Nightfall

15

Nightingale woke up early on Friday morning with Simon Underwood’s words ringing in his ears. It was the second night in a row that he’d had the dream. He sat up and ran his hands through his hair, then caught sight of his reflection in the mirrored door of the wardrobe on the far wall. His face was bathed in sweat and there were dark patches under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept for a week. He groaned and lit a cigarette, smoked it all the way down, then showered and padded to the kitchen naked to make himself a black coffee. As he sipped it, he phoned his uncle Tommy. It was just after six thirty but his aunt and uncle had always been early risers.

His aunt answered again but she didn’t say anything to him, just called for her husband.

Uncle Tommy sounded hesitant. ‘Yes, Jack, how’s things?’

‘Everything’s fine, Uncle. I called you a couple of days ago.’

‘Aye, I’m sorry, lad, I’ve been busy.’

‘I need to talk to you about Mum and Dad.’

‘Aye, Linda said. But it’s complicated, and I’m not sure your dad would want me talking about it.’

‘He’s dead, so I can’t ask him or Mum, but I have to know the truth. You can understand that, can’t you?’

His uncle sighed but didn’t answer.

‘We have to talk about this, Uncle Tommy,’ said Nightingale.

‘Aye, lad. I guess so.’

‘How about I drive up to Altrincham on Sunday? About ten in the morning?’

His uncle put his hand over the receiver and said something to his wife. ‘Linda says come for lunch, Jack. She’ll do one of her roasts.’

‘Lunch it is.’

‘Jack, look… I’m sorry about all this.’

‘Let’s talk on Sunday, Uncle Tommy. It’ll be easier face to face.’

Nightingale was already at his desk when Jenny walked in. She waved through the doorway as she dropped her bag onto her desk, slipped off her trainers and changed into a pair of Chanel high heels with pretty bows on the back. ‘The early worm,’ she said.

He was studying the book he’d taken from the basement in Gosling Manor and looked disapprovingly over the top. ‘A bit of respect would be nice,’ he said, ‘me being management and all. I couldn’t sleep. Came back to watch the DVD again.’

‘Are you worrying about it?’

‘My father tells me he’s sold my soul to a devil and blows his head? Don’t you think I should be a bit concerned?’

‘He was probably deranged.’

‘And I’m his offspring. What if it’s hereditary?’

‘What if what’s hereditary?’

‘He went mad. Maybe he was schizophrenic. Manic-depressive. I don’t know. But if he was my father then maybe I’ll go crazy too.’

Jenny gestured at the dirty mugs on his desk. ‘I think you might be suffering from an excess of caffeine, Jack.’

‘It’s not the coffee,’ said Nightingale. ‘The more I look at the man in the DVD the more I see myself in him.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Jenny.

‘It’s the eyes. I look into his eyes and it’s like staring into a mirror.’

‘He doesn’t look anything like you.’

‘You don’t know what I’ll look like when I’m his age.’

‘He was fat, he looked like he’d spent a lifetime boozing and taking God knows what drugs, and he looked sick.’

‘And bald,’ said Nightingale.

‘And bald. Though I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’

‘Gosling was bald. That means I’ll go bald, too.’

Jenny grinned. ‘No, it doesn’t,’ she said. ‘The baldness gene crosses the sexes. Didn’t you do biology at school?’

‘I must have been off on the day we did baldness. How does it go again?’

Jenny sighed and picked up the dirty mugs. ‘You’ll inherit the hair of your mother’s father,’ she said.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea who your real mum was? If what Gosling said is true, she might be out there.’

‘I know,’ said Nightingale, ‘but I wouldn’t have the first idea how to find her. I doubt he went through an agency.’

‘We could try hospital records for the day you were born. That would be a start.’

‘If Gosling was doing this secretly, he wouldn’t have used a hospital,’ said Nightingale. ‘For all we know I could have been born in Gosling Manor. Oh, yeah, while I remember, how much is in the company account?’

‘Not a lot.’

‘I’m going to use the credit card to pay the electricity bill at Gosling Manor. Just under a grand. Can we cover it?’

‘Barely,’ said Jenny. ‘We dipped into the red again last month.’

‘We’ve got an overdraft facility of five hundred quid, right?’

‘We used that, then went into the red,’ said Jenny.

