I Know Who Did It (A Jack Nightingale Short Story) Read Free Page A

your
pardon?’
    ‘Sleeping with
the fishes?’
    She shook her
head in confusion. ‘Sleeping? Who said anything about sleeping? He’s sitting
with the koi in the garden. It’s his hobby. He spends more time with the fish
than he does with me.’
    Now it was
Nightingale’s turn to be confused. ‘Koi?’
    ‘Koi. Carp. Big
fish.’ She sighed and pointed at the kitchen. ‘Outside.’
    Nightingale
thanked her and let himself out through the kitchen door. Ron Mercer was sitting
on a wooden bench by the side of a large pool surrounded by rocks and pebbles.
He was a small man, bent over a Tupperware container full of brown pellets and
he was tossing them a few at a time into the water. More than a dozen brightly
coloured fish were snapping at the food.
    ‘Inspector
Mercer?’ asked Nightingale.
    Mercer peered up
at him with watery eyes. His skin was as wrinkled as old leather and he had a
large mole on his nose that looked pre-cancerous. There was a flesh-coloured
hearing aid tucked behind his right ear. ‘No one’s called me that in years,’ he
said. His voice was surprisingly powerful, deep and authoritative. ‘You in the
job?’
    ‘Used to be,’
said Nightingale. He nodded at the bench. ‘Mind if I join you?’
    ‘Go ahead,’ said
Mercer. Nightingale sat down and Mercer held out the Tupperware container.
    Nightingale took
out a handful of pellets and began throwing them one by one into the water.
    ‘I was a firearms
officer in the Met,’ said Nightingale, ‘And a negotiator. Jack Nightingale. He
offered his hand and Mercer shook. He had a firm grip. Mercer let go of
Nightingale’s hand and joined him in throwing food to the fish. ‘They’re
expensive, right?’ said Nightingale. ‘Most expensive fish in the world, I
heard.’
    ‘Can be,’ said
Mercer. ‘They can go for thousands. Some of these are worth a couple of
hundred.’
    What makes them
valuable? I’m guessing it’s not the taste.’
    ‘You don’t eat
these lovelies,’ said Mercer. ‘Most of the value is in the colour and the
pattern. The most valuable is the fish that most resembles the Japanese flag
– a red spot on a white background. The closer the red spot is to the
head, the more valuable.’
    ‘You like feeding
them, huh?’
    ‘I’m checking
them,’ said Mercer. ‘I check them all every day, This food is designed to float
so they have to come to the surface to feed. That way I can see if they’ve got
ulcers or parasites. They recognise me, you know. When I walk up to the pond,
they come to the edge to be fed. But the wife, they ignore her.’ He chuckled.
‘That drives her crazy, it does.’
    Nightingale threw
a couple of pellets and a large orange fish snapped up
both of them.
    ‘They eat
according to the temperature,’ said Mercer. ‘The warmer it is, the more they
eat. And in the middle of winter they don’t feed, other than to nibble a bit of
algae from the bottom.’ He threw in some more food. ‘They can live for more
than a hundred years, if you look after them.’ He chuckled. ‘They’ll outlive me
for sure.’ He began to cough and dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief. ‘So
what do you want, Jack? I’m assuming you want something?’
    ‘An old case of
yours,’ said Nightingale. ‘Forty years ago. Emily Campbell. She died at the
Rushmore Boarding School.’
    Mercer frowned,
his liver-spotted hand lying on top of the fish pellets. ‘Emily Campbell,’ he
repeated.
    ‘She was sixteen.
One of the pupils.’
    Mercer shook his
head. ‘I remember the name, but the case was closed. She killed herself, right.
It was a suicide.’ He shuddered. ‘Are you a smoker?’
    Nightingale
grinned. ‘Sure am. You?’
    ‘Used to be. The
wife made me stop ten years ago.’
    Nightingale took
out his cigarettes and offered the pack to Mercer. ‘I won’t tell her if you
don’t,’ he said. He lit the cigarette and one for himself. Both men blew smoke
contentedly up at the sky. Mercer looked nervously over at the