Lastnight (38 page)

Finally he switched on his mobile phone and placed it on the mantelpiece. Within seconds it would log on to the nearest antenna providing yet more proof that Nightingale was in the house. He took a look at his left wrist and then smiled ruefully as he realised he wasn’t wearing a watch. It didn’t matter. Whatever the time was, it was time to go.

68

N
ightingale opened the boot of the MGB, took two of the cans of petrol out and carried them down into the basement. He switched on his torch and one by one blew out the black candles. When the last one had been extinguished he slopped petrol over the CCTV consoles, then walked over to the stairs, sloshing petrol left and right. He walked up the stairs backwards, spilling the last of the fuel on the staircase, then propped open the secret panel with one of the cans.

He took the cardboard box of books outside and placed them on the steps, then retrieved the remaining two cans of petrol from the car and went back into the house. He emptied one of the cans around the body in the sitting room, then sloshed the contents of the final can around the hallway. The air was thick with fumes and he felt light-headed. He stood at the door and took a box of matches from his pocket. He stepped out, took a final look inside, then lit a match and tossed it into the hallway. The petrol ignited with a loud whoosh as Nightingale picked up the box of books and walked away.

He took a last regretful look at the MGB parked by the mermaid fountain. He was going to miss the car but it had to stay at the house as yet another indication that it was Jack Nightingale’s corpse inside.

He limped away, holding the cardboard box of books to his chest. Behind him windows shattered in the heat and he heard the crackling of wood burning. The flames cast shadows in front of him that writhed like living things. He didn’t look back. It took him almost five minutes to reach the main gate by which time the house was fully ablaze.

There was a black stretch Mercedes limousine parked at the side of the road with its lights off. Nightingale pulled open the rear door and cigar smoke billowed out. ‘How did it go?’ drawled Wainwright from inside.

‘As well as can be expected,’ said Nightingale. He climbed into the back, handed the box to the American, and pulled the door shut.

The chauffeur, a red-haired woman in a grey suit, started the engine.

Wainwright flicked through the books as the car pulled away from the kerb. ‘You’ve done me proud, Jack,’ he said.

‘I’ve put the Boullan book in there too.’

The American grinned. ‘Cool. You never know when a doppelganger might come in useful.’

Nightingale twisted around for one last look at Gosling Manor, now a ball of orange and red from which curled a huge plume of thick black smoke.

‘Best you don’t look back, Jack,’ said Wainwright. ‘From this moment on, Jack Nightingale ceases to exist.’

Nightingale turned around. Wainwright was right. Jack Nightingale was dead. For ever. There was no point in looking back. Though he wasn’t quite sure what he had to look forward to.

69

S
uperintendent Chalmers slotted a piece of chewing gum into his mouth and studied the burned corpse laid out on the stainless-steel table. ‘So what do you think?’ he asked the coroner.

Leslie MacDiarmid shrugged. ‘Definitely dead,’ she growled.

Chalmers sighed. ‘What I need to know,’ said Chalmers patiently, ‘is if this is the body of Jack Nightingale?’

MacDiarmid flicked a sheet of paper over and stared at the sheet under it. ‘No question,’ she said. ‘We fast-tracked the DNA analysis and compared it with the sample you gave us. There’s no doubt.’

‘And cause of death?’

MacDiarmid wrinkled her nose. ‘The fire was the actual cause. There was smoke and fire damage to his lungs so he was alive when the fire started. But he was in no state to get out. Someone had clubbed him over the back of the head with the proverbial blunt instrument.’

‘Any thoughts as to what that might have been?’ asked Chalmers.

‘A hammer, possibly. Something circular and metallic, anyway. Three distinctive blows. Two at the back of the head and one more on the top.’

‘So someone hit him twice and then again on the top of his head as he went down?’

‘I would say so, yes,’ said MacDiarmid.

‘And the fire? The body was found in a burned building and the arson investigator thinks that the fire started in the room where the body was found.’

‘And they found the accelerator, of course?’

‘Petrol, they said.’

MacDiarmid nodded. ‘It was poured over him, no question. Someone wanted to make sure he burned. I’m guessing that they didn’t want anyone to know who he was.’

‘But there’s no doubt?’

‘There’s no mistake with DNA,’ said MacDiarmid. ‘Back in the day when we needed fingerprints and dental records then a good fire might well make identification impossible, but these days you’d have to reduce a body to ash and a petrol-based fire isn’t going to do that. You’d need a crematorium furnace for that.’ She looked over at him and raised her eyebrows. ‘Was he one of yours?’

‘Used to be,’ said Chalmers. ‘He left the force a few years ago. He’s a private detective now.’ He forced a smile and corrected himself. ‘Was a private detective.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said MacDiarmid. ‘Do you have any suspects?’

Chalmers shook his head. ‘Place was burnt to the ground so there’s not much evidence to go on. But we’re working through his client list.’

The doors to the post-mortem room opened and a young man in a blue suit mimed holding a phone to his ear. ‘Call for you, Leslie,’ he said.

MacDiarmid patted Chalmers on the shoulder. ‘I have to take this, it’s about a suicide we had last night.’

