Midnight: The Second Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller (16 page)

34

T
he barista was a Ukrainian teenager with bad acne and he had trouble understanding the girl so it was a full ten minutes after entering the coffee shop that Nightingale finally had his two coffees. He took them to the table where Colin Duggan was whispering into his mobile phone. Duggan pocketed the phone as Nightingale put the coffee mugs on the table and sat down.

‘One low-fat latte,’ said Nightingale. ‘Are you off pubs, then? In the old days it would have been a pint of best in the Rose and Crown.’

Duggan picked up his coffee and sipped it. He was an inspector, the same rank as Nightingale had been when he left the Metropolitan Police. He was completely bald with elf-like ears and a mischievous smile. He was wearing a beige raincoat over a dark suit and had a Burberry scarf around his neck. ‘I keep out of them these days,’ said Duggan. ‘No point in rubbing my nose in it.’

‘On the wagon?’

Duggan patted his expanding waistline. ‘Diabetes,’ he said. ‘I can keep it under control by watching what I eat and drink but the doctor says that if I don’t get a grip on it now I’ll be on medication for the rest of my life.’

‘Bloody hell, Colin, you’re not even fifty. How can you have diabetes?’

‘Forty-six,’ said Duggan. ‘But it’s nothing to do with age. It’s the booze and the fish suppers. And the cigarettes. I’ve given them up too.’

‘Smoking doesn’t give you diabetes,’ said Nightingale. ‘Zero calories and they reduce stress. If anything, you’d be better off smoking more.’

Duggan grinned and scratched his fleshy neck. ‘Yeah, if it wasn’t for lung cancer they’d be the perfect food.’

‘I’m not sure how true that cancer thing is,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’ve known people who’ve smoked all their lives and never had so much as a cough. And there are non-smokers who’ve never even tried a single cigarette who’ve died of lung cancer.’ He patted his chest. ‘My lungs are fine. I reckon your genes have a lot to do with it. You either get cancer or you don’t; smoking is just one of lots of factors.’

‘So you’ve got good genes, have you?’ chuckled Duggan.

‘Yeah, that’s sort of why I wanted to see you.’

‘I knew there’d be something,’ said Duggan. ‘I haven’t seen you since the Sophie Underwood thing.’

Nightingale nodded. ‘I know. Sorry.’

‘Hell of a thing, that.’

That wasn’t how Nightingale thought of what had happened that cold November morning. It wasn’t a ‘thing’. It was a pivotal moment in his life and Sophie’s death had changed him forever. Duggan had been there and had seen the girl fall to her death. Nightingale had been on the balcony of the flat next door, trying to talk her back inside. ‘Yeah,’ said Nightingale. ‘It was.’

‘What happened to the father, who’d been fiddling with her – he deserved it.’

‘Yeah,’ agreed Nightingale.

‘Seems like a lifetime ago.’

‘It was.’

‘I’m back in CID and you’re a gumshoe.’

Nightingale chuckled. ‘Do they still say that? I thought that went out with Humphrey Bogart and Sam Spade.’

‘Guys I work with call you lot much worse than that,’ said Duggan. ‘The days of cops running checks for you private eyes for the price of a pint are well gone. These days, get caught and you lose your job, your pension, everything.’

Nightingale grimaced. ‘That’s not good news, Colin.’

Duggan raised his coffee in salute. ‘Don’t worry, Jack. You’ve got a lot of friends in the Job, me included. What do you need?’

‘I’m trying to track down my sister and I’ve drawn a blank through all the usual channels,’ said Nightingale.

‘Never knew you had a sister.’

‘Neither did I until recently,’ said Nightingale. ‘Thing is, she’s my half-sister – same father, different mother. And she was adopted on the day she was born. So I don’t know her name or her date of birth.’

‘You’re not making this easy, are you?’ said Duggan.

‘I was hoping you could run a check on the National DNA database.’

Duggan raised his eyebrows. ‘You think she’s in the system?’

‘I know it’s an outside chance but there are five million samples in the database and it’s growing at thirty thousand a month. She might have been arrested for something and had a sample taken.’ Nightingale sighed. ‘I know it’s a long shot, Colin, but I don’t have anything else.’

