Hoyle was standing next to a PC, frowning as he spoke into his mobile. He put it away as Nightingale came up to him. ‘Superintendent Chalmers wants you in his office, Jack,’ he said. ‘Now.’
Nightingale said nothing. He brushed past Hoyle and headed for his MGB.
‘Now, Jack. He wants to see you now.’
‘I’m busy,’ said Nightingale.
‘He’ll want you to see the shrink, too,’ said Hoyle, hurrying after him. It was standard procedure after a death.
‘I don’t need to see the shrink,’ said Nightingale.
Hoyle put a hand on Nightingale’s shoulder. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Jack. It’s natural to feel guilty, to feel that you’ve failed.’
Nightingale glared at him. ‘Don’t try to empathise with me and don’t sympathise. I don’t need it, Robbie.’
‘And what do I tell Chalmers?’
‘Tell him whatever you want,’ said Nightingale, twisting out of Hoyle’s grip. He climbed into the MGB and drove off.
2
What happened later that chilly November morning really depends on whom you talk to. Jack Nightingale never spoke about it and refused to answer any questions put to him by the two investigators assigned to the case. They were from the Metropolitan Police’s Professional Standards Department, and they questioned him for more than eighteen hours over three days. During that time he said not one word to them about what had happened. If you’d asked the two detectives they’d have said they were pretty sure that Nightingale had thrown Simon Underwood through the window. If they’d been speaking off the record they would probably have said they had every sympathy with Nightingale and that, given the chance, they would probably have done the same. Like policemen the world over, they knew that paedophiles never stopped offending. You could put them in prison so that they couldn’t get near children or you could kill them but you could never change their nature.
The post-mortem on the little girl had shown signs of sexual activity and there were bruises and bite marks on her legs and stomach. A forensic dentistry expert was able to match two of the clearer ones to the father’s dental records. A swab of the child’s vagina showed up the father’s sperm. The evidence was conclusive. According to the coroner, he had been raping her for years. The investigating officers presented the evidence to the mother, but she denied all knowledge of any abuse. They didn’t believe her.
Underwood had been in a meeting with six employees from the bank’s marketing department when Nightingale walked out of the stairwell on the twentieth floor of the bank in Canary Wharf. He had shown his warrant card to a young receptionist and demanded to be told where Underwood was. The receptionist later told investigators that Nightingale had a strange look in his eyes. ‘Manic,’ she told them. She had pointed down the corridor to Underwood’s office and he had walked away. She had called security but by the time they had arrived it was all over.
Nightingale had burst into Underwood’s office but he wasn’t there. His terrified secretary told him that her boss was down the corridor. She later told the investigators that Nightingale had been icy cold and there had been no emotion in his voice. ‘It was like he was a robot, or on autopilot or something,’ she said.
There were differing descriptions from the six witnesses who were in the meeting room with Underwood. One said Nightingale looked crazed, two repeated the secretary’s assertion that he was icy cold, two women said he seemed confused, and the senior marketing manager said he reminded her of the Terminator in the second movie, the one Arnold Schwarzenegger was trying to kill. The investigators knew that personal recollections were the most unreliable form of evidence but the one thing that all the witnesses agreed on was that Nightingale had told everyone to leave, that he had closed the door behind them and a few seconds later there was an almighty crash as Simon Underwood exited through the window.
Was he pushed? Did he trip? Did Nightingale hit him and he fell accidentally? Was Underwood so stricken by guilt that he threw himself out of the window? The investigators put every possible scenario to Nightingale, with a few impossible ones for good measure, but Nightingale refused to say anything. He didn’t even say, ‘No comment.’ He just sat staring at the investigators with a look of bored indifference on his face. They asked him several times if he wanted the services of his Police Federation represen tative, but Nightingale shook his head. He spoke only to ask to go to the toilet or outside to smoke a cigarette.
For the first couple of days the newspapers were after Nightingale’s blood, crying police brutality, but when a sympathetic clerk in the coroner’s office leaked the post-mortem details to a journalist on the Sunday Times and it became known that Underwood had been molesting his daughter, the tide turned and the tabloids called for Nightingale to be honoured rather than persecuted.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission sent two more investigators to talk to him but he was as uncommunicative with them as he had been with the PSD detectives. The IPCC officers offered Nightingale a deal: if he told them that Underwood had jumped there would be no charges. If he told them that Underwood had slipped and fallen through the window, there would be no charges. All they wanted was to close the file on the man’s death. Nightingale said nothing.
There were some in the Met who said Nightingale had his head screwed on right, that the IPCC and the PSD were lying sons of bitches and that, no matter what he said, they’d hang him out to dry. There were others who said that Nightingale was an honourable man, that he’d killed Underwood and wasn’t prepared to lie about what he’d done. Whatever the reason, whatever had happened to Underwood, Nightingale simply refused to talk about it, and after a week the investigators gave up.
Nightingale went to Sophie’s funeral but kept his distance, not wanting to intrude on the family’s grief. A photographer from one of the Sunday tabloids tried to take his picture but Nightingale grabbed his camera and smashed it against a gravestone. He left before Sophie’s coffin was lowered into the cold, damp soil.
