Dr Keller frowned. ‘I don’t follow you.’
Nightingale shrugged. ‘Pentagrams, Satanic ritual, witchcraft symbols.’
‘You’re wondering if the devil made her do it?’
Nightingale shrugged again. ‘Killing five kids. It sort of sounds like human sacrifice, doesn’t it?’
‘It sounds like the actions of a serial killer.’
‘But it’s unusual for serial killers to kill kids, isn’t it? Especially female serial killers. If there are kids involved then there’s usually a sexual motive, right?’
Dr Keller nodded hesitantly. ‘Well, yes, I suppose so. Child killers are generally middle-aged males and more often than not the killings follow on from sexual activity, either as a way of heightening sensations or through fear of being caught.’
‘And in my sister’s case there was no evidence of sexual assault?’
‘None at all,’ agreed Dr Keller.
‘So, if there was a reason, maybe in her mind she might have been sacrificing them. And the fact that she used a knife, that suggests a ritual, doesn’t it?’
‘I doubt that your sister would have had access to a firearm, so that really only leaves knives, strangulation or beating with a blunt object,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m not sure that the knife is significant.’
‘Knives are personal, and planned,’ said Nightingale. ‘She must have taken the knife in advance, which means she must have had a reason for killing the children. She wasn’t acting on impulse or out of anger. She planned it.’
‘You seem to know a lot about murder,’ said the doctor.
‘I was a policeman, in a former life.’
‘A detective?’
Nightingale shook his head. ‘Firearms officer, but I was also a negotiator. I did a fair amount of psychology as part of my training.’
‘Well, what you say is true, except that your sister is a sociopath so the general rules don’t always apply. She might simply have killed because she wanted to, and the normal constraints that would prevent you or me from killing weren’t there to stop her. She had the impulse to kill and she followed it. You and I and the rest of what we call normal people don’t act on our violent impulses. We learn to control them. That mechanism is missing from the psyche of a sociopath. Killing, to them, can be a natural impulse equivalent to eating or defecating.’
‘But going back to my original question, there was nothing vaguely Satanic about what she did?’
Dr Keller pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘If anything, it was the opposite.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Her last victim. Timmy Robertson. She killed him in a church. On an altar, I believe.’
41
‘ S o you didn’t tell her?’ asked Jenny, deftly picking up a prawn with her chopsticks and dipping it into a small dish of hot sauce. ‘You went all that way and you still didn’t tell her that Gosling sold her soul and yours? And that on her thirty-third birthday it’s so long and good night?’
Nightingale shrugged. He tried to pick up a piece of beef but the oyster sauce made it slippery and it fell onto the white paper tablecloth to add to the dozen or so food stains that proved testimony to his lack of chopstick skills. ‘You chose Chinese just because you know I can’t handle these things, didn’t you?’
They were eating in a restaurant close to Jenny’s mews house, one of her favourites. Nightingale had hit heavy traffic on the way back from Nottinghamshire and phoned her on his mobile to tell her that he’d be late and to arrange to see her for dinner.
‘I chose Chinese because I offered to buy you dinner and because I like Cantonese food,’ said Jenny. She smiled brightly. ‘I can get you a fork if you want.’
‘I’ll struggle on,’ said Nightingale.
‘Don’t think I didn’t notice that you changed the subject. Why didn’t you tell her that a devil was coming to claim her soul on her thirty-third birthday? That Gosling had traded her soul and that there’s nothing she can do about it?’
Nightingale sighed. ‘How could I tell her, Jenny? She looked at me like I was crazy when I told her that I was her half-brother. And even after I’d told her about the DNA evidence she was doubtful. If I’d told her that Gosling had sold her soul to a devil before she was born she’d have had me thrown out. Or committed. Can you imagine what the doctors would have done if they’d known? They’d have put me in a jacket with long sleeves before you could say “paranoid schizophrenic”.’
An elderly waitress dressed in black Chinese pyjamas brought a steel bowl of bok choi in garlic sauce over to the table. She spoke to Jenny in guttural Chinese and Jenny answered. The old woman cackled and walked away, as bow-legged as an elderly mariner.
‘You were talking about me, weren’t you?’ asked Nightingale, trying unsuccessfully to pick up another piece of beef.
‘She asked me if you were my new boyfriend and I said I’d rather crawl across broken glass than go on a date with you.’ She popped a piece of chicken into her mouth. ‘It sounds better in Cantonese.’
‘New boyfriend?’ said Nightingale. ‘What happened to the last one?’
Jenny jabbed her chopsticks at him. ‘My love life is a closed book to you, Jack Nightingale, and it’s going to stay that way. And you’ve changed the subject again.’
‘I thought the conversation had just progressed,’ said Nightingale. ‘Moved on.’
‘I know what progressed means,’ said Jenny.
‘I was using repetition for emphasis,’ said Nightingale.
‘No, you were using it to distract me,’ she laughed. ‘And it’s not working.’
Nightingale sipped his Tsingtao beer. ‘My sister’s in an insane asylum,’ he said. ‘They call it a secure mental facility but it’s an asylum. I’m not sure that telling her that her soul has been promised to a demon from Hell is actually going to help her.’
‘If it’s true, she has the right to know.’
Nightingale’s eyes narrowed. ‘If it’s true? What do you mean?’
‘Don’t get all defensive, Jack,’ she said.
‘No, I want to know what you mean.’
‘Jack, please…’
‘You do believe me, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Look at me, Jenny.’ He leaned towards her. ‘I’m serious, look at me. I’m having enough trouble convincing myself that this is actually happening. If you don’t believe me, then I might just have to accept that I’m going crazy.’
She looked into his eyes and smiled. ‘I believe you, Jack. Hand on heart, scout’s honour, cross my heart and hope to die, by all that’s holy, blah blah blah. I believe you.’
He smiled. ‘Thank you.’
‘It was a slip of the tongue. But it’s the fact that I do believe you that makes me so sure she has the right to know. If it was nonsense then it wouldn’t matter either way.’
‘Suppose I tell her and it pushes her over the edge?’ asked Nightingale.
‘She killed five kids,’ said Jenny. ‘That boat has pretty much sailed.’
‘Okay, but I tell her and then what? She’s locked up; there’s nothing she can do. She’s going to spend two years sitting in a cell knowing that she’s going to Hell.’ He sipped his beer again.
‘So she’s better off spending that time in ignorance?’
‘What can I do?’ He put down his chopsticks. ‘Look, I don’t want to tell her what the problem is until I can offer her a solution. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. And at the moment I don’t have anything approaching a solution.’
‘But you’ve got a plan, right? You’ve always got a plan.’