‘So you want me to run your DNA and see if there’s a sibling match?’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘No need. Our father’s DNA is already in the system. A guy called Ainsley Gosling. He committed suicide last month. Robbie Hoyle checked my DNA against Gosling’s a few weeks ago.’

‘Why did he do that?’ asked Duggan.

‘I’d just been told that Gosling was my biological father. I wanted to make sure that he really was.’

‘What happened to Robbie was a damn shame,’ said Duggan.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Nightingale. ‘It was a bitch.’

‘I couldn’t get to the funeral. I was up in Liverpool interviewing a guy on remand.’ Duggan shook his head. ‘What a waste. Just goes to show, right? Enjoy life while you can because none of us knows how long we’ll be here.’ He sipped his latte. ‘Okay, so all I need to do is run Gosling’s DNA through the database to check for close matches. Shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘On the QT, obviously.’

Duggan grinned. ‘Obviously,’ he said. ‘I’ve a couple of missing-person cases on the books – I’ll bury the search in one of those. Probably take me a day or two.’

‘You’re a star, Colin,’ said Nightingale, clinking his mug against Duggan’s.

‘So what’s the story? I didn’t know you were adopted.’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘Until recently, neither did I.’

‘This sister, she was born after you?’

‘Yeah, two years after. She’ll be thirty-one now.’

‘So he gave up two kids for adoption one after the other. That’s bloody strange, isn’t it?’

‘You don’t know the half of it, Colin.’

Duggan sipped his coffee. ‘What about the birth mother?’

‘Different mothers,’ said Nightingale. ‘Mine’s dead; my sister’s I don’t know about.’

‘Must feel strange, suddenly finding out that you have a sister after thirty-odd years. If you do find her you’re going to have a hell of a lot to talk about.’

Nightingale nodded but didn’t say anything. Duggan was right. Finding his sister would be hard enough, but if he did manage to track her down he was then going to have to explain to her that Ainsley Gosling had sold her soul to a demon from Hell. It wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to.

35

J
enny was at her desk peering at her computer screen when Nightingale walked into the office on Friday morning. She looked at her watch pointedly.

‘I know, it’s ten o’clock, but I had a late one last night,’ said Nightingale. He put a memory card on the desk. ‘Mr Walters was right – his child bride is fooling around behind his back.’

‘Child bride is a bit harsh,’ said Jenny. ‘She’s twenty-three.’

‘Yeah, and he’s fifty-one. That means he was almost thirty when she was born, which in my book makes him more than old enough to be her father.’

‘You are so judgemental,’ sighed Jenny, picking up the memory card.

‘Plus, she’s Latvian or Ukrainian, so he probably bought her off the internet at childbride dot com.’

‘Jack, you’re terrible.’

‘I’m a realist. You’ve seen the guy. Overweight, face like the back of a bus, IQ in single figures. She’s less than half his age and fit as a butcher’s dog. What did he think was going to happen?’ He looked over her shoulder. There was a Facebook page on her screen. ‘Busy, I see,’ he said.

‘I’ve been posting on the sites that Connie Miller visited. My name is Bronwyn and I’m depressed because I don’t have any friends and I hate my job.’

‘Bless,’ said Nightingale.

‘You’d be surprised at how many depressed people there are out there.’

‘The phrase “get a life” comes to mind. Of course people are going to be depressed if they sit around on their computer every day.’

‘I’ve come across the guy that Connie was emailing but he hasn’t reacted to any of my postings yet.’

‘He’s probably just another sad bastard thinking about topping himself,’ he said. He nodded at the memory card in her hand. ‘Let’s have a look at what I’ve got. At least it might help pay the bills.’

Jenny slotted the card into the reader attached to her computer.

‘The guy she’s with is Roger Pennington. Owns a car dealership in south London and a very nice house in Clapham.’

‘Married?’

‘Footloose and fancy-free and, if I know anything about Latvian mail-order brides, she’ll be divorcing Mr Walters and shacking up with Mr Car Dealership quicker than you can say “serves you right”. Make sure you send the bill before she takes him for everything he’s got.’

