I Know Who Did It_A Jack Nightingale Short Story

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Not great.’

  ‘He was looking at the car, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

  ‘If he knows my registration number he can track me down.’

  ‘He’d have to know the right people, Jenny.’

  ‘If he’s who you think he is, he probably does.’ She sighed. ‘Jack, what the hell have you done?’

  * * *

  Jenny stopped the Audi in front of the gates to Gosling Manor and Nightingale climbed out to open them. She drove through and waited while he closed the gates and got back into the car. She put the car in gear and drove along a narrow paved road that curved to the right through thick woodland and parked next to a huge stone fountain, the centrepiece of which was a weathered stone mermaid surrounded by dolphins and fish. They climbed out and looked up at the two-storey mansion, the lower floor built of stone, the upper floor made of weathered bricks, topped by a tiled roof with four massive chimney stacks.

  ‘You should sell it,’ she said. ‘It’s not as if you’re living here.’

  ‘I will,’ said Nightingale. ‘Once I’ve worked out what to do with all the stuff in the basement.’

  Nightingale fished the key from his raincoat pocket and unlocked the massive oak door. The hallway was huge, with wood-panelled walls, a glistening marble floor and a large multi-tiered chandelier that looked like an upside down crystal wedding cake. There were three oak doors leading off the hallway, but the entrance to the basement library was hidden within the wooden paneling. He clicked it open and reached through to flick the light switch. Jenny followed him down the wooden stairs.

  The basement ran the full length of the house and was lined with shelves laden with books. Running down the centre of the basement were two lines of display cases filled with all sorts of occult paraphernalia, from skulls to crystal balls. At the bottom of the stairs was a sitting area with two overstuffed red leather Chesterfield sofas and a claw-footed teak coffee table that was piled high with books.

  Nightingale waved at the bookshelves. ‘We need something about summoning demons,’ he said. ‘Specifically a demon called Paimonia.’

  ‘Is there an index or something that lists the books?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘So we browse through, what, two thousand volumes?’

  ‘Do you have a better plan?’

  She sighed. ‘Unfortunately not.’ She took off her coat and draped it over the back of one of the sofas, then walked over to the bookcases closest to the stairs. Nightingale started on the bookcase next to hers. As always he was amazed by the variety of titles in the library, all devoted to witchcraft and the occult. The books had been collected over more than fifty years by Nightingale’s genetic father, Ainsley Gosling, a Satanist who had put Nightingale up for adoption at birth.

  It took them the best part of two hours before they found what Nightingale was looking for. Like most of the books on the shelves, there was no title on the spine. It was bound in the skin of some long-dead animal, a reptile maybe. It was a small book, six inches by four inches just about, with fewer than a hundred pages, most of which were blank. The pages weren’t paper, they were more like yellowed cloth, and the words had been handwritten in capital letters. The only title was on the first page – THE SUMMONING OF DEVILS and underneath was a list of twelve names. Paimonia was the last name.

  Nightingale took the book over to one of the sofas and sat down. Luckily the book was in English – the volumes on the shelves came from all over the world, and a lot of them were written in Latin.

  ‘Does it tell you what you need?’ asked Jenny.

  Nightingale nodded. ‘The whole thing. Though it skates over the details over what the deal involves.’

  ‘The deal?’

  Nightingale was about to explain when he realised that Jenny was better off not knowing the finer points of negotiating with demons. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said. ‘But I’m guessing that Nelson found a book like this.’

  ‘What are you planning, Jack?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve got that look in your eye that says you’re up to something.’

  Nightingale grinned. ‘I’m just doing my research, that’s all.’

  Jenny looked around the basement and shivered. ‘Can you do it somewhere else, this place gives me the heebie jeebies.’

  ‘The heebie jeebies?’

  ‘You know what I mean. The sooner you sell this place, the better.’

  * * *

  Nightingale was about to clean his teeth when his phone rang. It was Jenny. ‘He’s here, outside my house,’ she said, her voice trembling.

