‘Maybe they met Gosling. Maybe he told them what he’d done.’
Jenny looked pained.
‘I’ll wear my kid gloves. Softly softly.’ He put down his coffee mug. ‘I’ve got to follow up any lead I can. No one else gives a toss about her, Jenny. They’ve put her in an asylum and thrown away the key.’
‘Because she killed kids, Jack.’ She shuddered. ‘I can’t think of anything worse, can you? Killing kids?’
Nightingale sighed. ‘I can’t argue with you,’ he said.
‘Because you know I’m right.’
Nightingale threw up his hands. ‘What do you think I should do? Walk away?’
‘Would that be so bad?’
‘She’s my sister.’
‘She’s your half-sister, a woman that you’ve met once in your life, who decided of her own volition to murder innocents. And you want to do what? Save her soul? Jack, if there’s any justice in the world she’ll burn in Hell for what she’s done.’ She stood up, her eyes blazing. ‘Her soul is damned anyway; you’re just whistling in the wind.’
Nightingale reached for his cigarettes.
‘You know they’re a crutch,’ she said. ‘Whenever you’re faced with something that makes you feel uncomfortable, you smoke.’
Nightingale tapped out a cigarette, slid it between his lips and lit it. ‘I smoke because I like to smoke,’ he said. ‘Anyway, this isn’t about me smoking. It’s about me wanting to help my sister.’ He threw up his hands. ‘I know that you’re talking a lot of sense, I know that there’s probably nothing I can do to help her, but I have to try.’
‘Why, Jack?’
Nightingale groaned. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say. She’s my sister. That’s the only answer I can give you.’
‘She’s killed children,’ said Jenny flatly.
‘And she’s behind bars for that. Okay, it’s a hospital and not a prison, but she’s still locked up. But what’s going to happen to her soul, that’s different. Gosling put her in that position, he did a deal for her soul, and now she’s all on her own. She has no idea what she’s up against. if I don’t help her then who will? She’s my sister, Jenny. The only family I’ve got. And I’m all she’s got.’
‘You keep saying that, but she’s not really your sister, in the same way that Gosling wasn’t really your father.’
‘We share the same DNA. That means we’re related.’
‘But up until three weeks ago you hadn’t heard of either of them,’ said Jenny. ‘Family isn’t about DNA, Jack. It’s about growing up together; it’s about connections, a shared history. You keep telling me that Bill and Irene Nightingale were your real parents, even though you know your DNA came from Gosling and your birth mother. Rebecca Keeley.’
‘Gosling paid Keeley twenty thousand pounds to have me and she gave me up the day that I was born, so I don’t think that qualifies her for maternal privileges. And the fact that Gosling sold my soul to a devil negates any dead daddy feelings I might ever have had.’
‘Exactly,’ said Jenny. ‘They’re not family.’
‘But my sister’s different. None of this is her fault. Gosling did to her exactly what he did to me. She can’t help herself but maybe I can.’
‘How? How do you expect to help a killer locked up in a secure mental hospital?’
Nightingale flicked ash into the ashtray at his side. ‘I didn’t say I know what to do, just that I have to do something.’ He groaned. ‘Jenny, you wouldn’t understand, you’re an only child.’
Jenny’s jaw dropped. ‘What?’
‘You don’t have any siblings, so you wouldn’t understand.’
‘Jack, I’ve got a brother. Five years older than me.’
Nightingale grimaced. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘The reason you don’t know is because you’ve never asked,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry. Really.’
Jenny folded her arms. ‘Here’s a question for you. How many Jack Nightingales does it take to screw in a light bulb?’
Nightingale looked out of the window and didn’t reply.
‘Just the one,’ continued Jenny. ‘He holds up the bloody bulb and waits for the world to revolve around him.’
Nightingale held up his hands. ‘You’re right. I can be a bit self-centred at times.’
‘Self-obsessed,’ she said. ‘Which is another way of saying that you don’t care about anyone other than yourself. That’s why I don’t understand this sudden urge to save a woman that you barely know.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t understand it myself, Jenny. I just know that I have to try. She’s all I have.’ He grinned at her. ‘Present company excepted.’
45
J oshua Wainwright said that he was passing through the UK on Sunday afternoon on his way to Switzerland. Nightingale arrived at Biggin Hill airport in Kent just after three-thirty and already the sky was darkening. He showed his driving licence to a bored security guard, who checked his name against a list on a clipboard. The guard pointed towards a car park next to a large glass-sided building. ‘You can park over there,’ he said. ‘Go through into reception and they’ll tell you where the jet is.’ The guard raised the barrier so that Nightingale could drive his MGB through.
Inside the general aviation terminal an equally bored receptionist pointed towards Wainwright’s Gulfstream jet, parked in front of a hangar. ‘Mr Wainwright’s plane will be leaving within the hour,’ she said.
‘I know, it’s all a bit rushed,’ said Nightingale. ‘He’s a regular visitor, right?’
‘At least once a month,’ she said. ‘Usually at the weekend.’
‘Beats flying economy, doesn’t it?’
‘You’ve got that right,’ said the receptionist.
‘How much would Wainwright’s plane cost, do you think?’
The receptionist wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s a Gulfstream G550,’ she said. ‘Anywhere between forty-five and seventy million dollars.’
Nightingale whistled. ‘It’s a different world, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Think how many years you’d have to work to earn that much money.’
‘Years? Lifetimes, more like. It’s a funny old world, innit? Most of us are working all the hours God sends to make ends meet but there are people flying around in private planes and living the life of Riley.’
‘Who was Riley, anyway?’
The woman shrugged. ‘Probably a banker,’ she said. ‘Those bastards, they run the economy into the ground and then us taxpayers pay to bail them out.’ She jerked a thumb at Wainwright’s jet. ‘He’s not a banker, is he?’
Nightingale shook his head. ‘Nah, I don’t think so.’ He smiled at her and went outside. The lights were on in the cockpit of the Gulfstream and Nightingale saw two pilots deep in conversation. There was a set of steps leading up to the open hatch and Nightingale climbed them slowly. As he got to the top, a blonde stewardess with waist-length shampoo-commercial hair appeared. She was wearing a stylish grey suit and blood-red high-heeled shoes.
‘Mr Nightingale?’ she said.
‘That’s me,’ said Nightingale.
She showed him into the cabin. Joshua Wainwright took a foot-long Cuban cigar from his mouth and grinned when he saw Nightingale.
‘Jack, how the hell are you?’ he asked in his mid-Western drawl. He had a New York Yankees baseball cap on his head and a thick gold chain around his neck from which dangled a fist-sized letter J that looked as if it was solid gold. Wainwright swung his feet off a white leather footstool, stood up and shook hands with Nightingale. He was a couple of inches shorter than Nightingale with skin as black as strong coffee and the muscular upper arms of a man who either lifted a lot of weights or injected steroids. From the strength of Wainwright’s grip, Nightingale figured it was the former.
‘All good,’ said Nightingale.
Behind Wainwright was another model-pretty flight attendant in a grey suit, this one a brunette with razor-sharp cheekbones and piercing blue eyes. She smiled at Nightingale as if he was judging a beauty pageant and she was a front-runner.
‘Drink, Jack?’ asked Wainwright.
‘I’m driving,’ said Nightingale.
Wainwright waved him to one of the leather seats. He sat down and flicked cigar ash into a massive crystal ashtray. His face was smooth and unlined and Nightingale would have been hard pushed to put his age at more than twenty-five. ‘Just the one?’