Lastnight (30 page)

He took a deep breath, trying to focus his thoughts. If the police were on their way, he had to act fast. And even if they weren’t, he still needed to be out of the flat as quickly as possible. His mind raced. What had he touched? Nothing. Caitlin had let him into the flat. She had unlocked the doors and opened them for him. He’d touched nothing so there were no surfaces to wipe down.

He tucked the Glock back into its holster then went over to the machete she’d dropped and picked it up. He carried it over to the kitchen area and pulled off a piece of paper kitchen roll. He used it to wipe the handle clean, then took it over to Receding Hair. He knelt down and placed the handle in Receding Hair’s right hand, pressing it hard. He stood up. So Receding Hair had cut Caitlin’s throat. Her blood was on the machete, the machete was in his hand.

The positions of the bodies weren’t great. He was going to have to make it look as if Caitlin had shot the two men as they were heading towards her.

He bent over and pulled Receding Hair’s legs so they pointed towards Caitlin. Then he did the same with the second man. There was something familiar about both men and suddenly he realised what it was. They had been helping to carry Marcus Fairchild’s coffin.

He stood up and listened for a few seconds. No sirens. He walked over to Caitlin. Blood was pooling around her but there was none gushing from the throat. Her heart had stopped.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate. He needed to paint a picture that the police would believe. He was less unsteady on his feet now and the fog that had enveloped his mind was gradually dissipating. He opened his eyes, pulled out his Glock and wiped the butt with the piece of kitchen towel, then put it in Caitlin’s right hand. The scenario would make sense. Two men with knives attacking a young girl. She has a gun and shoots them both but not before one of them had slashed her throat. There were a lot of holes in the story, not the least being how a young girl had a Glock in her possession, but it was better than the truth. The problem was SOCO would do a gunshot residue test on her hands and at the moment they were clean. He held her hand around the gun and forced her first finger on to the three triggers – the Glock’s patented safety mechanism that prevented the gun from being fired accidentally. He aimed at the wall behind the two bodies. The investigating officers might be prepared to believe two lucky shots but only if there was at least one that had gone wide. Two would be better, he realised. Two shots followed by a pause and then two more, just in case there were neighbours counting. It would look as if she had shot twice and missed, then shot twice again and killed them. Sometime between the first shots and the second, Crew Cut managed to cut her throat.

Nightingale squeezed her finger against the triggers, keeping a tight grip on her dead hands. The first bullet hit the wall above the door, then he moved her hand to the right and fired again, this time at the wall above the television set. He let her arm fall to the floor then stood up. He took a quick look around then walked around her body, taking care not to get any blood on his Hush Puppies, then used the paper towel to open the door and let himself out. He stood in the hallway, which was in darkness, listening carefully. He didn’t hear anything so he tiptoed down the stairs, taking care not to touch the walls or the bannister. He used the paper towel to open the door to the street. He took a deep breath before stepping out, half expecting to find himself staring down the barrels of an armed response unit, but the street was deserted. He kept his head down as he walked away.

45

N
ightingale took deep breaths as he walked. He was still a little fuzzy but his head was getting clearer by the minute. He looked around, struggling to get his bearings, then realised that he wasn’t far from Oxford Street. He walked past Tottenham Court Road Tube station and went down Oxford Circus station instead, figuring that if the police did start checking CCTV they’d only check the nearest station. He went down to the westbound platform. He felt exhausted but didn’t want to risk taking a taxi home in case the driver remembered him. He kept his head down as he waited on the platform, though there were so many passengers he doubted that he would be identified even if the CCTV footage was examined.

The train arrived and it was busy but not packed and he managed to squeeze into a seat between a man with a large briefcase perched on his knees and a woman who kept muttering to herself. Nightingale folded his arms and kept his head down, wishing he had a hat. He got off at Bayswater and hurried back to his flat. As soon as he had let himself in, he switched on the kettle in the kitchen and went through to the bathroom and stripped off all his clothes. He put everything into the bath. As he took off his jeans he almost fell, staggering to the side and banging into the washbasin. He bent down and splashed cold water on his face. Caitlin had put something in his drink, he was sure of that, almost certainly GHB.

