Nightingale had the horrible feeling that he was back at square one again. The one source he had was now dead and had seemingly been part of whatever was happening. If Proserpine was behind it all, it could get even nastier than a bunch of dead children. But if she was orchestrating what was happening, why would she show up to warn him off? At the moment it was all far too complicated to think through, and he needed more information in a hurry.
He waited until he was back in his hotel room and had showered and changed before phoning Mrs. Steadman again. A familiar precise voice answered him. ‘Mr. Nightingale? How good to hear from you. I’d been rather worried.’
‘I’m fine, Mrs. Steadman. Thank you for your concern.’
‘I am so glad you got back safely from the Astral Plane. You really should never have tried anything so dangerous by yourself. It’s so easy to find false visions planted in your mind, and for those who want to harm you to block your return.’
‘The big toe thing worked.’
‘Yes, it sounds ridiculously mundane, but focusing on a small, easily visualised piece of reality will usually work to bring someone back. You should never have tried to contact someone on the Astral by yourself, it’s a very advanced technique.’
‘I think I realise that now, ‘said Nightingale. ‘But I couldn’t contact you by traditional methods.’
‘No,’ said Mrs. Steadman. ‘I am rather busy at the moment.’
She didn’t elaborate, so Nightingale didn’t ask. He’d long ago discovered that there was far more to Mrs. Steadman than met the eye. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m just stuck, big-time, and I didn’t know who else to ask. At least I’ve finally got hold of you.’
‘Ask about what?’ she said. ‘What are you involved with now?’
He gave her a condensed version, leaving out Wainwright’s name. Mrs. Steadman listened in silence as he ran through what had happened to the children, and he told her about Kim Jarvis killing herself in front of him. As he spoke, he could visualise her in the back room of the store, surrounded by her Wiccan candles, crystals, pots, jars and herbs, with the kettle perhaps just boiled for her tea. He missed the warmth and welcome of that room.
But that was all in another life.
When he described that morning’s visit from Proserpine, she gasped. ‘Oh dear me, no, She is still pursuing you?’
‘Seems so. Closer than ever this time. Seems I might be on her bad list, and so is Wai...’ He choked off Joshua’s name, but it was too late.
‘Ah, so you are still working for him,’ she said. ‘I think I told you before that I didn’t exactly approve of that idea. He is definitely of the Left-Hand Path, and may well not prove as good a friend as you might think. He does not have your best interests at heart. I really wish you wouldn’t consort with him, Mr. Nightingale.’
‘Yeah, I remember you telling me that,’ said Nightingale. ‘At the moment he seems to be riding with the good guys. He’s horribly scared for his niece. Seems she’s the last name on the list.’
‘And you seem rather scared yourself, Mr. Nightingale, though probably not for his niece. I think there’s something else that you’ve chosen not to tell me.’
Nightingale closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Might have known I wouldn’t be able to pull the wool over your eyes, Mrs. Steadman,’ he said. He opened his eyes again. ‘You remember Sophie Underwood?’
‘The little girl you lost and then saved? Of course.’
‘She’s the thirteenth name on the list.’
There was another gasp, and then she clicked her tongue. ‘Oh dear, oh dear. It really does seem as if someone has rather a grudge against the two of you. I’m not sure that I will be able to help with this.’
‘Why not? There are children at stake here, Mrs. Steadman.’
‘Well, yes. But again this all seems to result from something you and Mr. Wainwright have done. Someone is trying to revenge themselves on you through these children. You are paying the price for interfering in someone else’s activities. In a sense, they are restoring the Balance, and as I have told you before...’
‘It’s your job to try to keep the Balance, not disturb it.’
‘Quite. But still... Do you think you could remember precisely what that awful creature Proserpine said to you? Her exact words.’
Nightingale cast his mind back, visualised the scene, then tried to put his police training back to work, and remember the conversation verbatim. When he’d finished, she was silent for a moment before asking her question slowly and carefully.
‘And you’re quite sure those were her words? ‘You’ve danced your jig and now you need to pay the piper’?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘And remind me of the young lady reporter’s last words.’
That was much easier, and Nightingale told her everything Kim Jarvis had said in her last moments.
‘Oh dear me, I really hope not. For everyone’s sake.’
‘What is it?’
‘I may be wrong, and as I say, it isn’t my place to do anything about it, I think Proserpine knows that, too, when she said there would be nobody to help you.’
‘But...’
She interrupted him firmly.
‘No, Mr. Nightingale. I really am sorry, but I can’t be of any help to you with this. It’s not my place to interfere, and what happens, happens. If it is meant to be, then so it will be. But I shall watch what happens with interest.’
