Nightshade: The Fourth Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online

house?’
    ‘If he really was a Satanist then there’d be books or other paraphernalia. It’s a complicated business.’
    McBride looked at his watch. ‘Okay, let’s do it,’ he said. ‘But I’ll have to call the wife and let her know that I’ll be late.’
    There was a wooden plaque on the wall next to the bookcase and Nightingale walked over to get a better look. There was a pentangle in the middle and below it, a pair of compasses. McBride joined him. ‘I’ve never noticed that before,’ he said. ‘Is it a witchcraft thing?’
    Nightingale shook his head. ‘It’s a Masonic thing.’ He pointed at a small brass label at the bottom of the plaque. ‘That’s the name of his lodge.’
    ‘He never mentioned it.’
    ‘It’s no big deal – a lot of farmers are Masons. Mainly they’re a social and charitable group. A lot of cops used to be Masons but it’s fallen out of favour in the last few years.’ He went over to the desk and put his hand on a drawer, then straightened up and looked at McBride. ‘With your permission, I’d like to search the house, from top to bottom.’
    ‘Looking for what, actually?’
    ‘Anything that suggests your brother really was a Satanist. If he was then there’d be things he wouldn’t want anyone else to see.’
    ‘The police have been through the house, they searched all the rooms when they took away the computer and the guns.’
    ‘Yeah, well, the cops aren’t always as thorough as they should be,’ said Nightingale. ‘Let’s see how I get on.’

11
    N ightingale spent the best part of four hours searching the farmhouse, from a dusty attic filled with old furniture and long-forgotten clothes and odds and ends, down through all the rooms and ending up in a cold damp basement which contained a fridge-freezer full of pork and lamb, presumably from the farm’s stock. But at no point did he find anything that gave a clue to Jimmy McBride’s state of mind or suggested that he was in any way interested in Satanism. There was something disconcerting about the bedrooms. The main bedroom with an en-suite bathroom had obviously belonged to the parents – their clothes were still in the wardrobes and there were bottles of make-up and perfume on an old oak dressing table. The bedroom where Danny McBride had slept had posters of rock groups and racing cars on the walls and fishing tackle in one corner, and Nightingale found a collection of dirty magazines at the bottom of a chest of drawers that was still full of underwear, socks and T-shirts.
    McBride’s own bedroom was a throwback to the fifties, with heavy dark wood furniture and more watercolours on the walls. On a bedside cabinet there was a copy of
Farmer’s Weekly
, next to a framed photograph of a middle-aged man wearing thick-framed spectacles and a flat cap, a stocky woman with tightly permed hair and two young boys grinning at the camera. The McBride family.
    Nightingale went through every cupboard, every wardrobe, lifted the carpets and checked behind every picture. He checked the toilet cisterns and looked for loose floorboards. He found nothing that suggested McBride was anything other than a hard-working farmer, albeit one with a limited social life.
    After he’d finished searching the basement he went upstairs to the kitchen, where the brother was sitting at the table nursing a mug of coffee. He was staring out of the window at the yard and he turned to look at Nightingale. ‘I made a coffee, do you want one?’ he asked.
    ‘I’m okay,’ said Nightingale, sitting down at the table.
    ‘Find anything?’
    Nightingale shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not a blind thing. Who’s looking after the livestock?’
    ‘I’ve brought in a contractor from Sunderland,’ said McBride. ‘None of the neighbours wanted to help, not after what Jimmy did.’ He shrugged. ‘Can’t blame them, I suppose.’
    ‘You’re going to sell it?’
    ‘I’m going to have to,’ said McBride. ‘I can’t see how