‘Mrs Brierley’s cheque should clear tomorrow.’

‘Assuming it doesn’t bounce like last time,’ said Jenny.

‘That was because her shit of a husband emptied their account,’ said Nightingale. ‘The new cheque was on hers. It’ll be fine.’

‘You’re not planning to live there, are you?’

Nightingale laughed. ‘If you’d seen the size of the place, you wouldn’t even ask,’ he said. ‘It’s huge. It’s a couple of hundred yards from the kitchen to the main bedroom.’

‘Gosling lived there alone, didn’t he?’

‘I’m not sure. I think he must have had staff living in, for cleaning if nothing else. And it needs a team of gardeners. That’s another reason I couldn’t live there – I couldn’t afford the upkeep.’

‘So why have the power connected?’

‘Robbie and I found the basement and I want to go through it properly. It was hard by torchlight. And the estate agents will need the electricity on when they start showing people around.’

‘That’s the plan? Sell it?’

‘I’m going to have to because there’ll be inheritance tax to pay. Turtledove doesn’t know how much but it’ll be a lot.’

Jenny looked at the clock on the wall. ‘You haven’t forgotten Mr McBride, have you?’

‘McBride?’

‘The gentleman whose wife’s having an affair with her boss, remember?’

‘What time’s he due?’

‘Ten.’

‘Time for another coffee, then,’ he said.

‘What are you reading?’ asked Jenny, as she went over to the machine. She put down the dirty mugs and picked up a clean one.

‘A book,’ said Nightingale. ‘And I’m not reading it, I’m staring at it, trying to make sense of the letters, which isn’t the same thing.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Jenny. She poured him some coffee and brought it through to his office.

Nightingale handed it to her. ‘See for yourself,’ he said.

Jenny opened it. It was full of handwritten scrawl, some in dark blue ink, some in black, and some in what looked disconcertingly like dried blood. Dotted among the text there were sketches of circles and pentagrams. Jenny tried reading a sentence at random but she couldn’t make any sense of it. It certainly wasn’t English, or any other language she recognised.

‘At first I thought I might have caught dyslexia,’ said Nightingale. He sipped his coffee, then reached for the whisky bottle.

Jenny moved it out of his reach without taking her eyes off the book. ‘You don’t catch dyslexia,’ she said, frowning over the spidery writing. ‘Where did you get this from?’

‘I picked it up in the house last night,’ said Nightingale. ‘Old man Gosling’s basement is packed with books and stuff… weird stuff. I thought that might have been his diary but I can’t make head or tail of it. I thought it must have been written backwards, but even if you read it from right to left it still doesn’t make sense.’

Jenny looked up. ‘I’ve got it,’ she said.

‘The suspense is killing me,’ said Nightingale. ‘What have you got?’

‘It’s not written backwards, it’s mirror writing. There’s a difference.’

‘So you have to read it in a mirror? How on earth did he manage that?’

‘You can teach yourself to write that way. Leonardo da Vinci used to do it, so that no one could read his papers.’ Jenny fetched a small mirror from her bag, sat down opposite Nightingale and held the book so that a page was reflected.

Nightingale shook his head. ‘It still doesn’t make sense.’

‘It’s not English, that’s why.’

He took the mirror from her and tried to read a sentence. ‘What is it? Italian?’

‘Latin.’

‘My comprehensive was a bit light on dead languages,’ said Nightingale. ‘Can you translate it?’

Jenny rolled her eyes. ‘Didn’t you read my CV when you hired me?’

‘I was too busy looking at your legs,’ said Nightingale. ‘Can you tell me what it says?’

‘Eventually,’ said Jenny.

A sudden knock at the door startled them. Jenny hurried to open it. Joel McBride, a middle-aged man in a wheelchair, looked up at her. He was in his late forties with lank brown hair, flecked with grey, that kept falling into his eyes. He was wearing a scarlet windbreaker and black leather gloves with the fingers cut off. Nightingale decided that his bulging arm muscles were the result of pushing himself around. ‘I’m sorry I’m early but the taxi got the pick-up time wrong,’ said McBride.

‘No problem,’ said Nightingale, getting up from his chair. ‘As my lovely assistant just reminded me, the early worm catches the bird. There’s something we need to discuss.’

‘About my wife?’ said McBride.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Nightingale.