Nightshade: The Fourth Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller (18 page)

‘There isn’t a day goes by when I don’t say a prayer of thanks to God, you know that?’ She poured boiling water into a earthenware teapot, complete with a red knitted tea cosy. Sandra had made the tea cosy at school almost twenty years ago and presented it to her mother on Mother’s Day. ‘It was a miracle, a true miracle.’

‘It was,’ agreed Sandra.

‘And Will? How is he?’

Sandra nodded. ‘He’s okay. He’s taken time off work, he doesn’t want to let Bella out of his sight. He’s in the hospital with her now. I get the feeling that he blames me. He doesn’t say anything, of course, but I can see it in his eyes.’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t. It wasn’t your fault, it was those …’ She shuddered. ‘Those animals. How could they do that to a little girl?’

Sandra shook her head. ‘The police say they think he’s done it before. They’re talking to the girl to see if she’ll give evidence against him. Will gets so angry when he sees anything about them on television. He wants them dead. Says hanging’s too good for them.’

‘Well, he’d be right about that,’ said her mother. ‘Killing’s too good for them, though. They need to be made to suffer for every day they have left. They won’t of course. It’ll be Sky TV and PlayStations and probably conjugal visits. Prison today isn’t really prison. They’re like holiday camps.’

‘I don’t think I can face a trial, Mum. The police say they hope that they will just plead guilty and then Bella won’t have to give evidence. I couldn’t bear the thought of her having to talk about what they did to her.’ She shook her head fiercely. ‘I don’t want her going through that.’ She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself down and then forced a smile. ‘Mum, I’ve got to ask you something and I know it’s going to sound silly, but …’ She threw up her hands. ‘I should just spit it out, shouldn’t I? Did I ever have a sister? A sister called Eadie?’

Sandra could see from the look of horror on her mother’s face that she’d struck a nerve. ‘Did your father say something?’

‘No, Mum. I just need to know, did I have a sister?’

Tears filled her mother’s eyes and she dabbed at them with a teacloth. ‘Why are you asking now?’ she sniffed.

Sandra got up and walked over to her mother and hugged her. ‘It just came up, Mum. I need to know.’

Sandra’s mother trembled and Sandra found herself patting her on the back to reassure her. ‘It’s okay, Mum.’ She flashed back to when she’d been a teenager and she’d been dumped by her first boyfriend. Her mum had hugged her and patted her back in exactly the same way and told her that everything was going to be all right, that there were plenty of fish in the sea and that one day she’d meet the man of her dreams. She’d been right. Will was the love of her life. ‘Come on, sit down, I’ll make the tea.’

Her mother sat down and kept dabbing at her eyes as Sandra poured tea into two mugs. She sat down and waited until her mum had sipped her tea before asking her again about Eadie.

‘She lived for about an hour,’ said her mother. ‘Barely that.’ She sighed. ‘She was eight weeks premature and didn’t stand a chance, really. I knew that as soon as I saw her.’ She held out her right hand. ‘The doctor held her like that, with one hand. She was so tiny. And she didn’t even open her eyes. They put her in one of those incubator things, but I could see from the looks on the faces of the nurses that she wasn’t long for the world. We’d already decided on the name. Eadie. Your dad’s grandmum was Eadie. I know it’s old-fashioned, but that’s what he wanted and what your dad wants he usually gets.’ She dabbed at her eyes again. ‘She would have been our first.’ She shook her head. ‘No, she WAS our first. She was my first baby but I only got to hold her after she’d died. They wrapped her in a white cloth and said that I could hold her as long as I wanted. They meant it, too. I held her for hours and no one said a word.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘Tell you what? That I had a baby and she died? What good would that have done? You all came along later.’

‘That’s so sad.’ Sandra felt tears pricking her eyes.

‘She didn’t suffer. She just wasn’t meant to be born. Your dad said she’d gone back to be with the angels.’

‘Did you bury her?’

‘The hospital arranged a cremation and they had a vicar there.’ She wiped her eyes and smiled. ‘Not a day goes by when I don’t think about her,’ she said. ‘In a way I’m glad you know. It wasn’t a secret, it was just that your dad and I decided it was something we should keep to ourselves.’ She sipped her tea again. ‘What made you ask about Eadie now? After all these years?’

