Nightshade

82

Nightingale saw Robbie walk into the pub and ordered his lager before turning to shake his hand. ‘This is turning into a right can of worms, you know?’ asked Robbie.

‘I’m fine thanks, all good,’ said Nightingale. ‘Whatever happened to the social niceties?’

‘You want small talk or do you want to talk about what’s going on?’

‘I don’t know what’s going on, that’s why I called you.’

The lager arrived and Nightingale paid the barman. He gestured at a table by the fireplace. ‘Bit quieter over there,’ he said.

Robbie took off his overcoat and draped it over the back of a chair before sitting down. Nightingale sat opposite him and sipped his Corona. ‘You should drink that in a glass,’ said Robbie.

‘Tastes better out of the bottle.’

‘Rat piss,’ said Robbie.

‘Nah, I’m serious.’

‘I mean rat piss. Rats run across the crates and pee on the bottles. Mate of mine runs a pub and he says never drink from a bottle, always use a glass.’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘Maybe that’s what makes it taste so good.’

Robbie laughed and shook his head. ‘You’re mad,’ he said.

‘Yeah, they do say.’ He put down his bottle. ‘So you’ve got something for me, yeah?’

‘You wanted to know if anyone connected with Bella Harper had died recently. Apart from the nurse who killed his family?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you want to tell me why?’

‘It’s a case, sort of.’

‘Sort of?’

‘I’m just making some enquiries, Robbie.’ He took a drink from his bottle. ‘Have you found something?’

Robbie nodded. ‘I did, yeah. A suicide. Freelance journalist killed himself in Clapham.’

‘What’s the Bella Harper connection?’

‘He talked to her about three hours before he died.’ He saw the look of astonishment on Nightingale’s face and raised his glass. ‘That good enough for you?’

‘Are you serious?’

‘As cancer, mate. He went into a corner shop, bought a bottle of drain cleaner and drank the lot. How do you do that? How do you drink a bottle of it? It’s as corrosive as hell.’

‘I heard of a guy who killed himself by drinking a bottle of furniture polish.’

‘A lovely finish?’

Nightingale grinned. ‘It’s an old joke. So what’s the story?’

Robbie leaned closer as if he was worried about being overheard. ‘Guy’s name was Jeremy Barker. He was a freelance reporter but he wasn’t averse to taking photographs of celebrities behaving badly. He sold titbits to the tabloids and the overseas press. Living hand to mouth, pretty much. His death was suicide, no question of that, but in his jacket was a digital camera and a voice recorder. There were two photographs of Bella Harper on the camera.’

‘Shit. How did he get to her?’

‘Did I say he was wearing a white coat and carrying a stethoscope? Bastard pretended to be a doctor and walked right in. The Sussex cops have checked the hospital’s CCTV and there’s footage of him going in and out.’

‘And the digital recorder?’

Robbie nodded. ‘I thought you’d pick up on that,’ he said. He took an iPhone from his pocket. ‘I couldn’t take the recorder but they were okay with me making a copy. He was only with her a few minutes.’ Robbie tapped on the screen of his phone, then held it out. Nightingale took it and held it to his ear. He frowned as he listened. The end of the conversation was impossible to hear. He switched it off and gave it back to Robbie.

‘So she whispered to him? Something about Jesus?’

‘The whole conversation is weird, Jack. How did she know he was a reporter? How did she know his name?’

‘Had she met him before?’

‘Doesn’t sound like that. The thing is, there’s no doubt that it’s suicide. The shopkeeper saw him drink the drain cleaner. So it’s not as if it’s a murder investigation. The detective who caught the case listened to the recorder thinking it might be a verbal suicide note, but then realised it was Bella. So he’s passed it on to the detectives on that case. But they’re not really interested because Barker wasn’t involved in the abduction.’

‘Never wrote about it?’

Robbie shook his head and put the phone back in his pocket. ‘Nope. Not a word. Looks like he was after an exclusive, he’d be able to sell the story and pictures for a lot of cash, maybe not in the UK but the foreign papers would have bitten his arm off.’

