Midnight: The Second Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller (35 page)

88

G
raham Kerr lit a match as he watched. He was standing in a clump of trees overlooking the house and had seen the MGB, patrol car and police van arrive. He breathed in the fragrance of the match and shivered with anticipation. At his feet was a can of petrol. He wasn’t happy about using petrol. Petrol was the blunt instrument in an arsonist’s armoury, the equivalent of a sawn-off shotgun or a machete. Kerr preferred subtlety, but in Jack Nightingale’s case there was no time to be clever. Mistress Proserpine wanted him dead and she always got what she wanted.

Kerr loved to watch his victims. Watching them going about the business not knowing that their days were numbered was part of the pleasure. It was almost as satisfying as the setting of the fires that took their lives. Almost, but not quite.

Kerr let the match burn down almost to his fingers before blowing it out and slipping it into his back pocket. He didn’t like using petrol but at least he could use his Swan Vestas matches. First he’d have to wait for the police to leave. If Nightingale stayed in the house, that’s where he would die. If he went back to his flat in Bayswater, he’d die there. But one way or another, Jack Nightingale would die.

89

N
ightingale climbed out of his MGB. ‘Nice of you to let me use my own car,’ he said to Chalmers, who was walking towards the front door.

A Surrey Police van with half a dozen uniformed officers had been waiting for them at the gates and had followed them in.

‘We’ve got better things to do on New Year’s Day than run a taxi service for you,’ said the superintendent. ‘Now open the front door.’

‘Anything to stop you doing the chinny-chin-chin thing.’ Nightingale took out his keys and opened the front door as the uniforms piled out of the van. They were led by a bruiser of a sergeant, who glared at Nightingale as if blaming him personally for having to work on New Year’s Day.

Chalmers put a hand on Nightingale’s shoulder. ‘You hang on outside with me while the men give it the once-over. If she’s in there you’d best tell me now.’

‘She isn’t,’ said Nightingale.

The uniforms filed through into the hallway. Two of them went upstairs and the rest spread out on the ground floor.

Nightingale tapped out a Marlboro and lit it. ‘Happy New Year, by the way,’ he said.

‘What’s going on, Nightingale?’ asked Chalmers. ‘What’s this all about? You inherit this house from a mystery man who blows his own head off. People around you have a nasty habit of coming to a sticky end. A serial killer tries to slit your throat. And your long-lost sister escapes from the most secure mental hospital in the country a couple of days after you pay her a visit. And all this happens over – what, four weeks?’

‘It’s been an eventful month, that’s true.’ He blew smoke towards the mermaid fountain.

‘Is there something you want to tell me? Something that would explain it?’

‘I’m as baffled as you are,’ said Nightingale.

‘I’m trying to help you here,’ said the superintendent.

Nightingale held the cigarette away from his mouth. ‘No, you’re not,’ he said. ‘You’re playing good cop in the hope that I’ll give you something you can use to send me down. You didn’t like me when I was in the Job and you don’t like me now, so you can just search the house and then get the hell off my property.’

Chalmers opened his mouth to reply but then the transceiver he was holding crackled. ‘Superintendent, you need to see this. Third bedroom on the left.’

Nightingale gritted his teeth. That was the bedroom where he’d summoned Frimost, and he hadn’t cleaned up.

Chalmers noticed his discomfort and he grinned triumphantly. ‘Something there you hoped we wouldn’t find, huh?’ He jerked a thumb at the door. ‘Inside,’ he said.

Nightingale flicked away his cigarette and went into the hall. The superintendent followed him up the stairs. The panel that hid the secret passageway down to the basement was still in place and Nightingale avoided looking at it. They turned left at the top of the stairs. A constable was standing outside the door to the bedroom, his arms folded. A sergeant was inside the room, looking down at the pentagram and the candles. He nodded at the superintendent.

‘No sign of the girl?’ asked Chalmers. The sergeant shook his head. ‘Okay, search the rest of the rooms while I have a word with Mr Nightingale here.’

