The Phantom of Barker Mill

by steve higgs

  ‘I can perform all the tasks you have demanded.’ he said, his voice a soothing baritone.

  ‘You have other skills that you wish to be considered though?’ I coaxed.

  ‘Indeed. You may recognise me. I am a famous detective. My death was reported in 1893. However, I survived the fall from the Reichenbach falls and was transported forward in time to find myself here. My name is Sherlock Holmes and I am here to offer you my skills to solve the cases that will baffle you.’

  I looked past him. As the crowd dispersed and the numbers thinned I was left with just one in the queue. A man in his early twenties. He looked vaguely familiar. I turned my attention back to the man in front of me. I had an urge to be abrupt and rude, it seemed the swiftest method of ending this exchange. It was not in my nature to do so though. Instead, I smiled politely ‘I'm afraid I would find myself as the weaker part of such a partnership and that does not appeal. I am sure you understand.'

  Thankfully he nodded. I extended my hand, we shook, and I stepped around him and towards the young man who was now stood just a few feet from the door that led to my office.

  ‘Shall we get started?’ I asked and ushered him towards the door. I went up the stairs quickly, taking my jacket off as I went. ‘Please come in. Take a seat.’

  The chap came in behind me and took the seat in front of my desk as I went around to sit behind it. ‘Good morning. As you are the only candidate that has survived the initial filtering process the job is now yours provided you can demonstrate sufficient aptitude. Can I assume you speak English?'

  ‘Yes. Very much so.' His accent was local. I was glad for it. It would not have mattered if the chap had been Ukrainian, or Polish or even French, nevertheless I was pleased that English was his native language.

  ‘Here is my keyboard.' I said passing it to him and swivelling the screen so that he could see it. ‘Please navigate to Microsoft word and write a passage about what you had for breakfast this morning.'

  He took the keyboard and mouse and got going. I had him perform a few other basic tasks just to reassure myself he was capable. I asked him questions as he was doing it. Why he was interested in the job? How was it that he was available? What other experience he had and what other jobs he had held? I wanted to make sure he could speak articulately and answer questions while he was typing. Five minutes after he walked into my office I could not find anything further to ask him or any further tasks to set him and not a single reason why I should not employ him.

  ‘I just realised that I have not yet asked you your name.’

  He did not reply immediately though. He was sat looking at me with his head cocked slightly to one side as if he wanted to ask a question rather than introduce himself.

  ‘And your name is?' I prompted.

  ‘Jim Butterworth.’

  Jim Butterworth. The name sounded familiar. I knew it from somewhere. Where did I know it from? My brain was attempting to connect the two dots but could not quite make them touch.

  ‘You might know me better as Demedicus.’

  Bingo! Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

  Now I knew why he looked familiar. Three weeks ago, I had been called by his grandmother who had been convinced he was a vampire. She had wanted me to kill him. He was no longer dressed as a vampire though. The last time I had seen him his finger nails had been painted black, he had been wearing eyeliner and he had convinced himself that he was a vampire. He was living in a basement, sleeping in a coffin and had threatened to kill me for disturbing his slumber.

  ‘Right. Well, thank you for coming in. You look very different.' He was wearing normal person clothes. A pair of grey trousers, black shoes, a white shirt and a coat.

  Are you still living with your Grandmother?’ I asked

  ‘Err, no. No, Granny kicked me out.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes. I am living with my boyfriend now. I hope that doesn’t bother you.

  ‘I cannot imagine why it would.' I said. There are millions of gay people. The world is filled with people of different race, religion, gender. They are separated and connected by their interests, beliefs, hopes, and dreams. I wished them all every happiness and generally hoped they would leave me alone and stop killing one another.

  ‘This is a new thing actually.’ I guess James wanted to tell me about it even though I had not prompted more information. ‘After you killed our Master, Ambrogio.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him, James. He died attempting to escape justice and after he had given me a sound beating.’

  ‘Yes, sorry. Anyway, you did us all a favour killing him. After that the club fell apart and I decided I didn’t want to be a vampire anymore and that made me question some other decisions and I realised that I am LGBT.’

  Probably not all four at the same time I suspected. Maybe not L at all - equipment deficiency and all that.

  ‘Is there anything else you want to know?' he asked looking a little sheepish as if he now felt that he had told me far more than I needed to know.

  ‘When can you start?’

  It turned out he had nothing planned for the rest of the day, so we discussed pay and hours and probation period. I had read all about such things this morning while I was eating my breakfast so that I had a slight idea what I ought to pay and how I should manage an employee. Then I left him sitting at my desk sifting emails while I went to the bank.

  Spectral Dog Case. Tuesday, 12th October 1100hrs

  When I got back to the office, James was on the phone. He was diligently taking notes on a pad I kept on the desk, the phone trapped between his shoulder and ear to leave his hands free.

  I listened to his half of the conversation, giving him the space to do his job. I acknowledged that I was impressed - not only was he doing a good job, but he had grasped the task without being prompted and sounded confident on the phone.