As she left, Chalmers stared down at the burned corpse chewing thoughtfully. Eventually he sighed and shook his head, almost sadly. ‘Well, Jack, I always said you’d burn in Hell. Looks like I wasn’t far off the mark.’ He took out his mobile phone and called his number two, an inspector who had being assigned to his unit just three weeks earlier. The inspector answered quickly, he was still at the eager-to-please stage. ‘Simon, we’ve got a murder. That corpse in Gosling Manor was Nightingale and his head had been bashed in before the place was torched. Get me a room sorted and arrange HOLMES support.’ Chalmers was fairly sure the Met’s computerised investigation program had been called the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System for no other reason that it would have echoes of the legendary fictional detective, but there was no doubt that it had simplified the gathering of intelligence. ‘And get on to his secretary, a girl called Jenny McLean. We need his full client list, going back a year. And arrange for her to come in for an interview later this afternoon.’

Chalmers ended the call, put away his phone and walked out of the room. The door to MacDiarmid’s office was open and as he walked by he saw the coroner put down her phone. ‘Are you off, Superintendent?’ she called.

Chalmers nodded. ‘I’ve got a murder enquiry to kick into gear,’ he said.

‘Good luck with that,’ she said.

‘No witnesses, no CCTV footage, and if I know Jack Nightingale we’ll find dozens of possible motives, so I’m going to need some luck, that’s for sure.’

‘Well, at least you knew who the corpse was,’ she said. ‘If you hadn’t given me that DNA sample to cross check with, we’d never have identified him. His DNA wasn’t on any of the databases.’

‘You’d have got a match through his dental records eventually,’ said the superintendent.

The coroner shook her head. ‘We’d have been waiting forever for that,’ she said.

Chalmers frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘By the look of it Mr Nightingale never went near a dentist his whole life. Perfect teeth. Not a single filling.’

70

J
enny McLean stood at the graveside, tears running down her face as she listened to the vicar say whatever it was that vicars said as coffins were lowered into the ground. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, maybe. Jenny’s parents stood either side of her staring sombre-faced at the grave. Jenny was holding a red rose, Nightingale realised. There were two dozen or so people gathered in the churchyard. Superintendent Chalmers was there, and so was Colin Duggan. There were another half-dozen policemen, all guys that Nightingale had worked with, back in the day. Eddie Morris was standing some distance away from the grave, clearly keeping well away from the cops who were there.

Nightingale couldn’t help but notice that there were far fewer people than there had been at Marcus Fairchild’s funeral. He was sitting in the back of the black stretch Mercedes with Joshua Wainwright. The American was smoking one of his huge cigars. He nodded with his chin at Jenny who was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘Who’s the blonde?’

‘My assistant, Jenny McLean.’

‘I’m guessing the relationship was more than professional, judging by the tears.’

‘Not in this life,’ said Nightingale. ‘I just wish there was some way that I could …’

Wainwright silenced Nightingale by pointing a finger at his face. ‘Don’t even think it,’ he said. ‘The moment, the instant, the Order of Nine Angles even suspects that you’re not dead then the killing will start again. Everyone you know, everyone you care about, will die. But more than that, Jack. If they think that Jenny or any of your friends knows where you are they’ll torture them for whatever information they have. You have to stay dead. For ever.’

Nightingale nodded. ‘I know.’

‘For ever, Jack,’ said Wainwright, punctuating his words with jabs of his cigar. ‘There’s no statute of limitations on this. No happy ending. No reunions. No postcards from somewhere sunny. You’re dead to them all.’

‘I get it, Joshua.’

Wainwright nodded. ‘I hope so because I’m one of your friends and I do not want the Order on my back. I can afford the best protection there is but even that …’ He left the sentence unfinished and looked at his watch. ‘Wheels up in thirty minutes,’ he said. ‘We need to go.’

Nightingale took a deep breath and took a last look at Jenny. As he watched, she tossed the red rose into the grave and turned to bury her face in her father’s chest. ‘Okay,’ he said. He looked across at Wainwright. ‘Where are we going, exactly?’

‘Does it matter?’ asked the American.

‘I guess not,’ said Nightingale.

The first Jack Nightingale supernatural thriller

STEPHEN LEATHER

NIGHTFALL

‘You’re going to hell, Jack Nightingale’: They are words that ended his career as a police negotiator. Now Jack’s a struggling private detective – and the chilling words come back to haunt him.

Nightingale’s life is turned upside down the day that he inherits a mansion with a priceless library; it comes from a man who claims to be his father, and it comes with a warning. That Nightingale’s soul was sold at birth and a devil will come to claim it on his thirty-third birthday – just three weeks away.

Jack doesn’t believe in Hell, probably doesn’t believe in Heaven either. But when people close to him start to die horribly, he is led to the inescapable conclusion that real evil may be at work. And that if he doesn’t find a way out he’ll be damned in hell for eternity.

Read an extract from the book
here

Out now in paperback and ebook

The second Jack Nightingale supernatural thriller

STEPHEN LEATHER

MIDNIGHT

Jack Nightingale found it hard enough to save lives when he was a cop. Now he needs to save a soul – his sister’s. But to save her he has to find her and they’ve been separated since birth.

When everyone Jack talks to about his sister dies horribly, he realises that someone, or something, is determined to keep them apart.

If he’s going to save his sister, he’s going to have to do what he does best – negotiate. But any negotiation with the forces of darkness comes at a terrible price. And first Jack must ask himself the question: is every soul worth saving?

Read an extract from the book
here

Out now in paperback and ebook