I Know Who Did It (A Jack Nightingale Short Story) (6 page)

Mrs Steadman’s
hand flew up to cover her mouth. ‘The sister was a sacrifice?’

‘I think so,
yes.’

‘Oh Mr
Nightingale, what have you done?’

‘It gets worse,
Mrs Steadman. This man is now threatening me, and my friend Jenny. And there’s
nothing I can do to stop him.’

Mrs Steadman
sighed. ‘I warned you, didn’t I? I told you not to mess with Paimonia.’

‘This man can’t
be killed, can he? That’s part of the deal.’

‘I thought I
explained that to you.’

‘I knew the deal
was that you could live for ever. I didn’t appreciate that meant you couldn’t
be killed. What can I do, Mrs Steadman? How can I put a stop to this?’

Mrs Steadman
looked at him fearfully. ‘You can’t, Mr Nightingale. If this man has the
protection of one of the strongest demons in Hell, there’s nothing you can do.’

Nightingale
sighed. He wanted a cigarette, badly.

‘You need to run,
Mr Nightingale. You and your friend need to get as far away from this man as
you can. That’s your only hope, to be somewhere where he can’t find you.’

‘I can’t do that,
Mrs Steadman.’

‘You have to.’

Nightingale
rubbed the back of his neck. ‘There’s no way of stopping this man? No way at
all.’

Mrs Steadman
swallowed nervously. ‘I’m afraid not. So long as he has the protection of
Paimonia, there is nothing you can do.’

‘What if this
Paimonia were to die. What then?’

Mrs Steadman’s
eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If Paimonia were
to die, what about the people who had done deals with him?’

‘Those deals
would no longer be valid, obviously. But Paimonia is all-powerful, only Satan
himself is stronger.’

‘I have to go,’
said Nightingale, heading for the door. ‘Thanks for your help.’

He hurried out,
leaving Mrs Steadman staring forlornly at the door. ‘Mr Nightingale, I didn’t
help you at all,’ she whispered.

* * *

Nightingale drove
south to Streatham, through the town centre and made a right turn and then a
left and then drove down an alley between two rows of houses. There was a row
of six brick-built lock-up garages with metal doors and corrugated iron roofs.
A large black man was waiting for him, next to a black Porsche SUV. He was
wearing a black overcoat and impenetrable wraparound sunglasses. T-Bone worked
for a South London gangster but had a sideline in supplying illicit weapons to
the criminal community. T-Bone grinned as Nightingale climbed out of his MGB.
‘You still driving that rust bucket, Birdman?’

‘It’s a classic,’
said Nightingale.

‘It’s a piece of
shit,’ said T-Bone. ‘If I sold guns as shit as your motor, I’d be out of
business.’ T-Bone pulled out a set of keys from his coat pocket, unlocked the
door of one of the lock-ups and pushed it up. There was an old Jaguar there,
its boot facing outwards. T-Bone pulled the door halfway down behind them.
‘Don’t want anybody looking in,’ he explained. He used another key to open the
boot of the car. Inside were a dozen or so packages, covered in bubble-wrap.
T-Bone picked up one of the packages and unwrapped it. It was a Glock, similar
to the one Nightingale had used when he was with the Met’s firearms unit.
T-Bone held it out to Nightingale but Nightingale shook his head. ‘Have you got
anything smaller? More concealable?’

‘A lady gun, you
mean?’

‘I was thinking
of something I could hide.’

T-Bone nodded and
rooted through the packages before selecting one and unwrapping it. ‘Smith and
Wesson 638 Airweight?’ he said. ‘Aluminium so it’s light, small frame so it’s,
well….the clue’s in the name, innit?’

Nightingale
nodded and took the revolver. He held it in the palm of his hand. T-Bone was
right, the 638 Airweight was a near-perfect lightweight revolver. It weighed
less than a pound and the barrel was just two inches long. That meant it wasn’t
especially accurate beyond a few yards but it could easily be carried in a
jacket pocket. It only held five rounds but there were thirty eights so would
do a lot of damage.

