thousands?’
‘A lot,’ said Hoyle.
‘He can’t have read them all, surely.’
‘Maybe he was a speed reader,’ said Hoyle. ‘Maybe they’re investments. Maybe he bought them by the yard and never read them.’
They walked along the display cases. ‘He was a collector, that’s for sure,’ said Nightingale. There was a case of what appeared to be shrunken heads, leathery fist-sized lumps with straggly hair and pig-like noses. In the next they found chunks of rock, which Nightingale realised were fossils. He peered closer. They looked like birds but had long claws and teeth.
‘Vampire bats?’ asked Hoyle, only half joking.
‘I don’t know what the hell they are,’ said Nightingale. ‘They’re fossils so they’ve got to be old. But I don’t think birds ever had teeth, did they?’
‘They look more like lizards than birds,’ said Hoyle. He played the beam of his torch down the basement to the end furthest from the stairs. ‘That looks like the security system,’ he said. There were half a dozen LCD screens on the wall in two banks of three.
The two men walked through the display cases towards them. As they got closer they saw a black wooden desk with a straight-backed chair and a large stainless-steel console dotted with labelled buttons. Nightingale ran his finger along it. ‘This picks up the feeds from the CCTV cameras,’ he said. ‘Look at this. There’s – what? Twenty- four cameras?’
‘Twenty-eight,’ said Hoyle. ‘Overkill, wouldn’t you say?’
‘He’d sit down here watching the screens. But watching for what?’
‘Scared that someone would rip off his collection?’
‘I don’t think he was scared,’ said Nightingale. ‘I think he just wanted to know what was going on in the house. He couldn’t have been alone. He’d have needed a staff – cleaners, gardeners, a driver, an estate manager. Maybe he didn’t trust them. Maybe he didn’t trust anybody.’
‘But when he died, he was alone in the house,’ said Hoyle. ‘That’s what it said in the file.’
‘He must have let the staff go,’ said Nightingale.
Hoyle waved a hand at the rows of display cases behind them. ‘And what is this place? What was Gosling doing down here? It’s not a display or an exhibition. He kept it all hidden away.’
‘You know what it is,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s Witchcraft R Us, that’s what it is. A shrine to black magic. Ainsley Gosling was a Satanist and this was where he plied his trade.’
‘There’s no such thing as magic,’ said Hoyle. ‘Smoke and mirrors and superstition, that’s all there is. This is the twenty-first century, Jack, the third millennium. Magic belongs back in the Dark Ages.’
‘You got the heebie-jeebies over that crystal ball, didn’t you?’
‘That was different. That wasn’t magic – it was…’ He paused, lost for words. ‘I don’t know what it was. Maybe you were right, maybe the light was playing tricks with my reflection.’
‘Okay, but you got married in church, didn’t you?’
‘So?’
‘So that was a religious ceremony, before God.’
‘That’s different,’ said Hoyle, rubbing his wedding band.
‘No, it’s the same. What you did in church with Anna was a ceremony with all the paraphernalia of religion. And remember Sarah’s christening? I had to renounce Satan and all his works.’
‘They’re just words, Jack. Everyone says “until death us do part”, but most marriages end in divorce. They’re words, not spells.’ He waved his arm at the shelves of books. ‘This is bollocks. All of it. And you know it’s bollocks.’
‘I’m not saying it’s not bollocks,’ said Nightingale, ‘I’m just saying that Gosling obviously believed in it, that’s all. And maybe that belief is what drove him to kill himself.’ He moved towards the stairs. ‘Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. We can’t see properly with the torches – I’ll get the power switched on and we’ll come back.’
They walked past an oak desk on the way to the staircase. Unlike the others in the basement it wasn’t heaped with books or papers: there was just a single leather-bound volume open with a Mont Blanc fountain pen next to it. The pages were filled with a handwritten scrawl, but Nightingale couldn’t read it in the torchlight. He picked it up and took it with him.
13
Robbie Hoyle lived in a neat semi-detached house in Raynes Park that he’d bought a couple of years before property prices crashed and was now worth less than the mortgage he’d taken out to pay for it. His wife’s black VW Golf was already in the driveway so he parked in the street.
‘Maybe we should sell this place and move into Chez Nightingale,’ said Hoyle, as they walked down the driveway to the house.
‘I don’t think you could afford the rent, mate.’
‘You could cut me a deal,’ said Hoyle. He unlocked the door. ‘We’re going to need a bigger place – we bought this before we knew we were having twins.’
‘Twin girls, they can share a room,’ said Nightingale.
‘Spoken like an only child,’ said Hoyle, pushing the front door open. ‘Trust me, kids need their own space.’
Anna Hoyle came out of the kitchen, holding a bottle of red wine. ‘Keep the noise down, boys. I’ve only just got the twins to sleep and Sarah’s got an exam tomorrow.’
‘I love you too,’ said Hoyle. He pecked her on the cheek.
‘I’m serious,’ said Anna. She smiled at Nightingale and held up the wine bottle. ‘Hi, Jack. Red okay?’ Nightingale and Hoyle had met Anna at the same time ten years earlier. She had been a probationer at the south London station they were working at and they had both asked her out. She’d said yes to Nightingale first but on the evening they were due to meet he’d been called away to an armed siege at a bank in Clapham. The following evening she’d gone for a drink with Hoyle and things had gone so well that they had married six months later. After three children she was still a stunner, with shoulder-length blonde hair, a trim figure and green eyes that always seemed amused.
‘Red’s fine. Sorry I kept your man out,’ said Nightingale, taking off his raincoat. He dropped it on the back of an armchair and gave her a brotherly peck on the cheek. He’d long ago come to terms with the fact that she’d never be more than a friend, though he still caught himself looking at her legs whenever she left a room.
‘I’ll get the glasses,’ said Hoyle. ‘You sit yourself down. I know you gumshoes spend all your day pounding the streets.’
‘Great,’ said Nightingale. He collapsed onto the sofa and stretched out his legs.
‘How’s business?’ asked Anna, sitting opposite him.
‘Getting by,’ he said, trying not to look at her cleavage. ‘The divorce rate always goes up during a recession. More arguments about money, I guess.’
‘And Jenny?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘Asked her out yet?’
Nightingale groaned. ‘Anna, she’s an employee. She’s staff. Start anything with your staff these days and you end up in an industrial tribunal.’
‘She fancies you something rotten, Jack. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Why else do you think she works for you?’
Nightingale grinned. ‘We’re a dynamic company with growth prospects,’ he said.
Hoyle returned from the kitchen with three glasses. He put them on the coffee-table and flopped into an armchair while Anna poured the wine. ‘So, did Jack tell you he’s a man of property now?’
‘Really?’ said Anna. ‘Property?’
‘I’ve been left a house.’
