Nightshade

38

Nightingale pushed open the office door and held up the two cups of Costa coffee. ‘For my favourite assistant,’ he said.

Jenny was standing in front of the television. She looked over at him and grinned. ‘My cup runneth over,’ she said. ‘Though I have to point out that I’m your only assistant.’

Nightingale hung up his coat and went over to stand by her. The television was tuned to Sky News and a reporter was talking to camera in front of a suburban house. ‘What’s happening?’

‘They found that little girl. Bella Harper.’

‘Alive?’

‘Yes, thank God.’

‘How many days was it? Four? That’s really unusual. If they’re not found within forty-eight hours …’

‘Well, in this case it worked out for the best. I’m so happy for the parents. They must be so relieved.’ She went back to her desk and muted the sound. ‘So how did it go with the little old lady?’

‘According to Mrs Steadman, that Satanic altar is just window dressing. Either McBride did it with next to no knowledge of what Satanism is about, or someone tried to frame him.’ He sat down opposite her.

‘There’s no doubt that he killed those children,’ said Jenny. ‘None at all.’

‘I meant frame him for the devil-worship thing. How are you getting on with the kids?’

‘All good,’ she said. She stood up and took her coffee over to the whiteboard. ‘And you were right. All the children who were killed were from single-parent families.’

Nightingale joined her. ‘That can’t be a coincidence, can it?’

‘More than half of all marriages end in divorce, but couples with children tend to stay together more than those who don’t. So you’d expect half of the eight to be in single-parent families.’

Nightingale frowned and rubbed his chin. ‘But why would he deliberately set out to kill kids with just one parent?’

‘I don’t know. But I don’t see that it can be a coincidence. Having said that, it still doesn’t explain why he only shot two girls in the first classroom. I haven’t been able to check them all, but I did cross-check some of the pupils with the electoral roll and there must have been half a dozen or more kids from one-parent families in that first room that he didn’t shoot.’

‘Okay, so all the children that he shot were from one-parent families, but there were children from one-parent families that he didn’t shoot?’

‘Exactly. But I’m not sure that helps us come up with a motive.’ She waved at the photographs. ‘Do you notice something else?’

Nightingale studied the photographs. ‘Five girls, three boys. Blonde hair, dark hair, one redhead. Eye colour?’

‘Some have blue eyes, some have brown.’

‘Short hair, long hair. Straight hair, curly.’

‘It’s more what you don’t see,’ said Jenny.

Nightingale shook his head. ‘I don’t get it.’ He stared at the photographs, then threw up his hands. ‘Got it. They’re all Caucasian.’ He turned to look at Jenny. ‘He was targeting white kids? Is that what you think?’

‘I though that might be significant until I checked the school roll. There are very few Asians or Afro-Caribbeans at the school. In fact Berwick is the most ethnically homogeneous district in the country. In the last census, 99.6 per cent of the population recorded themselves as white.’

‘So if it’s not racial, what is it? What am I missing?’

‘At the risk of being judgemental, how about the fact that they’re all good-looking kids?’

‘What?’

‘The girls are pretty, the boys are good-looking, there isn’t a fat, spotty or funny-looking one in the bunch.’

‘You’re joking.’

Jenny shook her head. ‘No, I’m deadly serious. You take any group of kids these days and probably a third are overweight. Another quarter are, shall we say, challenged in the looks department. I know that’s cruel, but it’s a fact of life. Some kids are good-looking, some aren’t. I know that all parents think their kids are perfect, but when you take a step back you know that isn’t true.’ She waved at the whiteboard. ‘These kids are all the sort you see in TV commercials.’

Nightingale ran his hand through his hair. ‘So he was targeting good-looking kids from single-parent families?’

Jenny nodded. ‘You can see where I’m heading with this, right?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Children from single-parent families are more likely to be abused. They’re more vulnerable.’

‘So you think that McBride had been abusing these kids and decided to kill them?’

‘I think that needs looking at, yes.’

‘His brother said he was great with kids.’

‘Yeah, well, just because he didn’t abuse his own nephews doesn’t mean he wasn’t a child molester.’

Nightingale sighed. ‘The brother isn’t going to be happy about this. We prove that his brother wasn’t a devil-worshipper by showing that he was a paedophile.’

‘He wants the truth,’ said Jenny.

‘I’m not sure that he does. He might think he does but how’s he going to react if we tell him that his brother was a paedophile?’ He sipped his coffee as he looked at the photographs on the whiteboard. Jenny was right. They were all good-looking kids. He stared at the photograph of Grace Campbell. Long, curly chestnut hair. A snub nose. Smiling for the camera. Was it possible that she had been abused? She looked happy, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. ‘We don’t know for sure that these children were abused,’ said Nightingale. ‘We’re going to have to be very careful here.’

‘What about the post-mortems?’ asked Jenny. ‘They were all sudden deaths, so by law there has to be a post mortem, right?’

Nightingale nodded. ‘That’s right.’

‘So talk to the coroner. If the kids were being abused, he’d know.’

‘It’ll mean going back to Berwick. I doubt he’s going to say anything over the phone.’

Jenny smiled brightly. ‘I’ll book you a ticket. And there’s something else you might want to do while you’re up there.’

‘I’m all ears.’

‘The lab still have the crucible and the knife. Why don’t I get them to check them for fingerprints and DNA?’

‘DNA’s expensive,’ said Nightingale. ‘Don’t forget that when the two grand has gone we’re not going to be getting to be getting any refreshers.’

‘Just fingerprints, then. We can compare them to McBride’s prints and we’ll know if he set up the altar or not.’

‘You think he’d go to the trouble of setting up a fake black magic altar?’

‘I don’t know. But if it wasn’t him, at least we’d have the prints of whoever did, and that might be a start.’

Nightingale nodded thoughtfully. She was right.

‘You touched them with your bare hands, right?’

‘I wasn’t thinking about prints, I was more concerned about the blood.’

‘Sure, but we’ll need your prints to rule you out. And while you’re up in Berwick you could get something with McBride’s prints. Something that only he could have touched.’

‘Two birds with one stone?’

‘Exactly.’