  ‘So, this was Saturday?' He made a note. ‘And you have not seen him since then?' Another note and a pause while he listened. ‘Can we go back to the bit about the dog please?' a pause, ‘Yes.' Pause. ‘Yes.' Pause. ‘The size of a fucking horse. Yes, I think I have that. Mrs. Collins can I place you on hold for one moment while I confer with my colleague?'

  James put his hand over the speaker and stared at the phone base unit hopefully searching for a hold button that was not there. I had not seen the need to buy a phone with lots of functions. In fact, I had not bought a phone at all but had taken an old one out of my attic. He accepted that his search was fruitless and looked up at me.

  ‘Do you want to take this call? I'm not really sure what I am doing. The lady…' he looked down at the pad. ‘Mrs. Collins, her husband has disappeared, and she thinks he has been eaten by a spectral dog.'

  I motioned for him to hand over the phone.

  ‘Mrs. Collins, this is Tempest Michaels. I am the lead investigator and owner of Blue Moon Investigations. You say that your husband has disappeared?'

  The lady's name was Carol Collins, her husband had gone missing three days ago but, of course, the police had done little to follow up on the missing person report. This would not have attracted my attention nor given her cause to seek out a paranormal investigator, it was the clearly defined, glowing spectral dog on the CCTV camera at her husband's breaker's yard that got me involved.

  The couple owned a breaker's yard in Gillingham where they dismantled old cars and made a profit from selling off parts and recycling plastics, steel etcetera. Her husband was the gaffer and she did the books and they employed a few lads that operated the machinery and drove the vehicles. Her husband had simply failed to come home one night. She had not worried at first. He often came home late because he had a late collection or delivery or went via the pub for a few drinks, then came in after she had gone to bed for the night. When he was not there in the morning she started to panic though and then she got a call from Malcolm - one of the lads at the yard, who had arrived to open up and found it still open. Her husband's car was still there but there was no sign of hi
m. They did, however, find blood on the ground in the yard.

  The police were called and confirmed the blood was human. There was no body though and no other evidence to work with. Mrs. Collins said she was deeply worried that something had happened to him, but he had no enemies. They had no real rivals, certainly none that would stoop to murder to eliminate the competition, so she could not imagine what might have happened. The police had assured her they would give it their full attention and had immediately looked at the CCTV footage from the previous night. There were only a couple of cameras, so what one could see of the premises was limited. They whizzed through until someone yelled out as a blur went past the camera.

  When they backed the tape up and advanced it at regular speed what everyone watching had seen was an enormous glowing dog walk past the camera. I could understand instantly why she had called me for help. The police would carry on with their investigation but were not going to look into the possibility that a ghost dog had eaten her husband.

  There was not much the police could do as the dog did not appear to be breaking any laws. They had searched for it at the premises where not only could the dog not be found but no trace of it either. The dog was clearly massive, on the short clip we saw it walked in front of a Vauxhall Corsa and was not much lower at its shoulder than the roof of the car.

  To her credit, Mrs. Collins did not seem convinced that it was a ghost dog, but she wisely had no intention of finding out for herself what it was. She wanted it dealt with before it damaged the business or scared off her staff and she wanted her husband back if at all possible, please.

  I noted down all of this, committing much of the detail to memory, wrote down her address and agreed to meet her in an hour. I put the phone down.

  James was sat in the chair behind the desk, his hands folded in his lap. He was looking up at me expectantly, either waiting for an instruction or for me to tell him what I was going to do.

  ‘Well done, James. You handled that phone call in a very professional manner.' Credit where it is due. I worried that I just sounded patronising. It was my first time being a boss. I had subordinates when I was in the Army, but this was different. Suddenly, I had two employees. Not that Amanda was really my subordinate. I dismissed my concerns, I was the owner of the business, so as long as I could manage to be in charge without being a dick about it I should be fine.

  ‘So, what now?’ James asked.

  I looked at my watch. The time was 1117hrs. We had agreed to part-time hours where James would work five days per week between 0900hrs and 1300hrs and would on request work on a Saturday if the business was busy. He had been employed for all of about forty minutes so far and I had not really set him any tasks.

  ‘I think,' I said as I opened the desk drawer and dug around in it, ‘that you should knock off for today and start in earnest tomorrow at 0900hrs. I will, of course, pay you in full for today.' I found what I was looking for and produced a spare set of keys. One key opened the door from the street at the bottom of the stairs, the other opened my office door, which I never locked. My reasoning was that if someone broke their way in through the bottom door they would just do the same at the top of the stairs rather than be put off by a second locked door and I would have two broken doors to replace.

  I did not have to convince James to take the rest of the day off. He was gone in a flash. I settled into the still warm desk chair and opened a search engine. I was glad of this new case, I needed a distraction from the embarrassment of being suckered by Brett Barker. I looked for the breaker's yard business. I found a listing for them that gave a phone number and address, but they had no website. The search did show them on a map though. I clicked on the image, allowed it to open to full page size and scrolled down to zoom out. The business was located well away from houses and residential property, down a narrow looking lane near to the riverfront. It was not far from the Strand outdoor leisure park I had been taken to as a child. I wondered what that place looked like now. A memory of chasing my sister through the kiddie’s pool surfaced. I smiled at the image of childhood happiness and innocence but then remembered how that had been replaced by adult problems like Brett Barker and my smile, rather than fading, got screwed up and thrown in a corner in anger.

