Midnight: The Second Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller (24 page)

53

N
ightingale drove his MGB up to a set of wrought-iron gates set into a ten-foot-high brick wall. It was a few minutes after eight o’clock in the morning and the sun had only just decided to put in an appearance.

‘Is this it?’ asked Morris. Nightingale nodded. ‘I have to say, Jack, that when I said I’d do anything for you I didn’t mean breaking and entering. And I didn’t expect you to have me up at sparrow’s fart.’

‘I’m pretty sure the house is empty,’ said Nightingale.

‘Yeah, well, it’s still breaking and entering.’

‘You’re as bad as my assistant. Eddie, the guy who lived there is dead. And even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have gone running to the cops.’

‘Who was he?’

‘A rich nutter,’ said Nightingale.

‘How did he die?’

‘Why does that matter?’

‘I just want to know what I’m getting into,’ said Morris, patting the sports bag on his lap. ‘You sure about this?’

‘I’m sure the guy’s dead. And I’m pretty sure that without him to pay the bills his security team will have moved out.’

Morris stiffened. ‘You didn’t say anything about a security team.’

‘It’s not a problem,’ said Nightingale. He climbed out of the MGB. ‘He was a bit paranoid, that’s all. Anyway, he’s dead. I just need you to get me into the house.’

Morris got out of the car and stretched. ‘Not much room in these MGBs, is there?’

‘It’s a classic,’ said Nightingale, patting the roof.

‘It’s a bloody matchbox, that’s what it is.’ He gestured at the driveway. ‘You sure there’s no one in there?’

Nightingale walked over to the high black-metal gates. He rattled them. They were locked. He went over to the intercom set into the wall and pressed the buzzer. There was no answer so he pressed it again, this time for almost a minute. ‘If there was anyone in there, they’d be telling me to go away, wouldn’t they?’

‘There’s CCTV,’ said Morris, pointing at a camera covering the approach to the gates.

‘There’s lots of CCTV,’ said Nightingale. ‘But that’s not a problem if there’s no one in there to look at the monitors.’

‘You sure his alarm isn’t connected to the local cop shop? Or a monitoring centre?’

‘Like I said, he was paranoid. He wouldn’t want outsiders coming round.’ He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, then blew smoke. ‘Okay, Eddie, I need you to get in there and let me in. Then you can push off and leave me to it.’

‘Push off where?’ said Morris. ‘We’re out in the bloody sticks.’

‘Then you can wait here and I’ll drive you back to civilisation,’ he said.

Morris looked at the gates, then along the wall. ‘How am I supposed to get over that?’

Nightingale blew a smoke ring that was quickly whipped away by the wind. ‘Bloody hell, Eddie, you’re the housebreaker,’ he said. ‘Allegedly.’

‘I don’t fancy the gates,’ said Morris. ‘Give me a leg up over the wall. But away from the CCTV. I hate those things.’

54

N
ightingale smoked two cigarettes after he had helped Morris over the wall. He was thinking about lighting a third when his mobile phone rang. It was Morris. ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve done a runner, Eddie,’ said Nightingale.

‘Press the buzzer again,’ said Morris.

Nightingale went over to the gate and pressed the button.

‘Who is it?’ said Morris over the intercom.

‘Don’t screw around, Eddie,’ said Nightingale.

There was a buzzing sound from the gates and then a loud click and they opened. Nightingale got back into the MGB and drove along the curving driveway towards a three-storey modernist cube of glass and concrete. He parked in front of the flight of white marble steps that led up to a gleaming white double-height door.

Morris opened the door and bowed to Nightingale. ‘Welcome, m’lord,’ he said. ‘Would m’lord care for tea in the conservatory?’

‘Any problems?’ asked Nightingale as he got out of the car.

‘Easy peasy, lemon squeezy,’ said Morris. ‘The alarm’s self-contained but they’d left the manufacturer’s override on it. Most people do.’

‘How did you get in?’