‘How did you get so cynical?’ asked Jenny. Her fingers played over the keyboard and she called up the pictures and videos that had been stored on the card.

‘Ten years as a cop and two years doing this,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s not as if I see people at their best, is it? Anyway, what are you doing over the weekend?’

‘I’m off to the country with Barbara to see Mummy and Daddy,’ she said.

‘Hunting, shooting and fishing?’ He peered at the pictures on the screen.

‘Not at the same time, obviously,’ she said. ‘And it’ll be a bit cold for fishing, anyway. You should come down with me one weekend. They’d love to meet you.’

‘Mutual,’ said Nightingale.

‘I’m serious, Jack. They keep asking about you.’

‘I’d like to meet them, too. I just think that I’d be a bit out of place, that’s all.’

‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘You’d have no problem getting on with Daddy He’s a smoker, too. And he collects classic cars.’

‘How rich is your dad, exactly?’

She grinned. ‘Very.’

‘And his house, it’s bigger than Gosling Manor, right?’

‘Size isn’t everything.’

‘How many bedrooms has it got?’

‘I don’t think we’ve ever counted,’ she laughed. ‘Are you telling me you won’t visit because their house is bigger than yours?’

‘I’m joking,’ he said, holding up his hands in surrender. ‘I’d love a weekend in the country. I’m not sure about the shooting bit, though.’

‘We’re slap bang in the middle of the pheasant season. It’s a great day out – you really should try it.’

‘The shooting, I’m fine with; it’s the killing birds bit that I’m not happy about.’

‘Daddy has a clay-pigeon shoot as well. You don’t have a thing about clay discs, do you?’

‘I guess not.’

‘Daddy does have a rule that you have to eat anything you shoot and you might find them a bit chewy.’ She laughed at the look of surprise on his face, then noticed the dirt on his hands. ‘What have you been doing?’ she asked. ‘Your hands are filthy.’

Nightingale looked at his palms. They were streaked with ash. ‘Had a problem with the car,’ he lied. He pointed at the screen. ‘Can you print out the stills and copy the video onto a DVD?’ His mobile phone rang in the pocket of his raincoat and he went to retrieve it.

It was Colin Duggan. ‘Jack, how are they hanging?’ asked the policeman.

‘All good, Colin,’ said Nightingale.

‘I’ve got good news and bad news,’ said Duggan. ‘The good news is that I got a hit on the DNA. A definite sibling. Same father as you but a different mother. She’s a thirty-one-year-old woman so the dates are in line with what you were looking for.’

‘That’s brilliant, Colin.’

‘Yeah, but don’t get too excited. Wait until you hear who she is.’

36

N
ightingale ended the call, went through to his office and sat down. He lit a cigarette and swung his feet up onto the desk.

Jenny got up and followed him. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

Nightingale blew a smoke ring up at the ceiling. ‘I know who my sister is. And I know where she is.’

‘Jack, that’s brilliant. Are you going to see her?’

Nightingale looked pained. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘There’s a problem?’

Nightingale nodded. ‘Yeah, there’s a problem. A big one.’

‘Come on, don’t keep me in suspenders.’ She grinned. ‘How bad can it be?’

‘Her name’s Robyn. Robyn Reynolds.’

Jenny frowned. ‘Where have I heard that name before?’

‘Splashed across the tabloids and the evening news,’ said Nightingale. ‘She’s the serial killer they caught two years ago.’

Jenny put her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. ‘No,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘She killed five children, didn’t she?’

‘Butchered them, Colin said. She’s in Rampton now. The loony bin.’

‘Oh Jack . . .’ groaned Jenny. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘You and me both, kid.’ He pulled on his cigarette and held the smoke deep in his lungs before letting it out slowly.

‘There’s no doubt, is there?’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘It’s a perfect parental match,’ he said.

‘Is it worth comparing her DNA to yours, to make sure?’

‘There’s no point, not with us having different mothers.’ He sighed. ‘There’s no doubt, Jenny. My sister’s a convicted serial killer.’ He forced a smile. ‘At least we know where she is. And that she won’t be going anywhere for a while.’ He flicked ash into the ashtray. ‘It’s not what I expected, that’s for sure.’

