Nightfall

68

Nightingale used the chalk he’d bought from Alice Steadman’s shop to draw a circle in the middle of the room, about twelve feet in diameter. ‘Are you sure it doesn’t have to be a particular size?’ he asked.

Jenny looked up from her notebook. ‘Mitchell says it can be as big or as small as you want,’ she said.

Nightingale grinned at her. ‘Funny, that,’ he said, ‘because before you said size was important.’ He straightened and used the birch branch they’d taken from a tree in the garden to outline the circle.

‘Once you’ve gone around it with the branch, you draw the pentagram. A five-pointed star. Make sure there are two points at the top of the circle and one at the bottom.’

‘Which is the top and which is the bottom?’ said Nightingale.

‘That’s up to you,’ said Jenny. She frowned as she read her notes. ‘Okay, here it is. You have to draw a triangle around the circle. Once the devil has been summoned, it will be confined to the area between the circle and the triangle. And the apex of the triangle has to point north.’

‘Okay,’ said Nightingale, hesitantly.

‘So you make the apex of the triangle point north, and two points of the pentagram should point north, with one pointing south.’

Nightingale looked through the windows and across the lawn, trying to visualise the way he’d driven to the house. He gestured across the grass. ‘London is that way, so that’s north,’ he said.

‘I think we should be more accurate than that,’ said Jenny. ‘I saw some compasses downstairs. I’ll get one.’

As she headed back down to the basement, Nightingale sprinkled consecrated salt water around the perimeter of the circle.

Jenny returned with a brass compass. She stood at the edge of the circle and showed Nightingale which way was north.

‘I wasn’t too far off,’ he said.

‘Well done, you,’ she said. She watched as he drew the pentagram inside the circle, and a large triangle outside.

When he had finished the triangle, he looked at her. ‘Now what?’

‘Now you have to write in the three points of the triangle. You write “MI” and then “CH” and then “AEL”.’

‘Michael?’

‘The archangel,’ said Jenny. ‘Don’t blame me if it sounds ridiculous. I’m just telling you what Mitchell noted in his diary.’

Nightingale wrote the three sets of letters, then put the chalk down and dusted his hands. ‘Is that it?’ he asked.

‘That’s the circle done. When you’re ready you put the candles at the points of the pentagram, light them and burn the herbs.’

‘Okay,’ said Nightingale.

‘Then you have to recite this.’ She showed him a passage in Latin that she had written down. ‘I’m pretty sure you’ll have to say these words as they are and not the translation. Then when you’ve finished you say, “Bagahi laca bacabe.” And before you ask, I’ve no idea what that means. It’s not Latin.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘According to Mitchell, once you’ve said those three words, Proserpine will appear. But I’ve had enough Delia Smith recipes go wrong to know that sometimes it’s not enough just to have the right ingredients.’

He took the notebook from her. ‘You know what I don’t understand, Jenny?’

Jenny sighed. ‘I could draw up a list, but it would take months.’

‘Why do you stay with me?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re way overqualified, the work isn’t demanding, I’m an idiot most of the time.’

‘All true,’ she said.

‘So why do you work for me?’

‘I haven’t really thought about it,’ she said.

‘You must have. You must think about changing jobs sometimes. Everyone does.’

‘I like working with you, Jack.’

‘I could never figure out why you came for the job in the first place.’

‘It was pure luck,’ she said. ‘It’s not as if I was looking for a job with a private eye.’ She paused. ‘I never told you what happened the day I came for the interview.’

‘I thought you were a spy for the Inland Revenue at first,’ he said. ‘You seemed too good to be true.’

‘I was shopping in New Bond Street,’ she said, ‘and popped into Costa for a coffee. I was waiting to hear if I’d got a job I’d been interviewed for, assistant to the marketing director of a big advertising agency.’

‘Nice,’ said Nightingale.

‘Yeah, well, I was sipping my latte and thinking all was well with the world, when the director of human resources called me and said I hadn’t get the job, blah, blah, blah. As he was saying that, I was looking at a free newspaper someone had left on the table. He’d been doing the crossword but had screwed it up, big-time. Couldn’t even spell Esperanto. Anyway, under the crossword there were situations-vacant adverts, and yours had been circled. So as the human resources director was telling me I wasn’t quite right for the position, I was looking at an advert asking me if I wanted a job that would never be boring.’

‘I wrote the copy for the ad,’ said Nightingale.

‘I know,’ said Jenny. ‘But if I hadn’t gone into that coffee shop, and if the paper hadn’t been left open at the page your advert was on…’

‘Maybe my guardian angel wanted you with me,’ said Nightingale.

‘Jack!’

‘I’m serious, Jenny. If it wasn’t for you, I’d never have known about any of this. I mean, who reads Latin, these days?’

‘It was serendipity, Jack. A fortunate set of circumstances.’

‘It’s my clumsy way of saying thanks. Thanks for putting up with me, and thanks for sticking with me.’

‘Somebody has to,’ she said.

‘Well, I’m glad it’s you.’ Nightingale checked his watch. ‘You have to go now, Jenny.’

‘No way.’

‘I have to do this on my own.’

‘I’m staying, Jack.’

Nightingale folded his arms. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know that if it goes wrong I don’t want you around.’ He smiled confidently. ‘I’ll call you when it’s over.’

‘They’ve got phones in Hell, have they?’ she asked.

Nightingale went to hug her but she shook her head and walked away.