‘Kitchen door,’ said Morris. ‘Did the lock so no one will know we’ve been here.’ He gestured up at a CCTV camera aimed at the front door. ‘The cameras are off.’

‘Thanks, Eddie. Do you want to push off or wait in the car?’

‘I’ll hang around the house,’ said Morris, stepping back into the hallway.

Nightingale jogged up the steps, his raincoat flapping behind him. ‘You’re not thinking about taking anything, are you?’ he said.

‘I just fancy a look,’ said Morris. ‘It’s right out of one of those posh-homes magazines, isn’t it?’

‘It’s one hell of a house,’ agreed Nightingale. ‘But we’re leaving it exactly the way we found it. No helping yourself to a little souvenir.’

He looked around the white-marbled hallway.

Morris pointed at one of two stainless-steel CCTV cameras covering the hall. ‘He really had a thing about cameras, didn’t he?’

‘Like I said, he was paranoid.’

‘Yeah, well, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you. What was he scared of?’

‘Dunno,’ lied Nightingale.

‘Because there’re more of them cameras inside the house than outside. That’s just plain weird.’

‘The guy who lived here was weird,’ agreed Nightingale.

‘How did he die?’

‘Like I said, it doesn’t matter.’

Morris looked up at a glass feature light hanging from the centre of the ceiling. It looked like a waterfall that had been frozen in mid-flow. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Could get a fair few bob for that.’

‘Don’t even think about it, Eddie,’ said Nightingale. He walked across the hallway towards a jet-black door with a glossy white handle. ‘He was through this way.’ He opened the door and walked into a long room that overlooked the gardens at the back of the house. The walls and ceiling were white and the floor was the same white marble as in the hallway, though in the centre of the room a pentagram had been set into the floor with black stone. Within the pentagram there was a hospital bed and a green leather armchair with an oxygen tank next to it.

‘Now that’s just weird,’ said Morris. ‘He was Jewish, was he?’

‘Jewish?’

Morris pointed at the pentagram. ‘Star of David. That’s a Jewish thing. Mate of mine wears one on a chain around his neck.’

‘It’s not a Star of David,’ said Nightingale. ‘If anything, it’s the opposite.’ He unlocked the French windows, which led out onto a stone-flagged patio. A cold wind blew in from the garden, ruffling his hair.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Forget it,’ said Nightingale. He walked out onto the patio and looked across the well-tended lawns. He frowned as he stared at the flagstones, then he took out his cigarettes and lit one. The last time he’d been at the house he’d drawn a pentagram on the flagstones but now there was no trace of it. It was as if he’d never been there.

Morris joined him on the patio. Nightingale pointed at the CCTV camera mounted on the rear wall of the house. ‘I wonder if there’s a recorder at the other end of that?’

‘Bound to be,’ said Morris. ‘They’ll all feed to one central location. It’ll be linked to a recording system.’

‘Think you can find it?’

Morris grinned. ‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’ He went back into the house and Nightingale followed him.

There were six identical black doors leading off the hallway. One led to a kitchen, another opened into a storage room, and a third led to a small library lined with books. There was a circular oak table in the middle of the room, with books stacked on it.

‘Eddie, go and see if you can find where the CCTV feeds go to.’

‘No sooner done than said,’ said Morris. He went back to the hallway as Nightingale rummaged through the books.

The diary he was looking for was bound in red leather, the colour of congealed blood. It wasn’t on the table but after ten minutes of working his way along the bookshelves he found it wedged between a book on exorcism and another on mythological creatures. He pulled it out and flicked through the yellowing pages, which were covered in handwritten reverse-Latin script with scribbled illustrations.

‘Jack!’

Nightingale tucked the book under his arm. ‘What?’

‘Found it!’ shouted Morris. ‘Upstairs!’

55

M
orris had found the security room on the top floor, at the end of a corridor off which there were half a dozen bedrooms. It wasn’t difficult to find as it had the word SECURITY in large capital letters on the door. There was a bank of monitors on one wall and on a table in front of them were a keyboard, three telephones and a MacBook laptop computer. There was a black leather swivel chair pushed close to the table and behind it a stainless-steel bunk bed. To the right was another door leading to a bathroom.

