‘He isn’t my father.’
‘Half of your genes came from him; it’s his DNA that made you.’
‘That doesn’t make him my father,’ said Nightingale. He waved his hand at the television screen. ‘He used me as a bargaining chip — that’s all I was to him. So don’t expect me to start crying now because he killed himself.’
Gosling slid off the bed, cradling the shotgun. He waddled over to the camera and his robe fell open again as he groped for the ‘stop’ button. The last thing Nightingale saw before the screen went blank was an expanse of white, mottled flesh.
‘Can you believe that?’ said Nightingale. ‘He sold his daughter’s soul so that he could get laid.’
‘That’s men for you,’ said Jenny.
‘I’m serious,’ said Nightingale. ‘What sort of shit would sell his child’s soul for sex?’
Jenny stood up. ‘Anyway, he’s dead. That’s the end of it.’
Nightingale ran a hand through his hair. ‘It would have been nice if he’d told me where my sister was.’
‘You heard what he said. He doesn’t know. Didn’t know. If he’d known he’d have told you. But at least we know who he sold her soul to. Frimost. Have you heard that name before?’
Nightingale shook his head. ‘We should check in Gosling’s library. With all those books on the occult there’s bound to be something about Frimost.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
‘It’s your call. You pay my wages. Most months, anyway.’
‘Just leave the answering machine on. The run-up to Christmas and New Year is always a quiet time for private detectives. It’s after the festive season that the phone starts ringing off the hook.’
8
N ightingale stopped the MGB in front of the gates to Gosling Manor and looked across at Jenny expectantly. ‘Can you get the gates?’
‘What did your last slave die of?’ asked Jenny, climbing out of the car. It was dark and the gates gleamed in the MGB’s headlights.
‘It wasn’t overwork,’ said Nightingale. He waited until Jenny had pushed open both gates before driving through. She closed them and got back into the car, shivering and rubbing her hands together.
‘Why didn’t Gosling install electronic gates?’ she asked.
‘I get the feeling he didn’t have many visitors,’ said Nightingale. He put the car in gear and drove along a narrow paved road that curved to the right through thick woodland.
‘Who’s taking care of the grounds?’ asked Jenny.
‘No one at the moment. Gosling let all the staff go before he topped himself.’
‘You’re going to have to get someone in when spring comes,’ she said, nodding at the expansive lawns to their left, the grass glistening in the moonlight. ‘The grass will need cutting and you can’t let woodland take care of itself. It’s got to be looked after.’
‘I keep forgetting that you’re a country girl at heart,’ said Nightingale.
‘Daddy has three gardeners working full-time,’ said Jenny. ‘And this place isn’t much smaller.’
‘I’ll have to check the money situation,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I’m pretty sure I don’t have enough to pay for a gardener.’
‘There’s the money from the books you sold from Gosling’s library. You got a stack of cash for them.’
‘Yeah, but that’s got to go towards the mortgages Gosling took out on the house. Could turn out to be negative equity there, in which case I’m really in trouble.’
‘Wasn’t there insurance? On Gosling’s life. I know he killed himself but most policies pay out if the suicide is a couple of years after the policy is taken out.’
‘Turtledove didn’t mention any insurance policies, so I guess not,’ said Nightingale.
He parked in front of the house, a two-storey mansion, the lower floor built of stone, the upper floor made of weathered bricks, topped by a tiled roof with four massive chimney stacks. To the left of the house was a four-door garage and behind it a large conservatory. In the middle of the parking area stood a huge stone fountain, the centrepiece of which was a weathered stone mermaid surrounded by dolphins and fish.
‘Are you going to sell it?’
‘I think I’ll have to,’ he said. ‘I can’t see myself living out here in the middle of nowhere.’ He switched off the engine and climbed out. He lit a cigarette as he looked over at the ivy-covered entrance. ‘It’d make a great hotel.’
‘You should get an estate agent to value it,’ said Jenny, getting out of the car. She looked up at the front. ‘It really is a beautiful building. Doesn’t seem like the sort of place that a Satanist would call home, does it? Even at night.’
Nightingale chuckled. ‘Doesn’t look like a haunted house, you mean?’
‘It’s a family house. You can imagine the kids playing on the lawn, Mum in the drawing room, Dad in the study tying fish flies, the faithful retainer in the kitchen giving a couple of pheasants to the cook.’
Nightingale looked over at her, his cigarette halfway to his lips. ‘You are joking, right?’
Jenny shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ she said.
‘Who has a cook and a faithful retainer these days?’
Her cheeks flushed and she looked away.
Nightingale grinned. ‘Daddy?’
‘It’s a large house and it needs staff,’ said Jenny. ‘You’ll find that out for yourself. I can’t imagine you’ll want to be dusting and polishing and cleaning windows.’
‘Yeah, but a faithful retainer?’
‘Lachie is a gamekeeper, if you must know. Now stop taking the piss, Jack. And let’s go inside, it’s freezing out here.’
Nightingale fished the key from his raincoat pocket and unlocked the massive oak door. It opened easily and without a sound, despite its bulk. He switched the lights on. The hallway was as big as his office, with wood- panelled walls, a glistening marble floor and a large multi-tiered chandelier that looked like an upside-down crystal wedding cake.
There were three oak doors leading off the hallway, but the entrance to the basement library was concealed within the wooden panelling. Nightingale pulled open the hinged panel and reached inside to flick the light switch. He stepped aside and waved for Jenny to go ahead. ‘Ladies first,’ he said.
‘Age before beauty,’ she said. ‘I’ll follow you.’
‘Scaredy cat,’ he laughed, and went down the wooden stairs. Despite Nightingale’s levity he could understand Jenny’s reservations; there was something decidedly spooky about the basement. It ran the full length of the house and was lined with shelves laden with books. Running down the centre of the basement were two lines of display cases filled with all sorts of occult paraphernalia, from skulls to crystal balls. Nightingale had spent dozens of hours down there but had seen only a fraction of the contents.
Jenny followed him down, keeping a tight grip on the brass banister. ‘I still don’t understand why he kept all this stuff hidden,’ she said. ‘There’s a perfectly good study and library upstairs.’
‘I don’t think he wanted his staff knowing what he was up to,’ said Nightingale. He walked along to a seating area with two overstuffed red leather Chesterfield sofas and a claw-footed teak coffee table that was piled high with books. He sat down into one of the sofas.
Jenny ran her finger along the back of the other. ‘Looks like no one’s dusted in years,’ she said.
‘Are you offering?’ asked Nightingale.
‘No, I’m not.’ She sat down. ‘So what’s the plan?’
Nightingale waved at the bookshelves behind him. ‘I guess we need to find books on devils, see if any of them refer to a Frimost. While we’re at it, we should start compiling a list of titles so that I can see which ones I can sell. We’ve got to sort the wheat from the chaff because some of them are really valuable. That’s where most of Gosling’s money went, remember?’
‘It’s going to take forever, Jack. There must be — what, two thousand books here?’
