‘There must be adoption records, right? If your parents adopted you there’d have to be paperwork.’
‘My birth certificate has Bill and Irene Nightingale down as my parents. There’s nothing to say I was adopted. And, according to the DVD Gosling left me, I was given to them at birth. I don’t think any agency was involved.’
‘That’s illegal.’
‘It was thirty-three years ago. I don’t think everything was computerised as it is now. And I get the feeling that Gosling wasn’t too concerned about the legality of what he was doing. I think he just got the baby, his baby – me – gave him to the Nightingales and they passed him off as their own.’ He waved his arm around the basement. ‘I think the answer’s somewhere here. Gosling must have kept records and this is his hidey-hole so I want to see what I can find.’ He pointed to the middle of the basement. ‘I’m going to start with those filing cabinets but I’ll go through every book in the place if I have to.’
‘Looking for what, exactly?’
‘I don’t know, Robbie. But he was a rich man so he must have kept a track of what he was spending. Everyone does, right? You keep receipts and bank statements and bills.’
‘Anna looks after the finances,’ said Hoyle. ‘But, yeah, I know what you mean.’
‘So, I think Gosling must have paid someone to help him with the adoption. He couldn’t have done the whole thing himself. If I can find his records for the year I was born, I might turn up a clue as to who my real mother was.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I keep saying that. “Real mum”. As if Irene Nightingale was some sort of fake. She wasn’t. She was my mum and she’ll always be my mum, no matter how this pans out.’ He flicked ash onto the floor. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’
‘Late shift,’ said Hoyle.
‘Do you want to make yourself useful?’
‘That’s why I’m here.’
26
Nightingale found Ainsley Gosling’s financial records in six beechwood filing cabinets between a display case of ivory carvings and a seaman’s chest with a lock that had rusted with age and defied his attempts to open it. Gosling had been methodical with his record-keeping and there were separate files for each quarter going back to 1956. Nightingale pulled out the three most recent ones and took them to a desk where Hoyle was poring over a huge leather-bound book filled with newspaper clippings. He looked up. ‘He was interested in serial killers – Fred West, the Yorkshire Ripper, Harold Shipman. He followed all the cases.’
‘Everyone should have a hobby,’ said Nightingale, dropping the files onto the desk. ‘These are his most recent financial records. Can you see what he was up to in the months before he died?’ He went back to the filing cabinets. The records for the year he was born were in the third. He pulled out the four files.
‘He was buying books, big-time,’ said Hoyle, holding up a receipt from a Hamburg bookstore. ‘He paid a million and a half euros for something called The Formicarius in January.’
‘A million and a half euros for a book? It’s no wonder all his money went.’
‘Published in 1435, according to this. But that’s just one. There’s a receipt here for six hundred thousand dollars, another for a quarter of a million pounds. A stack of receipts from China that I can’t read. And, from the look of it, they were all about witchcraft or demonology. Occult stuff.’ Hoyle gestured at the bookshelves. ‘That’s where all his money went. He spent millions putting this library together.’
Nightingale put the files on the desk. ‘He wasn’t building a library. He was buying information.’
‘I don’t follow,’ said Hoyle.
‘He didn’t care about the books, he wanted the information in them.’ Nightingale sat down in a leather winged chair. ‘Here’s what I think. He did a deal with the devil when I was born. Or, at least, he thought he did a deal.’
‘Jack…’
Nightingale held up a hand to silence his friend. ‘Whether he did or he didn’t do isn’t the issue. What matters is what was going through his mind. And so far as he was concerned he’d sold my soul. Then, as he said on the DVD, he had a change of heart. He wanted out of the deal, but for that he needed information.’ He pointed at the bookshelves. ‘He thought the answer lay somewhere in those.’
‘You’re not starting to believe this mumbo-jumbo, are you?’
‘I’m trying to empathise with Gosling,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m trying to think the way he was thinking. If I can get inside his head, maybe I can make sense of this. Maybe I can work out why he killed himself.’
‘Why does it matter?’
‘He was my father.’
‘In name only,’ said Hoyle. ‘You never knew him. So why does it matter? And why are you looking for your genetic mother?’
Nightingale didn’t reply.
‘You think this all might be true, don’t you?’ asked Hoyle, quietly.
‘Don’t be soppy,’ said Nightingale.
‘You want to ask her if Ainsley Gosling sold your soul to the devil.’
Nightingale shook his head and opened a file. It was full of bank statements, used cheque books and receipts. ‘I don’t think he sold my soul. But I think he believed he did. There’s a difference. Besides, I haven’t got a mark.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Nightingale sighed. ‘They say that if your soul belongs to the devil, you carry a mark. Like a tattoo.’
‘“They”?’
‘The people who believe in this crap,’ said Nightingale. ‘It was in that book I took with me last time. It was written by some top Satanist. In it he says that if the devil has your soul, you have a pentagram tattoo somewhere on your body. And I haven’t. You’ve seen me in the changing rooms enough times.’
‘That’s true. Not a pretty sight, it has to be said.’
‘But no pentagram. So, it’s all bollocks.’ He flicked through a cheque book. The dates in it were from the year that he had been born.
‘Damn right, it’s bollocks,’ said Hoyle. He held up another receipt. ‘He bought a dozen books from a shop in New Orleans for a total of half a million dollars – all about voodoo. You know, you should be able to sell them – you’d make a fortune.’
‘Assuming I can find someone crazy enough to buy them,’ said Nightingale. He handed the cheque book across the desk to Hoyle. ‘Thirty-three years ago, Ainsley Gosling paid twenty thousand pounds to a woman called Rebecca Keeley.’
Hoyle studied a cheque. ‘That was a lot of money back then.’
‘It’s a lot of money now,’ said Nightingale.
‘What do you think the going rate for a baby was?’
‘Twenty grand sounds about right to me. I’ll see if I can track her down.’
Hoyle tapped the file he’d been working through. ‘What I don’t see in these files are his household accounts. Utility bills and payments to staff. It’s all big payments. He must have left the small stuff to a manager.’
‘His driver, maybe,’ said Nightingale. ‘He only had three people working for him towards the end.’
Hoyle pulled out a piece of paper. ‘You know he had a Bentley?’
Nightingale shook his head.
‘An Arnage,’ said Hoyle. ‘Nice motor.’
‘But nothing here for the driver?’
‘No pay slips, no national insurance, no tax details.’
‘He probably didn’t want his staff down here so the household accounts must be somewhere else.’
Hoyle checked his watch. ‘I’m going to head off,’ he said. ‘Gotta be in the factory by six. You sure you’re okay?’
‘I keep flashing back to my uncle’s house. And I keep thinking that maybe if I’d gone straight around to see
