Nightingale nodded. ‘So Abaddon would have had more power than you?’
‘Hard to say,’ said Wainwright. ‘You never got round to reading Aleister Crowley’s diary before you made a present of it to me, did you?’
‘I’m not much of a reader,’ said Nightingale.
‘Shame. He detailed the various levels of Occult power, and there’s a whole lot of them. With the top three, the whole idea is to gain an understanding of the way the Universe works, and to use the power of your will to shape it as you wish.’
‘And you think Abaddon might have got to one of those three levels?’
‘Almost certainly,’ said Wainwright. ‘Probably she got to Magister Templi to even consider raising a demon like Bimoleth. You told me she could hold people motionless, with the power of will alone?’
Nightingale shuddered, as he remembered his final encounter with Abaddon in the chapel of the San Francisco mansion. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We were damned lucky.’
‘Or the forces of light smiled on you. Anyway, she’d have had to reach a pretty high level to do that.’
‘And how do people reach that kind of level?’
Wainwright shrugged. ‘Years of dedication. Study. Sacrifices to Lucifer.’
Nightingale looked across at him. ‘You mean human sacrifices?’
‘Well, you saw that in San Francisco. And there are higher grades, where the price of admission is even steeper.’
‘Steeper than murder?’
‘Oh yes, and even that’s not enough. You want to reach Magus or Ipsissimus and you need to have that power bestowed on you. Maybe that’s why Abaddon was trying to raise Bimoleth, she thought he might bestow that higher power on her.’
‘In exchange for what?’
Wainwright laughed. ‘I wouldn’t know, and if I did, I couldn’t tell you. Adepts who reach those levels are never permitted to speak of it. But, apparently, they achieve power that is incomprehensible to anyone else. Practically limitless on Earth.’
‘Doesn’t sound good,’ said Nightingale.
Wainwright laughed again but there was a harshness to the sound. ‘Guess there’s no need to worry yourself about it. There’s talk that Crowley may have reached that level, and drove himself mad doing it. Probably nobody since. You ask me, there’s not a Magus walking this Earth right now. Much less an Ipsissimus.’
Nightingale nodded. ‘And how far along the trail have you gotten, Joshua? As far as Abaddon?’
Wainwright grinned slyly. ‘It’s like Fight Club, Jack. The first rule is that you don’t talk about it.’
‘I hear you,’ said Nightingale. It was obvious Wainwright was bringing a curtain down on that subject. ‘You sure you’ll be able to find a priest in Memphis?’ he asked.
‘Already arranged,’ said Wainwright. ‘I’ve got contacts pretty much everywhere these days, a quick call gets most things done.’
‘You never struck me as the type to associate with the clergy.’
‘Ain’t. But if I need something done I can always find someone. Not all priests are shining examples of piety, Jack. Plenty of them would offer Ted Bundy absolution if there was a couple of hundred dollars in it for them. Consecrating a few bullets will be no problem.’
‘Good, said Nightingale. ‘From what I’ve seen of demons, they laugh at ordinary weapons, and we need to take Dudák down before the twenty-sixth, one way or another.’
‘You still think you can find Dudák?’
‘I think I’ve got a pretty good idea, I’ll know more after an interview, and maybe a phone call or two. I can’t afford to be wrong.’
‘So maybe your magic bullets are gonna work fine on Dudák, but have you thought about what we’re going to do about whoever’s behind him?’
‘What do you mean?’
Wainwright looked across at Nightingale, and his face was worried. ‘From what I hear, this Dudák is a nasty piece of work, but he’s still minor league. He’s not a Prince, an Earl, a Marquis of Hell, he’s got no real clout, he can’t be making pacts and bestowing power. Seems he couldn’t even get himself out of a cave for eight hundred years, he had to wait for someone more powerful to show up and free him. And make use of him.’
‘It had occurred to me,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s hard to believe Dudák decided to move all the way to Tennessee, send you that list, track down your niece, kill your sister and brother-in-law all by itself. But could Abaddon do all that?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Wainwright, ‘She had power, for sure, as head of a coven, and she was a very strong adept, but most of that was destroyed when her coven broke up. And freeing a trapped Demon is major-league power, much less actually obliging it to do your bidding. I think we’re looking at someone much further up the scale.’