‘I’ll see what there is on the internet,’ she said, heading back to her desk.

Nightingale leaned back in his chair and blew smoke rings up at the ceiling. He remembered the Robyn Reynolds case, and the killings she was responsible for. The murders had been front-page news during Nightingale’s final three months as a police officer, and Reynolds had been caught shortly after he’d left the Met.

He finished his cigarette and stubbed out the butt in his ashtray. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out the bottle of brandy he kept there for his clients, the ones that needed a stiff drink to deal with bad news. He looked around for a glass but couldn’t see one close by. There was a mug by his feet but it had stale coffee in it. He groaned and leaned back in his chair.

Jenny returned with a handful of printed sheets. ‘It’s a bit early for brandy, isn’t it?’

‘I feel like a drink.’

‘I’ll make you a coffee.’

‘An alcoholic drink,’ he said.

She gave him the sheets and took the bottle from him. ‘I’ll make you an Irish coffee.’

‘It’s whiskey in an Irish coffee,’ he said. ‘Irish whiskey, to be precise. If you use brandy, it’s a Parisienne coffee.’

‘And if I spit in it, that’ll make it an assistant’s revenge,’ she said, heading over to the coffee-maker. ‘Just be grateful for what you get.’

‘You wouldn’t spit in my coffee,’ he said.

‘Wouldn’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t,’ she said, pouring coffee into a mug.

Nightingale flicked through the sheets he was holding. ‘She has her own Wikipedia page?’

‘Yeah, but there’s not much on it,’ she said. She looked over her shoulder. ‘Notice the date of birth?’

Nightingale looked at the first sheet. ‘November the twenty-seventh. We’ve got the same birthday.’

‘That can’t be a coincidence,’ said Jenny.

‘How does Gosling manage to have two kids born on the same day, two years apart?’

‘It’s not difficult,’ said Jenny. ‘He can time the conception and then do a Caesarean if necessary.’

‘That’s incredibly controlling,’ said Nightingale.

‘Come on, Jack. He produces kids for no other reason than to sell their souls. Gosling is in total control of everything he does so why would you be surprised that he’d time the births?’ She brought over his mug of coffee. ‘Maybe there’s something significant about November the twenty-seventh.’

‘Jimi Hendrix was born on November the twenty-seventh. And Ernie Wise. And Emperor Xiaozong of China.’ He grinned. ‘In 1127, if you were going to ask.’

‘I wasn’t,’ said Jenny.

‘It could just be a coincidence,’ said Nightingale. ‘Plus we were both adopted but our adoptive parents are shown as our biological parents, so the date of birth could be suspect anyway.’ He shrugged. ‘Actually, it might be an idea to get a copy of her birth certificate just to check.’

‘I’ll get one from the General Register Office,’ said Jenny.

‘There’re no pictures of her,’ said Nightingale, flicking through the sheets.

‘She was never photographed,’ said Jenny.

‘How can that be? The press always get pictures.’

‘I Googled her and there’re no pictures anywhere. There’s not much detail about what she did, either.’

‘She killed five kids. How can there be no details?’

‘She pleaded guilty so not much was read out in court. The tabloids went to town, obviously, making her out to be a cross between Myra Hindley and Jack the Ripper, but they’re low on details. There were no interviews with her parents, she didn’t seem to have any friends, and the police didn’t comment.’ She nodded at the sheets. ‘The newspapers spoke to the detective in charge but he wouldn’t say anything other than that he was happy the case had a satisfactory conclusion.’

Nightingale sipped his coffee and frowned. ‘There’s not much brandy in this.’

‘It’s half past ten in the morning, Jack.’

‘Coffee and brandy and cigarettes – the breakfast of champions.’

‘You said that about muffins and croissants.’

Nightingale raised his mug in salute. ‘I’m flexible,’ he said.

‘You’re upset, aren’t you?’

‘That my sister’s a serial killer? What do you think?’

‘I think you should go and see her.’

Nightingale nodded. ‘You’re probably right.’