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Nelson. Or Hall. Or whatever his name is. He’s parked in a grey Toyota.’

  ‘Has he said anything?’

  ‘He’s just sitting there.’

  Stay inside, keep the door locked, I’ll be right around.’

  Nightingale hurried downstairs to the street and flagged down a black cab. Jenny’s three-bedroom mews house was just off the King’s Road in Chelsea. Nightingale had the cab drop him at the entrance to the mews. Jenny’s Audi was parked outside her house. The grey Toyota was four houses along. There was someone sitting in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel. Nightingale walked towards the car, trying to stay in its blind spot. He grabbed at the passenger door handle and pulled the door open. Hall looked over at, mouth open in surprise. Nightingale climbed in and slammed the door shut. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he said between gritted teeth.

  Hall sneered at him. ‘It’s a free country. You came around to my home, I thought the least I could do was return the favour.’

  ‘I don’t live here.’

  ‘I know that. The lovely Ms McLean does.’

  ‘You go near here and I’ll…’

  ‘You’ll what, Nightingale? And I’m already here so do what you think you have to do?’

  ‘I just want you to leave her alone. She’s nothing to do with this. If you’ve got a problem with me then face me, man to man.’

  Hall chuckled. ‘First things first.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You haven’t worked it out yet? I’m due a sacrifice, and Ms McLean fits the bill. It’s a pity she’s not a virgin, but…’

  Nightingale grabbed Hall by the throat but the man continued to smile at him. ‘What do you think you can do to me, Nightingale?’ he said, his voice strangled but firm.

  ‘I can stop you. That’s what I can do.’

  Hall reached inside his jacket and pulled out a knife. It had a blade almost six inches long, pointed and with a jagged edge along one side. Nightingale stiffened and released his grip on Hall’s throat. Hall handed the knife handle first to Nightingale. ‘Take it. Kill me. Go on.’

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘So what are you going to do? Tell the cops?’ He laughed. ‘I’m sitting in a car in a public street.’

  ‘With a knife,’ said Nightingale.

  Hall tapped him on the chest with the handle. ‘Take it. You know you want to. Take it and kill me. Go on.’ Nightingale shook his head and Hall laughed. He turned the blade around and quickly plunged the knife into his own chest, grunting through gritted teeth.

  Nightingale jerked back and Hall continued to smile. ‘What do you think you can possibly do to me if I can do this to myself,’ said Hall. He slowly pulled the knife out. There was no blood, not on his chest or on the blade. Hall took a deep breath then put the knife back inside his jacket. ‘You can’t kill me, Nightingale. That’s the deal I have. I’m immortal.’

  ‘In exchange for your soul? And regular sacrifices?’

  Hall shrugged. ‘It’s a small price to pay, in the grand scheme of things.’

  ‘And Emily Campbell was the first?’

  ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘Her sister wants to know what happened. They said it was suicide. But she didn’t believe it.’


  ‘If it makes her feel better, it was Emily’s fault. She shouldn’t have been there. It was midnight, I’d done the ritual. Paimonia was explaining the small print. I didn’t know about the sacrifice, or that the sacrifice had to be repeated. All I knew was what I’d read in this old book I found among my grandmother’s things after she died. She was a bit of a witch, though I never realised that. Anyway, the book explained the ceremony and what I could get, but there was stuff missing.’ He shrugged. ‘Emily came into the room. I think she was sleepwalking, maybe. Or maybe Paimonia had done something to her. Anyway, she walked into the room, the door slammed behind her and that was that. She was the first.’ He grinned. ‘Does that help you, Nightingale? Does knowing what happened help you in any way? Because it isn’t going to change anything. I’m going to arrange for your friend Jenny McLean to be the next sacrifice and there’s nothing you can do about it. Now go.’

  ‘You can’t do this.’

  Hall reached for the knife inside his jacket. ‘Get the fuck out of my car or I swear I’ll kill you now and fuck the consequences.’

  Nightingale glared at the man but knew there was nothing he could do. He cursed and got out of the car. Hall grinned and drove away.

