Tennessee Night (The 8th Jack Nightingale Novel)

by Stephen Leather

  It was good to feed.

  CHAPTER 15

  Nightingale’s alarm was set for 7.30, but the ring tone of his mobile phone woke him a good hour earlier. The caller ID showed Kim Jarvis’s mobile number. ‘Jack? Kim Jarvis.’

  Nightingale’s voice was thick and dry with sleep and the previous night’s cigarettes. ‘You’re up with the lark,’ he said, sitting up and running a hand through his hair.

  ‘I’m a reporter, we never sleep. Turn on the local news, WMC-TV5 or Fox-13. Then get back to me.’

  She cut the connection, and Nightingale groped for the TV remote on the bedside table pointed and pressed. He found the WMC channel first and watched their outside broadcast, from what was obviously the local train station, judging by the huge blue and grey train that filled half the screen. The subtitle feed underneath the picture gave him the full story faster than the solemn female reporter’s voice could hope to.

  A ‘so-far-unidentified male child’ had fallen under the wheels of the City of New Orleans as it was pulling into Memphis Central last night, and been pronounced dead at the scene. Police were still at the station, though the paramedics had long since left with the body. There was an appeal for any witnesses who had not yet been traced and given statements to contact the Memphis Police Department.

  Nightingale winced, reached for his cigarettes, remembered the hotel’s no smoking policy and picked up his mobile phone instead. Before he had chance to return Kim Jarvis’s call, the ringtone sounded again. This time it was Wainwright. Nightingale muted the television and pressed the answer button on the phone.

  ‘Jack, you seen the news?’ asked Wainwright.

  ‘Watching it right now. That reporter woman called me.’

  ‘David Robinson’s name was crossed off the list at just about the time that kid hit the rails. I saw the name go, but the story took an hour or two to break over here.’

  Nightingale didn’t waste time asking where ‘over here’ might be. Wherever Wainwright was at the moment, chances were high that he’d be somewhere else inside a few hours.

  ‘The TV news didn’t give a name, Joshua. Could be a coincidence.’

  ‘Sure it could, But it isn’t. I guess it’s not that easy to ID a kid, they don’t carry passports or a driver’s licence. And they’ll be needing to contact the family first. Probably waiting for some mom to find her kid doesn’t show up for breakfast and call the cops. And I’ll bet my boots the lady’s name will be Robinson.’

  Nightingale’s eyes were still on the television screen as he listened to Wainwright. The subtitles changed.

  ‘Joshua, they’re saying that witnesses saw the kid walk straight under the train. He didn’t fall and there was nobody near him when it happened. This is crazy. How can somebody know in advance about a suicide?’

  ‘I’m guessing whoever is doing this made it happen, rather than knew about it.’

  Nightingale’s thoughts flashed back to a few forced suicides he’d encountered in his early days of being dragged into the world of the Occult. He could think of at least two entities that could be making this happen. And if there were two, there could be many others. He’d even seen Wainwright himself use the force of his will to make people follow his orders. ‘What about hypnotism, Joshua? Like you used on Judas in San Francisco?’

  ‘That was a parlour trick compared to this. We were lucky my will was stronger than hers and I was a lot more advanced. But even so, it was all I could manage to get a little information out of her. This is in a whole different league, the control must be incredibly strong to force someone to kill themselves. The resistance to that would be huge. I doubt there’s an adept in the USA who could do that, especially not at a distance.’

  Maybe a Shade, thought Nightingale. Or something even more powerful. Something that already held a grudge against him, and maybe against Wainwright too.

  ‘Jack, we may be talking about something that’s not human. Or more than human.’

  ‘A demon? An Elemental?’

  ‘Elementals don’t work that way, Jack. They’re not capable of logical planning, they just feed and destroy.’

  ‘So what might I be looking for?’

  ‘I just have no idea. They don’t write books about this stuff, or if they do, I’ve never read one. And I don’t know anyone who has. You said there were people you might be able to talk to?’

