But it’s clear that he wasn’t mad and he wasn’t a Satanist. But he wanted people to think that he was. It wasn’t that someone set him up; his fingerprints were on that fake altar, which means that he must have put it together. But a real Satanist would have had books on the occult in his house. And he would have fixed up an internet connection so that he could visit Satanic websites.’
‘That makes sense,’ said Jenny.
‘So if he wasn’t crazy and he wasn’t a Satanist, we need to understand the logic of what he did. And that’s what’s making my head hurt.’
‘You’re not alone there. But why couldn’t he just be crazy? And faking the altar was part of his craziness?’
‘Because the shooting wasn’t the work of a madman. He chose his victims, moving from classroom to classroom. He shot one teacher and eight pupils and then he blew his head off. A madman would have just gone into one classroom and blasted away and not cared who he killed. And probably shot it out with the cops, too.’ He shook his head. ‘McBride wasn’t mad, which means there was a logic to everything that he did.’
‘So we need to work out why he killed the kids that he did.’
‘And the deputy headmaster. I think he might be a clue to solving this.’ He sipped his lager. ‘Like I said before, he could have killed more teachers but didn’t. We need to look at Mister … what was his name?’
‘Etchells. Simon Etchells.’
‘We need to run a full check on him. And the kids.’
‘You still think that the kids are connected in some way?’
‘They were all in single-parent families, which means they might have been more vulnerable.’
‘Vulnerable to what? Abuse?’
‘Maybe. I didn’t get anywhere with the coroner’s officer, but I could talk to the parents.’
‘That’s your plan? Walk up to complete strangers and ask if their children were being assaulted?’
Nightingale grimaced. ‘It doesn’t sound too good when you put it like that.’
‘You have to be careful,’ she said. ‘They’ve already lost a child and you start asking questions like that. Your feet won’t touch the ground.’
‘If this is about kids being abused, there has to be a reason why McBride decided to do what he did. Something must have happened to kick him off.’ He took a long pull on his lager. ‘I need to talk to that cop that Robbie put me in touch with. He might have an idea what’s going on up in Berwick.’
‘If he knew, surely he’d have done something already?’
‘That depends on what it is. Maybe it’s not common knowledge.’
‘Are you sure you want to do this, Jack?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We don’t have a client, remember. And we’re coming up on two grand’s worth already.’
‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’
‘We know what happened. You want to know why. There’s a difference.’
‘I want to know why McBride killed those kids, yes. It’s not about the money. If someone forced McBride to do what he did, I want to know.’
‘You think someone forced him to kill the children and then kill himself?’
‘I don’t know what to think. That’s why I want to keep on the case, for a while longer at least.’
Jenny looked at her watch. ‘Speaking of cases, you haven’t forgotten you’ve got a job this evening?’
‘Of course not.’ He grinned. ‘But remind me again what it is.’
Jenny sighed. ‘Mrs Holiday. Her husband’s knocking off his secretary at the Premier Inn every Thursday night.’
‘Ah yes, the old romantic.’
‘And she wants photographs to give to her lawyer.’
‘I’m on it,’ said Nightingale.
‘The camera’s in the office,’ she said. ‘I’ve charged it and there’s a fresh memory card in it. Some video would be nice.’
Nightingale saluted her sarcastically. ‘Aye, aye, ma’am.’
49
Jeremy Barker checked himself in the mirror and smoothed down his hair. The white coat and the stethoscope draped casually around the neck gave him the look of a doctor, and providing he kept walking purposefully he doubted he would be challenged. People were used to deferring to men in white coats, and providing he didn’t actually claim to be a doctor he didn’t see he was breaking the law. He took a pair of horn- rimmed spectacles he’d borrowed from his aunt and put them on. Barker had just turned twenty-five but with his receding hairline and drinker’s paunch he looked a few years older. He turned left and right, then nodded at his reflection. ‘Twenty milligrams of epinephrine and get the crash cart in here, stat!’ he said, then he laughed. It would probably be best if he didn’t say anything.
He took off the coat and glasses and put them into a backpack with a small digital voice recorder and a Casio digital camera. His car was parked a few yards from the building that housed his cramped rented flat and it took him just over an hour to drive from Clapham in south London to the hospital in Brighton. He parked some distance away, because the car park was covered by CCTV. He climbed out of the car, put on the white coat, and shoved the stethoscope into one pocket and the recorder and camera into the other.
It was nine o’clock in the evening. Barker had thought long and hard about the best time to visit the hospital. There would be more staff around during the day, so less chance of him being spotted, but in the evening more of the patients would be asleep and it was more likely the girl would be alone.
She was out of the ICU, which meant she would be on the children’s ward. That was on the third floor and consisted of two dozen individual rooms. He’d been to the children’s ward before and he knew there were windows looking into each of the rooms so that the nursing staff could check on the patients from the corridor.
As he reached the main entrance, he took the stethoscope out of his pocket and put it around his neck. The lifts were across the main reception area but there were stairs just beyond them. He put his mobile phone to his ear and kept saying yes, yes, and no until he was past the reception desk. He took the steps two at a time, keeping his phone in his hand.
He stopped when he reached the third floor and took a couple of minutes to steady his breathing. He knew there was almost nothing to worry about – the hospital was huge and doctors came and went, and on the off- chance anyone questioned him he planned to say he was a GP, there to check up on one of his own patients. He even had a fake business card in his wallet he could show if necessary.
He stepped into the corridor. To his right was a nursing station. For a moment he thought it was unoccupied, but then he spotted a nurse at a computer. He put the phone to his ear and began to walk. ‘Yes, I’ll be here for an hour or so. Can you ask Derek if he can do it for me. I know, but he’s on call.’ Barker kept the imaginary conversation going as he walked by the station, then slowed as he reached the patient rooms. There was a slot in each door containing a card with the name of the patient and any instructions for the nursing staff. The first room had a boy called Jake. The curtain to his room was closed. On the other side of the corridor the curtain was open and he could see a nurse talking to a girl swathed in bandages. Barker looked at the name on the card. Alison Cooper. Different girl.
There were boys in the next two rooms, and no nurses. The lights were off but there was always enough of a green glow from the monitoring equipment to see by. Double doors at the end of the corridor opened and a black doctor walked towards Barker, his long white coat flapping behind him. Barker took out his phone and began talking, but made eye contact with the black doctor and nodded as he walked by. He had to walk the full length of the corridor before he found Bella Harper’s room. The curtain was half drawn and he checked the girl was alone before opening the door. As he stepped into the room he put his hand into the pocket of his coat and switched on the digital recorder. Bella was lying on her back, her blonde curls spread out over the pillow, giving her the look of a sleeping angel.
Barker closed the door softly and went over to the window to close the curtain. As he turned around his breath caught in his throat as he realised her eyes were open and she was staring at him. He swallowed. ‘Hello