  Bugger.

  I was wallowing. It had been hours since I was released from custody. I had heard nothing from Brett Barker or Owen Larkin or even Mrs. Barker, but I was still employed to solve the mystery of the Phantom for Brett and to work out for Mrs. Barker who had killed her husband. I was quite very ready to prove that it was Brett Barker behind everything and that he was guilty of murder. I just had no start point currently.

  I slapped myself in the face, a physical action to break my mental focus.

  Come back to Brett Barker later. Deal with the spectral dog.

  I left the office and went to see Mrs. Collins.

  The House of Mrs. Collins. Tuesday, October 12th 1215hrs

  The address she had given me was for her house, also in Gillingham. I knew the area a little and could identify where her road was. It was all terraced houses in that area, which would often mean that parking was difficult. But at lunchtime on a Tuesday I should be okay.

  I cruised along her street, taking in the house numbers until I found hers. There was nowhere to park despite my expectations, but I found a spot around the corner. Her house was coated in render and painted a soft magnolia colour with contrasting toffee brown on the stone features around the windows, front door and on the guttering. The front garden was tiny and sported a pair of rose bushes, one each side of the front bay window. Leading from the street to her door, was a chequerboard path of black and white tiles. A few of them were broken yet most were intact, and I had to wonder how long the path had been there. If it was an original feature, it was most likely over one hundred years and counting. Pretty good workmanship and made to last.

  I walked down it and rang the bell. Through the small panel of frosted glass, a shadow could be seen moving. Seconds later the door was opened by a lady. She introduced herself as Carol Collins. I showed her my card and she welcomed me inside.

  Over the next hour, Mrs. Collins told me everything she knew, showed me the CCTV footage several times and introduced me to her two employees, Barry and Malcolm, who were politely waiting in her lounge when I arrived.

  The CCTV footage was compelling. In the short clip where the dog appeared, it wandered from left to right in front of several dead cars that provided a reference for its size, but it paused at one point and looked directly at the camera. Its eyes were twin glowing orbs of evil, at least that was how Mrs. Collins described them. I was certain it was just the ambient light bouncing off the tapetum lucidum, a reflective layer in many animal's eyes. I had to admit though that the effect was convincing and would have been at home on a horror movie special effect. The dog's fur was definitely glowing, it made the creature appear translucent as if one could see through it.

  Mrs. Collins expressed that she was too scared of whatever it was to go investigating for herself, so she had sent in Barry and Malcolm. Two nights ago, they had volunteered to go to the yard. Mrs. Collins had kept the yard shut since her husband had gone missing, so no one had been there since the Police had left. The two chaps returned terrified an hour later with a tale of being chased by a hell-hound and barely escaping with their lives.

  They regaled me with the same story, telling me to be wise and never go to the yard after dark. Malcolm wanted the whole thing to be sold off.

  ‘You should sell it, Carol.’ Malcolm said to his employer.

  ‘How can I? What will you and Barry do for a living?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about us. We will land on our feet somewhere. It’s just not going to be the same without Edgar there anyway.’

  ‘But he might be just fine, Malcolm. Mr. Michaels doesn't think it is a ghost dog. Do you, Mr. Michaels?'

  ‘Well…’

  Malcolm cut me off before I could speak. ‘If you wait, the val
ue will just keep going down and you will get nothing for it.'

  Carol seemed to be deliberating. ‘What if Edgar turns up? He could just be hurt somewhere. It happens all the time.’

  ‘He would understand, Carol.' Malcolm said. ‘You have to sell as quickly as you can before the press gets hold of the story. Once that happens no one will buy it.' Malcolm was pressing the idea of selling the business quite hard. I made a note on my pad. If their behaviour was suspicious then Mrs. Collins was not picking up on it.

  I left Mrs. Collins with her two employees and headed to the breaker's yard. Notwithstanding Malcolm's warning, I felt quite inclined to go there at night. I would need a partner for the event and one or two items to aid me in capturing the dog if indeed there was one there. That I had seen it on TV did nothing to make me believe I would see it again.

  I had been hired to rid her of the spectral hound and to determine if her husband had been dragged to hell. My theory was that the Mrs. Collins' husband had simply absconded. They owned the breaker’s yard between them, so if he elected to leave her he probably wanted her to give up her half of the business, a goal he was unlikely to achieve if she was the woman scorned and wanted to cut his nuts off and boil them in vinegar. What had tipped me off was her two employees Barry and Malcolm. They had put on an impressive performance playing the part of two men completely terrified by the spectral hound. It had convinced Mrs. Collins that what she had seen on CCTV was in fact real. When I ruled out the chance that the creature was a ghost dog or some other supernatural apparition the obvious conclusion was that they were in on it. Barry and Malcolm were not the only employees at the yard, but they were the longest serving. "They have been with Edgar since the start." Mrs. Collins had told me. My guess was that their loyalty lay with Mr. Collins. More than anything though it had been Malcolm’s continual assurance that the best thing she could do was sell, even at a reduced or below market price.