Watery Grave (A Jack Nightingale Short Story)

By Stephen Leather

A grieving widow believes that her husband has come back from the dead. But does he want to help her or hurt her? Supernatural detective Jack Nightingale is called in to investigate.

Stephen Leather is one of the UK's most successful thriller writers, an ebook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan “Spider’ Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels. Before becoming a novelist he was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mirror, the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He is one of the country’s most successful ebook authors and his ebooks have topped the Amazon Kindle charts in the UK and the US. In 2011 alone he sold more than 500,000 eBooks and was voted by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world. Born in Manchester, he began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into fifteen languages. He has also written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock and the BBC's Murder in Mind series and two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were filmed for TV. His book The Chinaman was filmed as The Foreigner starring Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Leather
• Release date: Apr 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370108992

Stephen Leather

Stephen Leather is one of the UK’s most successful thriller writers, an eBook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan “Spider’ Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels. Before becoming a novelist he was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mirror, the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He is one of the country’s most successful eBook authors and his eBooks have topped the Amazon Kindle charts in the UK and the US. He has sold more than a million eBooks and was voted by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world. His bestsellers have been translated into fifteen languages. He has also written for television shows such as London’s Burning, The Knock and the BBC’s Murder in Mind series and two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were filmed for TV. You can find out more from his website www.stephenleather.com

Book preview

Nightingale kept nodding as Jenny talked, in between nibbling at his chocolate chip muffin and sipping his coffee. Jenny had brought the muffin and the coffee so he knew that she wanted something, and the least he could do was to sit and listen. He put on the face he used when a client came to tell them what was troubling them, the face that said he cared and wanted to help and would do whatever needed to be done to bring peace and harmony back into their lives.

‘You are listening, aren’t you?’ she said, leaning towards him.

‘Of course.’

‘Because your eyes keep glazing over.’

‘That’s because I’m enjoying this muffin,’ he said.

‘So what have I told you so far?’

Nightingale sighed. ‘Seriously?’

Jenny nodded. ‘Seriously.’

Nightingale sipped his coffee. ‘Your very good friend Laura Nicholson who you played lacrosse with at school lives in a multi million pound house in Sandbanks which she thinks is haunted because she keeps seeing wet footprints outside her house.’

Jenny tossed her blonde hair and looked disappointed that he had actually been listening.

‘I didn’t say haunted. She just said that the footprints keep appearing on the dock, heading towards her house.’

‘So, she’s complaining about wet footprints on her dock. And she lives by the sea.’

‘Laura doesn’t scare easily.’

‘Why would anyone be scared of wet footprints, Jenny? Listen to yourself.’

Nightingale could see she was about to snap at him, but instead she took a deep breath and Nightingale was fairly sure she was counting to ten. ‘She thinks it’s her ex-husband and that he wants to hurt her.’

‘What, it was an acrimonious divorce?’

Jenny sighed. ‘Ex husband as in dead husband. Are you not listening to me?’

‘I am, but I don’t recall you telling me that her husband was dead.’

‘Boating accident last year. They never found his body but his yacht caught fire while he was on board.’

‘And why would his ghost come back to haunt her?’

‘Well, that’s why she wants to hire us. To find out.’

‘We’re not Ghostbusters, Jenny. That’s who you call when you’ve got a ghost.’

‘She’s a friend, Jack.’ She put up her hand as soon as he opened his mouth. ‘She’s a friend but she’s happy to pay us. It’s not Pro Bono and before you say anything, yes I know you hate U2.’

‘Our normal rate?’

‘Yes, our normal rate. And we can stay in her house during the investigation. And it’s a lovely house, Jack. You know property down there now costs upwards of ten thousand pounds a square metre. When we get there you’ll see why. It’s idyllic.’

‘And suppose it is a ghost and not just a trespasser with wet feet?’

‘Then we exorcise it.’

‘That’s not what we do, and you know it. Exorcism is best left to the professionals.’

‘Then we bring in experts. Look, how hard a job is it? We stay in a luxury house in a beautiful part of the world for a few days and we see whether or not she has something to worry about.’ She flashed him a tight