Blood Bath (Seven Jack Nightingale Short Stories) Read online

  BLOOD BATH

  By Stephen Leather

  ***

  Jack Nightingale appears in the full-length novels Nightfall, Midnight, Nightmare, Nightshade and Lastnight. I bought the cover for Blood Bath long before I got around to writing a short story to go with it. Several of my friends and fans were also inspired by the cover to write their own short stories, so I have put them together in this collection. The Nightingale timeline is complex but I think all of the short stories take place between the end of Nightmare and the end of Lastnight. Enjoy!

  Blood Bath By Stephen Leather

  Blood Bath by Alex Shaw

  Blood Bath by Andrew Peters

  Blood Bath by Conrad Jones

  Blood Bath by Lynne Waterman

  Blood Bath by Matt Hilton

  Blood Bath by Robert Waterman

  Blood Bath

  By Stephen Leather

  Jack Nightingale placed his camera on Jenny McLean’s desk and grinned. ‘Twenty-odd shots of Mr Clifford with his secretary, in her car, checking into the Holiday Inn Express and leaving ninety minutes later,’ he said. ‘Some nice video of them exchanging saliva.’

  Jenny picked up the camera and began checking the shots as Nightingale took off his raincoat and hung it by the door. She was wearing a pale blue dress and had tied her hair back in a ponytail. ‘How are you with haunted hotels?’ she asked.

  ‘I try to steer clear of them,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a Mr and Mrs Stokes on their way in,’ she said. ‘They own a hotel in Brighton.’

  ‘And it’s haunted?’

  ‘Apparently.’ She connected the camera to her camera and began downloading the pictures and video that were about to make Mr Clifford’s divorce much more expensive and have him out of the family home by the end of the week.

  The door to the office opened and a middle-aged couple walked in. The man had a receding hairline that suggested baldness was only a year or two away and bifocal spectacles indicated that he had problems seeing things no matter how far away they were. He was wearing a Barbour jacket and had a red scarf wrapped around his neck. His wife was a small woman, barely over five feet tall, and was wearing a jacket and scarf that matched her husband’s. She had a thin, drawn face and Nightingale noticed that her nails were bitten to the quick. ‘Speak of the devil,’ whispered Nightingale, but regretted it immediately when the woman flinched. She’d obviously heard him. He flashed them a beaming smile. ‘Mr and Mrs Stokes?’’

  The couple nodded. Nightingale pointed over at a sofa by the window overlooking the street below. ‘Why don’t you make yourself comfortable?’ he asked. Jenny stood up and took their coats and scarves and offered them coffee.

  As Jenny made the coffees, Nightingale sat down behind her desk and asked them what their problem was. Mr Stokes did the talking. He sat with his legs and arms crossed and had a habit of grinding his teeth when he wasn’t speaking. He explained that they had bought a hotel in Brighton six months earlier. ‘We were doing all right for a month or so,’ said Mr Stokes. ‘At least we were covering our costs, pretty much. But then a website called Haunted Brighton wrote about the hotel, saying that there had been several deaths there and that the hotel is haunted by a malevolent spirit.’

  ‘A ghost?’ said Jenny, her mug of coffee poised on its way to her lips.

  ‘A ghost we could probably live with,’ said Mr Stokes. ‘The website said it was a vampire.’

  Nightingale laughed out loud. ‘A vampire?’

  ‘It didn’t actually say vampire,’ said Mrs Stokes, flashing her husband a withering look. ‘It described a demon that craves blood, that encourages suicides so that it can feed.’

  ‘Complete bollocks, of course,’ said her husband.

  ‘But people believe what they read,’ said Mrs Stokes. ‘And the problem is that if you Google The Weeping Willow Hotel, Brighton, that bloody website comes up on the first page. So every potential booking is cancelled before it even gets started. I mean, who in their right mind would stay in a hotel that had had half a dozen suicides.’ She glared at her husband. ‘And who in their right mind would buy a hotel like that?’

  ‘That’s the name? The Weeping Willow?’

  Mrs Stokes nodded.

  ‘It’s a nice name,’ said Jenny.

