‘Okay, look around and see if you can find one. Or recordable DVDs.’
‘There’re some DVDs next to the keyboard.’
‘There you go, then.’
Jenny spent the next fifteen minutes talking him through the process of transferring files from the computer to a DVD. When he had finished he went back into the hallway and slowly climbed the stairs, his gloved hand on the banister. At the top of the stairs were three doors. Nightingale guessed correctly that the room at the front of the house was the main bedroom. He opened it to find a double bed with a black teddy bear propped up against the pillows. On one wall was a framed picture of white horses racing through foaming surf. There were small tables either side of the bed. On one there was a lamp and a Garfield alarm clock, on the other a photograph of a couple in their fifties in a brass frame. Nightingale picked up the photograph. It was probably her parents, he figured. They looked like a nice couple, and the man had his arms protectively around his wife and a proud tilt to his chin as he looked into the camera. ‘Do you know why she did it?’ Nightingale whispered to the image. ‘Do you have any idea why she killed herself?’
He put the photograph back on the bedside table and walked over to the dressing table. He caught sight of his reflection and grinned at himself. ‘Jack Nightingale, cat burglar,’ he said. ‘Where did it all go wrong?’
There were two hairbrushes next to a line of perfume bottles. The larger of the two brushes had several hairs among the bristles. Nightingale took a Ziploc bag from the pocket of his raincoat, slipped the hairbrush into it and sealed it.
He went into the bathroom. It was spotless, the towels neatly folded on a heated rack, hair treatment products in a neat line on a shelf, a tube of toothpaste neatly squeezed at the end. There was an Oral B electric toothbrush slotted into a charger. Nightingale picked it up, pulled off the brush head and put it in a second Ziploc bag. He looked around for a replacement head and found one in a drawer. He slotted it into the handle and put the brush back into the charger. As he looked into the mirror above the washbasin he caught a glimpse of red letters written across the wall behind him. Nightingale froze, his mouth open in surprise. He stared at the letters, which glistened wetly. They were uneven and irregular as if they had been smeared carelessly across the tiles. His eyes widened as he stared at the single sentence. His mind scrambled to read the back-to-front words in the mirror:
YOUR SISTER IS GOING TO HELL,JACK NIGHTINGALE.
With his pulse pounding in his ears, he put a gloved hand out to the mirror, touching it gently as he stared at the reflection. He felt the blood drain from his head and for a moment he almost fainted, then he took a deep breath and turned around. The tiles were spotless. Nightingale blinked and shook his head but there was nothing on the wall. He rubbed his face and swallowed. His mouth had gone dry so he bent down and drank from the cold tap and then he went back downstairs, left the house through the French windows and slid them shut. He put the spade back in the shed and closed the door, then walked along the side of the house to the pavement. There was no one around as he walked through the gate and along the street, and he lit a cigarette as he headed back to the hotel.
15
N ightingale had breakfast in the hotel — egg, bacon, sausage, tomato, mushroom, white toast and coffee in the restaurant followed by three cigarettes sitting at a trestle table in the garden — before walking to the house where Connie Miller’s parents lived. It was a small brick cottage on the edge of the village, surrounded by tall conifers that swayed in the wind. The sky was grey and overcast and there were half a dozen seagulls hunched together on the roof.
Nightingale walked up to the front door. There was no bell but in the middle of the door there was a weathered iron knocker in the shape of an owl’s head with a ring held in its mouth. He knocked and then stood back, looking up at the cottage. The curtains were drawn in the upstairs windows. He knocked again. He heard a dog bark and turned around to see an elderly woman wrapped up in a duffle coat walking a cocker spaniel on a lead. He smiled and nodded as she walked by. He looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock in the morning. There was no car parked in front of the house so it was possible the Millers had already left the house. He knocked again, then took his mobile phone from his raincoat. The phone signal was patchy around the hotel but now he had a full signal. He phoned 118–118. The operator soon had a number for the Millers and Nightingale asked her to put him through. He heard a ringing tone and a second later a faint ringing from inside the house. The call went unanswered and Nightingale cut the connection. He walked over to the garage at the side of the house. The door opened upwards and it wasn’t locked. Inside was a dark blue VW Passat.
‘Terrific,’ muttered Nightingale. He knew he should walk away. He should go back to the hotel, get into his MGB, and drive back to London. He could phone from London and ask any questions he had then, and if no one answered the phone — well, so be it. He had the toothbrush head and the brush with its hairs and that was all he needed to confirm whether or not Connie Miller was his sister. He closed the garage door.
There was a wooden gate at the side of the garage. It opened silently on well-oiled hinges. Nightingale had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he walked down the path, his mind racing. The car in the garage suggested that there was someone at home but, if there was, why wasn’t the phone being answered and why did no one react to the knocking? ‘Because they’re dead’ was the thought echoing through his mind. ‘They’re dead and you’re going to find their bodies and the shit is going to hit the fan again.’
Nightingale wanted a cigarette but he knew that it wasn’t the time for a smoke. The garden was a neat square of grass with a line of conifers marking a border with another cottage. There was a wooden bird table in one corner with a metal mesh container filled with peanuts. Two blue tits flew away as Nightingale walked over to the kitchen door. ‘If it’s locked I’m calling it quits,’ he whispered to himself. ‘I walk away and get the hell out of Dodge.’ He put a gloved hand on the knob and turned. The door opened and Nightingale’s heart began to pound.
He stepped into the kitchen and carefully closed the door behind him. ‘Mr Miller? Mrs Miller? Hello? Is anybody there?’
There was an electric kettle next to the sink and Nightingale touched it with the back of his gloved hand. Even through the leather he could feel that the kettle was hot. His mouth had gone so dry that it hurt when he swallowed. His heart was racing and he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He knew that he shouldn’t be in the house but he couldn’t walk away, not without knowing what, if anything, had happened to the Millers. He moved towards the hall, his Hush Puppies squeaking on the gleaming linoleum.
The hallway was carpeted, a red hexagonal pattern on a blue background, more suited to a pub than a home, and over a small teak table there was a framed painting of the Virgin Mary, whose eyes seemed to follow him as he crept towards the front door. He looked up the stairs, half expecting to see a body hanging there, but there was nothing. There was a door to the left that was ajar. Nightingale pushed it open. ‘Mr Miller? Mrs Miller?’
A fire was burning in the grate, which was flanked by two winged armchairs. There was a woman slumped in the armchair on the left. All he could see was the top of her head, light brown hair streaked with grey, and an arm resting on the side of the chair.
‘Mrs Miller?’ he said. There was no response.
A ginger and white cat was curled up on the sofa by the window and it lifted its head and stared at Nightingale with impassive green eyes. Nightingale wasn’t a cat person. He preferred dogs. A dog couldn’t hide its true feelings. If it was happy its tail wagged and its eyes sparkled. If it was scared its ears went back and its tail went between its legs. Cats didn’t show emotion, though; they just stared and kept their own counsel. Dogs were loyal, too, but cats cared only about their own comfort. When he was still a constable walking a beat Nightingale had been called to a house where an old lady hadn’t been seen for more than two weeks. He’d had to break in and he’d found the old woman sprawled across the rug in front of her television. What was left of her. The woman had four cats and they had done what was necessary to survive. They’d started with the soft tissue — her face and thighs — and there wasn’t much that was recognisably human by the time Nightingale got there. He’d never forgotten the way the cats had rubbed themselves up against his legs as he’d stared down at the body, mewing and arching their backs. Dogs never ate their owners, no matter how hungry they were. They sat and waited for help or barked to get attention, but that was all.