‘I wasn’t too far off,’ he said.
‘Well done, you,’ she said. She watched as he drew the pentagram inside the circle, and a large triangle outside.
When he had finished the triangle, he looked at her. ‘Now what?’
‘Now you have to write in the three points of the triangle. You write “MI” and then “CH” and then “AEL”.’
‘Michael?’
‘The archangel,’ said Jenny. ‘Don’t blame me if it sounds ridiculous. I’m just telling you what Mitchell noted in his diary.’
Nightingale wrote the three sets of letters, then put the chalk down and dusted his hands. ‘Is that it?’ he asked.
‘That’s the circle done. When you’re ready you put the candles at the points of the pentagram, light them and burn the herbs.’
‘Okay,’ said Nightingale.
‘Then you have to recite this.’ She showed him a passage in Latin that she had written down. ‘I’m pretty sure you’ll have to say these words as they are and not the translation. Then when you’ve finished you say, “Bagahi laca bacabe.” And before you ask, I’ve no idea what that means. It’s not Latin.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘According to Mitchell, once you’ve said those three words, Proserpine will appear. But I’ve had enough Delia Smith recipes go wrong to know that sometimes it’s not enough just to have the right ingredients.’
He took the notebook from her. ‘You know what I don’t understand, Jenny?’
Jenny sighed. ‘I could draw up a list, but it would take months.’
‘Why do you stay with me?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re way overqualified, the work isn’t demanding, I’m an idiot most of the time.’
‘All true,’ she said.
‘So why do you work for me?’
‘I haven’t really thought about it,’ she said.
‘You must have. You must think about changing jobs sometimes. Everyone does.’
‘I like working with you, Jack.’
‘I could never figure out why you came for the job in the first place.’
‘It was pure luck,’ she said. ‘It’s not as if I was looking for a job with a private eye.’ She paused. ‘I never told you what happened the day I came for the interview.’
‘I thought you were a spy for the Inland Revenue at first,’ he said. ‘You seemed too good to be true.’
‘I was shopping in New Bond Street,’ she said, ‘and popped into Costa for a coffee. I was waiting to hear if I’d got a job I’d been interviewed for, assistant to the marketing director of a big advertising agency.’
‘Nice,’ said Nightingale.
‘Yeah, well, I was sipping my latte and thinking all was well with the world, when the director of human resources called me and said I hadn’t get the job, blah, blah, blah. As he was saying that, I was looking at a free newspaper someone had left on the table. He’d been doing the crossword but had screwed it up, big-time. Couldn’t even spell Esperanto. Anyway, under the crossword there were situations-vacant adverts, and yours had been circled. So as the human resources director was telling me I wasn’t quite right for the position, I was looking at an advert asking me if I wanted a job that would never be boring.’
‘I wrote the copy for the ad,’ said Nightingale.
‘I know,’ said Jenny. ‘But if I hadn’t gone into that coffee shop, and if the paper hadn’t been left open at the page your advert was on…’
‘Maybe my guardian angel wanted you with me,’ said Nightingale.
‘Jack!’
‘I’m serious, Jenny. If it wasn’t for you, I’d never have known about any of this. I mean, who reads Latin, these days?’
‘It was serendipity, Jack. A fortunate set of circumstances.’
‘It’s my clumsy way of saying thanks. Thanks for putting up with me, and thanks for sticking with me.’
‘Somebody has to,’ she said.
‘Well, I’m glad it’s you.’ Nightingale checked his watch. ‘You have to go now, Jenny.’
‘No way.’
‘I have to do this on my own.’
‘I’m staying, Jack.’
Nightingale folded his arms. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know that if it goes wrong I don’t want you around.’ He smiled confidently. ‘I’ll call you when it’s over.’
‘They’ve got phones in Hell, have they?’ she asked.
Nightingale went to hug her but she shook her head and walked away.
69
From the bedroom window, Nightingale saw Jenny walk towards her car, then stop and look back at the house. Their eyes met. He gave her a small wave but she shook her head sadly and turned away. Nightingale lit a cigarette as she got into the car and drove off.
He smoked slowly, then stubbed out the butt. He was in the master bedroom, the place where his father had killed himself. He stripped off his clothes and walked through to the bathroom. The large tub was already filled with water and he slid into it. He held his breath and submerged himself, sliding down the cold enamel and staring up through the tepid water. He stayed under until his lungs started to burn, then pushed himself up and exhaled. He scrubbed himself clean with a small plastic brush and a bar of soap. He washed and rinsed his hair twice, then climbed out of the bath and towelled himself dry. He put on clean underwear, socks, a pale blue polo shirt and cargo trousers. He took his cigarettes and lighter from his suit, stuffed them into one of the knee pockets in the cargos and put on a pair of brand new Nike trainers. He looked at the padded envelope, then took out the crucifix and hung it around his neck. Finally he combed his hair, checked himself in the mirror over the wash-basin and walked slowly downstairs.
He went to the drawing room and lit the five candles. Then he stepped inside the pentagram. He took several deep breaths to compose himself, then went over the chalk outline with the birch branch. He sprinkled more consecrated salt water around the perimeter of the circle, then set fire to the contents of a lead crucible. The herbs and bits of wood in it hissed and spluttered and filled the room with cloying smoke.
He picked up Jenny’s notebook and began to read the Latin words she’d shown him, stumbling over the strange language. A wind blew through the room, even though the windows and door were firmly closed. The candle flames flickered and the smoke pouring up from the crucible began to form a circle. Nightingale coughed and continued to read, running his finger beneath the words so that he wouldn’t lose his place. When he finished, he coughed again and said out loud,‘Bagahi laca bacabe.’ He closed the notepad.
The room was thick with smoke, as dense as a pea-souper fog, sickeningly sweet but acrid enough to make his eyes water.
What happened next, Nightingale was never able to explain to anyone, not even to himself. He wasn’t sure that he remembered it properly. The only way his mind could come close to interpreting what he’d seen was to picture it as space folding into itself, a series of flickering flashes. Then the air blurred and she was standing within the apex of the triangle. It was a girl, in her late teens or early twenties, white-faced, with heavy mascara, a black T-shirt with a white skull on it, a black leather skirt, black boots and a studded collar around her neck. She looked at him through narrowed eyes. ‘Jack Nightingale,’ she said, her voice a throaty whisper. ‘Are you in such a hurry to join me? You have only six hours left. Why are you wasting them?’
Now Nightingale saw that a second figure had folded out of the air. A dog, a black-and-white collie, that sat at the feet of his mistress. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘We’ve met before.’