He tried to check the back of his head in the mirror but no matter how he twisted he couldn’t get a decent look. He pressed his hand against the spot where he’d been hit but there didn’t appear to be any blood, which he took as a good sign. If he hadn’t spotted Caitlin in the mirror about to bash in his skull it would have been a lot worse.

He went back through to the kitchen and made himself two mugs of strong coffee, pouring a lot of milk into one to cool it down so he could drink it straight away. He picked up two black garbage bags and went back to the bathroom. He was reluctant to throw away a perfectly good pair of Hush Puppies, but he knew he had no choice. Even a good cleaning wouldn’t remove the gunshot residue trapped in the sole or lace holes, and even the tiniest speck of blood would tie him to the killings. He put them in one of the bags and put his raincoat in another. Dry cleaning would get rid of any gunshot residue, but he could also leave the coat at the dry cleaner’s for several weeks, out of harm’s way.

He carried the rest of the clothes through to the kitchen and put them in the washing machine on the longest and hottest cycle, then drank his second mug of coffee.

He took a bottle of bleach from the cupboard under the sink and went back in the bathroom. He turned on the bath taps and poured in a good slug of bleach. When the tub was half full he sat in the water and washed himself carefully and methodically, then he used a plastic nailbrush to clean under his nails. When he’d finished he turned off the taps and pulled the plug, then stood up and rinsed himself under the shower. He shampooed his hair twice and then used conditioner and then rinsed himself a final time before stepping out of the bath and putting on a bathrobe.

His head was starting to clear and he made himself another cup of black coffee and took it through to his sitting room. He switched on the television, dropped down on the sofa and swung his feet up on to the coffee table. He now had a throbbing headache. He remembered he had a bottle of paracetamol in his bathroom cabinet so he went to get it and washed down two tablets with his coffee.

There was a football match on Sky TV but it was nothing more than wallpaper to Nightingale. He stared at the screen as he went through everything that had happened. No one had seen him going into the flat with Caitlin. No one had seen him leave. If the police had been called they would be inside the flat now. The scene-setting he’d done might fool them for a while, but the angle of the cut in Caitlin’s neck was a worry. And there was no good reason why a young Goth girl would be carrying a Glock. If Nightingale was really lucky then the cops would assume Receding Hair and Crew Cut were the Goth killers and they had taken Caitlin to the flat to kill her. But if he was that lucky, he ought to go out and buy a couple of lottery tickets.

If the cops did start to look for someone else, the Glock would hopefully be a dead end. T-Bone had been positive the gun was untraceable. Nightingale was sure he’d left no trace of himself in the flat. And when he’d finished cleaning his clothes and disposing of his shoes, there’d be no trace evidence linking him to the killings.

46

N
ightingale opened his eyes and groaned. It took him a few seconds before he realised where he was – lying on his sofa. He sat up and ran his hands through his hair. His head was aching, either from the drug that Caitlin had slipped him or from the bang on his head. He staggered over to his kitchen and drank from the cold tap, then pulled a bottle of malt whisky from a cupboard and poured himself a decent measure. He took the glass and the bottle back to the sofa. The television was on but he had muted the sound.

On the wall was a photograph of him and Robbie Hoyle on the day they’d graduated from Hendon Police College, both looking proud in the spotless new uniforms. Nightingale forced a smile and raised his glass. ‘I’m going to miss you, Robbie,’ he said. He drank. He could still taste garlic at the back of his mouth.