The sergeant left the room and Chalmers kicked the door shut, then turned and shoved Nightingale in the chest with both hands. Nightingale staggered backwards. He regained his balance and pulled back his right hand in a fist.

‘Go on, do it!’ shouted Chalmers. ‘Do it and see what happens.’

Nightingale relaxed his hand. ‘You assaulted me.’

‘Yeah, and I’ll do it again if you don’t start telling me the truth.’

‘So PACE goes out of the window?’

‘Screw PACE and screw you.’ He pointed at the pentagram. ‘You did this?’

Nightingale didn’t say anything.

‘There was a pentagram like this in your sister’s room. And candles, and the same strong smell of burned crap. What’s going on? What does it mean?’ Chalmers jabbed his finger at the pentagram. ‘Did she do this? Was she here?’

‘I did it,’ said Nightingale quietly.

‘Why?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Can’t? Or won’t?’

‘Both,’ said Nightingale. ‘So what are you going to do? Hit me again? Because if you do, I’ll break your sodding arm and take my chance in court. I could always say you tripped and fell – that worked for me when I was in the Job.’

Chalmers glared at Nightingale, then reached for the door handle. ‘I’m going to get you for this if it’s the last thing I do, Nightingale.’

‘Good luck with that,’ said Nightingale, taking out his pack of Marlboro.

90

K
err watched the police car and van drive away from the house. He looked at his watch. It would soon be dark. Nightingale was alone in the house and if he stayed there then that would be where he died. He hoped that Nightingale stayed where he was because it was a lovely old house and Kerr would love to see it burn. Kerr sat down with his back to one of the trees and shook the box of Swan Vestas matches. He felt his groin tighten with every rattle of the matches. He stared at the house and licked his lips. ‘Soon,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Soon.’

91

N
ightingale took his phone out of his pocket and rang Jenny.

‘It’s on the news,’ she said before he could speak. ‘They had her picture and said that she could be dangerous.’

‘I know. Chalmers picked me up this afternoon. I’m at the house.’

‘What if they find her?’

‘They won’t. That was the deal she did. Escape and freedom. They searched my flat and Gosling Manor and they’ll have her red-flagged at the airports and ports but she’s already fled the coop.’

‘Do you know where she is?’

‘I don’t want to know,’ said Nightingale.

‘Now what?’

‘Now’s the hard part,’ he said.

‘Do you want my help?’

‘You can’t help, kid. I have to do it myself. Tonight, at midnight.’

‘Be careful, Jack.’

‘Always,’ he said, and ended the call.

He walked downstairs to the hall, switching on the lights as he went. He pulled open the panel that led to the basement. He flicked on those lights too, then went slowly down the wooden stairs.

He had taken careful notes of what Aleister Crowley had written in his diary about summoning Lucifuge Rofocale. The pentagram was identical to the ones he had used when calling up Proserpine and Frimost, but the mixture of herbs was different, the candles had to be black and not white, and the incantation was longer and more complex. But the crucial part was a parchment that had to be prepared and burned at one of the two north-facing candles at the stroke of midnight.

The parchment had to be prepared from a virgin goat, and luckily Mrs Steadman at the Wicca Woman shop had been able to supply him with some. On the parchment there had to be a drawing that looked like a pentagram but with various rune-like scrawls in the centre and below it. Nightingale had sketched it from the diary and Crowley had stressed that it had to be copied perfectly onto the parchment on the day that it was required, ideally within an hour of the ceremony. The drawing could be done in the blood of a sea turtle, or the blood of the person summoning the devil. Mrs Steadman had laughed when he’d asked her if she had any sea-turtle blood and told him that there wasn’t much call for it.

Nightingale sat down at the book-strewn desk, opened one of the drawers and took out a new razor blade and a swan’s feather. He used the razor blade to clip off the end of the feather to make a workable nib, then slowly drew the blade across the tip of his left index finger. He winced as the blood flowed.

