Midnight: The Second Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller by Stephen Leather Page A

instantly realised that he’d lied. The previous night he’d done exactly that, forcing the French windows of Connie Miller’s house. He took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Look, here’s what I’d be thinking if it was my case—’
    ‘Which it isn’t,’ interrupted the superintendent.
    ‘Which it isn’t,’ agreed Nightingale. ‘But if it was, I’d be looking for someone local. Not Abersoch local maybe, but north Wales local. And not someone in her close circle but someone she knew. Possibly through the internet. Someone she trusted enough to let him get close to her.’
    ‘Are you on the internet much?’
    Nightingale grinned. ‘Me? I’m a Luddite. I’ve barely mastered my TV remote. Anything I need off the internet, my assistant does it for me.’
    ‘The woman I phoned who backed up your alibi?’
    ‘That’s right, Jenny. She’s up on all the hi-tech stuff. Me, I don’t trust any technology that I can’t fix myself. Have you looked under the bonnet of a car recently? You wouldn’t know where to start if you had a problem. Most mechanics are lost, too. They need a computer to tell them what’s wrong and then they just replace whatever the computer tells them to.’
    ‘Yeah, it’s a brave new world, all right,’ said the superintendent. ‘Policing is going the same way. These days it’s all CCTV and forensics and DNA; no one bothers going around asking questions any more.’
    ‘You seem to be doing all right on the question front,’ said Nightingale, flicking ash.
    ‘Because with Connie Miller there’re no forensics, no CCTV, just a dead body and you crouched over her with a knife.’ The superintendent took a long pull on his cigarette and narrowed his eyes as he stared at Nightingale. ‘You ever worked a serial-killer case?’ he asked after he’d blown smoke at the ground.
    Nightingale shook his head. ‘Not a case. But I talked to one once. He was holed up in his house with armed cops outside. I was sent to talk to him. Nasty piece of work. Liked butchering women. Raped them with knives.’ Nightingale grimaced. ‘Negotiators are trained to empathise but he was impossible to get close to. He was a true sociopath; killing to him was the same as eating and drinking. I spent the best part of three hours talking to him. He only wanted to tell me what he’d done.’
    ‘Like a confession?’
    Nightingale shook his head. ‘It was more like boasting. He knew what was going to happen and he wanted to share what he’d done with someone. Anyone.’
    ‘And what did happen?’
    ‘He died,’ said Nightingale flatly.
    ‘Killed himself?’
    ‘Sort of,’ said Nightingale. ‘Charged the armed cops with a knife in his hand.’
    ‘Death by cop,’ said Thomas. ‘Probably best, if he was as evil as you say.’
    ‘He was evil, all right.’ Nightingale dropped his cigarette butt to the ground and stamped on it. ‘I can go, right?’
    ‘I guess so,’ said Thomas. ‘Just do me one favour?’
    ‘What’s that?’
    Thomas flicked his cigarette away. ‘Don’t come back to Abersoch.’
    ‘I wasn’t planning to.’
    ‘And I’ll be talking to Superintendent Chalmers again.’
    ‘I’m sure you will,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘And I still think you killed Connie Miller.’
    Nightingale nodded. ‘I did pick up on that,’ he said.

19
    W hen he woke up early on Saturday morning Nightingale thought about going for a run in Hyde Park, but then decided against it in favour of a bacon sandwich, a black coffee, and two cigarettes while he read the Daily Express . The main story was about three bank bosses who between them were set to receive bonuses of more than £200 million. Nightingale shook his head in disbelief as he read the story. ‘Who the hell did you sell your souls to for a deal like that?’ he muttered. Inside the paper was a story about declining attendances in the nation’s churches while worship at mosques was up thirty per cent. The Archbishop of Canterbury said that the