  ‘It’s a lovely hotel,’ said Mr Stokes. ‘Everything about it is great. The rooms are lovely, we’re close to the beach. It should be a goldmine.’

  ‘Instead of which it’s a money pit,’ said Mrs Stokes. ‘We have to pay the housekeeping staff and the night manager and the chef and the waitress.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s a nightmare.’

  ‘You said suicides,’ said Nightingale. ‘The website talks about suicides? I thought the website talked about a vampire?’

  Mr and Mr Stokes looked at him in astonishment. ‘There’s no such thing as vampires,’ said Mrs Stokes. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Well…’ said Nightingale hesitantly.

  Mr Stokes shook his head in annoyance. ‘The website said there was some sort of vampire killing guests. It was the first we’d heard about deaths in the hotel but once we looked into it we discovered that there had been several suicides. At least six over the past ten years. But there was nothing unusual or suspicious about them. Just suicides.’ He shrugged. ‘Sometimes people get to the end of their tether and they just want to end it all.’ He looked over at his wife and she glared back at him.

  ‘Theses suicides, were they all guests?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Five of them were guests but the wife of the last owner also killed herself in one of the bathrooms,’ said Mrs Stokes. She began rubbing her hands together as if she was washing them.

  Nightingale’s jaw dropped. ‘I’m sorry, the wife of the guy you bought the hotel from, killed herself there? And you still bought it?’

  ‘We didn’t know that at the time,’ said Mrs Stokes. ‘But yes, that’s what happened.’

  ‘The seller didn’t mention it?’ asked Jenny.

  Mrs Stokes shook her head. ‘Though to be honest, we never spoke to him, everything was done through the estate agent. Mr Dunbar had already gone back to Scotland.’

  ‘Mr Dunbar was the pervious owner?’

  ‘The estate agent said that he had health problems,’ said Mr Stokes. ‘Now of course we realise it was just a way of keeping him away from us.’

  Nightingale nodded. “I’m not a legal expert, but shouldn’t your surveyor have picked up on something like this? Due diligence or whatever they call it. You made an investment on the back of a surveyor’s report, presumably?’

  ‘The building is fine,’ said Mr Stokes. ‘It’s a hundred years old and will stand for at least another hundred. The roof is fine, there’s no damp, the electrics and the plumbing were overhauled five years ago.’

  ‘Don’t sellers have to tell you about any negative aspects?’ said Jenny. ‘Things like noisy neighbours and dry rot.’

  ‘Apparently suicides aren’t covered,’ said Mrs Stokes. ‘That’s what our solicitor tells us.’

  ‘But you looked at the books, surely?’ said Jenny, her pen poised over her notepad. ‘Didn’t they let you know that something was wrong?’

  The couple exchanged a look and Mr Stokes flinched even before his wife spoke. ‘I told you we should have done that, didn’t I?’ she said.

  Mr Stokes threw up his hands. ‘We were buying the building. The building is fine. I just assumed that the hotel would hav
e guests. That’s what hotels do, right?’ He looked pleadingly at Nightingale as if he was begging him to agree with him.

  ‘I guess so,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Well guessing isn’t good enough,’ said Mrs Stokes. ‘We haven’t had a single booking since we took the place over. And it turns out that the hotel had been empty for three months before we bought it.’

  ‘So the seller knew there was a problem?’ said Jenny. ‘Doesn’t that mean he conned you?’

  Mrs Stokes shook her head. ‘He never actually lied to us,’ she said. ‘And we didn’t ask the right questions.’ She flashed her husband a withering look leaving them in no doubt that by ‘we’ she meant him.

  ‘When we looked around there were people in the restaurant so we assumed they were guests,’ said Mr Stokes. ‘And he said that we couldn’t see several of the rooms because they were occupied.’ He held up his hands again. ‘With hindsight, I screwed up.’

  ‘And the hotel has always been losing money?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘I think things got worse about six months ago,’ said Mr Stokes.

  ‘About the time that Mr Dunbar put it up for sale,’ said Mrs Stokes, glaring at her husband.