Sandra drank from her own mug as her mind raced. Telling her mum the truth would raise more questions than it would answer. How had Bella known about Eadie? She put down her mug. ‘It was a dream, Mum.’

‘A dream?’

Sandra nodded. ‘Just a dream.’

W
ill was sitting next to Bella’s bed when Sandra walked into the room. There was a tray on the cupboard on the other side of the bed, and Sandra lifted the plastic from the plate. There were two pale burgers, a spoonful of anaemic corn and three roast potatoes. Sandra could understand why Bella hadn’t touched the food. She replaced the cover and smiled at her husband. ‘Everything okay?’

‘We’re good,’ said Will.

‘I want to go home,’ said Bella.

‘Soon, honey,’ said Sandra. ‘The doctors have to be sure that everything’s okay.’

‘Everything IS okay,’ said Bella firmly. ‘I want to be able to sleep in my own bed.’

‘I’ll talk to the doctors,’ said Sandra. She pointed at the tray. ‘How about I order you some fast food? A pizza? Or I can go and get you KFC or Burger King if you want.’

Bella shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry.’

‘You have to eat, honey.’ Sandra looked across at her husband. ‘Do you want to get a coffee?’

Will stood up and looked down at Bella. ‘Are you okay if your mum and I go and get a coffee?’

Bella reached for the remote and began changing the channels on the wall-mounted TV. ‘Sure.’

Will and Sandra walked down the corridor towards the lifts. ‘The police want us to do a press conference,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘The woman from the press office said it was some quid pro quo thing they had with the media. They help us publicise the search for Bella and when she’s found we give interviews.’

‘I suppose that’s fair,’ said Sandra. ‘If it hadn’t been for the publicity the neighbours wouldn’t have phoned and …’ She left the sentence unfinished.

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Will. He pressed the button to call the lift. ‘And at least it’s good news, right? We just thank the police and the public. She said it might mean that they’ll leave us alone then.’ The lift arrived and they got in. Will pressed the button for the ground floor.

‘What did she mean? Leave us alone?’

‘You know what the tabloids are like. They’d have paparazzi hanging outside our house, following her to school, all that nonsense. But if we have a press conference and everyone gets their photographs and our quotes then they won’t bother us.’

Sandra frowned and ran a hand through her hair. ‘Do you believe that?’

‘I think we’ll still have paparazzi around but what she says about the quid pro quo is fair. We do owe them, especially the TV people.’

They arrived at the ground floor and walked to the canteen.

‘What did she say, your mum?’

‘You won’t believe it,’ said Sandra. ‘Mum and Dad did have another daughter, but she died at birth. They’d never mentioned it. To anyone.’

Will stopped and stared at her open-mouthed.

‘I know. It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? She never said anything, all these years.’

‘And the baby was called Eadie?’

Sandra nodded. ‘It was a family name.’

‘How the hell did Bella know?’

‘I wish I knew,’ she said. ‘Have you talked to your dad? About his father?’

‘He’s not answering his phone. You know what he’s like. Let’s get our coffee and I’ll try again.’

They joined the queue at the counter, picked up coffee and muffins, and took them to a free table. They sat down, and Will took out his mobile phone and phoned his father. This time his father answered. ‘Is everything okay?’ asked his father immediately. ‘Is Bella okay?’

‘She’s fine, Dad.’

‘I’m coming to the hospital tomorrow.’

‘There’s no need, Dad. She’ll be home soon. Really, she’s fine. Look, I have a quick question for you. What was your dad’s name?’ Will’s grandfather had died not long after his father had been born, felled by a major stroke after twenty years of smoking two packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day.

‘Arthur,’ said Will’s father. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Somebody was asking, that’s all. Look, I’ve got to go, I’ll let you know as soon as Bella’s home.’ He ended the call and stared at his wife in astonishment. ‘Bella was right,’ he said. ‘Grandpa Arthur. How could she know?’

‘Maybe your dad mentioned it sometime?’

‘Why would he?’

‘I don’t know, Will. He spends a lot of time with her. Maybe they talked about him.’

‘I don’t see why. Dad was just a kid when his dad passed away. And how do you explain the Eadie thing? Grandpa Arthur and Auntie Eadie, that’s what Bella said.’

‘What are you saying, Will? That she went to Heaven and met dead relatives that we didn’t know about?’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘Is it?’ said Will. ‘You believe in Heaven, don’t you?’

