Cursed_A Jack Nightingale Short Story Read online

  The doctor looked up at him. ‘Pretty much everything,’ he said. ‘The previous hospital tried most antibiotics and they had just started him on steroids when he was moved here. We’ve used the most powerful antibiotic cocktails that we have and they had no effect. Now we’re working our way through various combinations of steroids but nothing has worked so far.’ He gestured at the window. ‘The ice bath will lower his core temperature but we can’t keep him cool that way for ever.’

  ‘So what’s next?’

  The doctor took his glasses off and began polishing them with a handkerchief. ‘We’ve contacted a skin specialist in Sweden and sent him the case file, and we’re talking to skin hospitals around the world, but for the moment . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I wish I knew, really. In all my years as a doctor I’ve never seen anything like this.’

  Nightingale caught a train from Charing Cross to Catford. It was the middle of the day and the carriage he was in had only four occupants, one of whom was an obese woman in a Day-Glo pink jumpsuit, with dyed blonde hair pulled back into a Croydon facelift. She was looking after three toddlers, though ‘looking after’ was stretching it as all she did was to scream at them in between talking at the top of her voice into her smartphone. Nightingale spent the journey wondering why the smartest phones seemed to be in the hands of the stupidest people. His own phone was a five-year-old Nokia and he only ever used it as a phone. He had no idea how to access the phone’s GPS. He’d never even tried to connect to the internet, and if it had a camera he had never come across it.

  He wanted a cigarette but, while he figured the pink harridan wouldn’t notice if he lit up, he was mindful of the CCTV cameras watching his every move. He was going to Catford to meet the inspector who had led Roach’s team at Dale Farm and figured that it wouldn’t look good if he was arrested by British Transport Police officers as he got off the train.

  The woman was explaining to a friend how she’d managed to get disability allowances for her children based on a series of afflictions that all seemed to consist of nothing but initials. She boasted that she was claiming close to two thousand pounds a month from the State, at which point Nightingale realised that perhaps she wasn’t quite so stupid after all.

  When he arrived at Catford he stood on the pavement outside the station and lit a Marlboro before phoning the inspector. McAdam told Nightingale to wait where he was.

  Nightingale was finishing his second cigarette when he heard the dull juddering of a diesel engine seconds before a grey Sprinter van with police markings turned the corner and headed for the station approach. A group of black teenagers on BMX bikes scattered and a homeless man sitting by the side of a cash machine began gathering up his belongings. The van came to a halt and a side door rattled open. A uniformed inspector wearing a stab vest over his uniform stepped out and nodded at Nightingale.

  ‘You Jack?’

  Nightingale nodded, transferred his cigarette to his left hand and offered the right one. The inspector shook it then popped his head inside the van. ‘Why don’t you guys take ten?’ he said. ‘Grab a coffee and pick me up here.’ The driver nodded and McAdam pulled the door shut. He rubbed his hands together as the van drove away. ‘So you’re going to help Scrambled, are you?’

  ‘Scrambled?’

  ‘Scrambled is Simon’s nickname.’ Nightingale frowned in confusion and the inspector smiled. ‘Roach. Cock. Cockroach. Cock to chicken. Chicken to eggs. Eggs to scrambled.’

  ‘You TSG guys do love your nicknames, don’t you? What’s yours?’

  ‘They call me Sir,’ said the inspector. He nodded at the cigarette in Nightingale’s hand. ‘Are you going to let me have one of those?’

  Nightingale took out his pack of Marlboro and tapped one out. He offered the pack to the inspector and the officer took the cigarette. Nightingale lit it for him and the two men inhaled gratefully.

  ‘Actually they call me Jack, too.’

  ‘Because . . .?’

  ‘Because my name’s McAdam – so that’s Tar McAdam and that’s Jack Tar, so I’m Jack.’ He took another pull on his cigarette. ‘Have you seen him? Scrambled?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Nightingale shuddered. ‘It’s . . .’ He shrugged. There were no words to describe how terrible it was.

