Nightshade

41

Nightingale went back to his rental car and phoned McBride, but he didn’t pick up and the call went through to his answer service. Nightingale left a brief message saying that he was heading out to the farm, but then he realised he hadn’t eaten all day so he popped into a local café for a coffee and a sandwich. He called again as he drove to the farm, but McBride still wasn’t picking up.

When he arrived at the farm the five-bar gate was padlocked, so he left the car in the road. He climbed over the gate and walked down the dirt track. He made a final unsuccessful attempt to call McBride and then shoved his phone into the pocket of his raincoat.

As the track bent to the right he was able to see the farmyard and realised that McBride’s car was parked there, its nose up against the side of the house. It began to rain as he got closer to the farmhouse, and he turned up the collar of his coat and jogged the last fifty yards. He rang the doorbell but there was no response. He rang again. The rain was getting heavier and he stood closer to the door to avoid the worst of it.

The front door remained resolutely closed. From where he was standing he could see that the barn door was ajar. He jogged over, his Hush Puppies splashing through puddles, and squeezed through the gap. Rain was beating a tattoo on the corrugated iron roof. ‘Mr McBride, are you in here?’ he called.

Water dripped down the back of his neck and he shivered. As he looked to the left his breath caught in his throat. Danny McBride was hanging from the upper level, a thick rope around his neck.

Nightingale took a step back, his eyes open in horror. It didn’t make any sense. McBride wasn’t the type to kill himself. He was a husband and a father and there had been nothing about his behaviour that suggested he was depressed. He was upset about what his brother had done, but that was no reason for him to take his own life.

He’d been hanging there for a while, Nightingale realised. Hours, probably. His trousers were wet and there was a small pool of urine on the floor. The bladder always emptied itself on death. And so did the colon. Nightingale had attended several suicides when he was a police officer and the smell of death was always the same. Urine and faeces. The intestinal gases as they expanded and escaped, and finally rotting flesh. Nightingale shuddered. ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ he muttered under his breath. He took out a cigarette and lit it as he considered his options. He could get back into his car and drive to the airport without telling anyone about the body. Or he could be the dutiful citizen and phone the police. But if he did that he’d have to face Stevenson again and have to explain what he was doing on the farm. And he guessed that Stevenson would relish any excuse to have Nightingale in a cell wearing a paper suit for a day or two.

Nightingale blew smoke up at the roof of the barn. If he drove away without reporting the death and the cops discovered that he’d been in the barn, he’d be in trouble. Not prison trouble, but helping the police with their enquiries trouble. And he’d probably need a lawyer.

But there’d be no evidence that he’d been in the barn and seen the body. There were the phone calls, of course. The call he’d made at Heathrow and the message on McBride’s phone. He could get around that, though, and phone again saying that he wouldn’t be able to meet McBride that afternoon. That might work. But he’d have to make the call well away from the farm.

Then there was his family. They deserved to be told. Somewhere there was a wife carrying on as normal, totally unaware that her husband was dead. And two boys who had to be told that their father was gone for ever.

He looked around the barn. Everything seemed exactly as it had been the last time he had been there. Except for the body, of course. He took a long drag on the cigarette and held the smoke for a good ten seconds before letting it out in a tight plume. He’d made up his mind.