Nightfall: The First Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller (18 page)

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F
inding someone to buy the books from Ainsley Gosling’s library was surprisingly easy. On Wednesday morning, before he showered or shaved, Nightingale made himself a mug of coffee and powered up his laptop. He entered ‘shops selling second-hand books on witchcraft’ into Google, which threw up more than six thousand sites. He added ‘London’, which brought it down to around five thousand. He scrolled through them and realised that most were regular bookshops so he put a plus sign in front of ‘witchcraft’ and tried again. He sipped his coffee as he studied the list of sites. One on the second page looked promising – a store called Wicca Woman in Camden Town, close to Camden Lock market. He clicked onto the website. Wicca Woman apparently sold everything that a wannabe witch could need, from clothing to potions to magic wands, and it had a comprehensive list of books, including a second-hand section. The address was on the main page with a telephone number.

Nightingale shaved, showered and put on his second-best suit, then called the number and asked to speak to the owner. Her name was Alice Steadman and she said she’d be delighted to see any books he might want to sell, and that she would be in the shop all day.

Nightingale managed to find a space in a multi-storey car park a short walk from Wicca Woman. It was in a side-street, sandwiched between a shop that sold hand-knitted sweaters and a boutique that seemed to stock only T-shirts promoting drug use. A bell chimed as he pushed open the door. A stick of incense was burning next to the cash register, filling the premises with a cloying, flowery fragrance. There were two pretty teenagers in the shop, giggling as they looked at a display of love potions. The sales assistant was a punk girl with fluorescent pink hair, a stud in her chin, two in each eyebrow and a nose-ring. ‘Don’t they set off metal detectors in airports?’ asked Nightingale.

The girl grinned, showing perfect white teeth. ‘All the time,’ she said. She patted her groin. ‘But this is the one I have problems with.’

‘I bet,’ laughed Nightingale. ‘Is the boss in? Mrs Steadman? I spoke to her on the phone about some books.’ He held up a carrier-bag that contained five he had taken from the basement at Gosling Manor.

‘I’ll get her for you.’ She disappeared through a beaded curtain and returned with a tiny woman in her sixties. In a long black shirt that reached her knees, black knitted tights and black shoes that curled up at the toes, she looked like a pixie’s shadow and had a bird-like, inquisitive face. Like a bird, she cocked her head to one side as she looked at him. ‘Mr Nightingale?’

‘Yes,’ said Nightingale.

‘I thought you’d be older,’ she said. ‘You sounded older on the phone.’

One of the girls held up a small cloth bag. ‘Here – do these fings really work?’

Mrs Steadman tilted her chin and fixed her with a steely glare. ‘My dear, everything in this shop works, providing you believe in it.’

‘But it’ll make my boyfriend fall in love with me, yeah? And not look at any other girls?’

‘That’s what it says on the label, my dear, and that’s what it’ll do. But use it sparingly. No one wants a lapdog for a husband, do they?’ She smiled at Nightingale. ‘Come with me, young man, and show me what you have.’

She led him through the curtain into a small room. There was a circular table, with three wooden chairs, and above them a colourful Tiffany lampshade. A gas fire was burning so Nightingale took off his raincoat and draped it over the back of one of the chairs. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve just made a pot,’ asked Mrs Steadman.

He sat down and placed the bag on the table. ‘Tea would be lovely, thank you,’ he said.

Mrs Steadman brought over a tray with a brown ceramic teapot, two blue-and-white striped mugs and a matching milk jug and sugar bowl. ‘How do you like it?’

‘Milk and no sugar,’ said Nightingale, as she poured.

‘Sweet enough?’ she said, and giggled like a teenager. ‘So, these books, they were left to you, you said?’

‘Yes, by my father. His name was Ainsley Gosling. Have you heard of him?’

‘Should I have done?’ She passed him a mug and sat down.

‘He was a collector of books on the occult. I wondered if he’d bought any from you.’

‘I don’t recall the name,’ she said, stirring her tea. ‘And, really, I don’t carry a huge selection of books. I deal mainly in spells and talismans.’

‘And you make a living from that?’

Mrs Steadman chuckled. ‘Young man, I don’t do this to make money. This is my life. This is who I am.’

‘Forgive me for asking, but are you a witch?’