  ‘Could be, but I’ve got so little to go on. Just a list which seems to be predicting suicides, and a few dead kids. Plus it seems to be aimed at you and me. At the moment, I’m just waiting for kids to die and struggling to find a handle on this.’

  ‘I know, Jack. But time’s a-wasting. I need to call in some favours here, maybe speak to a few people who aren’t that easy to contact. Could be time you did the same. I always get the feeling you have a source or two you don’t talk about.’

  And won’t be talking about, thought Nightingale. He and Wainwright had been on the same side a few times, but Nightingale had learned not to give his trust easily. He preferred to keep his life compartmentalised as much as possible, and Wainwright didn’t need to know about many areas of it.

  ‘Okay, get back to me soon, Joshua. I know it makes no sense, but I’m starting to feel responsible for these kids.’

  He cut the connection and phoned Kim Jarvis..

  ‘Took you long enough,’ she said.

  She sounded irritated. ‘Something came up, sorry,’ he said.

  ‘You saw the news report?’

  ‘Sure. Is it David Robinson? Is that why you called?’

  ‘Seems the kid rode to the station on his bike. Memphis PD ran the serial number through the National Bike registry and got a hit. They’re not releasing the name till the family have been informed and had some time. But I have a source and he gave me the info.’

  ‘So this is your dramatic pause moment? Tell me.’

  ‘Bike’s registered to a family called Robinson. They have a son called David, aged eleven. Look, Jack, I know there’s a huge story in this, and I want in on it all the way. Let’s do breakfast.’

  ‘Breakfast it is,’ he said. ‘Name the place.’

  CHAPTER 16

  Dudák lay on the bed, his eyes wide open, staring into the darkness but able to see things that no human ever could. The feeling of fullness was satisfying, more so after so many centuries of emptiness. The hunger within was not the basic need to refuel that the creature sleeping on the other side of the bed would feel when it awoke. Dudák could survive infinitely with the cravings unfulfilled, but once the hunger had been re-awakened, it grew stronger by the day. And food had been plentiful lately, with the prospect of much more to come.

  The creature slept fitfully now, seeming to be suffering from the dreams that plagued its kind during times of rest. Dudák had wasted no time in attempting to satisfy its needs tonight, there were more important matters to be considered, and, besides, the feeling of satisfaction inside was all-consuming and needed to be savoured.

  The creature had been unhappy, complaining, but Dudák had sent it to sleep once it had completed its task. Dudák was not prone to anger, nor even irritation, and the situation would be addressed dispassionately. The creature had been useful, had performed the tasks required of it, and would continue to do so for a little while longer. But the time was fast approaching when its usefulness would be at an end, when it might become an inconvenience, and would therefore be disposed of.

  Dudák would take no pleasure or satisfaction from the disposal, but nor would there be any hesitation, pity or mercy.

  What needed to be done would be done, Everything had been mapped out well in advance, and there could be no deviation from the plan which had been set out for Dudák.

  CHAPTER 17

  Kim Jarvis’s choice of breakfast venue was Brother Juniper’s on Walker Avenue, a fifteen minute drive from Nightingale’s hotel and a similar distance from her newspaper’s office. Nightingale guessed she didn’t want any of her colleagues to see them togeth
er, and was clearly taking him a lot more seriously than the previous day.

  The restaurant was made of whitewashed wooden boards, with high triangular roof gables which put Nightingale in mind of a small town church. Its sign advertised the ‘Best breakfast in Memphis’, and, once he’d entered, it struck Nightingale as a fairly typical American diner. There were several patrons perched on stools at the wooden counter, and quite a few more sitting on plain varnished chairs around the bare wooden tables in the room. Nightingale took a seat at a table at the back, with his seat giving him a clear view of the door. He wasn’t expecting trouble, but being careful had gotten to be a habit in recent months.