Nightingale tried to protest again, but it was too late, she had cut the connection. It wasn’t the first time that Mrs. Steadman had declined to help Nightingale, but it was still a serious setback. He was pondering his next move when the room phone rang.
‘Jack Nightingale? Bonnie Parker, I’m down in the lobby. Any chance you could come down?’
‘You’re a little early.’
‘I was just passing, thought I might save myself a little time later.’
‘Just passing?’ said Nightingale. He didn’t believe that for one minute. ‘I’ll be right down.’
‘Right down’ might have taken a little longer than Sergeant Parker would have expected, since Nightingale took the stairs down from the twelfth floor.
Parker looked surprised to see him emerge from the stair door, rather than one of the bank of elevators. ‘Did you need the exercise?’ she asked.
‘Nah, just don’t like lifts.’
‘We call them elevators. You don’t look the claustrophobic type.’
‘I’m not. Just don’t like them.’
Parker nodded and let it pass. She’d obviously managed to find time for a change of shirt since their previous meeting, and the current one was light blue. She looked to be wearing the same suit.
‘You were just passing then,’ said Nightingale. ‘Nothing to do with trying to talk to me before Ms Hutton showed up?’
Parker frowned at him. ‘Mr. Nightingale, that’s an awful thing to say. You’re perfectly at liberty to call her, and not say a word till she gets here.’
Nightingale grinned. ‘Actually I gave her the day off. Can we go someplace where I can smoke a fag or two while we talk?’ He grinned, knowing that she would pick up on the slang. Smoking a fag was what he did in the UK, to the American ear it was a criminal offence.
Parker seemed to ignore his attempt at humour and just nodded. ‘Let’s take a little walk to Beale Street. I’m sure a tourist like you wants to see the home of the Blues.’
‘Just so long as it’s home to an ashtray or two,’ said Nightingale.
A stroll of a few blocks through the heart of downtown Memphis brought them to the city’s most famous street, though at this time of the day it was pretty quiet. Ryan O’Rourke’s Bar might have been a little too mock-Irish for Nightingale’s tastes at night, with too many shamrocks and leprechauns painted on the walls, windows and menus, but it came with patio seating, his favourite Corona beer, and that all important permission to smoke. He proved his theory correct when Parker accepted one of his Marlboro to go with her coffee. ‘I thought I recognised a fellow smoker,’ said Nightingale.
‘Not often,’ said Parker. ‘My husband thinks I quit.’
‘Bet he doesn’t.’
‘Maybe not. Talking of recognising things, I smell cop on you.’
‘Guilty as charged. Metropolitan Police, London. Negotiator and firearms officer.’
‘Really? Most of you guys are still not armed?’
‘That’s right. But I’m not “you guys” anymore. I left years ago.’
‘And what brings you to Memphis, Mr. Nightingale? And specifically to the Memphis Park Cemetery last night to witness two suicides?’
‘So much for small talk,’ said Nightingale.
The detective shrugged but didn’t say anything. It was an interrogator’s technique around the world – leave a silence and wait for the person being questioned to fill it.
Nightingale took a long drag on his cigarette, then blew smoke upwards and watched it rise. As ever with the police, he had three choices. Tell them the plain, unvarnished truth, which they would never believe, and which would probably get him arrested or committed. Try to make up some convincing lies, which would mean trying to remember them all, improvise quickly, and hope they stood up to scrutiny. Or stick as close to the truth as possible, but not all of it, and not all at once. As cops went, Parker seemed a pretty straight kind, so Nightingale decided to try option three.
‘Well, first of all, I only witnessed one suicide. The kid was dead long before I got there.’
‘Charmaine Wendover. She deserves her own name.’
Nightingale nodded. ‘She does. I’m sorry. Well, as I say, Charmaine was dead long before I got there.’
‘You checked?’
‘I did. She was cold. Probably a couple of hours before.’
‘What brought you to the cemetery?’
‘I drove,’ he said, but the look of contempt that flashed across her face showed that she didn’t appreciate his attempt at humour. ‘A phone call from Kim Jarvis. We’d been working together...sort of...on the spate of kids committing suicide here in the last few days.’
‘Might make sense for her, as a reporter, but what’s your interest?’
‘Shall we say I’m interested in the unusual? And young kids committing suicide in public is pretty unusual.’
Parker shook her head. ‘That’s not gonna fly, Nightingale. The Peabody says you checked in three days ago, that’s a day before the Robinson boy died at the station. And two deaths isn’t a spate.’
‘What about Olivia Taylor, Timmy Williams, Madison Moore, Susan Johnson, Martin Brown?’
‘I caught the Olivia Taylor case. Little girl hanged herself with her skipping rope from the balustrade of her parents’ house. Suicide for sure. But who are the others?’