Mrs Steadman’s eyes sparkled with amusement. ‘Just show me what you have in the bag, young man,’ she said.

Nightingale took the five books from the bag and put them on the table in front of her. She took a pair of reading glasses from the top pocket of her shirt and put them on. She picked up the first book, opened it carefully and studied the first page, which listed the date of publication and the publisher. ‘My goodness,’ she said.

‘It’s about witchcraft in the eighteen hundreds,’ said Nightingale.

‘I can see that,’ she said. ‘This book I’ve seen before, but only reproductions. This is a first edition with the original illustrations. They were changed in later editions because some people found them . . . offensive.’

‘Is it valuable?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Would you buy it from me?’

She looked at him over the top of her glasses. ‘Young man, if I wanted to buy this I’d have to remortgage my house. A second edition sold for fifteen thousand pounds last year. This is a first edition and it’s in perfect condition.’

‘But you can’t buy it?’

Mrs Steadman sat back in her chair. ‘It’s out of my league, young man,’ she said. ‘If you like, you could leave it with me and I’ll see if I can sell it for you. For a commission, of course. Say, ten per cent.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Nightingale. He took out his cigarettes. ‘Do you mind if I . . . ?’

The woman patted her chest. ‘I’m afraid so,’ she said. ‘Asthma. And you know those things will give you cancer.’

‘Please don’t tell me I’m going to hell,’ he said. ‘That’s the last thing I need to hear right now.’

‘There’s a big difference between dying of lung cancer and going to hell.’

‘Do you believe in hell?’ asked Nightingale.

The woman fixed him with her eyes. They were so dark brown that they were almost black, glistening like pools of oil. ‘No, young man, I do not.’

‘There’s no such place?’ The tea was very strong, the way his mother used to make it. ‘Strong enough that the spoon stands up in it,’ was what she’d always said.

‘How could there be? Fire and brimstone and suchlike.’

‘But I thought . . .’ He was going to say ‘witches’ but caught himself just in time. ‘. . . people in your line were big believers in heaven and hell and devils.’

‘Young man, you have a very strange idea of what my “line” entails,’ she said. ‘I channel energy, I use the power of the natural world to make changes for good. It has nothing to do with God or the devil, with heaven or hell, and everything to do with the natural order of things.’

‘Love potions?’ said Nightingale.

‘Trinkets,’ said the woman. ‘We use the real power to help people, to cure sickness or at least to ease pain and suffering. It has nothing to do with condemning people to eternal damnation.’ She picked up the second book. It was leather-bound, a history of the Salem witch trials of 1692. ‘This is nice,’ she said. ‘Not my sort of thing but you’d get a thousand pounds or so if you can find the right collector. It would probably fetch a higher price in America.’

‘Can you sell it for me, Mrs Steadman?’

She nodded thoughtfully. ‘I know a lady in Boston who would probably be interested,’ she said. She put it aside and picked up the third. It was a Victorian book on natural healing that Nightingale had found open on a display cabinet. It was filled with watercolour paintings of plants and flowers and appeared to offer cures for everything from earache to bunions. ‘Now this I can definitely sell,’ she said. ‘I sold a copy over the Internet last month and I had several people chasing it. How does five hundred pounds sound?’

‘Like music to my ears,’ said Nightingale. ‘Could you pay me now?’

‘If you’re happy with a cheque.’

‘Delirious,’ said Nightingale.

She picked up the next book and smiled. ‘This one too. It’s one of the best books on pagan rituals there is and I think . . .’ She opened it and nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes, it’s a second edition. There’s a market for it here in Camden – we’ve got quite an active pagan community. Would you take three hundred for it?’

‘Excellent,’ said Nightingale.

‘Tell me, is there a reason you’re selling them?’

Nightingale smiled. ‘I have a cash-flow problem,’ he said, ‘and they’re not really of any interest to me.’

‘Your father’s books, you said. Was he a big collector?’

‘I’d say so,’ said Nightingale.

‘And, if you don’t mind me asking, why did you come to my little shop rather than trying an auction house?’

‘I want to keep a low profile,’ said Nightingale. ‘I figured if they were in an auction there’d be publicity. My father died a short time ago and I don’t want newspapers trying to drum up a story.’

‘Why would that be a story?’