92

K
err looked at his watch. It was just before midnight. There were lights on in the downstairs hallway and upstairs at the front of the house and he had waited, hoping that they would go out, but eventually he had walked around to the rear of the building and seen candlelight flickering in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and he figured that was where Nightingale was. He reached for the handle of the front door, turned it and smiled when he realised that it wasn’t locked. He opened the door and slipped inside, his heart racing. The house was bigger than anything he’d ever torched in the past, and he knew that to be sure of killing Nightingale he’d have to go upstairs.

He eased the door shut behind him. In his left hand was the red petrol can. He’d filled it almost to the top and he heard the liquid slosh around as he headed for the stairs.

93

N
ightingale took a piece of paper from his pocket. On it were instructions that he’d copied from Aleister Crowley’s diary. He looked around the pentagram to check that everything was in place, then he ignited the mixture of herbs that he’d placed in a brass crucible. They caught fire easily and crackled and hissed as they burned.

Nightingale began to read from the paper. ‘
Osurmy delmausan atalsloym charusihoa
,’ he said, trying not to stumble over the unfamiliar words. He spoke for a full minute, taking care over every syllable. When he’d finished, he took a deep breath. ‘Come, Lucifuge Rofocale,’ he said. He held the parchment with its bloody drawing over one of the north-facing candles and watched as it burned. ‘Come, Lucifuge Rofocale,’ he repeated. ‘I summon you.’

He narrowed his eyes, not sure what to expect. In the diary Crowley hadn’t been able to describe what Lucifuge Rofocale looked like, saying that he chose one of many forms depending on the circumstances. The burning parchment scorched his fingers but he barely felt the pain.

The thick smoke rippled and then began to spin in a vortex at right angles to the floor, faster and faster in a motion that was almost hypnotic, and Nightingale found himself leaning towards it. He took an involuntarily step forward and then another, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand still.

There was a deep booming laugh that echoed around the room and then the vortex folded inside out and a short, squat figure appeared, less than four feet tall. At first Nightingale thought it was a child, but as it moved through the smoke he saw that it was a dwarf, with a large head topped with curly black hair, a thick body and short bow legs. The dwarf thrust his chin square out as he stared up at Nightingale with blood-red eyes. He was wearing a crimson jacket with gold buttons up the front, black jodhpurs and shiny black boots that made Nightingale think of a toy soldier.

‘You are Lucifuge Rofocale?’ asked Nightingale. ‘I command that you speak the truth.’ In his diary, Crowley had said that the devil sometimes sent emissaries in his place but an emissary could not lie about his identity.

There was a blast of heat, so hot that Nightingale gasped. A wall of flame flickered along the edge of the pentagram, red at the bottom, yellow at the top, then the flames leaped higher, sucking the air from the room. Nightingale put his hands over his face and he could feel the heat singeing the hairs on his skin. The flames grew higher until they were as tall as he was, then they began to swirl until they formed an impenetrable mass of fire. Nightingale whirled around but, whichever way he faced, the heat was unbearable.

‘I summoned you to talk!’ he screamed, and in an instant the flames vanished.

The dwarf was glaring at him. ‘You dare to summon me?’ he hissed. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘You are Lucifuge Rofocale and I command that you speak the truth.’

‘You command?’ roared the dwarf.

The ground shook and the walls fell away and then the floor vanished and Nightingale was standing on the pentagram in the middle of darkness. There was nothing above him or below him and the air was ice-cold. There was no sign of the dwarf.

‘You are Lucifuge Rofocale and I command that you speak the truth!’ shouted Nightingale. His voice echoed into the distance. Then suddenly the pentagram began to plummet down in free-fall, the air rushing past his face so quickly that he couldn’t pull it into his aching lungs. Nightingale closed his eyes. ‘This isn’t happening,’ he said. ‘I’m in Gosling Manor, inside the pentagram. None of this is real.’

He opened his eyes again and he was back in the bedroom. The flames had gone. He looked at the back of his hands; the hairs there were singed and the skin blackened.

The dwarf’s upper lip curled back. ‘Happy now? Or do you want more?’

