The woman still stood motionless on the curb, staring at what was left of her son, her mind unable to comprehend that her whole world had been destroyed in the space of a few seconds.
She was still frozen when the police and paramedics arrived.
Dudák stood leaning against the crossing sign on the other side of the road, while people milled around opposite, traffic backed up, horns were sounded and the whole junction ground to a halt. Nobody took the slightest notice, and by the time the police started taking witness statements, Dudák was long gone, fed and satisfied.
CHAPTER 10
Nightingale drove back in the direction of the Peabody, stopping at Pizza Hut for an early dinner. An hour later, he was suitably fed, but no further forward in figuring out any of what was happening. He’d just left his car with the valet, when his mobile phone rang. It was Wainwright. ‘Jack? You saw my sister? Everything okay?’
‘More than okay as far as I can tell, the definition of a happy family. Naomi’s lovely, seems a hundred per cent happy, not a care in the world.’
‘Shit.’
‘That’s a bad thing?’
‘No, but it doesn’t get us anywhere. If there’s a threat to her, it doesn’t look like she or her parents are aware of it. Look, it gets worse.’
‘Tell me.’
‘The fifth name crossed itself off an hour ago. Timmy Williams.’
‘Any information?’
‘Not yet. But when Timmy Williams’s name crossed off, nobody else showed up on the end of the list. Looks like it’s complete at thirteen names.’
‘Thirteen?’
‘Yeah, just like in a coven. Like the coven you busted to Hell up in San Francisco.’
‘You think that’s a lead?’
‘To be honest I have no idea. I’d have thought only their leader, Abaddon, was powerful enough to pull this off, but she’s dead. Thirteen is a powerful Satanic number anyway, so maybe there’s no connection. Can you think of anyone else with a grudge against you, or me?’
Nightingale could have mentioned quite a few names, but he wasn’t ready to share everything with Wainwright yet. ‘Not unless Bimoleth’s managed to get himself free and wants to settle accounts.’
There was silence at the other end for a few moments. ‘You know, Jack, that’s not even close to being funny. But if he was loose, the whole world would probably know about it. We need to find something soon, Jack. I got that list four days ago...’
‘Yeah, and four of the names on it are dead. Five if Timmy Williams is already dead. I did the maths.’
‘Me too. Whoever sent it is telling me that my niece has only a week or so to live. Anyway, Valerie has emailed you everything we managed to find on Olivia Taylor. I hope that’ll help.’ He ended the call.
Once back in his room, Nightingale used his phone to check his emails. Valerie’s was the only unread item in the inbox, which was no surprise as Nightingale wasn’t a great user of emails. As ever, Valerie didn’t bother with greetings or formalities, and the email consisted of just one paragraph, giving details about the fourth name on the list, Olivia Taylor, including her date of birth, address and the events surrounding her death. She had tied her skipping-rope round her neck, fastened the other end to the bannister and jumped over. Death had been instantaneous, and yet again, the police found no evidence of anything suspicious.
He was about to close the mailbox when he noticed that another email had just come in, also from Valerie. It was headed Timmy Williams, and he clicked to open it.
Timmy Williams was the fifth name on Wainwright’s list. The boy had been eleven, and Valerie had obtained his Memphis address and his school details. He’d been killed that afternoon in a traffic accident. Somehow Valerie had managed to find a witness report, which said the boy had just ignored a DON’T WALK light and walked straight out under the wheels of a truck. Police had ruled out DUI for the truck driver, and had made no arrest. They were treating it as an accident.
Five dead kids, and all of them could have been suicide. It made no sense at all to Nightingale. All of the deaths had come after their names had been written on the list that had been sent to Wainwright, so how could anyone predict suicides? Or, worse yet, how could someone or something be causing young kids to kill themselves?
Worst of all, how in the name of sanity was Nightingale meant to stop them?
He lay down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to come up with a plan. If the list maintained its logic, he had just eight days to save Wainwright’s niece, and nine to save Sophie Underwood. But that still left seven more potential victims, seven kids who would be on his conscience, unless he could find a way to save them. Was that what was this was really about, forcing him to watch helplessly while innocent children died? If this was aimed at him, then it must be the work of someone who knew his weakness, knew that there was nothing that would eat away at him more than to see kids hurt.
Proserpine?
He knew she still craved his soul, the one that had been pledged to her, and she had promised him that one day he’d offer it to her again. Was she waiting for him to summon her and offer his soul in exchange for sparing the children’s lives? It seemed unlikely, the kids were strangers to him, why should he make them his responsibility? Except for Sophie, of course. Sophie, that was a tough one to explain. If this were the work of one of the former Apostles, they probably wouldn’t have learned about Sophie. The Met had never publicised his role in her rescue, it was just another successful operation. He hadn’t needed to give evidence at the subsequent court case, especially since they’d kicked him out by then.
He badly needed a lead, and he had no real idea where to find one. Claiming to be a journalist and trying to ask the parents questions was unlikely to get him very far. The police weren’t going to be helpful either. All he had was a list of dead kids, which he could have got from anywhere, and another list of potential victims. Showing the rest of the list to a police officer wouldn’t get any kind of reaction, not until one of them actually died. When that happened it was ten to one that instead of helping him investigate the police would throw him in jail as the number one suspect.
