‘Well, if it wasn’t Robbie, who was it? And who would want to tell you that your sister is going to Hell? Do you think it might be Proserpine?’
Nightingale didn’t say anything.
‘You look like a kid who’s just been caught stealing sweets,’ said Jenny.
‘I do not.’
‘You’ve been up to something.’
Nightingale held up his hands. ‘Guilty as charged,’ he said. ‘You should have been a cop.’
‘What did you do, Jack?’
He sighed. ‘I called up Proserpine.’
Jenny’s eyes widened. ‘You did not!’
‘Why ask if you don’t believe me? I summoned her, and it isn’t her behind the messages. And it wasn’t her down in the basement. She said that my sister’s soul was nothing to do with her.’ He took off his raincoat and hung it on the rack by the door.
‘And you believe her?’
‘I don’t think there’s any reason for her to lie. Maybe it’s like Barbara said and it’s our subconscious at work.’
‘You mean we were pushing the planchette? Because I wasn’t. Were you?’
‘Not deliberately, of course. That’s the whole point of the subconscious, isn’t it? It works without you knowing why or how.’
‘But at one point it was moving on its own, Jack. And the spinning globe? The books? I didn’t tell Barbara about that, but we saw what we saw. Something was down in the basement with us, and it wasn’t Robbie. And if it wasn’t Robbie last time, maybe it wasn’t Robbie before. Which means that someone or something wanted you to go to Abersoch.’ She flashed a smile. ‘But at least now we know for sure that Connie Miller wasn’t your sister.’
‘Yeah, Thomas was telling the truth after all,’ agreed Nightingale.
‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Jenny.
‘I’m going to find her,’ said Nightingale.
‘How, exactly?’
Nightingale grinned. ‘I’ve got a plan,’ he said. ‘I’m a private detective, remember? Finding missing people is what I do.’
‘By the way, I looked at the DVD with the files from Connie Miller’s computer.’
Nightingale shrugged dismissively. ‘You can leave that now. There’s no connection to me.’
‘Jack, there could be a serial killer out there.’
‘That’s the police’s job.’
‘I’m serious, Jack. She spent a lot of time on sites about depression and suicide. And she was getting a lot of email from a guy in Caernarfon. He wanted to meet her. His name’s Craig. Caernarfon Craig he calls himself.’
Nightingale frowned. ‘The cops should have followed that up.’
‘I don’t think so. She was using a separate email account that she’d set up just to log on to some of the darker sites.’
‘How did you find that out?’
‘One of the files you downloaded had her passwords.’
‘The cops would have found that, surely?’
‘I don’t think so. It was tucked away in one of her correspondence files. She was pretty good at covering her tracks. I think she wanted to talk to people without them knowing who she was. There’re a lot of weirdos on the internet.’
‘Send it to the cops, Jenny. Let them follow it up.’
‘And how exactly would I explain away the fact that I’ve got copies of her personal emails?’
‘Okay, what do you want to do?’
She smiled. ‘Like you, I’ve got a plan.’
34
T he barista was a Ukrainian teenager with bad acne and he had trouble understanding the girl so it was a full ten minutes after entering the coffee shop that Nightingale finally had his two coffees. He took them to the table where Colin Duggan was whispering into his mobile phone. Duggan pocketed the phone as Nightingale put the coffee mugs on the table and sat down.
‘One low-fat latte,’ said Nightingale. ‘Are you off pubs, then? In the old days it would have been a pint of best in the Rose and Crown.’
Duggan picked up his coffee and sipped it. He was an inspector, the same rank as Nightingale had been when he left the Metropolitan Police. He was completely bald with elf-like ears and a mischievous smile. He was wearing a beige raincoat over a dark suit and had a Burberry scarf around his neck. ‘I keep out of them these days,’ said Duggan. ‘No point in rubbing my nose in it.’
‘On the wagon?’
Duggan patted his expanding waistline. ‘Diabetes,’ he said. ‘I can keep it under control by watching what I eat and drink but the doctor says that if I don’t get a grip on it now I’ll be on medication for the rest of my life.’
‘Bloody hell, Colin, you’re not even fifty. How can you have diabetes?’
‘Forty-six,’ said Duggan. ‘But it’s nothing to do with age. It’s the booze and the fish suppers. And the cigarettes. I’ve given them up too.’
‘Smoking doesn’t give you diabetes,’ said Nightingale. ‘Zero calories and they reduce stress. If anything, you’d be better off smoking more.’
Duggan grinned and scratched his fleshy neck. ‘Yeah, if it wasn’t for lung cancer they’d be the perfect food.’
‘I’m not sure how true that cancer thing is,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’ve known people who’ve smoked all their lives and never had so much as a cough. And there are non-smokers who’ve never even tried a single cigarette who’ve died of lung cancer.’ He patted his chest. ‘My lungs are fine. I reckon your genes have a lot to do with it. You either get cancer or you don’t; smoking is just one of lots of factors.’
‘So you’ve got good genes, have you?’ chuckled Duggan.
‘Yeah, that’s sort of why I wanted to see you.’
‘I knew there’d be something,’ said Duggan. ‘I haven’t seen you since the Sophie Underwood thing.’
Nightingale nodded. ‘I know. Sorry.’
‘Hell of a thing, that.’
That wasn’t how Nightingale thought of what had happened that cold November morning. It wasn’t a ‘thing’. It was a pivotal moment in his life and Sophie’s death had changed him forever. Duggan had been there and had seen the girl fall to her death. Nightingale had been on the balcony of the flat next door, trying to talk her back inside. ‘Yeah,’ said Nightingale. ‘It was.’
‘What happened to the father, who’d been fiddling with her — he deserved it.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Nightingale.
‘Seems like a lifetime ago.’
‘It was.’
‘I’m back in CID and you’re a gumshoe.’
Nightingale chuckled. ‘Do they still say that? I thought that went out with Humphrey Bogart and Sam Spade.’
‘Guys I work with call you lot much worse than that,’ said Duggan. ‘The days of cops running checks for you private eyes for the price of a pint are well gone. These days, get caught and you lose your job, your pension, everything.’
Nightingale grimaced. ‘That’s not good news, Colin.’
Duggan raised his coffee in salute. ‘Don’t worry, Jack. You’ve got a lot of friends in the Job, me included. What do you need?’
‘I’m trying to track down my sister and I’ve drawn a blank through all the usual channels,’ said Nightingale.
‘Never knew you had a sister.’
‘Neither did I until recently,’ said Nightingale. ‘Thing is, she’s my half-sister — same father, different mother. And she was adopted on the day she was born. So I don’t know her name or her date of birth.’
‘You’re not making this easy, are you?’ said Duggan.
‘I was hoping you could run a check on the National DNA database.’
Duggan raised his eyebrows. ‘You think she’s in the system?’
‘I know it’s an outside chance but there are five million samples in the database and it’s growing at thirty thousand a month. She might have been arrested for something and had a sample taken.’ Nightingale sighed. ‘I know it’s a long shot, Colin, but I don’t have anything else.’
‘So you want me to run your DNA and see if there’s a sibling match?’
Nightingale shook his head. ‘No need. Our father’s DNA is already in the system. A guy called Ainsley Gosling. He committed suicide last month. Robbie Hoyle checked my DNA against Gosling’s a few weeks ago.’