‘I thought it might be Proserpine, but I didn’t get the feeling she’s behind it,’ said Nightingale. ‘But she knows all about it though.’
‘Got any other guesses?’
‘Well, Lucifuge Rofocale was behind that mess in New York, and he has a pretty big grudge against me,’ said Nightingale. ‘This might be his doing.’
‘We’d best hope not. He’s a Prince of Hell, ain’t going to be stopped by sprinkling Holy Water on a few shells.’
‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘If it is him, or someone like him, that’s where my plan sort of runs out.’
‘Anyways,’ said Wainwright, ‘one step at a time, I guess.’
‘Yes,’ said Nightingale. ‘And step one is Elise Wendover.’
‘Who’s she?’
‘The mother of Charmaine, the girl who killed herself in the grotto. I’ve some questions for her.’
CHAPTER 61
Kim Jarvis had claimed to have found Charmaine Wendover by calling all the Wendovers in the book and asking for the girl, but Nightingale had his doubts about that now. His search had been much easier, since there was only one Elise Wendover listed in the Memphis directory. He slowed the SUV to a halt opposite her apartment building. It was four stories high, built as three sides of a rectangle, with a well-kept green area in the middle and a few benches dotted around it. The bricks of the walls were chocolate brown up to halfway between the second and third floors, where they changed to white. The roofs were all grey slate, and the whole building looked to be relatively modern and kept in good repair.
‘Nice place, I guess’ said Wainwright. ‘Do you think the cops are going to like you talking to her?’
‘It’s not against the law to knock on somebody’s door and ask to talk to them,’ said Nightingale. ‘And the cops aren’t investigating a crime here. They’ve probably forgotten she exists. It’s not a great time to call, but then we can’t afford to wait. You going to take the car to go see your tame priest?’
‘I’ll call a cab,’ said Wainwright. ‘I always prefer to have someone else do the driving.’
Nightingale nodded, and he headed across the street, while Wainwright took a blue sports bag out of the back of the car, slammed the tailgate and pulled out his phone.
The building didn’t appear to run to a doorman, and Nightingale was considering his options for getting inside when a tall black man in blue overalls, carrying a toolbox, opened the main door. Nightingale held it for him, and the man grunted an acknowledgment. He said nothing more, seeming either to accept him as a resident or, more likely, not in the least bit interested who he was, so Nightingale walked in.
The Wendover apartment had been listed as 315, so Nightingale only had two flights of stairs to climb. He opened the stairwell door on the third floor, walked along to 315 and rang the bell. He heard the shuffling of feet, and the door opened on a security chain. He could make out a pair of reddened eyes and some long mousy hair, and then the woman spoke. ‘Who are you? What do you want? I’m not seeing any more reporters.’
‘I promise you I’m not a reporter,’ said Nightingale.
The woman’s nose wrinkled in puzzlement. ‘You Australian?’
‘English. My name’s Jack Nightin
gale. Mrs. Wendover, I was the one who found your daughter. In the grotto. Can I talk to you?’
The door was immediately closed in his face. Nightingale thought for a moment that he’d have to try a different approach, but then he heard the security chain being taken off, and the woman opened the door again.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘The place is a mess, and so am I, I’m afraid, but I need to talk to you, too.’
Nightingale took a look around, and decided she was probably right on both counts about the mess. It was an upscale apartment that had been let go. The sitting room had a good view of the lawn outside, but the windows were dirty, and the curtains needed cleaning. The sofa and chairs looked grubby, with food and wine stains everywhere, and shoes lay on the floor where they’d been kicked off. Empty wine bottles lay in a basket to the side of the sofa, and there was a pizza box and a half-empty bottle of Californian Chablis on the coffee table. The woman straightened a cushion on one of the armchairs and waved him into it. Nightingale noticed there seemed to be no television, though there was a wooden unit across the room where one might have been. An open laptop stood next to the wine bottle.
