‘Is there something you want to tell me? Something that would explain it?’
‘I’m as baffled as you are,’ said Nightingale.
‘I’m trying to help you here,’ said the superintendent.
Nightingale held the cigarette away from his mouth. ‘No, you’re not,’ he said. ‘You’re playing good cop in the hope that I’ll give you something you can use to send me down. You didn’t like me when I was in the Job and you don’t like me now, so you can just search the house and then get the hell off my property.’
Chalmers opened his mouth to reply but then the transceiver he was holding crackled. ‘Superintendent, you need to see this. Third bedroom on the left.’
Nightingale gritted his teeth. That was the bedroom where he’d summoned Frimost, and he hadn’t cleaned up.
Chalmers noticed his discomfort and he grinned triumphantly. ‘Something there you hoped we wouldn’t find, huh?’ He jerked a thumb at the door. ‘Inside,’ he said.
Nightingale flicked away his cigarette and went into the hall. The superintendent followed him up the stairs. The panel that hid the secret passageway down to the basement was still in place and Nightingale avoided looking at it. They turned left at the top of the stairs. A constable was standing outside the door to the bedroom, his arms folded. A sergeant was inside the room, looking down at the pentagram and the candles. He nodded at the superintendent.
‘No sign of the girl?’ asked Chalmers. The sergeant shook his head. ‘Okay, search the rest of the rooms while I have a word with Mr Nightingale here.’
The sergeant left the room and Chalmers kicked the door shut, then turned and shoved Nightingale in the chest with both hands. Nightingale staggered backwards. He regained his balance and pulled back his right hand in a fist.
‘Go on, do it!’ shouted Chalmers. ‘Do it and see what happens.’
Nightingale relaxed his hand. ‘You assaulted me.’
‘Yeah, and I’ll do it again if you don’t start telling me the truth.’
‘So PACE goes out of the window?’
‘Screw PACE and screw you.’ He pointed at the pentagram. ‘You did this?’
Nightingale didn’t say anything.
‘There was a pentagram like this in your sister’s room. And candles, and the same strong smell of burned crap. What’s going on? What does it mean?’ Chalmers jabbed his finger at the pentagram. ‘Did she do this? Was she here?’
‘I did it,’ said Nightingale quietly.
‘Why?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Can’t? Or won’t?’
‘Both,’ said Nightingale. ‘So what are you going to do? Hit me again? Because if you do, I’ll break your sodding arm and take my chance in court. I could always say you tripped and fell — that worked for me when I was in the Job.’
Chalmers glared at Nightingale, then reached for the door handle. ‘I’m going to get you for this if it’s the last thing I do, Nightingale.’
‘Good luck with that,’ said Nightingale, taking out his pack of Marlboro.
90
K err watched the police car and van drive away from the house. He looked at his watch. It would soon be dark. Nightingale was alone in the house and if he stayed there then that would be where he died. He hoped that Nightingale stayed where he was because it was a lovely old house and Kerr would love to see it burn. Kerr sat down with his back to one of the trees and shook the box of Swan Vestas matches. He felt his groin tighten with every rattle of the matches. He stared at the house and licked his lips. ‘Soon,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Soon.’
91
N ightingale took his phone out of his pocket and rang Jenny.
‘It’s on the news,’ she said before he could speak. ‘They had her picture and said that she could be dangerous.’
‘I know. Chalmers picked me up this afternoon. I’m at the house.’
‘What if they find her?’
‘They won’t. That was the deal she did. Escape and freedom. They searched my flat and Gosling Manor and they’ll have her red-flagged at the airports and ports but she’s already fled the coop.’
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘I don’t want to know,’ said Nightingale.
‘Now what?’
‘Now’s the hard part,’ he said.
‘Do you want my help?’
‘You can’t help, kid. I have to do it myself. Tonight, at midnight.’
‘Be careful, Jack.’
‘Always,’ he said, and ended the call.
He walked downstairs to the hall, switching on the lights as he went. He pulled open the panel that led to the basement. He flicked on those lights too, then went slowly down the wooden stairs.
He had taken careful notes of what Aleister Crowley had written in his diary about summoning Lucifuge Rofocale. The pentagram was identical to the ones he had used when calling up Proserpine and Frimost, but the mixture of herbs was different, the candles had to be black and not white, and the incantation was longer and more complex. But the crucial part was a parchment that had to be prepared and burned at one of the two north-facing candles at the stroke of midnight.
The parchment had to be prepared from a virgin goat, and luckily Mrs Steadman at the Wicca Woman shop had been able to supply him with some. On the parchment there had to be a drawing that looked like a pentagram but with various rune-like scrawls in the centre and below it. Nightingale had sketched it from the diary and Crowley had stressed that it had to be copied perfectly onto the parchment on the day that it was required, ideally within an hour of the ceremony. The drawing could be done in the blood of a sea turtle, or the blood of the person summoning the devil. Mrs Steadman had laughed when he’d asked her if she had any sea-turtle blood and told him that there wasn’t much call for it.
Nightingale sat down at the book-strewn desk, opened one of the drawers and took out a new razor blade and a swan’s feather. He used the razor blade to clip off the end of the feather to make a workable nib, then slowly drew the blade across the tip of his left index finger. He winced as the blood flowed.
92
K err looked at his watch. It was just before midnight. There were lights on in the downstairs hallway and upstairs at the front of the house and he had waited, hoping that they would go out, but eventually he had walked around to the rear of the building and seen candlelight flickering in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and he figured that was where Nightingale was. He reached for the handle of the front door, turned it and smiled when he realised that it wasn’t locked. He opened the door and slipped inside, his heart racing. The house was bigger than anything he’d ever torched in the past, and he knew that to be sure of killing Nightingale he’d have to go upstairs.
He eased the door shut behind him. In his left hand was the red petrol can. He’d filled it almost to the top and he heard the liquid slosh around as he headed for the stairs.
93
N ightingale took a piece of paper from his pocket. On it were instructions that he’d copied from Aleister Crowley’s diary. He looked around the pentagram to check that everything was in place, then he ignited the mixture of herbs that he’d placed in a brass crucible. They caught fire easily and crackled and hissed as they burned.
Nightingale began to read from the paper. ‘ Osurmy delmausan atalsloym charusihoa,’ he said, trying not to stumble over the unfamiliar words. He spoke for a full minute, taking care over every syllable. When he’d finished, he took a deep breath. ‘Come, Lucifuge Rofocale,’ he said. He held the parchment with its bloody drawing over one of the north-facing candles and watched as it burned. ‘Come, Lucifuge Rofocale,’ he repeated. ‘I summon you.’
He narrowed his eyes, not sure what to expect. In the diary Crowley hadn’t been able to describe what Lucifuge Rofocale looked like, saying that he chose one of many forms depending on the circumstances. The burning parchment scorched his fingers but he barely felt the pain.