There were two reports into the death, by the PSD and the IPCC. Both were inconclusive and criticised Nightingale for refusing to co-operate. Without his statement, there was no way anyone could know what had happened in the meeting room that day. Two eyewitnesses had seen the body fall to the Tarmac, close enough to hear Sophie’s father shout, ‘No!’ all the way down, but not close enough to see if he had jumped or if he had been pushed. There was CCTV footage of the reception area, which clearly showed Nightingale arriving and leaving, but there was no coverage of the room and no CCTV cameras covering the area where Underwood had hit the ground. Both reports went to the Crown Prosecution Service at Ludgate, and they decided there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute Nightingale.
He had been on suspension until the reports were published, when he was called into the office of his superintendent who told him that his career was over and the best thing for everyone was for him to resign. Superintendent Chalmers had the letter already typed out and Nightingale signed it there and then, handed over his warrant card and walked out of New Scotland Yard, never to return.
Sophie’s mother killed herself two weeks after the funeral. She swallowed a bottle of sleeping tablets with a quantity of paracetamol, and left a note saying she was so, so sorry she hadn’t been a better mother.
The second in the Jack Nightingale supernatural thriller series is MIDNIGHT:
Jack Nightingale found it hard enough to save lives when he was a cop.
Now he needs to save a soul – his sister’s. But to save her he has to find her and they’ve been separated since birth.
When everyone Jack talks to about his sister dies horrible, he realises that someone, or something, is determined to keep them apart.
If he’s going to save his sister, he’s going to have to do what he does best – negotiate.
But any negotiation with the forces of darkness comes at a terrible price.
And first Jack must ask himself the question: is every soul worth saving?
Out now in paperback and ebook – read on for an opening extract . . .
1
It wasn’t the first dead body that he’d ever seen, and Jack Nightingale was fairly sure it wouldn’t be the last. The woman looked as if she was in her late thirties but Nightingale knew she was only thirty-one. She had curly brown hair, neatly plucked eyebrows and pale pink lipstick, and her neck was at a funny angle, which suggested that the washing line around her neck had done more than just strangle her when she’d dropped down the stairwell. She was wearing a purple dress with a black leather belt. One of her shoes had fallen off and was lying at the bottom of the stairs, the other dangled precariously from her left foot. A stream of urine had trickled down her legs and pooled on the stair carpet, turning the rust-coloured pile a dark brown. Death was always accompanied by the evacuation of bowels, Nightingale knew. It was one of the unwritten rules. You died and your bowels opened as surely as night followed day.
He stood looking up at the woman. Her name was Constance Miller and it was the first time he had ever laid eyes on her. From the look of it she’d stood at the top of the stairs, looped a piece of washing line around her neck and tied the other end around the banister, then dropped over, probably head first. The momentum had almost certainly broken her neck and she probably hadn’t felt much pain, but even so it couldn’t have been a pleasant way to go.
Nightingale took out his pack of Marlboro and a blue disposable lighter. ‘Don’t mind if I smoke, do you?’ He tapped out a cigarette and slipped it between his lips. ‘You look like a smoker, Constance. And I saw the ashtray on the kitchen table so I’m guessing this isn’t a nonsmoking house.’
He flicked the lighter, lit the cigarette and inhaled. As he blew a loose smoke ring down at the stained carpet, the woman’s arms twitched and her eyes opened. Nightingale froze, the cigarette halfway to his mouth.
The woman’s arms flailed, her legs trembled and she began to make a wheezing sound through clenched teeth. Suddenly her eyes opened wide. ‘Your sister is going to Hell, Jack Nightingale,’ she said, her voice a strangled rasp. Then her eyes closed and her body went still.
Nightingale cursed and ran to the kitchen. The back door was open the way he’d left it. Next to the sink was a pinewood block with half a dozen plastic-handled knives embedded in it. He stubbed out his cigarette, took one of the biggest knives and ran back to the hall. He took the stairs two at a time until he was level with her then he reached over and grabbed her around the waist. He grunted as he hefted her against his shoulder and climbed up the stairs to take the weight off the washing line. He held her tight with his left arm as he sawed at the line with the knife. It took half a dozen goes before it parted and her head slumped over his shoulder.
She was the wrong side of the banister and he couldn’t pull her over so he let her weight carry him down the stairs until her feet were touching the floor, then he lowered her as best he could before letting go. She fell against the wall and slid down it, her hair fanning out as the back of her head scraped across the wallpaper. Nightingale hurried around the bottom of the stairs just as the woman fell face down on the carpet. He rolled her over and felt for a pulse in her neck with his left hand, but there was nothing. He sat back on his heels, gasping for breath. Her skirt had ridden up her thighs, revealing her soiled underwear, and Nightingale pulled it down.
‘Get away from her!’ bellowed a voice behind him.
As he turned he saw a burly uniformed police sergeant wearing a stab vest and pointing a finger at him. Just behind him was a younger PC, tall and thin and holding an extended tactical baton in his gloved hand.
‘Drop the knife!’ shouted the sergeant, fumbling for his baton in its nylon holster on his belt.