  Before Mr Stokes could respond, Nightingale raised a hand, hoping to cut short any argument. ‘So what exactly is it you want me to do?’ he asked.

  ‘First of all, get the website to take down its comments,’ said Mr Stokes. ‘We’ve sent emails to the website but no one has replied.’

  ‘Have you tried setting a lawyer on them?’ asked Jenny. ‘If the website is libelling your hotel, you could sue them.’

  ‘We spoke to our solicitor,’ said Mrs Stokes. ‘He says that we have to prove it’s not true. But how do we prove there isn’t a vampire in the hotel? It’s ridiculous. But it’s there on this bloody website for everyone to see.’

  ‘Have you talked to the police?’

  ‘About what?’ asked Mr Stokes.

  ‘To confirm that there have actually been deaths at the hotel. And that they were simple suicides.’

  ‘They say that suicide isn’t a crime so they are not bound to tell us if there have been suicides at the hotel,’ said Mr Stokes. ‘Here’s what we need, Mr Nightingale. We need you to find out if it’s true that there have been a spate of suicides at The Weeping Willow. If so, we need to know what we should do to put a stop to it. And we need you to get this website to take down the rubbish that’s there. Can you do that?’

  Nightingale smiled and nodded confidently. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said.

  *

  Detective Sergeant James Gracie was a dour Scotsman in his fifties with a greying beard and a bored expression that suggested there were a dozen things he’d rather be doing than standing in a bar with Nightingale. They were in a small pub a short walk from the John Street police station in Brighton. It was lunchtime, the only time that Gracie said that he had time to spare. The price of the meeting was fair enough – a double whisky and a ham sandwich, which Nightingale had ordered along with a bottle of Corona and a sausage roll for himself. ‘I really appreciate this,’ said Nightingale as they carried their food and drinks over to a corner table by a fruit machine.

  Gracie shrugged. ‘Colin Duggan vouched for you, grumpy old bastard that he is. Not sure how much I can tell you, though.’ He sat down and looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got to be back in the factory by one. Health and safety briefing followed by a diversity awareness survey. It’s all go in the modern world of policing.’

  ‘How long have you been in the job?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Coming up for thirty years,’ said Gracie. ‘Retirement beckons.’

  ‘Got any plans?’

  ‘I’m not going to be a private eye, that’s for sure,’ said the detective. He sipped his whisky. ‘I’m planning to sail around the world.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Biggest regret of my life is that I didn’t join the merchant navy. Always been a keen sailor and that’s the plan, take my boat around the world.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ said Nightingale. ‘I get seasick walking over Tower Bridge.’ He raised his bottle of Corona in salute and took a long drink before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘There have been six deaths in The Weeping Willow Hotel, right?’

  Gracie nodded as he picked up his sandwich.

  ‘All suicides?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The detective took a big bite and chewed contentedly.

  ‘That’s a bit unusual, isn’t it?’

  Gracie swallowed and took another sip of whisky. ‘Six in ten years? Not really. I mean, it’s quite a few considering it’s a small hotel, but I wouldn’t say it’s that unusual,’ He sipped his beer. ‘A lot of people choose to end it in hotels, you know that?’

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Well it’s true. Not the cries for help. They do it where there are people so that they can be talked out of it. But the ones who are really committed will often go to a hotel to do it. Smarter ones, anyway. The stupid ones will throw themselves under a train or step in front of a bus. But your average middle class suicide, he or she knows what’s involved. You were in the job, you know what death smells like.’ Nightingale nodded. Yeah, he knew. It wasn’t a smell you ever forgot. The sphincters opened on death and bodily fluids and faeces made their own way out, then the insects would arrive and the body’s own bacteria would start the decomposition process. Nightingale shuddered. ‘There’s a mess, with every suicide,’ said Gracie. ‘So if you know that and if you’ve got money, it makes sense to do the dirty deed in a hotel where someone else gets to clear up the mess. You book into a suite, have a bottle of champagne to wash the tablets down, maybe put on a porn movie.’

  Nightingale grinned. ‘Sounds like you’ve thought about it.’

