners, left or right. If the crosses are there you can name your own price.’

‘If they’re not?’

‘Then it’s just a book,’ said the American. He jabbed his cigar at Nightingale. ‘The woodcuts of the first edition are a little bit special. There are seals in there that have never been published before or since.’

‘Seals as in stamps?’

‘Satanic seals,’ said Wainwright, nodding. ‘Secret insignia. There were only a hundred copies published with the special woodcuts but then the author came under pressure from the Vatican to remove them. Which he did.’

‘I’ll check as soon as I get back.’

‘I’m serious, Jack. If you’ve got the right edition, I’ll give you this plane. And the girls.’

The two stewardesses beamed at Nightingale as if they were happy to be included in the deal.

Wainwright went back to scrutinising the list while Nightingale sipped his beer.

‘Have you seen the copy of
Daemonologie
?’ said Wainwright, tapping the list. ‘Do you know what state it’s in?’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘I haven’t seen that one. My secretary did most of the books.’

‘If it’s pristine then I’ll buy it,’ he said. ‘The copy I have is pretty shabby. You know King James the Sixth of Scotland wrote it, right?’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Yeah, at the end of the sixteenth century. Not much of real use in it, but it’s worth owning. I’ll pay top dollar.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ said Nightingale.

Wainwright picked up a Mont Blanc pen from a side table and put ticks next to a dozen or so of the titles. ‘You’ve got two books here by Aleister Crowley,’ he said. ‘
Magick Book 4
and
Liber Al Vel Legis
,
The Book of the Law
. I’ll have them both. But what I really want is a diary of his. He’s rumoured to have written one during the last five years of his life and it’s believed that one of his followers published a very limited edition after he died. A dozen copies at most were printed and distributed to his closest friends and members of his coven. The presses used to print the book were destroyed and the typesetter is supposed to have killed himself. No one knows where the twelve copies are or who has them.’

‘I’ll have a look in the basement,’ said Nightingale. ‘Any idea what it’s called?’

‘It might not even have a title,’ said Wainwright. ‘It would have been published in 1948, that’s all I can tell you. But I have to warn you: if you do come across a copy, you mustn’t sell it.’

Nightingale laughed. ‘To anyone other than you, you mean?’

‘To anyone,’ said Wainwright. ‘The rumour is that if a copy was ever sold, the buyer and the seller would both die.’

‘It’s cursed, you mean?’

‘It’s not really a curse. The book itself is fine, and ownership is quite safe. But if a copy is sold for money . . .’ He shrugged.

‘You believe that?’

‘I know that Aleister Crowley was one of the most powerful Satanists who ever lived,’ said Wainwright. ‘And his closest followers were only one step behind him.’

‘And a book can be cursed?’

‘Anything can be cursed,’ said Wainwright. ‘I’m serious about this, Jack. If you do find a copy don’t try to sell it. Come to me and we’ll work out a deal.’

‘A deal?’ Nightingale grinned. ‘You’re not after my soul, are you?’

‘A deal for the diary – one that doesn’t involve a financial transaction,’ said the American. He handed the list back to Nightingale and put down the pen. ‘Let me know when I can see those and I’ll come along with cash. And I need you to keep an eye out for another book. It’s called
The Lemegeton
. Or
The Lesser Key of Solomon
. First published in the seventeenth century. But I need to know about the binding. The binding is as important as the content.’

Nightingale nodded and put the list away. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ he asked.

Wainwright picked up a crystal tumbler filled with whiskey and ice. ‘Can’t promise I’ll answer, but go ahead.’

‘You’re rich, right?’

‘Not as rich as Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, or that Mexican who heads the rich list, but I do okay for a black guy.’

‘But you weren’t born rich, were you? You don’t come from money.’

‘Made every cent myself.’ He raised his glass to Nightingale. ‘Started from nothing. Less than nothing. Father ran off before I was born, mother did laundry to try to make ends meet and failed miserably. Had no money to pay for any sort of education. Had to do what I had to do to survive.’

Nightingale nodded and tapped the neck of his bottle against his temple. ‘That’s one hell of a jump. From there to here.’

‘And I’m guessing you want to know how much is down to my specialist knowledge of the occult?’

‘You got me,’ said Nightingale. He took a long drink from his bottle, his eyes never leaving Wainwright’s face. ‘Is everything you’ve achieved the result of a deal you did with . . .’ He grinned and shook his head. ‘I feel stupid even asking,’ he said. ‘We’re sitting in a Gulfstream jet and I’m talking about something that would have had us burned at the stake in the Middle Ages.’

‘Actually, if you’d gone around telling people that you could sit in a metal bird and fly from here to America in six hours they’d probably have burned you as a witch anyway,’ said Wainwright. ‘Much of the technology we take for granted in the twenty-first century would have had you put to death or committed to an asylum back then.’

‘But what we’re talking about is the exact opposite, isn’t it?’ said Nightingale. ‘You’re saying that you can do a deal with a devil and get rich. And if you went around saying that, you’d be treated as an idiot or fitted for a straitjacket.’

‘I’m not saying anything of the sort,’ laughed Wainwright. ‘You’re the one who’s doing all the talking at the moment.’

‘But you’re not contradicting me, are you?’

Wainwright chuckled. ‘There’s the cop in you coming out,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Nightingale, settling back in his seat. ‘Old habits die hard.’

‘Nah, I see where you’re coming from,’ said the American. ‘This is all new territory for you and you want as much information as you can get. But there’s a limit to what I can tell you. There’s an element of non-disclosure involved, you have to understand that. The true believers don’t shout it from the rooftops because they’ve a vested interest in keeping the knowledge to themselves. And the principals, well, they’ve always preferred to work in the shadows.’

‘The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world that he doesn’t exist,’ said Nightingale.

‘That’s the truth,’ agreed Wainwright.

‘Because if there’s a devil, then there’s a God. You can’t have one without the other. So if the world believed in the devil then it would also have to believe in God. And given the choice, most people would side with God.’

Wainwright laughed out loud. ‘You believe that? You believe that people are inherently good? Look around you, Jack. Look how people treat each other. Whether they’re Christians or Muslims or non-believers, they rape and kill and lie and steal. Do you think they would behave any differently if they truly believed there was a God?’

‘I’m having trouble with the devil thing,’ sighed Nightingale.

‘You and the whole Catholic church,’ said Wainwright.

‘I mean, understanding what it means. You’ve summoned devils, right?’

‘That’s not the sort of thing you ask,’ said the American. ‘You’ve heard of the sanctity of the confessional, haven’t you?’