‘Long dead, apparently.’
‘Have you called the police?’
‘Yes, but they’re not really interested. No sign of foul play, no history of abuse or irrational behaviour. Her car’s gone too.’
Nightingale nodded. ‘I’m guessing you spared them the bit about the book and the witchcraft?’
It was Dixon’s turn to nod. ‘Yes. They’d think I was insane. Can you help, Mr Nightingale?’
Nightingale was quiet for a few moments. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘I can make a few enquiries about the book among some people I know, see if I can turn up anything, but there’s no evidence of a crime, and I’m a one-man show, there’s no way I can organise a nationwide search for one missing woman.’
Dixon lowered his head briefly, then looked up again. There were tears in his eyes. ‘No, I suppose not. It was a forlorn hope, I’d seen your website a few weeks ago. She showed it to me actually, we had quite a laugh about it.’
‘Laughed about what?’
‘You know. The whole supernatural detective thing. Sorry, I didn’t mean...I...I suppose I’d better go.’
He got up, and Nightingale stood up too. Nightingale handed him a business card. ‘Look, Professor Dixon, if anything turns up you think I can help with or if your wife comes home and you’d like me to talk to her, give me a call. I’m sure it’ll work out soon.’
‘I hope so, Mr Nightingale,’ said the Professor, heading for the door. ‘I’ve just got an awful feeling that our luck is about to run out.’
Jenny let the Professor out and returned with her coffee and muffin. She sat down opposite him. ‘You’re not even going to try to help him? Couldn’t you see how desperate he was, Jack?’
‘Come on, love,’ he said. ‘What am I meant to do? I can’t scour the whole of London for a missing wife with nothing to go on. The police will take it more seriously if she doesn’t show up in a couple of days, and there are thirty-two thousand officers in the Met, last time I checked.’
If he’d expected that to placate her, he was due to be disappointed. Jenny flared her nostrils and widened her eyes. ‘First of all, don’t call me love, this is the twenty-first century. Second of all, how can you just walk away from this case? He’s distraught, and we’re talking about a woman who might be vulnerable.’
‘She’s a missing person, Jenny. And she has only been gone for one day. Okay, I can check with the police to see if she has been arrested, I can check the hospitals, and I can speak to friends and family. But that’s all. If she was a suspected terrorist then we could get the police to check ports and airports and her phone and bank records, but she isn’t.’
‘You can get her phone checked. You’ve done it before.’
‘That’s getting harder than it used to be,’ said Nightingale. ‘The Data Protection Act means you can go to prison for sharing data, and the days of a mate in Vodafone helping me out in exchange for a drink are pretty much gone.’
‘But what about the other business, the witchcraft thing?’
‘Again, what can I do? All he’s got to go on is a drunken conversation and a book with some names and dates in. Which only he has seen, and which has disappeared. Could mean anything, and it’s no clue to finding her.’
‘But if she really is a witch?’
Nightingale shrugged his shoulders. ‘So what? The last hanging for witchcraft was over four hundred years ago, and it’s not been illegal for sixty years in Britain. Plenty of people call themselves witches, Wiccans, pagans, whatever now. If you can think of anything constructive I could have done, tell me what.’
She sighed. ‘Oh...I don’t know. But you should be doing something.’
‘I am,’ he said. ‘I’m going to drive down to the Travelodge in Hastings, to see if I can get some photos of the errant Mr Rigby with his secretary. That’s the kind of case that pays the bills...and I take it we still have plenty of bills to pay.’
‘You know we have,’ said Jenny. ‘That’s why I think we should at least try to help Professor Dixon. He’s not a pro bono case, he’ll pay real money.’
Nightingale stood up and took out his cigarette and lighter. ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do.’
‘And why were you late? You said you were helping the police.’
‘A woman threw herself under a train. I saw her do it. Chalmers thought I might have some insight into why she did it.’
‘Oh that’s awful.’
‘It was a bit of a shock, but I’m okay now.’