‘Timmy Williams ran out under a truck while walking with his mother. Madison Moore drank drain cleaner. Susan Johnson jumped out of her apartment window, and Martin Brown cut his wrists in the bath.’
Parker pursed her lips, took a sip of her coffee and made a disgusted face. ‘That’s a lot of suicides.’
‘And nobody connected them?’
‘Why would we? Suicides generally don’t connect. Yes, it’s pretty unusual, but there’s no suggestion anyone else was involved in the deaths, right?’
‘True enough.’
‘Anyway, we’re wandering from the point. What made you show up in Memphis, all the way from London, in response to two kids killing themselves?’
Nightingale laughed. ‘Nice try. You know full well I didn’t come from London. I’ve been working over here for quite a while. Didn’t you check my immigration status?’
‘Might have. So who do you work for, and what’s their interest?’
‘I might take the Fifth on that one,’ said Nightingale. ‘Let’s just say I work for some people with an interest in the unusual.’
‘You have a licence to work as a Private Investigator in Tennessee?’
‘I’m guessing you know the answer to that one, too.’
‘You guess right. So tell me about Kim Jarvis. Where does she fit in?’
Nightingale recognised Parker’s sudden switch of topic, hoping to wrong-foot him. He bought himself some time by lighting another cigarette, and signalling the waitress for two more coffees. ‘Unless you’re in a hurry?’ he said to Parker.
‘I can go one more. Not like I have a homicide to worry about.’
‘So why are you here?’
‘Something smells wrong, and I’m off duty until three. Now, you’re doing a fine job of trying to change the subject, but tell me about Kim Jarvis.’
Nightingale grinned. Not much got past the detective. ‘I barely knew her. Met her two days ago, I showed up at her office because it was her by-line on the story about Timmy Williams. When I told her about the other suicides, she seemed interested in the possibility of a connection.’
‘I don’t buy any of that. For a start, how did some out-of-town guy even get to hear about the other three? They would never have even made the local papers. And why would an experienced reporter try to make a connection between suicides? She’d have thought you were a nut, and sent you on your way.’
‘Maybe she should have,’ said Nightingale. ‘Unless I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, she was pretty much on the spot when Timmy Williams stepped in front of the truck, and she knew where to find Charmaine. The stuff she fed me about following her to the Crystal Shrine was nonsense, the girl had been dead for two or three hours before Kim turned up. And why kill herself? In front of me?’
‘A good question, ‘ said Parker. ‘Why not talk me through that?’
Nightingale obliged, covering every detail as accurately as he could, but leaving out her final sentence. ‘So that was it? She says “Bye Dude” and then she shot herself?’
‘That was it.’
‘And she wanted the world to see her tattoos. You know anything about Black Magic?’
The question came out of nowhere, and Nightingale couldn’t stop his face from betraying his surprise. ‘Why would you ask that?’ he said.
‘Maybe you didn’t get a good look at them. I did. All kinds of wizards, witches and mythical creatures. Weird writing in languages nobody in our Department can read. A bunch of symbols they tell me might mean something in Occult circles...and one more little thing.’
Parker lit another cigarette to emphasise her dramatic pause. Nightingale kept quiet.
‘Back of her left shoulder, there was a goat’s head, and a seven pointed star.’
Nightingale kept his face as expressionless as he could. ‘So?’
‘Does it mean anything to you?’
‘Should it? Why pick that one out?’
‘Because it wasn’t just another tattoo. It had been branded into her skin with some kind of hot iron.’
Nightingale gazed intently at the glowing end of his cigarette, and tried to keep his hand steady, as his memory reeled back to the nightmare that had been his final case in England. Followers of The Order Of Nine Angles often had a brand on their body of a seven-pointed star.
‘Branded, eh?’ he said. ‘Must have hurt. Is that kind of thing common over here?’
‘Not much,’ said Parker. ‘I’ve seen it used as an initiation for some street gangs, but nothing so elaborate. And yes, the ME said it would have hurt like hell. But it wasn’t recent. It had been there a few years.’
Nightingale nodded. ‘Anything else?’
‘Not really. We found her coat and purse in her car near the cemetery. Bag had the usual stuff and in the pocket of the raincoat was a list of names. Guess who?’
‘Not difficult. The dead children?’
‘Got it in one, plus Charmaine Wendover, and by rights she couldn’t have known she was dead until she’d left the car and gone to the Grotto. So how did she know she was dead, and how did she know the girl’s name? She wasn’t carrying any ID. And why did she call you forty minutes before she died? And who the Hell is Julia Smith?’
Again, Nightingale kept his face as expressionless as he could. ‘Who?’ he asked.