  He’d arrived on time, and Kim Jarvis followed him in less than a minute later, scanned the room, caught his eye and headed for his table. Her long blonde hair was pulled up, and her collection of earrings was also hidden under a black-leather, peaked motorcycle-cap. Her jacket was also black and looked as if it had been borrowed from a slightly larger biker boyfriend. Her Levis were tight, blue and sported the obligatory knee-rips. Today her glasses were large, round and dark enough to hide her eyes completely. She took the chair opposite Nightingale.

  ‘Incognito?’ he asked, trying his best winning smile.

  ‘Something like that,’ she said quietly. There was no answering smile. ‘You order yet?’

  ‘Just got here,’ said Nightingale, and as he spoke a waitress arrived bearing menus. She wore an apron over a white t-shirt, gave her name, Sammy, took their coffee order and left them to study the menus. Each one bore a cartoon of a friendly looking monk at the top, with his hands clasped over an ample stomach.

  ‘What do you recommend?’ he asked.

  ‘No idea, never been here before. That was a big part of the attraction. What’ll you have?’

  Nightingale applied himself to the menu. It had been quite a long time since he’d needed to pass the Metropolitan Police physical exam, and it wasn’t as easy to stay in shape as it had once been. Smoking and a diet of takeout would catch up with him eventually, so when he had time to think about food, he tried to keep it healthy. Or at the very least, add some healthy ingredients to the mix. Today that meant adding a bowl of oatmeal and blueberries to his order of eggs, bacon and sausage. Kim Jarvis chose scrambled tofu with vegetarian sausage, and Nightingale decided to keep his thoughts on that to himself. Sammy took the orders, flashed them a beaming smile and left them to their coffee.

  Kim Jarvis kept looking around the restaurant, finally decided there was nobody there she knew or who could overhear their conversation, and spoke just above a whisper. ‘You really need to tell me what’s going on?’ she said.

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘There’s a ten-year-old boy squashed flat by a train, and you knew about it all of twelve hours before it happened. Tell me how that’s possible.’

  ‘I told you as much as I could, pretty much all I know, yesterday.’

  ‘Oh sure, you had some magic list given to you by some mysterious old wizard, whose name you didn’t dare to mention. What’s really going on here?’

  ‘I really don’t know. How much have you told the cops?’

  ‘Nothing yet. Do you know how many psychos show up at the office every day? We humour them, just in case maybe they’re the one in a thousand who actually might have a useful lead. The only people who get more of them are the cops.’

  ‘You think I’m a psycho?’

  ‘The jury’s out on that.’

  ‘It did occur to me that you might be a serial killer getting his kicks by sticking his nose into the investigation,’ she said. ‘But there is no killer at work. These aren’t killings, they’re suicides. The cops have solid witnesses who saw that kid walk out in front of the truck, a whole platform full of people who’ll swear that David Robinson was nowhere near anyone else when he jumped in front of the train. And no evidence at all that the girl who hanged herself was pushed. And I don’t see you as Mandrake the Magician, or some Jedi Knight waving your fingers in the air and persuading random kids to kill themselves.’

  ‘Good to know. So where do we go from here.’

  ‘Maybe you give me some kind of genuine explanation for what’s going on here, and where you come into it.’

  ‘It’s complicated. I doubt you’d believe it.’

  ‘Try me.’

  The waitress arrived with their orders and they kept quiet until she had walked away.

  Nightingale nodded slowly. ‘Alright, maybe you are entitled to know a little bit more about this. I told you before that I was working for someone, the man who had that list, though he didn’t make it.’

  ‘Well, that’s progress, at least you’re admitting it’s a man. Give me a name.’

  ‘That’s not happening. Not now, probably not ever. He’d be very unhappy if his name was brought into this, and he’s not a man you’d want to upset.’

  ‘So you’re giving me nothing?’

  Nightingale sipped his coffee. ‘Maybe a little more. I told you before I’d been mixed up in some strange stuff lately. Did you ever read about the gang of Satanists that the cops claimed to have discovered operating out of a mansion in San Francisco?’