‘I meant for the woman,’ said Jenny. ‘Did she leave a note?’
‘No note, no sign that she was unhappy. Chalmers says there’s a rash of similar suicides.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better be going. I’ll probably go straight home after I’ve checked Mr Rigby out.’ He opened a desk drawer and grabbed a small digital camera.
‘Check the battery,’ said Jenny. ‘You know what happened last time.’
He checked and nodded. ‘Good to go,’ he said.
‘And Jack, please don’t forget about Mrs Dixon. I’ve got a bad feeling about her.’
‘I’m on the case,’ he said.
‘Do you mean that?’
‘Of course.’
‘You’re not just being glib?’
Nightingale sighed. ‘Hand on heart, I’m not sure what I can do. But let me give it some thought. And that book Professor Dixon talked about is a bit of a mystery that I’d quite like to solve.’
CHAPTER 5
Nightingale was done with the Rigby case by nine o’clock. Mr Rigby was a romantic and so took his secretary to a local pizzeria for a pizza and a bottle of chianti before bedding her. Nightingale managed to get a table close by. He couldn’t use his digital camera but managed to get several shots on his phone, including a beautiful one of Mr Rigby taking his date’s hand in his and kissing it. He used the camera to get a shot of the two lovebirds entering the hotel and of the car in the car park. As Mr Rigby had assured his wife of eighteen years that he was attending a sales conference in Bristol, Nightingale figured she would have no problem in divorcing him, if that was what she wanted.
Nightingale had decided against driving to Hastings as there were several trains a day and his MGB had been playing up. The car had an intermittent electrical fault and some days just refused to start. As he walked back to the station he lit a Marlboro. He walked past a church where a priest was sitting on a bench at the entrance. ‘Would you happen to have a spare cigarette?’ asked the priest. He was in his sixties with curly grey hair and red cheeks that suggested a fondness for a good whiskey.
‘Sure,’ said Nightingale. He took out his pack and offered a cigarette to the man. The priest took it and Nightingale lit it for him. ‘Busy day?’ he asked.
‘A wedding and three funerals,’ said the priest. ‘That’s Hastings in a nutshell. You’re not local, are you? I’m usually good with faces.’
‘Down from London,’ he said. ‘Just heading back.’
‘Business or pleasure?’
‘The former.’ Nightingale sat down and stretched out his legs. ‘So where do you stand on suicide?’ he asked.
‘It’s a bad thing, obviously,’ said the Priest. He held out his hand. ‘Ian,’ he said.
Nightingale shook it. ‘Jack. It’s still a mortal sin, right?’
‘I’m afraid so, yes.’ The priest took a long pull on his cigarette and blew smoke up at the moon. ‘Have you lost someone to suicide?’
‘I was on a platform when someone threw themselves in front of a train,’ said Nightingale.
‘That’s awful,’ said the priest shaking his head. ‘Truly awful.’
‘Yeah, it pretty much ruined my day. And hers. So she goes straight to Hell, is that what the Church believes?’
The priest frowned. ‘Are you a Catholic, Jack?’
‘I’m not much of anything these days.’
‘It shook you up, seeing her kill herself?’
Nightingale nodded. ‘Very much so.’ He drew
smoke deep into his lungs and held it there.
‘Did she have a family?’
‘A young daughter.’
The priest tutted and shook his head.
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ said Nightingale. ‘She goes to Hell, right?’
‘It’s complicated.’
Nightingale chuckled. ‘I hear that a lot.’
‘The fifth commandment is clear, the taking of human life is a sin. And that includes taking your own life. All life belongs to God, no one has the right to end a life other than God himself. So yes, suicide is a sin. But is it a mortal sin?’ He flashed a tight smile. ‘That’s where it becomes complicated. For a sin to be a mortal sin, three criteria have to be met. The sin must be gravely wrong, and yes, killing falls into that category. Then the person committing the sin must know that he or she is doing wrong. And thirdly, the sin has to be committed out of free will. Now, to go to Hell, a mortal sin must be unrepented. And the consequence of suicide is of course that there is no opportunity to ask for repentance. So on the surface, yes, suicides would go straight to Hell’ He took another drag on his cigarette and this time blew smoke at the ground. ‘But there are caveats. Most people who kill themselves do so in a moment of insanity. Not all, of course, but usually there is some element of mental imbalance and under those circumstances someone who kills themselves might not be aware of what they are doing.’