There was a flash of light so blinding that it hurt, and Nightingale shaded his eyes with his hands. The dwarf had gone and in its place was a creature so large that its head was against the ceiling and its leathery wings scraped the walls on either side of the pentagram. It had a pointed snout, jagged teeth and reptilian eyes, and when it roared the stench was so overpowering that Nightingale almost passed out.

‘Do you want more?’ the creature screamed and Nightingale staggered back.

‘I want only what is my right: to summon you and for you to speak the truth.’

‘Right?’ roared the creature. ‘Who are you to talk of rights?’ The creature opened its mouth and a stream of flame flashed over Nightingale’s head.

‘My name is Jack Nightingale and provided I stay within the pentagram you cannot harm me!’ shouted Nightingale.

The creature roared and there was another flash of light. Now the dwarf was back, scowling up at him. ‘The pentagram is a sanctuary and a prison,’ he hissed.

‘I’ve been told that,’ said Nightingale. ‘I want to talk.’ He fought to steady his breathing; he could feel his heart pounding in his chest as if it was about to burst.

‘You are either very stupid or very devious,’ said the dwarf. ‘Which is it?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘A lot depends on the way things go over the next few minutes.’

There was a loud bang and a flash and a foul smell, like a bad drain.

Lucifuge Rofocale folded his arms. ‘You tricked Sugart and he is not happy.’

‘I didn’t do anything. My sister summoned him. My sister sold her soul in exchange for escape.’

‘While you distracted Frimost, who had first claim on her soul.’

‘It’s hardly my fault if Frimost took his eye off the ball, is it?’

Lucifuge Rofocale glared at Nightingale. ‘You planned this. You planned it all.’

Nightingale wrinkled his nose. ‘It’s not my problem, is it? They’re both your subordinates. All you have to do is choose which one gets my sister’s soul.’ He put his hands in his pockets. ‘Of course, whoever loses out is going to be pretty pissed off, right? And I reckon no boss wants a pissed-off subordinate, even in Hell.’

‘You know nothing of Hell, Nightingale,’ said Lucifuge Rofocale. ‘Yet. But your day will come.’

‘This isn’t about me,’ said Nightingale. ‘This is about my sister. Her father sold her soul to Frimost thirty-one years ago. She has now sold it in good faith to Sugart. It seems to me that they both a have good claim on it. Both can make a good case and neither is going to take kindly to being told that he’s lost out.’ Nightingale grinned. ‘So you’re going to have to decide, right? And I’m guessing that souls are indivisible, which means that there’s no judgement of Solomon.’

Lucifuge Rofocale said nothing. He stared up at Nightingale, his lips set in a tight line.

‘So here’s the thing,’ Nightingale continued, taking his hands out of his pockets. ‘They both have a claim on her soul, no question about that. And neither will accept the other taking it from him. The way I see it, there’s only one thing you can do.’

‘Neither of them gets her soul,’ said the dwarf.

‘It’s the only way to keep the peace,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s the only decision that they’ll both accept.’

‘You’re a clever man, Nightingale.’

‘Not really,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I’ve been involved in a few negotiations over the years. So we’re agreed? My sister gets her soul back?’

‘This won’t win you any friends, you know.’

‘I can live with that,’ said Nightingale.

‘Sugart and Frimost will blame you. They will want revenge.’

‘They know where to find me,’ said Nightingale.

Lucifuge Rofocale nodded slowly. ‘So you have what you want. Your sister has her soul back. You must be feeling very pleased with yourself.’

‘Not really,’ said Nightingale. ‘I just want this to end. I want this threat lifted from her so that she can get on with her life.’

He took a piece of paper from his pocket and began to read.

‘Wait!’ said Lucifuge Rofocale.

Nightingale frowned. ‘What?’

‘We haven’t finished,’ said Lucifuge Rofocale.

‘I have,’ said Nightingale. ‘There’s nothing else I want from you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘What about Sophie?’ Nightingale shivered as if an icy finger had been drawn down his spine. ‘Don’t you wonder what happened to her?’