The superintendent nodded at the hallway. ‘Are you alone in there?’
‘What do you want, Chalmers?’ said Nightingale.
‘I want you to tell me who else is in the house with you,’ said the superintendent. ‘I was wondering if maybe the lovely Miss McLean was there so that we could kill two birds with one stone.’
Nightingale frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Is Jenny McLean inside or not?’ said the superintendent. ‘I’m not pissing about here, Nightingale.’
‘Yes, she is. Why?’
‘Because we want to talk to her, and to you, about what happened in Battersea.’ He sneered at Nightingale with undisguised contempt. ‘How stupid do you think we are, Nightingale? Did you think we wouldn’t check the CCTV cameras and that we wouldn’t find out that you were in the flat when George Harrison took a flyer off his balcony?’
10
T he uniformed officer, who looked as if he was barely out of his teens, showed Nightingale into an interview room and asked him if he wanted a tea or a coffee. He asked for a coffee and sat down at the table. Chalmers and the female detective had taken Jenny along to another interview room. After ten minutes the constable reappeared with a cup of canteen coffee.
‘You didn’t spit in it, did you?’ joked Nightingale.
The constable stared at him blankly and sat down opposite him.
‘Is this going to take long because I’ll need a cigarette break soon,’ said Nightingale.
The constable shrugged but didn’t say anything. Nightingale looked at his watch but as he did so the door opened and Chalmers walked in holding a clipboard and two blank cassette tapes. Behind him was another detective, who Nightingale recognised. Dan Evans. Evans was a detective inspector in his late thirties, with prematurely greying hair and an expanding waistline that hinted at a fondness for beer.
‘It’s almost midnight,’ said Nightingale. ‘Can’t this wait until tomorrow?’
‘No it can’t,’ said Chalmers.
‘You don’t need Jenny here,’ said Nightingale.
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said the superintendent. He nodded at the constable. ‘Off you go, lad, we’ll take it from here.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the constable, and he hurried out.
Evans took the two tapes from Chalmers, sat down opposite Nightingale and slotted them into the recorder.
‘She’s just my assistant,’ said Nightingale.
‘She was at a crime scene,’ said Chalmers.
‘It wasn’t a crime; he jumped,’ said Nightingale, but the superintendent held up a hand to silence him.
‘Wait for the tape, please.’
Evans pressed ‘record’ and nodded at the superintendent. Chalmers looked up at the clock on the wall. ‘It is now twenty-five minutes past eleven on the evening of December the first. I am Superintendent Ronald Chalmers, interviewing Jack Nightingale.’ He looked at Nightingale. ‘Please say your name for the tape.’
‘Jack Nightingale.’
‘And with me is…’ Chalmers nodded at Evans.
‘Detective Inspector Dan Evans,’ he said.
‘For the tape, can you confirm that I have not been charged or cautioned,’ said Nightingale.
‘You are here to help us with our enquiries,’ said the superintendent. ‘But I will now ask Detective Inspector Evans to read the caution to you.’
The inspector went through the caution, even though they all knew that Nightingale knew it by heart.
‘But I am free to leave whenever I want?’ said Nightingale when the inspector had finished.
The superintendent stared at Nightingale with cold eyes. ‘At the moment you’re helping us with our enquiries. If that changes then charges might be forthcoming and in that case we will of course follow PACE to the letter.’
Nightingale nodded. ‘And Jenny?’
‘The same,’ he said.
‘So how exactly can I help you?’ asked Nightingale.
‘On November the twenty-third of this year did you and your assistant, Jenny McLean, go to the residence of George Arthur Harrison in Battersea?’
Nightingale folded his arms and sighed. ‘You know I did.’
‘Yes or no?’
Nightingale sighed again. ‘Yes.’
‘And why was that?’
‘I wanted to talk to him.’
‘About what?’
Nightingale glared at the policeman. ‘I just wanted to talk to him.’
‘About the death of your parents?’
Nightingale nodded.
‘For the tape, please.’
‘Yes,’ said Nightingale. ‘I wanted to talk to him about my parents.’
‘Because he was driving the truck that crashed into them?’
‘Yes,’ said Nightingale.
‘Why did you leave it so long to go and talk to him? Your parents died fourteen years ago.’
Nightingale didn’t answer.
‘Did you hear the question, Mr Nightingale?’
‘I don’t have an answer to that.’
Chalmers leaned forward. ‘You don’t know why you suddenly felt the urge to go and see the man who killed your parents?’
‘I’d only just found out where he lived,’ said Nightingale, even though he knew that wasn’t the reason.
‘Your parents died fourteen years ago. You went to see the man who killed them less than two weeks ago. I don’t see that for someone who was a policeman for as long as you were it would have taken fourteen years to track him down. What made you suddenly want to see him again? Revenge?’
‘Harrison didn’t mean to kill my parents. It was an accident. An RTA, pure and simple.’
‘You believe that?’
‘Of course I do. There was an inquest, he wasn’t charged with anything. It was a rainy night, my father overtook a car on a blind corner and hit Harrison’s truck. It was a stupid accident.’
‘So you didn’t bear him any ill will?’
Nightingale leaned forward and placed his hands on the table. ‘Are you stupid?’ he said. ‘If I did want him dead I’d hardly have waited fourteen years before throwing him off a balcony. Give me some credit, Chalmers. If I wanted to kill someone I’d be a bit more creative than that.’
‘Maybe you lost your temper. Maybe he said something that set you off.’
‘We were talking on the balcony and he jumped.’
‘Why did he do that?’
Nightingale shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. We were having a conversation and he jumped.’
‘Like Simon Underwood did?’
‘Am I helping you with your enquiries into the death of George Harrison or Simon Underwood?’ said Nightingale.
‘There seems to be a pattern here. You go to talk to people and they die. It happened in Canary Wharf with Simon Underwood, in Abersoch with Constance Miller and in Battersea with George Harrison.’
‘What do you want me to say?’ asked Nightingale.
