DVD saying he’d sold my soul to the devil and then he blew his head off with a shotgun, which suggests, if nothing else, that he might have had a few sanity issues. What if I take after him? Nature and nurture, right? We’re a combination of our genes and our environment, and now I’ve found out that my genes have come from a nutter.’
‘A bald nutter, to boot.’
‘Exactly,’ said Nightingale.
Hoyle sipped his wine. ‘It’s a joke, right? Some sort of sick practical joke?’
‘I’m just telling you what happened,’ said Nightingale.
‘I mean this Gosling character, he’s just playing with you.’
‘But he killed himself, Robbie. Blew his head off with a shotgun. Bit extreme for a jape, don’t you think?’ He pulled out some photocopied sheets from the envelope: the police report and a copy of the conclusions of the inquest that had been held a week after the death. The verdict was suicide. ‘Just a thought, there’s no doubt that it was Gosling who died, is there? Shotgun blasts don’t leave much to identify.’
‘It’s all in there,’ said Hoyle. ‘His fingerprints matched the ones in the house. Nothing useful dental-wise so they did a DNA match. It’s definitely him.’
‘Can you do me a favour?’
‘Within limits,’ said Hoyle, cautiously.
‘I want to know if I really am his son. Can you check my DNA against his?’
‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ said Hoyle. ‘Do you want to give me a sample now?’
Nightingale took a small plastic bag from his jacket. Inside were half a dozen hairs that he’d plucked from his scalp, the roots intact.
Hoyle took it. ‘I was hoping for blood.’ He slid it into his jacket pocket. ‘It might take a day or two,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to wait until there’s a friendly face in the lab.’
‘I can’t believe the way my parents lied to me,’ said Nightingale. ‘And my uncle and aunt. My aunt and uncle must have known too.’
‘Have you spoken to them?’
‘My aunt was all jittery, and my uncle’s going to call me back.’
‘What about other family?’
‘That’s it, pretty much. Mum was an only child, all my grandparents died years ago, and Uncle Tommy and Auntie Linda never had kids. She has a few relatives but I hardly know them.’ He looked up from the papers he was reading. ‘What happened to the body?’
‘Cremated.’ Hoyle rubbed his finger around the rim of his wine glass. ‘You’re not taking this selling-your-soul- to-the-devil thing seriously, are you? People don’t sell their souls to the devil.’
‘He didn’t say he sold his soul. He said he sold my soul. And my sister’s.’
‘You don’t have a sister, Jack. You were an only child, remember? Which, incidentally, explains a lot.’
‘What?’
‘Only kids tend to be self-centred, used to getting their own way, have difficulty in forming lasting friendships.’
‘Screw you.’
‘See? That proves my point. Now me, one of four kids, you couldn’t wish for a more sociable fellow.’
‘I say again, screw you. And the rest of the Waltons.’
‘Easy enough to check if you had a sister,’ said Hoyle. ‘There’d be a birth certificate.’
‘Gosling’s not down on mine,’ said Nightingale. ‘Just my mum and dad. If Gosling did have a daughter, she’d be almost impossible to trace.’
‘It’s bollocks, the whole thing.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ said Nightingale. He drained his bottle of Corona.
‘You know it’s bollocks, right?’ said Hoyle. ‘There’s no such thing as the devil.’
‘Not the devil, a devil. He was very clear on that.’
‘So now you believe in devils?’
‘I’m not saying that. If there was a devil there’d be a God, and I’ve seen nothing over the past thirty-two years that’s convinced me there is. No God, no devil, end of story.’
‘There you go, then. It’s bollocks.’
‘He’s left me a huge bloody house in the sticks, Robbie. A mansion.’
‘So you’re going up in the world.’
‘Why would he do that if I wasn’t his flesh and blood? It’s one hell of an expensive joke, don’t you think?’
‘Okay, show it to me.’
‘What?’
‘The house. Spooky Towers.’
‘At night?’
‘You are jumpy.’ Hoyle grinned and finished his wine.
‘The power’s off. Gosling stopped paying his bills a month before he died.’
‘I’ve got torches in the car. You scared?’
‘Don’t be stupid. And it’s not in the least bit spooky. It’s bloody gorgeous in fact.’
‘I double dare you,’ said Hoyle, grinning. He waggled his fingers and made a ghostly wailing sound.
‘Screw you,’ said Nightingale again.
11
It was just before nine o’clock when they pulled up outside Gosling Manor in Hoyle’s Ford Mondeo. Hoyle climbed out of the car. ‘Bloody hell, Jack, it’s huge. It’s got to be worth millions.’
‘It would have been worth a lot more before the property crash,’ said Nightingale. ‘And it’s mortgaged to the hilt, apparently.’
‘How many bedrooms?’
‘A lot.’
‘And four garages. How cool is that?’ Hoyle walked around to the boot of the car, his feet squelching on dead leaves. He opened it, took out two torches and tossed one to Nightingale. ‘Come on, give me the tour, then.’
Nightingale took out his key and opened the front door. ‘Wipe your feet,’ he said.
‘You sound just like my wife,’ said Hoyle.
‘I just don’t want you walking dead leaves around my house,’ said Nightingale.
‘Now you definitely sound like her.’ Hoyle laughed and wiped his feet on the large mat in front of the door. ‘Happy now?’
They walked inside, playing their beams around the hallway. Nightingale led the way to the huge drawing room and pointed his at the massive fireplace. ‘That’s where the envelope was,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t there when the cops came so someone else must have a key.’
‘Where’s all the furniture?’ asked Hoyle.
‘He must have sold it,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m guessing he sold everything before he died, except the furniture in the bedroom.’
‘You could have some great parties in here.’
‘You could have a half-decent game of five-a-side football,’ said Nightingale.
Something scraped across the floor upstairs and both men jumped. ‘What the hell was that?’ said Hoyle.
‘Probably a cat,’ said Nightingale. ‘There was a cat upstairs last time I was here.’
‘Didn’t sound like a cat,’ said Hoyle.
‘Do you want to leave?’
‘Hell, no, we’re here now,’ said Hoyle. ‘Show me where he topped himself.’
Nightingale led him back into the hallway and up the staircase. ‘What are you going to do with the place?’ asked Hoyle.