‘Five rounds be
enough for you?’ asked T-Bone as if reading his mind.

‘Five should be
overkill,’ said Nightingale. ‘I was never one for spray and pray. How much?’

‘I was thinking
six hundred.’

‘Four?’

‘Five-fifty. And
if you don’t fire it, I’ll buy it back for three.’

‘I’ll be firing
it,’ said Nightingale. ‘Five, and I only need five rounds.’

T-bone pulled out
a plastic bag of bullets and counted out five. He slammed the boot shut and
gave the rounds to Nightingale. ‘Deal,’ he said.

Nightingale took
out his wallet and handed over ten fifty-pound notes. Always a pleasure doing
business with you, T-bone,’ he said. He shoved the gun into his pocket then
tried to raise the garage door. It seemed to be stuck and he couldn’t get it to
budge.

T-Bone chuckled
and forced it up with one hand. ‘You take care, Birdman,’ said T-Bone, as
Nightingale walked back to his MGB.

* * *

According to the
book, Paimonia was best summoned during the day. There were other peculiarities
of the ceremony. The candles had to be a mixture of black and blue, and among
the herbs and compounds that had to be burned were mercury and bindweed, both
of which he managed to find in storage jars in a display case in the basement.
The book also emphasised that the summoner had to look to the northwest during
the ceremony and he had used a small brass compass to check which way that was.
He put everything he needed into a cardboard box and carried it upstairs. He
chose a large bedroom that had been stripped of all its furniture and furnishings.
He closed the door behind him, placed the box on the bare floorboards, then
used consecrated chalk to draw a circle in the middle of the room, about twelve
feet in diameter. Then he used a birch branch taken from the garden to slowly
outline the circle. Then he used the chalk to draw a five pointed star on top
of the circle, with two of the five points facing northwest. So far it was a
standard pentagram. Nightingale sprinkled consecrated salt water around the
perimeter of the circle before studying the diagrams in the book. They were a
pretty close match to the page he’d copied from Mercer’s notebook. In a
standard pentagram the letters MI and then CH and then AEL were written around
the circle, spelling out the name of Michael, the archangel, but for Paimonia
the letters were replaced by complex symbols. Nightingale spent more than an
hour making sure he drew them perfectly, then he went through to the bathroom
and stripped off his clothes.

He had already
filled the claw-footed cast iron bathtub with water and he slid into it. He
held his breath and slid down under the water, holding his breath until he felt
his lungs start to burn, and then he pushed himself up and scrubbed himself
clean with a small plastic brush and a bar of soap. He washed and rinsed his
hair twice, then climbed out of the bath and towelled himself dry. He put on
clean clothes and a pair of new trainers. Finally he combed his hair, checked
himself in the mirror over the sink, and went back into the bedroom.

He picked up five
candles, three black and two dark blue, and placed them at the five points of
the pentagram. He lit them with his lighter, picked up the cardboard box, then
stepped inside the circle.

He took a couple
of deep breaths then used the birch branch to go over the chalk outline again.
He sprinkled consecrated salt water around the perimeter of the circle, then
set fire to the contents of a lead crucible. The herbs and spices and bits of
wood hissed and spluttered. He added bindweed and mercury salt and the room filled
with cloying smoke.

He took the book
out of the box and opened it at the chapter on Paimonia. He began to carefully
recite the words that would summon the demon. They were written
phonetically
, they
weren’t English or Latin, they were something in between. The candle flames
flickered as warm wind started to blow through the room, even though the
windows and door were shut. The air was getting thicker as the fumes billowed
up from the lead crucible. He tried not to think about the damage the mercury
might do to his lungs and he concentrated on the words he was saying. His eyes
began to water and he blinked away the tears.

There were
flashes of light above his head, like lightning strikes. He ignored them and
kept his eyes on the book. It was getting harder to see, his eyes were tearing
and the smoke was getting thicker by the minute.