  * * *

  Mrs Steadman could see from the look on Nightingale’s face that he was worried so she didn’t make any small talk or offer him tea. ‘What on earth has happened?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve made a huge mistake,’ he said. ‘I confronted a guy who’d done a deal with Paimonia and I told him that I know what he did.’

  Mrs Steadman frowned. ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘I guess I wanted to know for sure, so that I could tell my client what she wants to know.’

  ‘Client?’

  ‘It’s a lady whose sister died forty years ago. She was told it was suicide but she never believed it.’

  Mrs Steadman’s hand flew up to cover her mouth. ‘The sister was a sacrifice?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘Oh Mr Nightingale, what have you done?’

  ‘It gets worse, Mrs Steadman. This man is now threatening me, and my friend Jenny. And there’s nothing I can do to stop him.’

  Mrs Steadman sighed. ‘I warned you, didn’t I? I told you not to mess with Paimonia.’

  ‘This man can’t be killed, can he? That’s part of the deal.’

  ‘I thought I explained that to you.’

  ‘I knew the deal was that you could live for ever. I didn’t appreciate that meant you couldn’t be killed. What can I do, Mrs Steadman? How can I put a stop to this?’

  Mrs Steadman looked at him fearfully. ‘You can’t, Mr Nightingale. If this man has the protection of one of the strongest demons in Hell, there’s nothing you can do.’

  Nightingale sighed. He wanted a cigarette, badly.

  ‘You need to run, Mr Nightingale. You and your friend need to get as far away from this man as you can. That’s your only hope, to be somewhere where he can’t find you.’

  ‘I can’t do that, Mrs Steadman.’

  ‘You have to.’

  Nightingale rubbed the back of his neck. ‘There’s no way of stopping this man? No way at all.’

  Mrs Steadman swallowed nervously. ‘I’m afraid not. So long as he has the protection of Paimonia, there is nothing you can do.’

  ‘What if this Paimonia were to die. What then?’

  Mrs Steadman’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If Paimonia were to die, what about the people who had done deals with him?’

  ‘Those deals would no longer be valid, obviously. But Paimonia is all-powerful, only Satan himself is stronger.’

  ‘I have to go,’ said Nightingale, heading for the door. ‘Thanks for your help.’

  He hurried out, leaving Mrs Steadman staring forlornly at the door. ‘Mr Nightingale, I didn’t help you at all,’ she whispered.

  * * *

  Nightingale drove south to Streatham, through the town centre and made a right turn and then a left and then drove down an alley between two rows of houses. There was a row of six brick-built lock-up garages with metal doors and corrugated iron roofs. A large black man was waiting for him, next to a black Porsche SUV. He was wearing a black overcoat and impenetrable wraparound sunglasses. T-Bone worked for a South London gangster but had a sideline in supplying illicit weapons to the criminal community. T-Bone grinned as Nightingale climbed out of his MGB. ‘You still driving that rust bucket, Birdman?’

  ‘It’s a classic,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘It’s a piece of shit,’ said T-Bone. ‘If I sold guns as shit as your motor, I’d be out of business.’ T-Bone pulled out a set of keys from his coat pocket, unlocked the door of one of the lock-ups and pushed it up. There was an old Jaguar there, its boot facing outwards. T-Bone pulled the door halfway down behind them. ‘Don’t want anybody looking in,’ he explained. He used another key to open the boot of the car. Inside were a dozen or so packages, covered in bubble-wrap. T-Bone picked up one of the packages and unwrapped it. It was a Glock, similar to the one Nightingale had used when he was with the Met’s firearms unit. T-Bone held it out to Nightingale but Nightingale shook his head. ‘Have you got anything smaller? More concealable?’

  ‘A lady gun, you mean?’

  ‘I was thinking of something I could hide.’

  T-Bone nodded and rooted through the packages before selecting one and unwrapping it. ‘Smith and Wesson 638 Airweight?’ he said. ‘Aluminium so it’s light, small frame so it’s, well….the clue’s in the name, innit?’