Mrs Steadman was as sharp as a knife and a better inquisitor than the detectives who had quizzed him after Simon Underwood had fallen to his death. ‘He killed himself, Mrs Steadman.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘It’s okay. We weren’t exactly close. Now I just want to sell a few of his books to raise some money.’

‘I quite understand,’ she said. She picked up the last book. ‘Now this one I’ll definitely buy, but I’m afraid it’s not in the same league as the others,’ she said. ‘I sold a copy just last week, here in the shop.’ It was a collection of spells and seemed more like coffee-table book than one that a witch would use, full of glossy photographs and recipes – it reminded Nightingale of a Jamie Oliver cookbook. ‘It’s only worth about twenty pounds, I’m afraid. Several thousand copies were published in the seventies.’

‘Twenty pounds is fine,’ said Nightingale. ‘I really wanted to know what you thought about it. It says anyone can work a spell, that you don’t have to be in a coven or be a real witch. Is that right?’

‘That’s a difficult question, young man.’

Nightingale pointed at the book she was holding. ‘But you believe in it, don’t you? That if you light a candle of a particular colour, use a particular incense and the right herb, and say the right words, something magical will happen?’

‘Would you like a biscuit?’ asked Mrs Steadman. ‘I get the feeling that you’re going to be here for a while so I think I should give you something to nibble.’

Nightingale laughed. ‘A biscuit would be wonderful, thank you.’

Mrs Steadman went over to a shelf and returned with a packet of chocolate Hobnobs. ‘My weakness,’ she said.

Nightingale took one, wondering if it had been an attempt to distract him, or if she was simply being hospitable. ‘I guess my question is, does magic work?’ he said.

‘Well, of course it does, young man,’ she said, taking a biscuit for herself and placing it on her saucer. ‘If it didn’t, people would soon lose interest, wouldn’t they? If those girls out there buy that potion and use it and it doesn’t work, well, I’ll have lost two customers and they’ll tell all their friends and before long the shop will be out of business.’

‘But I thought you had to believe for magic to work.’

‘Well, you could say that about medicine,’ said Mrs Steadman. ‘With most illnesses, placebos work almost as well as the genuine article. Not for antibiotics, of course, but for the drugs that treat depression or high blood pressure or relieve pain it’s more a question of belief than of a true chemical effect. People believe that paracetamol will take away their headache so it does, when in fact a sugar pill would do the job just as well.’

‘You see, now you’re confusing me,’ said Nightingale. ‘Is it the spells that do the business, or is it believing in them that makes them work?’

‘Belief helps,’ said Mrs Steadman, patiently. ‘It probably makes the spells more efficient, but even someone who didn’t believe would get results. It’s like cooking. You don’t necessarily understand why yeast makes bread rise, but follow a recipe for bread and you’ll get a loaf.’

‘And what about black magic?’

‘The chocolates?

Nightingale chuckled. He was starting to like Mrs Steadman – she had a sense of humour not dissimilar to his own. ‘I mean spells that perhaps aren’t as well meant as the ones you sell in your shop.’

‘There’s no such thing as black magic,’ she said earnestly. ‘There’s no black magic and no white magic. There’s just magic.’

‘But I thought—’

Mrs Steadman silenced him with a wagging finger. ‘It’s like electricity, young man,’ she said sternly. ‘You can use it to power a life-support machine, or an electric chair. One saves lives and the other takes them, but the electricity itself isn’t good or bad. It’s just a power to be used.’

‘But stuff like selling your soul to the devil. Is that possible?’

Mrs Steadman looked concerned. She reached forward and put her hand on his. ‘Is that what this is about? You want to sell your soul?’

Nightingale shook his head emphatically. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said.

‘You swear, on all you believe in?’ She stared deep into his eyes.

Nightingale met her gaze levelly. ‘I swear,’ he said quietly. ‘I just need to know, that’s all. Is it possible?’

She pulled her hand back and sipped her tea, still watching him with those intense black eyes. ‘There are spells that supposedly enable you to give your soul to the devil,’ she said eventually. ‘One I know is actually quite simple. You go to a churchyard at night – any churchyard will do, but the older the better – you draw a magic circle on the ground, and within it you draw two crosses. You take some wormwood in each hand and hold a Bible in the left. Toss the wormwood in your right hand up and the wormwood in your left hand down taking care not to drop the Bible. Then you say the Lord’s Prayer backwards.’ She sipped her tea.