There must be some connection between the kids on the list, beyond the obvious geographical and age links. Since he couldn’t ask the parents or the police, and he didn’t much want to risk summoning Proserpine and hope she felt like answering questions, that really only left one avenue of investigation open to him.
The gentlemen of the Press. Or gentlewomen. If there was such a thing.
CHAPTER 11
In fact it did indeed turn out to be a lady of the Press who agreed to see Nightingale the following day. He’d taken a good look through the morning’s Memphis Herald and had found a three paragraph report on Timmy Williams’s death, under the by-line of Kim Jarvis, so that was the name he’d asked for at the newspaper office reception desk. As ever, reporters were always far more interested in talking to him than the police were, and he was pointed in the direction of her third-floor desk after just a perfunctory call from the girl at reception.
Kim Jarvis turned out to be a slim blonde in her early twenties, who didn’t rate an office, just a desk in the bullpen. She was dressed in blue jeans and a low-cut white top under a grey jacket. Nightingale winced as he noticed the half-dozen silver earrings in each ear, the silver stud in the side of her nose and the small metal ring through her upper lip. He never understood body piercings. She looked up from her computer screen and pushed her green plastic-framed glasses onto the top of her head as Nightingale found his way to her desk.
‘Jack Nightingale, right?’ she said. ‘Sally said you wanted to see me personally. Have we met before?’
She wrinkled her nose, tilted her head to one side and looked at him quizzically. He smiled and shook his head. ‘Not in this life,’ he said. ‘I was wanting to talk to you about a story you wrote.’
‘Well, that narrows it down, they don’t use my name on most of them. Which of my P
ulitzer-winning scoops are we talking about here?’
‘The kid who was hit by a truck yesterday. Timmy Williams.’
Her smile disappeared instantly. ‘Sit,’ she said, borrowing an empty chair from the next desk and pulling it round for him. ‘That was awful. Pretty much a coincidence, I was heading back here when I heard the sirens and followed it up. Kid never had a chance.’
‘Your report said the truck driver wasn’t arrested.’
‘No, that’s right. The cops breathalysed him as a routine thing, but there were plenty of witnesses to tell them it wasn’t his fault. The kid was standing next to his mother at the lights, and he just walked straight out under the truck. She didn’t have hold of his hand or anything.’
‘Would a boy of eleven let his mother hold his hand in public? It’s plenty old enough to know how and when to cross a road, surely?’
‘You’d think, but not this time. As I said, the witnesses say he just walked straight out.’
‘He wasn’t on his phone was he? Distracted?’
‘No. He was looking straight ahead, his mother said. Anyway, tragic for the family, but it’s a road accident. So who are you, and what’s your interest?’
‘Well, you know the name. As for my interest, well...can we just say I take an interest in the unusual?’
‘Say what you like, but what’s unusual about a road accident? They happen all the time.’
‘But, from what you’ve told me, it wasn’t an accident. The boy deliberately walked out into the truck’s path.’
She shook her head. ‘No, the witnesses said he just walked out without looking, but there’s a big difference between careless and deliberate.’ She frowned. ‘You seem to be suggesting he actually wanted to get himself killed.’
‘Maybe I am suggesting that.’
She sat back in her chair. ‘Oh come on. Why would he want to do that?’
‘No idea, maybe there was something in his family background. Did you go into it?’
‘We did not. The police called it an accident, we weren’t about to start prying into the family history, they have enough to deal with. We’re not vultures, there’s no story here. Now come on, what makes you think this kid wanted to die?’
Nightingale pulled out a sheet of paper on which he’d written four names, and passed it across. Jarvis looked at it, frowned and then looked back up at him.
‘I’ve heard another one of those names, Olivia Taylor. Recently. ‘ She frowned. ‘A day or two ago, right? A young girl hanged herself.’
Nightingale nodded.
‘What about the other two?’ asked Jarvis.
Again, Nightingale told her what he knew. She nodded along with his sentences.
‘So that’s four kids in four days who appear to have killed themselves in Tennessee?’
‘Five if you include Timmy,’ said Nightingale. ‘It certainly looks that way, and that would be pretty unusual, right.’
‘True enough,’ she said. ‘Even one would be very unusual, teenage suicide isn’t rare, but with primary kids it almost never happens. And five in five days? How do you come to cotton on to this?’
Nightingale hadn’t been looking forward to that question. ‘Tell me, Kim, what are your views on the supernatural?’
She looked around the bullpen. ‘I’m due a coffee break around now, so what do you say we take this across the street.’
‘Fine with me, I skipped breakfast.’
The reporter took him across the road and into the Three Kings bar. ‘Hope you don’t mind, but you can smoke in bars not coffee shops,’ she said.
‘I’ll cope,’ said Nightingale. He ordered a black coffee and a Danish to go with his Marlboro. Jarvis went for a doughnut, a cappuccino and a Camel.