Elise Wendover looked like a woman whose life had fallen apart. She was wearing a robe and slippers at 1.30 in the afternoon, her hair badly needed washing and a cut, her face was bloated with flushed cheeks and chin, and her eyes were red from crying. She looked as if she’d put on quite a few pounds recently, and her eye-liner and lipstick were badly smudged. She smelled of stale sweat and fresh wine. She slumped onto the sofa opposite him and Nightingale felt even more guilty for being there.
‘Mrs. Wendover, I’m really sorry to call here at such a bad time for you...’
She waved his apology away with her left hand, while the other lifted up the wine bottle. ‘Forget about it,’ she said, ‘I got the feeling there are never gonna be any good times again. You want a drink?’
Nightingale really didn’t, but anything which might establish common ground was probably a good idea. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
She looked around for a glass and didn’t see one. ‘You want to get yourself a glass?’ she said, ’First cupboard on the left.’
She waved her hand at the door behind her, which was obviously the kitchen, and Nightingale got to his feet. The kitchen was a worse mess, with dirty crockery piled in the sink, food remnants on the worktops, and splashes of liquid on the floor. Nightingale found a glass, held it up to the light and rinsed it out before taking it back into the sitting room. He set it on the coffee table, and Elise Wendover splashed some wine into it. She raised her own glass, as he took his.
‘Well, cheers to you, Mr. Nightingale, though I guess I have nothing left to cheer.’
‘Cheers. Call me Jack,’ said Nightingale, raising his glass to her in return and taking a sip of the wine. He wasn’t much of a wine drinker but he nodded approval, and forced down another sip, before setting the glass back on the coffee table. He looked across the table at her, and noticed fresh tears in her eyes.
She pointed at a photo on the mantelpiece, showing an attractive young blonde woman, raising a champagne glass at the photographer, clearly in some restaurant. ‘You wouldn’t recognise me now, would you? Would you believe that was taken eighteen months ago?’
Nightingale couldn’t think of a good answer to that so he stayed silent.
‘Yeah, just a couple months before I found out my husband was banging some slut he met off Tinder. Very kindly she called me up to tell me. And to tell me she was pregnant. He never came home again, not even for his clothes. Saved me shooting him.’
‘You have a gun here?’ asked Nightingale.
‘Nah, just talk,’ she said. ‘But I’d have loved to. Bastard deserved it.’
‘He’s not helping you financially?’
‘Haven’t heard a word from him since. It’s like he cut me and Charlie out of his life like we never meant anything to him. He cancelled his cellphone so I can’t even call him. Turned out he was six months behind with the house repayments, the bank repossessed it, and all I could find was this place, which I’m getting a deal on from a friend. I owe her three months rent as it is, so I don’t know how much longer she’ll be staying a friend.’
Nightingale nodded, but said nothing. He had no solutions to offer, nothing at all except a listening ear, so he let her talk.
‘All seemed to happen at once, I was working as a secretary for a construction company which went under, and all I’ve been able to find since is waitressing. Doesn’t pay much, and they tend to want their girls younger and prettier. And soberer. And now this. Jesus, what did I ever do to deserve this?’
‘Nothing at all,’ said Nightingale. ‘Just sometimes life doesn’t give us what we deserve. Things just happen.’
She nodded, and now the tears were really flowing. He wondered about moving to the sofa and putting an arm round her, but that kind of thing was easily misinterpreted these days, so he stayed put.
‘Shit happens, eh?’ she said, and sniffed. ‘Well you can say that again. But what happened to me, maybe I can deal with, but I killed my daughter, Jack. I killed Charlie.’
‘No, you didn’t, said Nightingale. ‘You’d never have done that.’
‘But I did, I just made things too hard for her to cope with. You know, she was only ten, but since Hank gave up on us, she’d been the adult round here. She used to make me dress to walk her to school, she’d do the washing up, clean the place, and she’d always be asking me to eat better, drink less, wash my hair. And in the end, it got too much for her, she couldn’t cope with having a child for a mother, and she killed herself. It was my fault.’