  ‘Yeah, me and the guys were in at the weekend but he was out of it. He didn’t show any reaction at all.’

  ‘They were using the ice, were they?’

  ‘Loads of it. Said he was burning up.’ He took a drag on his cigarette and then blew smoke up at the sky. ‘You saw what was happening to his skin, did you?’

  ‘They wouldn’t let me into the room.’

  ‘I went in. Had to show my warrant card and stretch the truth a bit, but they put me in one of those quarantine things and I had ten minutes with him.’ He took another drag on his cigarette. ‘His skin’s turning into scales. Like a snake.’

  ‘Yeah, the doctor said it was hardening.’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘They don’t know what’s happening. And we can hardly tell him the truth, can we?’

  ‘The truth?’

  ‘He was cursed. By one of the gypsies at the Dale Farm eviction. She grabbed him by his left arm and cursed him, and that’s where he started having a problem. His left arm is where it started.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  The inspector’s eyes hardened. ‘What, you think this is some sort of practical joke, do you? You think we’re making this up? Chalmers said you could be a bastard.’ He jabbed what was left of his cigarette at Nightingale. ‘You’re Scrambled’s last chance, mate, that’s why I’m here talking to you. Chalmers said you knew stuff about curses and that.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I know people who might know. So what happened?’

  ‘You saw it on the news, right?’

  ‘Who didn’t?’

  ‘Ninety families had to be evicted. It was a messy one, messy from day one. It was Green Belt and the travellers owned a piece of the land – they’d bought it legally – but they didn’t have planning permission for Dale Farm so they had to be moved. They used every legal trick in the book, but once they knew we were serious about going in they started pulling in activists from all over Europe. Rentamobs. They got set for a battle, and that’s what we ended up with.’ He blew smoke as he cupped the cigarette in his hand.

  ‘It took an hour or so to get through the barricades they’d set up, and they were pelting us with bricks and chunks of wood with nails in it. Not that you’d see that on the BBC – they were very selective about what they showed. They put poisoned meat down to try to get our dogs. And they used their kids as barriers. Hid behind the kids because they knew that would make us look bad.’ He shook his head. ‘The worst sort of scum. I mean, they call themselves travellers but they do bugger all in the way of travelling. And they knew they had no legal right to be there. They’d used lawyers every step of the way. They could have just packed up and moved on but they wanted a confrontation.’

  He took another pull on his cigarette. ‘We went in at about seven in the morning and by midday we were ready to let the bailiffs in. But it was a bastard five hours, I can tell you.’ He shuddered. ‘I’ve been in some nasty situations over the years but Dale Farm was the worst. They hated us, make no mistake about that. For them it was personal. They swore at us, they spat at us, they said that they wished our families would die of cancer. I’ll tell you something: if I ever got the chance to deal with one of those scumbags away from CCTV I’d beat them to a pulp for what they did to us. But of course that’s never going to happen, is it? Human rights and all that. We’re all geared up for protecting society’s scum while they ride roughshod over decent people.’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Forget I said that. It’s just that it was a shitty job, and a totally unnecessary one. The council should have nipped it in the bud when they first started moving in. Instead they let it get out of control and as always it’s us cops that have to do thei
r dirty work.’

  ‘I was a cop, I know what it’s like,’ said Nightingale. ‘So what happened to Scrambled?’

  ‘We were among the hundred men first in,’ said McAdam. ‘That was to gain access to the site and secure the caravans. That was when we had most of the fighting. Then we had to gain access into each caravan to get the occupants out. It wasn’t pleasant. And more often than not we’d have to go in with long shields. But Scrambled would always try to talk first. Scrambled always liked to lead from the front. His team respected him for that. He loved the TSG, too. Never wanted to work anywhere else.’ He finished his cigarette and flicked it into the gutter. ‘Chalmers said you used to be a negotiator,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, I was in armed response. But I’d done all the negotiation courses.’