‘Sort of an insanity defence, is that what you mean?’
‘A soul should not be dammed to Hell for eternity because of a moment of madness,’ said the priest. ‘As I said, it’s complicated. Suicide is the only sin for which someone can not repent, so it is a special case. But it isn’t true that the Church turns its back on those who commit suicide. For a start, the Church does not have any power over who does or does not go to Hell. That decision is God’s alone and the Church does not have the authority to question God’s will. We are commanded by Christ not to judge others so we leave final judgment to God. He is the only one who can know what was going through the mind of the person who killed themself.’
‘But I always thought that suicides couldn’t have a Christian burial.’
‘Then you thought wrong, Jack. The Code of Canon Law does not list suicide as a reason to deny a person a Catholic funeral or burial in a Catholic cemetery We can and we do pray for those who take their own lives. And we can have funerals for them, and they can be buried in our churchyards. I myself have buried two parishioners who took their own lives only last year.’
‘What happened?’
The priest flicked ash onto the pavement. ‘Sad story,’ he said. ‘They had been together for more than sixty years. Sixty-three, I think. Then they both got cancer. His was in the prostate, slow growing and the doctors said he wasn’t to worry about it, he’d be dead of old age long before the cancer killed him.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘That’s not how they worded it, but you get my drift?’
Nightingale nodded and took a drag on his cigarette.
‘The wife got her diagnosis the same week, but hers was a more virulent form of cancer. She had a round of chemo but it hit her hard. The doctors wanted to try radiation but she said she’d had enough and wanted to die in peace. They sent her home and put the Macmillan people in touch with her. I went to see her many times. She suffered a lot, towards the end.’ He shuddered. ‘Then one evening I went around and no one answered the door. I had a bad feeling – a premonition maybe – and I called the police. They’d both taken sleeping pills.’ He forced a smile. ‘And champagne. I always thought that was such a nice touch. The husband had gone out and bought a bottle of Moet. They used it to wash down the tablets. They’d changed into their Sunday best.’ He smiled again. ‘I think they thought they’d just be buried as they were found, but of course life is never that simple.’
‘The clothes were ruined?’
The priest nodded. ‘Death is never pretty. Even if it’s peaceful, everything is voided. But they were happy enough when they died. You could see it on their faces.’
‘But they were Catholic so they knew that what they were doing was a sin?’
‘They broke the Fifth Commandment, yes. But they died together and they died happily. As I said, it’s up to God to judge them and I have faith that he’ll judge them wisely.’ He dropped the remains of his cigarette onto the ground and stubbed it out with his shoe, then got to his feet. ‘I have to lock up,’ he said.
‘People steal from churches, even in Hastings?’
The priest chuckled. ‘We’ve had to replace the roof lead three times in the last five years. It stopped when we alarmed the roof and put in CCTV, but I’m sure it’ll happen again.’
‘Nice talking to you anyway,’ said Nightingale.
‘Drop by anytime, Jack,’ said the priest, then he turned and walked back into the church.
CHAPTER 6
Professor Dixon’s head ached where he’d been hit, and his wrists burned where the ropes dug into them. He strained against the knots that held him, but it was useless. The figure in the grey, hooded cloak held the knife up once again, a mere six inches from his eyes.
The voice was soft, polite but insistent. An educated, well-spoken voice, patient, almost kind, though Dixon knew now that there was no real kindness in it. Not towards him anyway. ‘Once more, Simon. I know what Catherine told you. That was a mistake and she’ll be punished for it, but I cannot risk interference or my organisation being exposed. To whom else have you told your story?’