Nightingale stared at the knife in his right hand. He turned back to look at the cops but before he could open his mouth to speak the young PC’s baton crashed against his head and Nightingale slumped to the floor, unconscious before he hit the carpet.
2
The superintendent was in his early fifties, his brown hair flecked with grey, and he studied Nightingale through thick-lensed spectacles. He was in uniform, but he’d undone his jacket buttons when he sat down at the table. Next to him was a younger man in a grey suit, a detective who had yet to introduce himself. Nightingale sat opposite them and watched the detective trying to take the plastic wrapping off a cassette tape.
‘You’ve not gone digital, then?’ asked Nightingale.
The superintendent nodded at the tape recorder on the shelf by Nightingale’s head. ‘Please don’t say anything until the tape’s running,’ he said. He took off his spectacles and methodically wiped the lenses with a pale blue handkerchief.
‘That could be a while, the way he’s going,’ said Nightingale.
The detective put the tape to his mouth, ripped away a piece of the plastic with his teeth and then used his nails to finish the job. He slid the cassette into one of the twin slots, then started work on a second tape. Nightingale figured the man was in his mid-twenties and still on probation with the CID. He kept looking nervously at the superintendent, like a puppy that expected to be scolded at any moment.
The custody sergeant who had taken Nightingale from the holding cell had given him a bottle of water and a packet of crisps and they were both on the table in front of him. He opened the bottle and drank from it, wiped his mouth on the paper sleeve of the forensic suit they’d given him to wear when they took away his clothes and shoes. On his feet were paper overshoes with elastic at the top.
The detective finally got the wrapping off the second tape and slotted it into the recorder before nodding at the superintendent.
‘Switch it on, lad,’ said the superintendent. The detect ive flushed and did as he was told. The recording light glowed red. ‘Right.’ He checked his wristwatch. ‘It is a quarter past three on the afternoon of November the thirtieth. I am Superintendent William Thomas and with me is . . .’ He nodded at the detective.
‘Detective Constable Simon Jones,’ said the younger man. He began to spell out his surname but the superintendent cut him short with a wave of his hand.
‘We can all spell, lad,’ said the superintendent. He looked over at the recorder to check that the tapes were running. ‘We are interviewing Mr Jack Nightingale. Please give us your date of birth, Mr Nightingale.’
Nightingale did as he was asked.
‘So your birthday was three days ago?’ said the superintendent.
‘And you didn’t get me a present,’ said Nightingale, stretching out his legs and folding his arms. ‘I’m not being charged with anything, am I?’
‘At the moment you’re helping us with our enquiries into a suspicious death.’
‘She killed herself,’ said Nightingale.
‘We’re still waiting for the results of the autopsy.’
‘She was hanging from the upstairs banister when I found her.’
‘You were bent over her with a knife in your hand when two of my officers apprehended you,’ said the superintendent.
‘Your men beat the crap out of me,’ said Nightingale, gingerly touching the plaster on the side of his head. ‘I used the knife to cut her down.’
‘One blow, necessary force,’ said the superintendent.
‘I was an innocent bystander,’ said Nightingale. ‘Wrong place, wrong time. They didn’t give me a chance to explain.’
‘Apparently they asked you to drop your weapon and when you didn’t comply they used necessary force to subdue you.’
‘First of all, it wasn’t a weapon; it was a knife I’d taken from the kitchen to cut her down. And second of all, they hit me before I could open my mouth.’ He pointed at the paper suit he was wearing. ‘And when am I getting my clothes back?’
‘When they’ve been forensically examined,’ said the superintendent.
‘She killed herself,’ said Nightingale. ‘Surely you must have seen that. She tied a washing line around her neck and jumped.’
&nb
sp; ‘That’s not what women normally do,’ said the superintendent. ‘Female suicides, I mean. They tend to swallow sleeping pills or cut their wrists in a warm bath. Hanging is a very male thing. Like death by car.’
‘I bow to your superior knowledge, but I think I’d rather go now.’
‘You’re not going anywhere until you’ve answered some questions.’
‘Does that mean I’m under arrest?’
‘At the moment you’re helping us with our enquiries,’ said the superintendent.
‘So I’m free to go whenever I want?’
‘I would prefer that you answer my questions first. If you’ve done nothing wrong then you shouldn’t have any problems talking to us.’ Thomas leaned forward and looked at Nightingale over the top of his spectacles. ‘You’re not one of those Englishmen who think the Welsh are stupid, are you?’
‘What?’
‘You know what I’m talking about,’ said the superintendent. ‘Us and the Irish, you English do like to take the piss, don’t you? Calling us sheep-shaggers and the like.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about you coming into our small town and causing mayhem,’ said the superintendent. ‘And acting as if it’s no big thing.’ He linked his fingers and took a deep breath. ‘Because it is a big thing, Nightingale. It’s a very big thing.’
‘She was dead when I got there.’
‘So you say.’
‘What does the coroner say?’
‘We’re still waiting on the exact time of death, but it looks as if it’s going to be too close to call.’
Cursed_A Jack Nightingale Short Story Page 7