  Nightingale nodded and took the revolver. He held it in the palm of his hand. T-Bone was right, the 638 Airweight was a near-perfect lightweight revolver. It weighed less than a pound and the barrel was just two inches long. That meant it wasn’t especially accurate beyond a few yards but it could easily be carried in a jacket pocket. It only held five rounds but there were thirty eights so would do a lot of damage.

  ‘Five rounds be enough for you?’ asked T-Bone as if reading his mind.

  ‘Five should be overkill,’ said Nightingale. ‘I was never one for spray and pray. How much?’

  ‘I was thinking six hundred.’

  ‘Four?’

  ‘Five-fifty. And if you don’t fire it, I’ll buy it back for three.’

  ‘I’ll be firing it,’ said Nightingale. ‘Five, and I only need five rounds.’

  T-bone pulled out a plastic bag of bullets and counted out five. He slammed the boot shut and gave the rounds to Nightingale. ‘Deal,’ he said.

  Nightingale took out his wallet and handed over ten fifty-pound notes. Always a pleasure doing business with you, T-bone,’ he said. He shoved the gun into his pocket then tried to raise the garage door. It seemed to be stuck and he couldn’t get it to budge.

  T-Bone chuckled and forced it up with one hand. ‘You take care, Birdman,’ said T-Bone, as Nightingale walked back to his MGB.

  * * *

  According to the book, Paimonia was best summoned during the day. There were other peculiarities of the ceremony. The candles had to be a mixture of black and blue, and among the herbs and compounds that had to be burned were mercury and bindweed, both of which he managed to find in storage jars in a display case in the basement. The book also emphasised that the summoner had to look to the northwest during the ceremony and he had used a small brass compass to check which way that was. He put everything he needed into a cardboard box and carried it upstairs. He chose a large bedroom that had been stripped of all its furniture and furnishings. He closed the door behind him, placed the box on the bare floorboards, then used consecrated chalk to draw a circle in the middle of the room, about twelve feet in diameter. Then he used a birch branch taken from the garden to slowly outline the circle. Then he used the chalk to draw a five pointed star on top of the circle, with two of the five points facing northwest. So far it was a standard pentagram. Nightingale sprinkled consecrated salt water around the perimeter of the circle before studying the diagrams in the bo
ok. They were a pretty close match to the page he’d copied from Mercer’s notebook. In a standard pentagram the letters MI and then CH and then AEL were written around the circle, spelling out the name of Michael, the archangel, but for Paimonia the letters were replaced by complex symbols. Nightingale spent more than an hour making sure he drew them perfectly, then he went through to the bathroom and stripped off his clothes.

  He had already filled the claw-footed cast iron bathtub with water and he slid into it. He held his breath and slid down under the water, holding his breath until he felt his lungs start to burn, and then he pushed himself up and scrubbed himself clean with a small plastic brush and a bar of soap. He washed and rinsed his hair twice, then climbed out of the bath and towelled himself dry. He put on clean clothes and a pair of new trainers. Finally he combed his hair, checked himself in the mirror over the sink, and went back into the bedroom.

  He picked up five candles, three black and two dark blue, and placed them at the five points of the pentagram. He lit them with his lighter, picked up the cardboard box, then stepped inside the circle.

  He took a couple of deep breaths then used the birch branch to go over the chalk outline again. He sprinkled consecrated salt water around the perimeter of the circle, then set fire to the contents of a lead crucible. The herbs and spices and bits of wood hissed and spluttered. He added bindweed and mercury salt and the room filled with cloying smoke.

  He took the book out of the box and opened it at the chapter on Paimonia. He began to carefully recite the words that would summon the demon. They were written phonetically, they weren’t English or Latin, they were something in between. The candle flames flickered as warm wind started to blow through the room, even though the windows and door were shut. The air was getting thicker as the fumes billowed up from the lead crucible. He tried not to think about the damage the mercury might do to his lungs and he concentrated on the words he was saying. His eyes began to water and he blinked away the tears.