  The inspector nodded. ‘Scrambled would have made a good negotiator. He had the gift of the gab. He was good with people, too. You come in for a lot of shit in this job but for him it was water off a duck’s back. He’d hold back the guys with shields and pop in himself, see if he could talk them out without having to get physical. That’s what makes this so shitty. He was the last person anyone should have wanted to hurt.’

  ‘I still don’t understand what happened,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘It was the fifth caravan that we went into. This one actually was a caravan; it had wheels and could easily have been driven off the site. Scrambled was there with six officers from his bus.’

  ‘Bus?’

  ‘That’s what we call the van. Now, standard procedure would be to announce ourselves then force the door before accessing the premises with two long shields, forcing any occupants back against the wall so that they can be restrained. But Scrambled wasn’t having any of that. He knocked on the door, identified himself, and opened it. It wasn’t locked so he went inside, on his Jack Jones. His team followed him but he was doing all the talking. There was an old woman lying in a bed, wrapped up in a blanket. Her grandson was there, a guy in his thirties. And his wife. Gypsies. The real McCoy.’

  ‘I’m not sure I get the difference.’

  ‘Travellers are mainly Irish. Tinkers. They’re the ones that will sell you white heather or pretend to resurface your driveway or strip the lead off the local church roof. Gypsies, real gypsies, are the Roma. Now, I’m not an expert by any means, but I did some reading before we went into Dale Farm. There are four million or so of them around the world and there’s a subgroup in the UK, the Romanichal, who’ve been around since the sixteenth century. They’d be the ones that used to travel around in the horse-drawn caravans, back in the day. These days they have transit vans and deal in scrap metal. Anyway, Scrambled tells them that they have to leave and the grandson says they’re not going; he says they’re Romanichal and that the legal action against the travellers has nothing to do with them.’

  ‘And was that true?’

  ‘The legal action specified which plots had to be cleared. It didn’t matter who was on them. And, like I said, their caravan was mobile so they could have easily driven away. In fact they did later on, once the bailiffs were in and threatening to tow it.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Scrambled says the man pulled a knife. The problem is that he was between the guy and the team so no one else saw it. One of his team had a camera but again the view was blocked. But if Scrambled said the guy had a knife then he had a knife.’

  ‘No argument here,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘So the guy lunges at Scrambled with a knife. They struggle. The guy falls back. The team crash the husband against the wall – don’t ask me what happens to the knife. His wife takes a swing at Scrambled, damn near claws his eyes out. He falls against the old woman. And that’s when it happened.’

  ‘That’s when what happened?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘That’s when she cursed him. She was grabbing his left arm, just above the wrist. And she said something to him, not in English. Then she spat in his face.’

  ‘She was an old woman?’

  ‘In her nineties. You’re wondering how she was able to grab a cop a third of her age. Scrambled said she was strong, a grip like a vice. But you have to understand what Scrambled’s like. He’d never get heavy with an old woman; it’s just not in his nature. He managed to make her let go and the three of them were removed from the van. Social services were there and they looked after the old woman. The knife was nowhere to be seen so the guy wasn’t charged, and once it was all over they drove off the site.’

  ‘And Scrambled was okay then?’

  ‘Right as rain. But the next day his arm was itching. Like he had a rash. He got some cream from Boots but that didn’t help. It just kept spreading. After a week it was all over his arm. Then it went across his back. He was still working, mind. It was under his shirt so no one knew that he had a problem. He kept going to see his GP and they tried him on tablets and lotions and stuff, but nothing worked. And the more it spread the more his health deteriorated.’ He shrugged. ‘And now he’s where he is. At death’s door.’

  ‘But I don’t see why you’re so convinced he was cursed. I’m guessing the camp was filthy; he could have picked up a bug. Got bitten by something. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe he’d have got sick anyway.’

  The inspector shook his head. ‘It started where she touched him. He showed it to me the next day. It was like you could see her fingerprints on his arm. And it spread from there.’

  ‘So maybe she had some contagious skin disease.’