Next to the graduation photograph was a framed photograph of Nightingale with his father and uncle in front of the Old Trafford stadium. Nightingale’s father – his adoptive father – had been a lifelong Manchester United fan, and so was his brother, Nightingale’s uncle Tommy. He stared at the photograph, remembering the day that it had been taken. His father was long dead, killed in a car crash with Nightingale’s adoptive mother. It had been an accident, that was what the coroner had said, anyway. The man driving the petrol tanker that had crushed the Nightingales’ car swore that he hadn’t seen the red traffic lights and hadn’t seen their car. He hadn’t been drinking and he tested negative for drugs and his tachometer showed that he’d only been driving for four hours before the accident. William and Irene had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He raised his glass to the photograph of his uncle Tommy. ‘At least you’re still around,’ he said. He drank some whisky and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. As soon as the words had left the mouth he felt a sudden chill and his stomach lurched as he remembered what Tony Barnett has said, shortly before T-Bone had shot him. ‘We’ve got a list, Nightingale. A list of your family, your friends, and everyone you care about. Everyone on that list is as good as dead.’

It had been two months since he had last spoken to his uncle and to his aunty Linda. He looked at his watch. It was three o’clock in the morning and while his aunt and uncle were usually in bed by ten they wouldn’t be up and about for a couple of hours. He knew he should wait until the morning but the feeling of dread was growing by the minute. He reached for the phone and called their landline. The phone rang out, unanswered. He redialled and he let it ring longer this time, but still nobody answered. His aunt and uncle didn’t have an answer machine and while they both had mobile phones they only had them in case of emergencies and rarely used them. He tried anyway. Both mobiles went straight through to the answering services but Nightingale didn’t bother leaving a message.

For a moment he considered getting into his car and driving straight up to Manchester but he figured that the whisky and the drug that Caitlin had given him didn’t make that a practical proposition so he drank two more glasses of whisky before falling into a dreamless sleep on the sofa, fully dressed.

47

N
ightingale left his flat at eight o’clock in the morning after he’d showered, shaved and changed into clean jeans and a denim shirt. He phoned his uncle before he showered, and after, and again one last time before he left the flat. The calls went unanswered. He didn’t make himself a coffee or breakfast, just headed downstairs and around the corner to Queensway, carrying the black bag and his raincoat. He dropped the black bag in a litterbin close to Queensway Tube station and then walked to the dry cleaner’s that he had been using for the past three years. It was run by an Iraqi family who had fled Iraq during the nineties after one of Saddam Hussein’s sons had taken a fancy to their daughter. Mrs Naghdi was behind the counter as usual, and she gave Nightingale a beaming smile when he walked in with his raincoat over his arm. ‘How are you, Mr Nightingale?’ she asked. She was in her fifties, a striking woman with olive skin and large brown eyes and a figure that always made Nightingale think about what a lucky man her husband was.

‘Busy as always, Mrs Naghdi,’ he said. He dropped the coat on the counter. ‘Can you dry-clean this for me?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But first check pockets, Mr Nightingale. Always check pockets.’

Nightingale did as he was told. In one of the pockets he found the piece of paper that the receptionist at the Ink Pit had given him.

‘See,’ said Mrs Naghdi. ‘Always check pockets.’ She took the coat from him and printed out two receipts. She clipped one to his coat and gave him the other. ‘I see you wear this coat long time but you never clean before,’ she said.

‘When will it be ready, Mrs Naghdi?’ He slipped the piece of paper into his trouser pocket.

‘Thursday evening.’ She handed him the receipt. ‘It says so on receipt.’

‘And if I should lose the receipt, would it be a problem?’

‘You never lose your receipt, Mr Nightingale. I know you how many years?’

‘More than I can remember,’ laughed Nightingale. ‘But if lose my receipt, I can still get my coat?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I always remember you and your coat. No receipt, no problem.’

‘You’re a sweetheart, Mrs Naghdi,’ said Nightingale. He left the shop and as he walked he screwed up the receipt and tossed it into a litterbin. He bought himself a coffee from Costa Coffee and then headed into a mobile phone shop. He bought a cheap Samsung phone and a pay-as-you-go SIM card with ten pounds’ credit. The salesman set the phone up for him and Nightingale called T-Bone as he walked along Queensway. The call went straight through to voicemail, which meant he’d either turned his phone off or was making a call. ‘T-Bone, this is Bird-man. I need another thing from you, same as last time. Soon as you can. This number is okay.’ He ended the call and slipped the phone back into his jacket pocket and then went off in search of a shoe shop that would sell him a new pair of Hush Puppies.