He reached the
end of the incantation and closed the book. He peered through the smoke. There
was no sign of any demon. He frowned, wondering if he had missed something out.
Then there was a loud boom that hit him in the chest like a punch and he
staggered back. There was a second boom, even louder than the first and then
something appeared in front of him. It had no real form, it was greyish-green
and constantly shifting. Nightingale saw a glimpse of what might have been a
claw and then a wing but they were there only for a few seconds.

‘Who are you?’
asked a surprisingly soft, almost feminine, voice.

‘My name is Jack
Nightingale and I have summoned you to offer my respects and to respectfully
request you bestow on me the gift of everlasting life. Are you Paimonia?’

‘You summoned me,
so you should know.’

‘Then can you
grant me my wish?’

‘That can be
done,’ said Paimonia. ‘But there is a price that has to be paid.’

‘My soul?’

‘Yes, of course.
But the gift of immortality does not come so cheaply. You were baptised?’

‘Why do you need
to know that?’

‘Because a
baptised soul has more value.’

Nightingale shook
his head. ‘No. Not baptised.’

‘Are you Jewish?
Or a Muslim?’

Nightingale shook
his head. ‘I’m a Christian.’

‘I shall require
a sacrifice.’

‘I will do
whatever you ask,’ said Nightingale.

‘A girl.’

‘You want me to
kill a girl?’

‘No, merely to
provide the sacrifice. I will do the rest. All you need to do is to bring her
to me.’

Nightingale
nodded. ‘And then I get to live for ever?’

‘For ever and
ever. For as long as you want, anyway.’

‘And you take my
soul?’

‘Only if you
die.’

‘Let’s do it,
then,’ said Nightingale.

‘It’s not as
straightforward as that,’ said Paimonia. ‘I will require more sacrifices, in
the future.’

Nightingale
frowned. ‘What? So we don’t have a deal?’

‘We have a deal,
my friend, you give me your soul and I grant you eternal life. But I require a
sacrifice first and then sacrifices at regular intervals. Every five years.’

‘So I have to
provide you with a sacrifice every five years? And if I do, I live forever?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I don’t get
any older?’

‘Not a day.’

Nightingale
nodded thoughtfully. ‘What about every ten years?’

‘Ten years?’

‘How about I get
a sacrifice for you every ten years?’

‘You want to
negotiate with me?’

‘It’s a deal,
right? So let’s deal. I’ll get you a sacrifice every ten years.’

‘Ten is not
acceptable.’

‘What is
acceptable?’

‘I told you.
Every five years.’

‘Nine.’

Paimonia sighed.
‘Seven. And that is my final offer.’

‘When? When do
you want the sacrifice?’

The door opened
and Jenny McNeil stood there, a look of surprise on her face. She was wearing a
leather flight jacket with a sheepskin collar and blue jeans. Her hair was tied
back in a ponytail. ‘What the hell are you doing, Jack?’ she said.

‘Jenny, what are
you doing here?’

‘You’ve summoned
Paimonia? You did it?’

Paimonia roared
and the floorboards shuddered. ‘She is perfect,’ he said. The grey-green shape
began to harden. It became darker, and smaller.

‘No!’ shouted
Nightingale. ‘Not her.’

Paimonia laughed
again. There were wings now, grey and leathery, and a reptilian jaw, lined with
teeth. Eyes opened, a fiery red, that glared at Jenny. ‘She is the price,’ said
Paimonia. ‘She is the sacrifice.’ There were legs now, covered in scales with
large hooked talons. And a tail, with a vicious barb at the end.

Jenny turned to
run from the room but the door slammed shut. She whirled around, her eyes wide
in terror. ‘Jack, what’s going on?’

‘What are you doing
here?’

‘Your phone’s not
working. I thought you might be in trouble.’

Paimonia laughed
and the walls and floor vibrated. ‘You’re the one in trouble, my dear,’ he
said. ‘But if it’s any consolation, you’ll be helping Mr Nightingale to get his
heart’s desire. Eternal life.’