‘Like you said, the big question is how did she know who he was. He was dressed like a doctor, right?’

‘I haven’t seen the CCTV footage but I spoke to the detective who did and yes, you can see him walking through the hospital in his white coat with his stethoscope around his neck. Looked like any other doctor and no one paid him any attention.’

‘But she knew he was a reporter.’

‘And she knew his name, Jack.’

‘Did he have a badge on? With his name on it?’

Robbie shook his head. ‘I asked that. No.’

Nightingale sat back in his chair and swirled his lager around in the bottle. ‘So somehow she knew his name and that he was lying about being a doctor, and then she wants to whisper something about Jesus to him?’

‘Do you have any idea what’s going on here, Jack?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘I’m as bemused as you are.’

‘I’m not bemused, I’m fucking gob-smacked. Who the hell drinks drain cleaner? And why? He was short of cash and owed a few grand on his credit cards but who doesn’t these days?’

‘Woman trouble?’

‘He was gay, and gays don’t tend to top themselves over a love affair gone wrong.’

‘Do the cops have a theory?’

‘To be honest, mate, it’s a suicide plain and simple. They’re not going to bust a gut trying to find out why.’

‘Case closed?’

‘It’s not even a case. The Bella Harper thing made them prick up their ears but that’s all.’ Robbie sipped his lager. ‘You heard about the headmistress, right?’

‘Bella’s headmistress?’

‘Yeah. She hanged herself. Her bloody head came right off, Jack. She tied a rope around her neck and jumped off the school building. You won’t have heard about the dentist yet, though. The cops are keeping that under wraps until all the relatives have been informed.’

‘What happened to the dentist? This is Bella’s dentist, right?’

Robbie nodded. ‘Guy called Malcolm Walton. Goes home and stabs his wife to death. Sits down and finishes his dinner. When his two teenage kids come home he butchers them. Then he goes into the kitchen and starts smashing wine glasses. Half a dozen of them. Uses a rolling pin to crush the glass and then swallows it. All of it. Not a nice way to die, Jack.’

Nightingale stared at his friend in horror.

‘So I’m guessing this isn’t a series of coincidences,’ said Robbie. ‘You ask me to see if anyone close to Bella Harper has died in strange circumstances and I find them piling up like a serial killer’s convention. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’

‘You won’t believe me, Robbie.’

‘Try me.’

Nightingale sat back in his seat, ran his hands through his hair and groaned. ‘If I tell you, you’ll think I’m crazy.’

‘That ship sailed some time ago. Who is your client?’

‘There’s no client.’

‘Pro bono? You’re helping someone out for free?’

‘Sort of.’ He picked up his Corona again. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ve been told. That doesn’t mean I believe it, okay?’

‘Okay.’

Nightingale groaned again. ‘This is going to sound stupid, I know.’ He took a deep breath. ‘A friend of mine, someone I’ve known for a while, someone I trust, told me that Bella Harper has been possessed.’

‘Possessed? By what? A ghost? A devil?’

‘By something. Something bad. And this friend said that whatever it is wants to do … Bad things.’

‘Bad things?’

‘She wasn’t specific. In fact she wasn’t specific about much, just that something had possessed Bella. I wanted to see if she was right or not.’

‘The girl’s with her parents, Jack. If there was something wrong, they’d have seen it.’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

‘I don’t believe in ghosts and that nonsense but surely, if there was a demon or something there’d be signs.’

‘I know as much about possession as you do. I was just asking around to see if it was possible.’

‘Several people who came into contact with her have killed themselves, that’s true enough. But how does a nine-year-old girl come to be responsible for that?’

Nightingale shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. The nurse was definitely murder-suicide.’

‘You spoke to the Sussex cops?’

‘I did a bit of detecting on my own.’

‘Bloody hell, Jack, be careful. They throw away the key for impersonating a cop these days.’

‘I played it by the book, more or less,’ said Nightingale. ‘I went to see the neighbour. She told me that the nurse suffocated his family and then slashed his wrists. But before that he was a loving father and husband.’

‘People snap. Happens all the time. And most murders are domestic, that’s a fact of life.’