  ‘I spoke to social services and they said she was okay. They had a paramedic check her out.’ While the inspector was talking the van returned and parked a few feet away from them. ‘What do you think, Jack? Can you do anything? He’s dying. The doctors are no help.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Nightingale. He realised he didn’t sound confident, but then at that moment he didn’t feel as if he had a snowball’s chance in hell of helping Roach.

  ‘The guy with the knife, the alleged knife, did you get his name?’

  ‘Smith,’ said McAdam. ‘Sampson Smith. Not sure if that’s his real name, though. Most gypsies are only in the system if they’ve committed a crime and even then we’ve no way of knowing if they’re using their real name. Most of them don’t even have birth certificates.’ The inspector looked at his watch. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. There are innocent members of the public out there waiting to be hassled solely on the basis of their colour.’

  ‘I don’t envy you your job,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘It has its moments,’ said McAdam. ‘Since the riots they’ve put us on a longer leash. The powers that be have realised what happens if we’re too soft on the scumbags. It’ll never be like the old days, and maybe that’s no bad thing, but a lot of the street crime problems would be solved if we were allowed to smack a few heads and nip trouble in the bud.’ He reached into his stab vest and pulled out a small grey thumb drive. ‘You should look at this,’ he said. ‘We were videoed up when we went in. The picture’s okay but the sound isn’t great. I’ve put on the approach to the caravan and what went on inside. It’s only about five minutes in all.’

  Nightingale took it off him and slipped it into the pocket of his raincoat. The inspector threw Nightingale a mock salute and climbed into the van. Nightingale watched it drive away before heading back into the station.

  Nightingale’s office was in South Kensington, above a hairdresser’s that offered him a fifty per cent discount if he allowed one of their trainees to cut his hair. Nightingale’s assistant, Jenny McLean, was at her desk tapping away on her computer keyboard when he walked in.

  She frowned and brushed a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. ‘I thought you were taking the day off,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, you and me both,’ he said, hanging up his raincoat. He went over to her desk and gave her the thumb drive. ‘There’s a movie on that I need to see.’

  ‘It’s not porn, is it?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You’
re sure?’

  ‘What sort of person do you think I am?’

  ‘The sort who’d think it was funny to show his secretary porn in the afternoon.’ She clicked the thumb drive into one of her computer’s USB slots. ‘So to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’

  ‘Chalmers.’

  ‘Your nemesis?’

  ‘He’s hardly that. But he needs a favour.’

  ‘From you?’ She tapped on her keyboard. ‘Did hell freeze over and I missed it?’

  ‘What do you know about gypsies?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Jenny. She clicked on an icon and the screen was filled with a grainy image of a group of caravans. ‘Is this it?’

  ‘I guess so,’ said Nightingale, pulling up a chair and sitting next to her.

  Jenny clicked her mouse and the picture began to shake. Two policemen in full riot gear – black fireproof overalls, blue helmets with Perspex visors and long Perspex shields – were moving towards a large white mobile home.

  ‘It’s not a home movie, then,’ said Jenny.

  ‘It’s the Dale Farm clearance,’ said Nightingale.

  A uniformed sergeant moved into view. Unlike his colleagues he wasn’t wearing riot gear, just a stab vest over a white shirt. ‘All right, lads, stand back. Let the dog see the rabbit,’ he said, walking towards the door of the mobile home.

  Nightingale pointed at the sergeant. ‘That’s Simon Roach. He’s in hospital now.’

  ‘Who took the video? It’s not TV footage, is it?’

  ‘One of the cops had a camera. The Met uses them a lot these days in case they get accused of anything.’

  Roach knocked on the door and identified himself, then pulled it open. He shouted something inside and then slowly went up a set of three metal stairs. The two officers with shields followed and the cop with the camera moved up behind them. The picture swung from side to side as the cop moved. First Roach, then the cops with shields, disappeared into the mobile home.

  By the time the cop with the camera went through the door, Roach was already struggling with a large man in a stained T-shirt and baggy cargo pants. ‘Can you see a knife?’ asked Nightingale.