‘Of course. But Bella didn’t die. She might have been unconscious for a few minutes but that’s not the same as dead, is it?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just trying to understand what happened.’

‘Does it matter?’ said Sandra. ‘We’ve got her back. That’s all I care about. Nothing else matters.’

Will smiled and nodded. ‘No arguments from me there,’ he said.

Sandra reached over and held his hand. ‘We should just count our blessings.’

N
ightingale was wondering whether to light a cigarette or head down to the pub for a lunchtime drink when Jenny opened the door to his office. He looked up from his copy of the
Sun
. ‘Don’t you ever knock?’

‘Why would I knock? You’ve got no secrets from me.’

‘I could be in an embarrassing situation.’

‘I don’t consider struggling with the
Sun
’s Sudoku to be that embarrassing,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I knew you’d want to see this.’ She handed him a computer printout. ‘The lab’s just got back to me. The only fingerprints on the knife and the crucible were yours and James McBride’s.’

Nightingale looked at the lab’s report. ‘That’s interesting.’

‘Well, it means that as you sure as hell didn’t set up the altar, it can only have been McBride.’ She dropped down onto the chair opposite him. ‘What do you think?’

Nightingale ran a hand through his hair. ‘I think that Jimmy McBride framed himself as a Satanist. Or at least was party to it. But why would he do that?’

‘Maybe he was disturbed. Schizophrenic, maybe. Perhaps he believed he was doing the work of the Devil.’

‘But nothing else about him points to that, does it? And while he might have set up the altar, he couldn’t have downloaded the Satanic stuff onto his computer. He didn’t have wi-fi.’

‘He could have taken the computer to somewhere that did have an internet connection.’

Nightingale shook his head. ‘It wasn’t a laptop,’ he said. ‘Someone else must have loaded the stuff onto his hard drive.’

‘But it was the cops who took it from his farmhouse.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So the cops helped frame him as a devil-worshipper? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘The cops. Or a cop. But here’s the thing, Jenny. He went out and killed eight kids and a teacher. Why does him being a Satanist make it more acceptable?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The whole world will know that he’s a child killer. Why bother to make it look like his motivation was tied in to devil-worship?’

Jenny shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘There’s only one reason to do that, and that’s to distract from his real motivation. The Satanism thing is a distraction. He wanted us to think that’s why he killed those children.’

‘So you think he had another reason?’

‘I do. And I think that it all comes down to the children that he killed. There has to be some connection, some reason that he chose them. And whatever that reason was, he wanted to hide it. He didn’t want anyone to know the real reason he was killing them.’

‘This is pretty heavy stuff, Jack.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘To be honest, I don’t know. I really don’t know.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Maybe a drink will help me think.’

‘Yeah, because alcohol is known to increase your IQ exponentially, right?’

Nightingale’s eyes narrowed. ‘Sarcasm?’

‘Barely concealed contempt, actually.’

‘So you don’t want to come to the pub with me?’

Jenny grinned. ‘I didn’t say that.’

N
ightingale paid the barman and raised his bottle of Corona. Jenny clinked her glass of white wine against his bottle. ‘Here’s to a clear head,’ she said.

Nightingale chuckled and drank. ‘So here’s what I’m thinking,’ he said. ‘It started out looking as if McBride was a lone madman who was involved in black magic and Satanism. A nutter who just went crazy with a shotgun. But it’s clear that he wasn’t mad and he wasn’t a Satanist. But he wanted people to think that he was. It wasn’t that someone set him up; his fingerprints were on that fake altar, which means that he must have put it together. But a real Satanist would have had books on the occult in his house. And he would have fixed up an internet connection so that he could visit Satanic websites.’

‘That makes sense,’ said Jenny.

‘So if he wasn’t crazy and he wasn’t a Satanist, we need to understand the logic of what he did. And that’s what’s making my head hurt.’

‘You’re not alone there. But why couldn’t he just be crazy? And faking the altar was part of his craziness?’

‘Because the shooting wasn’t the work of a madman. He chose his victims, moving from classroom to classroom. He shot one teacher and eight pupils and then he blew his head off. A madman would have just gone into one classroom and blasted away and not cared who he killed. And probably shot it out with the cops, too.’ He shook his head. ‘McBride wasn’t mad, which means there was a logic to everything that he did.’