‘Julia Smith,’ repeated Parker. ‘The list in her coat pocket. Martin Brown, Sue Johnson, Madison Moore, Olivia Taylor, Timmy Williams, David Robinson, Charmaine Wendover and Julia Smith. Seven of them are dead, all apparent suicides. So I’ll ask you again, what does that list mean, and who is Julia Smith?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Nightingale. ‘You’ll find it easier than I will to locate her.’
‘Oh we located her, all right. Or rather them. There are more than a dozen of them in the Memphis area and forty that we’ve found in Tennessee, and that won’t include all the kids, who may not be registered. People move around a lot. And even if we do find them all, so what? Do we drop by and see if they’re feeling like killing themselves?’
‘Might be difficult,’ agreed Nightingale.
‘Might be. You know, Nightingale, I get the feeling you know a whole lot more about this than you’re spilling. So I’ll ask you again, what brought you here, and what’s linking these suicides?’
‘I was sent here, as I said. The people I work for flagged up the deaths, it’s the sort of thing they look for. I’m here trying to find a link, and stop it.’
‘Bullshit. Maybe I should run you in again, make you tell me where you were at the time of each death.’
Nightingale shook his head. ‘It’d be a waste of time, and you know it. I can prove an alibi for all of them, and even if I couldn’t, so what? There’s no suggestion of a crime about any of them, they’ve all been classed as suicide.’
‘But why are they killing themselves? asked Parker. She banged her fist on the table which rattled the cups and drew a few curious glances from other patrons. She shrugged her shoulders and looked a little guilty. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘But children just don’t kill themselves like this. What is it, some kind of mass hysteria, or hypnosis?’
Nightingale nodded. ‘You might be onto something there. Maybe ask an expert.’
‘If I knew one. That’s odd...’
Something over Nightingale’s shoulder appeared to have caught the detective’s attention. Nightingale turned around, but just saw a few people on the far sidewalk.
‘What?’
‘The kid in the St Richard’s uniform. She’s a long way away from school at this time of day.’
Nightingale saw the young black girl in the green school blazer, bright white shirt and green tie, the knee-length grey plaid skirt and the white socks. She had a school satchel on her back. He turned back to face Parker. ‘You don’t work as the Truant Officer as well, do you?’
Parker laughed. ‘Guess not. And St Richard’s girls aren’t usually the truanting type. Their parents pay enough to make sure they show up all the time.’
Nightingale felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck, and he spun round in his seat in response to the warning sign.
The little girl was standing still on the sidewalk facing Ryan O’Rourke’s, staring intently across the road at them, Her satchel now on the floor at her feet, and she bent down, undid the straps, darted her hand inside and straightened up again.
‘Get down!’ shouted Nightingale. ‘She’s got a gun!’
Instantly the whole patio was in uproar, with tables being pushed over, cups and glasses hitting the floor, men shouting and a woman screaming as the patrons dived to the ground. The girl looked blankly at the scene and then started pulling the trigger. The screaming intensified, to be joined by cries of agony and yet more screaming, as it seemed some bullets found a target. Nightingale dropped and rolled behind one of the tables. The shots kept coming, and the screams grew even louder.
Now Parker was shouting. ‘Put it down. Put it down kid, or I’ll shoot.’
Two more shots came, this time from very close to Nightingale’s head, and then no more. Just a groan, and a stream of curses from Parker. ‘Police Officer,’ she shouted, and got to her feet. ‘Everybody stay down. Do not move.’ She was holding her gun that she had pulled from a holster on her hip.
Nightingale watched her as she walked across the street to where the small crumpled figure lay on the sidewalk, blood now covering the white shirt, and spreading rapidly onto the concrete, He saw Parker bend down, touch the girl’s neck, then straighten up, and throw up against a lamp-post. Nightingale took out his mobile phone and punched in 911 for an ambulance, but stopped when he saw that Parker was already calling it in on her radio. The screaming had stopped now, though the groaning and cries of pain from behind him continued, along with a rising buzz of confused voices.
Nightingale got to his feet and looked around. There were groups of people gathered round what he assumed to be the casualties, and it didn’t look as if he could help much. He walked across to where Parker was still talking on her mobile phone, then bent down to look at the girl. She was clearly dead, Parker’s two shots had taken her in the chest and punched big holes through vital organs. Her face was untouched, and showed no fear or pain, just a look of incredible calm. Her satchel had fallen over on the sidewalk, and Nightingale bent down to look at it, staring at the little plastic window that held the piece of card with the name written on it, though he already knew what he’d see.
‘Julia Amanda Smith,’ he whispered. ‘Class 4B. Suicide by cop.’