  Gracie pulled a face. ‘Jack, if I had a terminal disease, I wouldn’t let it eat me alive. My old man died of bowel cancer and it wasn’t pleasant. If it happened to me, yeah, I’d choose the hotel route.’ He took a longer pull on his pint. ‘There isn’t a big hotel that doesn’t get at least one suicide a year,’ he said. ‘The big posh London ones probably get one a month. No one talks about it, obviously. But it happens.’

  ‘So you you’re saying The Weeping Willow isn’t unusual?’

  Gracie grimaced. ‘I wouldn’t say that. It’s a smallish hotel and not that well known. But maybe word gets around.’

  ‘What, that The Weeping Willow is a great place to end it all?’

  ‘Hey, I’m just thinking out loud,’ said the detective. ‘It’s less than one a year.’ He took another bite of his sandwich.

  ‘And what sort of suicides were they?’

  The detective frowned. He swallowed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Hanging, tablets, wrists?’

  ‘Wrists. All wrists. In the bath.’

  ‘Doesn’t that seem a bit coincidental?’

  ‘The fact they all cut their wrists?’ He shrugged. ‘Not really. A lot of people end it that way. Especially now it’s harder to get the tablets.’

  Nightingale took a long pull on his bottle of Corona. ‘And what about the wife who killed herself? One of the owners?’

  Gracie nodded. ‘Yeah, I was actually on that night. Mrs Dunbar. Slit her wrists in a hot bath, bled out within minutes.’

  ‘And nothing suspicious at all?’

  ‘There were only five people in the hotel at the time. One guest, the night manager, the chef and a waitress. And her husband, of course. He was the one who found the body.’

  ‘And nothing to suggest that there was anything untoward?’

  ‘Untoward?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Nightingale. ‘Arguments with the husband, a guest on the sexual offenders register, a pissed-off member of staff?’

  The detective shook his head. ‘It was suicide, Jack. The razor was still in her hand.’

  ‘What sort of razor?’

  Gracie sighed. ‘You’re bloody per
sistent aren’t you?’ He finished his whisky and handed the empty glass to Nightingale. ‘The least you can do is get me a refill.’

  Nightingale went to the bar and returned with a fresh Corona and a double Scotch for the detective just as he was finishing his sandwich. ‘I’m too long in the tooth to mistake a murder for a suicide, Jack,’ said Gracie, brushing crumbs from his beard.

  ‘I wasn’t teaching you to suck eggs, James. Cross my heart. I was just asking. Razor blade? Straight razor? Kitchen knife?’

  ‘Straight razor. Her husband liked a wet shave and wasn’t a fan of disposable razors.’

  ‘And there was no question of cause of death? The reason I ask is that he sold the place not long afterwards, right?’

  ‘He’d spoken to the estate agent before she topped herself. They both did. We spoke to the estate agent, before you ask. He said there was no friction between them, other than the normal husband-wife stuff that we all go through. You married?’

  Nightingale shook his head. ‘And you don’t think he decided to keep all the money for himself?’

  ‘I saw Mr Dunbar within two hours of his wife dying and believe me, he was distraught. And he was having a drink with the chef when it happened. And the door was locked from the inside. They had to kick it in.’

  ‘They being….?’

  ‘The husband and the chef.’

  ‘Locked or bolted?’

  Gracie shook his head and took another sip of his whisky. ‘You’re bloody persistent, aren’t you? Bolted.’

  ‘Bolts can be slipped. Piece of dental floss and Robert’s your mother’s brother.’

  Gracie frowned. ‘Were you like this in the job?’

  Nightingale laughed. ‘No, not usually.’

  ‘Mrs Dunbar killed herself.’ He put up hand. ‘And before you ask, no, she didn’t leave a note. But her doctor had prescribed anti-depressants.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because she was depressed. Are you soft?’

  Nightingale sighed. ‘I meant what was she depressed about. Obviously.’

  ‘The hotel was losing money. That’s why they wanted to sell it.’

  Nightingale sat back in his chair and pushed the slice of lemon down the neck of the Corona bottle. ‘The other suicides. Were they cutters?’