Nightingale shook his head again. ‘No, this isn’t on you. You’ve been through hard times, but this is something different. Have you heard about other kids recently who’ve killed themselves? Same age as Charlie, in public places?’
She waved at the empty TV unit. ‘I don’t hear about much these days, sold the television. I guess the computer will be next. You telling me there’ve been other kids like Charlie, just up and killed themselves?’
‘It’s been happening a lot, all in the last few days. One boy walked in front of a truck, another threw himself under a train, there was another child who hanged herself at home. All Charlie’s age. And all with no warning and for no reason that anyone could find.’
She looked at him as if struggling to understand what he was telling her. ‘So what are you saying? They were killed or something?’
‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘They killed themselves. But I think someone else, or something else, made them do it.’
She poured the last two inches of wine into her glass, not offering to share since Nightingale had barely touched his. ‘I don’t see what you’re saying, how can someone make a kid kill themselves?’
‘I don’t really know,’ said Nightingale. ‘But Charlie never talked about hurting herself, did she?’
Elise Wendover shook her head emphatically. ‘Absolutely not, most of the time she was incredibly positive, kept telling me not to get too down, telling me we’d get through all this. The only time I ever saw her sad was when she was talking about how her father had just abandoned her. She...we...never so much as heard a word from him after that slut phoned. Not a damned word.’
‘Did you try to trace him?’
‘How? Police aren’t interested in a guy who just goes away, I didn’t have money for lawyers or detectives. Anyhow, in all that time, Charlie never once talked about hurting herself. Tell you the truth, couple times I talked about it and she was horrified. Kept telling me we had to be strong, we were all that each other had. You want some more wine? I got another bottle.’
Nightingale shook his head. ‘I’m good,’ he said, then watched as she levered herself up from the sofa and walked unsteadily to the kitchen. He heard the sound of the fridge opening, then the cork being drawn, and she tottered back in, set a full bottle down next to the empty one, then sat down again.
‘Last one
for today. I keep thinking if I stay drunk, all this won’t have happened, not unless I sober up. You ever try that?’
The words weren’t that coherent, but Nightingale got the sense of them. ‘Once,’ he said. ‘In another life.’
‘How’d it work out for you?’
He forced a smile. ‘Not too well.’ He took another sip of wine, just to keep her company, then tried to get back to the point. ‘So Charlie wasn’t unhappy, she didn’t have any problems at school?’
Again the over-emphatic shake of the head. Elise Wendover was getting pretty drunk now. ‘No, she was happy at school, lots of friends. She liked her teachers, though she missed Mrs. Dominguez. She’s had a baby, so they had a few substitutes in, Charlie said they were okay, but Mrs. Dominguez was really special. She was looking forward to her coming back to school.’ She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
‘Did she see her friends outside school?’
‘Not so much lately. Maybe she was a little ashamed of me and this place. Maybe the other moms didn’t want their kids hanging round a drunk.’
‘Did she talk to them on the phone much?’
She hung her head. ‘No. She wasn’t a great one for the phone.’
The woman’s eyes were beginning to glaze over, and he thought she might not stay coherent for too much longer. He’d probably got all he could from her, but his human sympathy wouldn’t let him leave it at that. ‘You shouldn’t be alone now,’ he said. ‘Is there anyone you can call?’
She shook her head. ‘That’s what the police said. Nah. My parents hated Hank, haven’t heard from them since they didn’t come to the wedding. Looks like they had it right.’
‘Why not try calling them? Maybe time to build some bridges? They might want to help.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, ‘been a long time, but maybe you’re right. Maybe not.’
Nightingale stood up to go, but she stayed seated, and put her head in her hands. ‘Mister. Jack. Why were you there?’
‘Where?’
‘The grotto. Where it…. happened.’
Where her daughter killed herself with alcohol and tablets, is what she meant. Nightingale couldn’t imagine how the woman felt, knowing that her daughter had taken her own life. Suicide was a terrible thing on every level, but it was always worse for those that were left behind.
Tennessee Night (The 8th Jack Nightingale Novel) Page 23