‘So,’ said Nightingale. ‘You care to answer my question now?’
She blew smoke and watched it curl upwards. Nightingale recognised the technique, she was buying time while she thought. ‘I’m interested in the supernatural,’ she said eventually. ‘I have friends who are Wiccans, but I’m not sure that’s the way to go. A lot of people assume I’m some kind of vampire anyway when they see all this.’
She took off her jacket, to reveal two complete sleeves of tattoos.
Nightingale widened his eyes. Kim’s tattoos had obviously taken a lot of work. The colours were vibrant, and the designs well-executed. He picked out dragons, wizards and witches, and a variety of Occult symbols.
‘I tend to wear jackets or long sleeves at work,’ she said. ‘But I love them, and the metalwork too.’
‘Didn’t the piercings hurt?’
She smiled. ‘The ones you can’t see hurt a lot more.’
Nightingale winced and tried hard not to imagine what she meant.
‘Ouch,’ he said.
‘Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,’ she said ‘You should get yourself a piercing down there. The girls go wild for them.’
‘No thanks,’ said Nightingale, ‘I’ll stick to flowers and chocolates.’
She shook her head. ‘Dull, dull, dull. So you got no tattoos either?’
‘Just the Pink Panther on my ass,’ said Nightingale.
‘Huh, more of that British humour.’
‘Could be. So, anyway, about the Occult...’
‘So anyway, I don’t dismiss the Occult at all, and I’d like to know more about it. Are you going to tell me why you asked?’
‘I was given a list two days ago, with some names on it. The first four were the four I showed you in the office.’
She got the point straight away. ‘Two days ago? But the last two weren’t even dead then.’
‘I know, and I can’t prove what I say, but believe me, the list was made before any of the kids on it died.’
‘Well I’m guessing the police would be pretty interested in talking to the guy who gave you that list. Who is he?’
‘Friend of mine. But he gave me the list. He didn’t make it.’
‘Who did?’ she asked.
‘That’s the problem, he doesn’t know and nor do I. But whoever did make the list is behind the death of these kids.’
‘Why would you say that?’
‘Well, how else could he know in advance?’
‘Come on now, Jack, even if I accept that someone made a list of dead kids before they died, that doesn’t mean they killed them. Weather forecasters and stock market analysts predict the future, but they don’t create it.’
Nightingale paused to think about that. It was a fair enough point from someone who didn’t know his background and Wainwright’s, but he didn’t believe the idea of a prophet unconnected with the deaths. Thirteen unexplained deaths would be pushing it for even the most gifted seer. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said eventually. ‘That would still leave us with the unexplained deaths. Five in five days.’
‘This is a lot to swallow,’ she said. ‘What do you plan to do about it?’
‘I don’t really know,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s too weird to go to the police with, I was just trying to find a way to get a little closer to the kids, maybe ask some questions, find a common factor, figure out what’s going on. You’re not convinced, are you?’
‘Not really. But you could convince me easily enough.’
‘How?’ he asked.
‘Just give me the next name on the list.’
‘I suppose that could work.’
‘It could, though you’d better make pretty sure you’re nowhere near him or her when it happens. If it happens, I mean.’
Nightingale gave her the next name, and she wrote it in a small notebook. David Robinson. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘How about a little background on you? So far I know you’re English and you ‘take an interest in the unusual’. My nose says cop, or ex-cop, so let’s have some more details. Why should I even be talking to you?’
Nightingale tried his best winning smile. ‘I was a cop, in a previous life. I was in the Metropolitan Police, once upon a time.’
‘That’s London, righ
t?’
‘Yeah, I was a police negotiator. Now I’m not. Now I work for someone who pays me to look into unusual things.’
‘And he’s the one who got the list?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And does he know someone on that list? Is that why you’re in town?’
Nightingale nodded. Kim Jarvis was pretty sharp.
‘So are you going to give me his name?’ she asked.
‘He likes his privacy.’
She nodded thoughtfully, then looked at her watch. ‘Time I was somewhere else,’ she said. ‘Give me your number, if I hear anything, I’ll call. Same goes for you, if you think of anything else, call me. If there’s a story in this, I’m in. Meanwhile I’ll see if I can turn up anything to connect these kids. Maybe I can nose around their schools, people are more likely to talk to me than some middle-aged English guy.’
Nightingale winced inwardly at the ‘middle-aged’, but gave her his mobile number. She put it into her phone, then called his, so he could store her number. ‘Okay, I’ll be in touch,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the coffee.’
Nightingale took the hint and counted out some bills as she headed for the door.
When he was back in his car he phoned Wainwright. His call was answered almost immediately. ‘You got anything, Jack?’
‘Not much. I managed to talk to the reporter who wrote the story about the latest kid who killed herself. I told her this was the fifth suicide, and mentioned the list. I gave her the next name.’
‘You did what? She’ll think you’re insane.’
‘Maybe, unless a kid with that name dies today. And besides, judging by the tattoos she’s covered in, she’s something of a believer in the Occult. Ever heard the name? Kim Jarvis?’
Tennessee Night (The 8th Jack Nightingale Novel) Page 5