‘You were right – the CCTV system has been switched off,’ said Morris. ‘State-of-the-art system, must have cost thousands.’

‘Yeah, Mitchell wasn’t short of a bob or two,’ said Nightingale. He sat down in the swivel chair and put the diary on the table. ‘Can you show me how it works?’

‘What is it you want?’ asked Morris, leaning over him and switching on the laptop.

‘I want to see what was recorded on November the twenty-seventh.’

‘Shouldn’t be difficult,’ said Morris. He flicked on a switch and the monitors flickered into life. Views of the interior and exterior of the house filled the monitors. ‘That’s the live feed.’

The centre monitor was larger than the rest and it was the main computer screen. By moving the cursor across a panel Morris could change the camera input to any of the monitors, and show up to sixteen inputs on any one screen. He quickly filled all four of the surveillance monitors, which meant that he had the views from sixty-four cameras and almost all were inside the house. One of the screens showed the back of the chair and the monitors.

Nightingale twisted around in his seat. He couldn’t see a CCTV camera but there was a stainless-steel light fitting on the wall. ‘Sneaky,’ he said.

Morris’s fingers played across the keyboard and a menu appeared on the main monitor. ‘Okay, there we go,’ he said. He pointed at the monitor. ‘There’re the dates; you scroll to the one you want and click on it.’ He moved the cursor to 27 November and a second menu filled the screen. ‘Those are all the feeds, by number, and the times. You choose a feed and then click on the time. It’s all digital so it should be quick. What part of the house are you interested in?’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Nightingale. ‘You wait in the car.’

Morris picked up the diary and flicked through it. ‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It’s mirror writing,’ said Nightingale. ‘You have to hold it in front of a mirror to read it.’

‘Why would anyone bother to write like that?’

‘I told you, he was a nutter. No offence, Eddie, but will you piss off and leave me to it?’

Morris put down the diary and headed for the door.

‘And don’t think about pinching anything,’ warned Nightingale. ‘I’m going to pat you down before we leave.’

‘I hear you,’ said Morris.

‘Yeah, well, hear and obey,’ said Nightingale.

As Morris left the room, Nightingale tapped on the keyboard and scrolled down to 26 November. He clicked on the feed for the camera covering the patio. A view of the flagstones filled the main screen. According to the digital timer running along the bottom of the screen it was the view at midday. He pecked at the keyboard and the timecode clicked to 23.59.50 on 26 November. Nightingale saw himself sitting in the centre of a pentagram, with candles burning at the five points of the star within the circle. The wind was ruffling his hair and he was holding a book in his lap. Nightingale smiled to himself. At least he hadn’t imagined the pentagram. He looked around for some way of boosting the volume but realised that the cameras probably didn’t have microphones attached, so there were pictures but no sound. Not that it mattered – he knew exactly what had been said.

The recorded Nightingale stopped reading, closed the book and stared out over the lawn.

Nightingale leaned back in his chair, waiting for Proserpine and her dog to appear on screen. The timecode clicked over to 00.00.00 and the date from 26 November to 27 November. Nightingale frowned. Proserpine had appeared at exactly midnight. So where was she?

The recorded Nightingale got to his feet and opened the book. He began reading aloud from it. Nightingale leaned forward, peering at the screen. Where was Proserpine? Why wasn’t she there? She had appeared at midnight and Nightingale had started to read from the book, so why wasn’t she on the screen?

Nightingale stared at the digits of the timecode: 00.00.45. Another second clicked by. And another.

‘This isn’t what happened,’ Nightingale muttered to himself. ‘She was there. I know she was there.’

Nightingale continued to stare at the recording. Nothing was happening. The timer at the bottom was ticking off the seconds but the Nightingale on screen just stood there, alone. There was no Proserpine. No dog. And no Mitchell being sent to burn in Hell.