Read Online Midnight: The Second Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller by Stephen Leather - Free Book Online Page B

Abersoch,’ said Jenny.
    ‘Now why on earth would you be doing that?’
    ‘From what you said, there’s no doubt that Constance Miller killed herself. But the cops seem determined to pin it on you, right?’
    Nightingale nodded. ‘Yeah, that was weird. It’s as if they wanted it to be murder. They wanted to turn it into something that it wasn’t.’
    ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Jenny, breaking a chunk off one of the muffins and popping it into her mouth.
    Nightingale looked over at the coffee-maker and Jenny sighed.
    ‘Coffee, Jack?’
    He grinned. ‘You really are psychic, aren’t you?’ As Jenny went over to the coffee-maker he picked up the printed sheets.
    Jenny looked over her shoulder. ‘I started by Googling suicides in Wales,’ she said.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Do you know how many women have killed themselves in Wales over the past two years?’
    Nightingale shrugged. ‘It’s a pretty depressing place,’ he said.
    ‘You are so Welshist,’ she said.
    ‘Bollocks – some of my best friends are Welsh. How many?’
    ‘Just over three hundred,’ she said. ‘Which, considering the size of the population, is about average for the UK.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So, I’ve been looking at the suicide rate for the area around Abersoch. And it’s way up. Much higher than average.’ She took two coffees over to her desk, gave one to Nightingale and sat down.
    ‘I’m listening,’ he said.
    ‘Here’s the thing. Every year between five and six thousand people kill themselves in the UK. Tends to be more in a recession, fewer when things are going well.’
    ‘Makes sense,’ said Nightingale, tapping out a Marlboro.
    ‘Men are more likely than women to kill themselves.’ She grinned. ‘Probably all that testosterone. So the suicide rate for men is just under seventeen for every hundred thousand. That’s about three-quarters of the total. For every one woman who takes her own life, three men do the same.’
    ‘We die younger too,’ said Nightingale. ‘It really isn’t fair.’ He lit his cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring up at the ceiling.
    ‘This is serious, Jack,’ said Jenny, leaning forward. ‘The national suicide rate for women aged between fifteen and forty-four is the lowest of any group. Fewer than five per hundred thousand. Which means that in Wales, with its population of just under three million, you’d expect fewer than a hundred and fifty women of that age to kill themselves. That’s equivalent to three hundred over two years.’
    ‘Which is about right, you said.’
    She took the printed sheets from him and fanned them out, then handed one back to him. It was a map with red dots on it. ‘Yes, for the country as a whole. But then I looked at the area around Abersoch. Abersoch gets crowded during the summer months but at this time of year it’s only locals living there and they number about a thousand. So, statistically, you’d expect fewer than one suicide a year among women. But so far this year there have been three.’
    Nightingale nodded thoughtfully as he looked at the map. ‘Okay, but suicides sometimes come in clusters. We had a rash of them in south London when I was a cop. Teenager topped herself and posted her suicide note on Facebook; within six months two others had followed suit. There was a bit of a panic on for a while but then it all died down.’
    ‘This is different, Jack,’ she said. ‘This has been going on for five years now, at least. That’s as far back as I’ve gone so far.’
    ‘What exactly do you think has been going on?’
    She gave him another sheet, this one a map of Wales. Like the first map, it was dotted with red circles. ‘I widened the search area to include Caernarfon and a few other towns within an hour’s drive of Abersoch. That takes the population up to almost twenty thousand. With a population of that size you might expect one woman a year to commit suicide. Again, it’s just between the ages of fifteen and forty-four we’re