that.’
‘There you are, then,’ she said.
‘You told them about cleaning the flat, the fingerprints and all?’
She nodded. ‘I figured I had to, right? If they’d looked at the CCTV footage then they must have gone looking for fingerprints and it would have been obvious that the place had been wiped clean. So yeah, I told them.’
Nightingale nodded. ‘That’s good. At least we’re consistent,’ he said.
‘Do you think that’ll be the end of it?’
‘I hope so,’ said Nightingale. ‘But Chalmers will carry on sniffing around, that much I’m sure of. He’s already spoken to the Welsh cop so I think I’m going to have more hassle on that front.’ He dropped his cigarette butt on the ground and stamped on it.
Jenny nodded at his foot. ‘You’d better watch that they don’t do you for littering.’
They had to wait for almost an hour before a minicab turned up outside the police station. ‘This is outrageous,’ said Jenny as she got into the back of the car. ‘They picked us up and brought us here so they should bloody well take us back.’
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Nightingale as he climbed in and pulled the door shut. ‘Lifts home went out with Dixon of Dock Green.’
‘We should sue them,’ said Jenny. ‘They didn’t arrest us; they just wanted to question us. They should at least have let you drive here in your car.’
‘They probably thought I’d do a runner,’ said Nightingale.
The driver twisted around in his seat. He was dark-skinned with a heavy beard. ‘Where to?’ he growled.
Nightingale looked at Jenny. ‘Do you want to come back to the house while I pick up the MGB or shall I drop you in Chelsea?’
‘I’ll go home,’ she said. ‘You’d be better collecting the car during the day, Jack.’ She looked at her wristwatch. ‘I thought there were laws about when the police could question people.’
‘PACE doesn’t apply when you’re helping them with their enquiries.’
‘Oh that’s what we were doing, was it? Why does Chalmers have it in for you?’
Nightingale grimaced. ‘He’s never liked me, right from the first time we met. Reckons I’m a maverick.’
Jenny laughed. ‘Well, he’s probably right.’
‘Yeah, well, he’s a box-ticker; everything has to be done by the book. He won’t have it any other way.’ He tapped the back of the driver’s seat. ‘Chelsea, mate,’ he said. ‘Is it okay to smoke?’
‘No smoking,’ said the driver.
‘Terrific,’ said Nightingale. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Afghanistan,’ said the driver, putting the car in gear and driving off.
‘I thought they were big smokers in Afghanistan,’ said Nightingale.
‘This is England,’ said the driver. ‘No smoking in taxis.’
‘So you left Afghanistan because of the Taliban?’ asked Jenny.
The driver laughed and slapped his chest with the flat of his hand. ‘I am Taliban!’ he said proudly. ‘I leave my country when the Americans invaded. Americans kill many Taliban. Very dangerous to stay there. So I come to England.’
Nightingale leaned forward. ‘Are you saying you got asylum in the UK because you were with the Taliban?’
The driver grinned at Nightingale in the rear-view mirror. ‘England is a great country,’ he said. ‘They give me lawyer, house for me and my family, and easy to get driving licence. Many of my friends are here already. Next month my wife’s mother is coming. She will be British citizen also.’
Nightingale looked at Jenny and shook his head in amazement. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘England is a great country. Can you believe that?’
Jenny grinned at Nightingale. ‘You’re going to have to get used to this,’ she said. ‘When they take away your licence you’ll be in cabs all the time.’
‘Maybe,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I’ve got a plan.’
12
N ightingale took a minicab to Gosling Manor first thing the next day and drove the MGB back to London. It was mid-morning when he got to the office. He put a brown paper bag on Jenny’s desk. ‘Muffins and croissants,’ he said. ‘The breakfast of champions.’
Jenny looked up from a stack of printed sheets. ‘Did you bring coffee as well?’
‘Don’t go all gift horse on me,’ said Nightingale. ‘You know your coffee’s much better than their mass- produced stuff.’
She looked inside the bag. ‘Banana chocolate chip,’ she said. ‘My favourite.’
‘Glad I can do something right,’ he said, leaning against the edge of her desk. ‘So what’s happening?’
‘I’ve been looking at suicides in Abersoch,’ said Jenny.
‘Now why on earth would you be doing that?’
‘From what you said, there’s no doubt that Constance Miller killed herself. But the cops seem determined to pin it on you, right?’
Nightingale nodded. ‘Yeah, that was weird. It’s as if they wanted it to be murder. They wanted to turn it into something that it wasn’t.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Jenny, breaking a chunk off one of the muffins and popping it into her mouth.
Nightingale looked over at the coffee-maker and Jenny sighed.
‘Coffee, Jack?’
He grinned. ‘You really are psychic, aren’t you?’ As Jenny went over to the coffee-maker he picked up the printed sheets.
Jenny looked over her shoulder. ‘I started by Googling suicides in Wales,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Do you know how many women have killed themselves in Wales over the past two years?’
Nightingale shrugged. ‘It’s a pretty depressing place,’ he said.
‘You are so Welshist,’ she said.
‘Bollocks — some of my best friends are Welsh. How many?’
‘Just over three hundred,’ she said. ‘Which, considering the size of the population, is about average for the UK.’
‘So?’
‘So, I’ve been looking at the suicide rate for the area around Abersoch. And it’s way up. Much higher than average.’ She took two coffees over to her desk, gave one to Nightingale and sat down.
‘I’m listening,’ he said.
‘Here’s the thing. Every year between five and six thousand people kill themselves in the UK. Tends to be more in a recession, fewer when things are going well.’
‘Makes sense,’ said Nightingale, tapping out a Marlboro.
‘Men are more likely than women to kill themselves.’ She grinned. ‘Probably all that testosterone. So the suicide rate for men is just under seventeen for every hundred thousand. That’s about three-quarters of the total. For every one woman who takes her own life, three men do the same.’
‘We die younger too,’ said Nightingale. ‘It really isn’t fair.’ He lit his cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring up at the ceiling.
‘This is serious, Jack,’ said Jenny, leaning forward. ‘The national suicide rate for women aged between fifteen and forty-four is the lowest of any group. Fewer than five per hundred thousand. Which means that in Wales, with its population of just under three million, you’d expect fewer than a hundred and fifty women of that age to kill themselves. That’s equivalent to three hundred over two years.’
‘Which is about right, you said.’