  ‘I did. There were all kinds of crazy rumours about ritual killings, child abductions, some pretty well-known names apparently involved, though nobody seemed to know exactly who. Then the whole thing seemed to go quiet. No charges yet, no court cases, and no big stories.’

  ‘That’s the one. Well, believe me, some of those rumours were true, except they didn’t go anywhere near far enough. A lot of people ended up dead, and I was involved in breaking up the ring. But it seems those involved had more power than we thought, a lot of strings got pulled. Most of them are still walking around.’

  ‘And I’m guessing they’re pretty pissed at you.’

  ‘At me and the guy who put me onto them.’

  ‘So they know who he is?’

  ‘Yes, his name got involved in the whole thing.’

  ‘So this is all about revenge?’

  Nightingale realised again just how sharp Jarvis was. She had a knack for connecting the dots. ‘Maybe. At the moment that’s about the only theory we have.’

  She leaned across the table towards him. ‘But come on, if they just bear a grudge against you, why not just shoot you? It’s the American way.’

  Nightingale grinned. ‘Yes, I’d noticed. At a guess, I’d say that just killing one or other of us isn’t enough punishment. They want to destroy us psychologically before that happens. Or maybe even something worse...’

  ‘What could be worse than driving you nuts then killing you?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘Maybe not.’ She used her fork to hack off a piece of vegetarian sausage. ‘You said that some of the names on this list are people who are important to the two of you?’

  ‘Yes. The last two. Whoever’s doing this wants us to suffer while the names get ticked off, one by one, knowing that each one brings us closer to a personal loss.’

  ‘So the first names are just to establish the pattern?’

  ‘Maybe. But each name crossed off is a kid that should be alive now, a set of parents whose lives have been destroyed, and we get the burden of knowing that it’s all our fault.’

  She sat back in her chair. She seemed to have forgotten about her breakfast. ‘But that’s ridiculous, you’re not the ones doing the killing.’

  ‘But it’s because of us, and what we did, that these kids are dying. You try living with that.’

  ‘Yeah, I get that. But even if this theory of yours is true, how are they doing it? You can’t just make someone kill themselves to order.’

  ‘Seems as if you can.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘If I knew that, maybe I could start figuring out a way to stop it, while there are still some people on that list left alive.’

  She put a forkful of scrambled tofu into her mouth and chewed. Nightingale had never eaten tofu and never planned
to. He’d read somewhere once that tofu always contained rat. It was something to do with rats being partial to soy beans. They were so partial to it that they would burrow into sacks of soy beans and then die of suffocation. The soy beans were processed into tofu and the rats along with it. Nightingale wasn’t sure if the story was apocryphal or not, but he always found the irony of vegetarians eating rat meat to be amusing. It wasn’t something that he would tell the reporter, obviously. At least not while she was eating. ‘It’s an awful lot to take in,’ she said eventually. ‘And an awful lot to try to believe.’

  ‘I know. Some days I don’t believe it all myself.’ He shrugged. ‘But now, in words of The Monkees, I’m a believer.’

  She sighed. ‘Okay, let’s assume I take it on board. Where do we go from here?’

  ‘I’m getting a sense of a pattern coming together here, and maybe I’ve got enough of one to take it to an expert I know and see if they have any ideas which could help. Meanwhile, there’s something I need you to do. The next name on the list is Charmaine Wendover. It’s a pretty unusual name. Maybe you could find out who she is, maybe find a way to get close to her, maybe get me close to her, so we could try to protect her.’

  ‘Or so you could try to kill her?’

  It was hard to tell if she was joking or not, so Nightingale decided to take what she’d said seriously. ‘It seems I haven’t entirely convinced you that I’m the good guy here.’

  ‘Let’s just say I’m keeping an open mind. At the moment the only thing connecting you to any of these deaths is that list of yours. And if it’s accurate, Charmaine Wendover is due to die sometime today. Doesn’t give us much time.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re meant to have much time. Or to stop any of this. It’s not a game, whoever’s doing this has stacked the odds in their favour. I’m meant to watch it all happen and be unable to prevent any of it. Will you help?’