Nightingale nodded. ‘I know. But something must have kicked him off. Same with this guy Barker. You don’t just one evening decide to drink drain fluid.’

‘And you’re suggesting that Bella Harper was involved.’ He shook his head. ‘Both times she was tucked up in her hospital bed when it happened.’

‘I get that,’ said Nightingale.

‘So what’s your friend claiming, that a little girl somehow forced them to kill themselves?’

‘Maybe that’s what the whispering was about. You can’t hear what she says at the end.’

Robbie’s eyes widened and he put down his lager. ‘What, you’re saying she hypnotised him? A nine-year-old girl hypnotised Barker to go away and drink drain cleaner?’

‘She whispered something to him. About Jesus. So what the hell was that about?’

Robbie threw up his hands. ‘Mate, what could she possibly have said that would have led him to kill himself two hours later? She’s a kid.’

‘I said you’d think I was crazy.’

‘If you’re actually considering this then yeah, you are out of your mind.’ He leaned forward again. ‘Look, people snap and kill themselves. Sometimes they take out their anger on someone else before they do it. Shit happens. You were in the job, you know that.’

‘So what’s the connection with the girl?’

‘Maybe there is no connection,’ said Robbie. ‘Maybe it’s a coincidence. A nasty little coincidence.’

‘I hope so.’

They both drank in silence for a while.

‘It’s not a coincidence, is it?’ said Robbie eventually.

‘I don’t think so, no.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah. And some.’

‘We can’t tell anyone, can we?’ said Robbie. ‘No one’s going to believe us. And it would pretty much kill my career dead.’

‘Even if they did believe it, and that would be one hell of an if, what could they do? Arrest a nine-year-old-girl? And charge her with what?’

‘You know about this spooky stuff? Can’t a priest do an exorcism or something?’

‘I’m told not. Whatever is inside her isn’t a spirit as such. It’ll take more than a few Hail Marys and some Holy Water.’

‘Like what?’

Nightingale picked up his Corona and drank as his mind raced. He didn’t want to lie to his friend, but there were some things better not said. Killing a child was definitely high up on that list, even if the child was already dead. He put down his bottle. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But before we get to the stage of doing something we need to be one hundred per cent sure.’

‘What are you thinking?’

‘If there are two, there could be more. If there are more …’

‘Then we’ll know for sure. But that doesn’t take us any further forward, does it? Even if we have absolute proof that a nine-year-old girl can make grown men kill themselves, what do we do?’

Nightingale nodded but didn’t say anything. Robbie wouldn’t have to do anything. It would be down to Nightingale. Mrs Steadman had made it painfully clear what he was supposed to do – thrust knives into the eyes and heart of Bella Harper.

‘Is this connected to what’s going on up in Berwick?’ asked Robbie.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What about Marcus Fairchild?’

Nightingale shook his head.

‘Your life is bloody complicated, Jack.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Nightingale. ‘I need a cigarette.’

They went outside to the terrace overlooking Kensington Gardens and sat near a propane heater. ‘You know the history of this place?’ Nightingale asked Robbie.

Robbie shook his head.

‘It’s been around for ever,’ said Nightingale, lighting a cigarette. ‘The sixteen hundreds anyway. They used to bring prisoners here for a drink before taking them over to Marble Arch to the hanging tree.’

‘Nice,’ said Robbie.

‘That was back in the day when they hanged you for stealing a loaf of bread or looking at the squire wrong.’ He shrugged. ‘The good old days.’ He took another long pull at his cigarette. ‘Did you turn up anything about Fairchild?’

‘I looked, mate. But there’s nothing known, certainly nothing along the lines of what you were talking about.’

‘Okay.’

‘I did see if he’d worked on any paedophile cases, like you said, but couldn’t find any cases at all, not for the prosecution or the defence. He specialises in company law – I doubt that he would have been involved in anything involving paedophiles.’

‘Yeah, I think he was lying about that.’

‘Jack, are you sure he’s what you say he is?’

‘No question.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

Nightingale smiled ruefully. ‘Best you don’t know,’ he said.