‘The police. I told the police. They know all about you.’
‘Hah. I hardly think so. I doubt you would have considered telling them anything beyond Catherine’s...departure, it would have made you look a fool. Even if you had, they wouldn’t have taken any notice. No, the danger to my plans may lie elsewhere, I shall ask again, but first perhaps a little...incentive.’
Dixon screamed, but there was no-one to hear it except his tormentor. He gasped in agony, and finally forced out the words. Nightingale. Jack Nightingale. He’s a detective. His website says he specialised in unusual cases. I thought....I went, yesterday, I went there, but he wouldn’t...he couldn’t...’
‘Hush now. Nightingale, yes, I have heard that name in another connection. He might certainly pose more problems than the police. If he were to be allowed to.’
Dixon groaned again, looked up at the figure in front of him and spoke again.
‘Where is my wife? Please don’t hurt her. I promise not to tell anyone, ever.’
This time the laughter was longer.
‘Don’t worry about your wife, she is in my care. And you are correct, you will not be telling anyone about us. Ever.’
‘I promise, I promise. Please, let me go, I’ve told you everything I know, everything I did.’
‘Of course you have. But this was never about information, Simon. You failed Catherine, and now is the time of reckoning.’
The knife was held up again.
The screaming was deafening, but there was nobody nearby to hear it.
CHAPTER 7
Jasmine frowned. Nice eyes and teeth but his jaw was just too wide. She swiped left. ‘That’s a no from me,’ she muttered. She followed that rejection with another half dozen in quick succession. It wasn’t that she was fussy, it was just most of the men on Tinder seemed to be dogs. Desperate dogs, at that. There were married men pretending to be single, poor men pretending to be wealthy, old men pretending to be young. Everyone lied. Though to be fair, Jasmine had spent ages choosing which pictures to put up and had stretched her profile description a bit. Telling prospective dates that her favourite thing to do was watching Netflix in her pyjamas with a pizza and a glass of wine was perhaps sending out the wrong message so she had gone with walking on the beach and horse riding.
‘Ever found anything you like in there?’ said a voice to her right. She jumped and almost dropped her phone. The stool next to her had been empty when she sat at the bar and ordered a glass of red wine. Now there was a tal
l, good-looking man in his early thirties sitting there. Definitely a swipe right, Jasmine thought. Dark blue eyes, neatly trimmed blond hair, unblemished skin and dazzling white teeth.
‘Are you a model?’ she heard herself ask, and her cheeks reddened.
He laughed. ‘No, I’m real,’ he said. He held out a hand. ‘Simon.’
‘Simon says,’ she said, shaking his hand and wondering where her awful banter was coming from. What was she, twelve. ‘Jasmine.’
‘Nice to meet you, Jasmine,’ he said, holding her gaze and her hand. His eyes were blue, but a blue so dark that they were almost black. She had never seen eyes that colour before. He was still holding her hand, she realised. His skin was soft but his grip was strong. His nails looked as if they had been manicured. He smelled good, but she couldn’t identify the scent. There was a hint of orange there, and mint perhaps, and lavender, and something that reminded her of the way her father used to smell. ‘You didn’t answer my question?’
She took back her hand. ‘Question?’
He nodded at her phone. ‘Did you ever meet anyone worthwhile that way?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not really.’
‘Anyone that you actually dated?’
She shrugged. ‘I live in hope.’
‘And the guy you’re here to meet. You swiped him right, right?’
She tilted her head as she looked at him. ‘How do you know that?’
‘That you swiped right? If you swiped left, you wouldn’t be meeting him.’
‘How did you know I was here to meet a date?’
‘Because if it was a boyfriend, you would probably have come with him. If you were here to see a girlfriend you would probably have got a bottle and a table.’
‘Are you a detective?’
He flashed her his movie star smile. ‘First I was a model, now I’m a detective? But I’m right, aren’t I? You’re here on a first date. With a man you met on the internet.’
She raised her glass in salute. ‘You got me.’
The Whisper Man Page 3