The Klowns of Kent

by steve higgs

  ‘Oh, err, Tempest.’ Jane called before I could leave. ‘It’s my birthday on Thursday. My boyfriend wants to take me for a drink in Rochester and told me to invite some friends.’ She stopped as if unsure what she wanted to say next.

  I made sure I was giving her my full attention, hoping it would encourage her to continue. ‘Well, I um… I don't have many friends since the whole vampire club thing went south and I came out, so I was hoping you and Big Ben and some of the others might be available to come for a drink. I don't want my boyfriend to think I am a total loser with no friends I guess.' she said with her head down so she didn't have to make eye contact with me. She looked up embarrassed as she finished speaking.

  It occurred to me that I knew very little about my assistant.

  ‘Jane, it would be an honour to come out for a drink with you and your boyfriend. I cannot speak for the others, but I will enquire about their availability and let you know. I feel certain that they will be only too happy to join us. Where are we going?’

  ‘The Warren.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Oh. Eight o’cl… I mean 2000hrs.’ I smiled, she was learning to tell the time correctly.

  ‘Right. I will speak with the others and let you know. I am sure it will be a good night. I am off to see Big Ben now actually, check on how he is doing in the hospital.' I had made the decision to see him in the last half second.

  ‘Okay.’ Jane said, smiling now with a degree of relief, having managed to ask what she clearly felt was an awkward question.

  I said I would see her in the morning and left her where she was.

  Maidstone Hospital. Monday, 24th October 1307hrs

  I pulled into the carpark and for once found a parking space straight away and near the point where the carpark was nearest the hospital. Heading past the main reception, I stopped as I realised that I had no idea where I was going. Big Ben had been spirited away by Dr. Harman and was probably being kept quite willingly as her personal sex monkey. However, I was willing to bet he would show up on the central registry and the lovely, wobbly old ladies in reception would be able to direct me to his location.

  I was correct, so two minutes later I was arriving in his private room. I was a little surprised that the NHS had private rooms, I was used to being crammed in twenty to a ward, yet here he was squirreled away nice and cosy. I didn't bother knocking, even though the door was shut. It simply didn't occur to me. So, the sight I received inside was entirely my own fault.

  I shut the door again, quickly leaving myself outside. Big Ben had seen me. He had grinned at me from his prone position on the bed which was entirely typical of him. The other person in the room did not see me, but then she had her back to me and her head down and appeared to be quite invested in what she was doing.

  Stood in the corridor, I was calculating whether it was better to knock, or go and find somewhere to sit until the visitor in his room elected to leave. Then someone tapped me on the shoulder and my bowel almost loosened itself.

  ‘Whatcha doing, Tempest?’ a voice asked from right next to my ear.

  As my heart restarted, I turned to confirm that the voice belonged to Patience Woods. Patience was a Police Officer, a friend of Amanda's and a larger than life black woman with boobs that probably created their own gravitational field. She was in uniform complete with radio, cuffs and all the paraphernalia they had to carry.

  ‘Good afternoon, Patience. What brings you here?’

  ‘That big hunk of man in there.' she answered, indicating the closed door with her head. I had no idea that she knew Big Ben. Considering it now though, it seemed perfectly reasonable that she would know Big Ben. He had shagged more than half the single women in the Country after all. And quite a few on the married ones probably.

  ‘You, err, know Big Ben?’ I asked.

  ‘Honey, it’s more like Big Ben knows me.’ she replied with a wicked smile. I could imagine a night with Patience would be an adventure. I had no intention of finding out though, which was a decision based mostly on the principle that I had no desire to sleep with a woman after Big Ben had. I suspected I would not fare well by comparison. Patience was looking at me. I was looking at her. The silence was getting awkward. ‘Honey, why are we standing in the corridor and not going in that room?’

  ‘Oh. Ah. Well, Big Ben is busy.’ Patience raised an eyebrow at me. ‘He has a doctor in with him.’ I explained.

  Patience did not look convinced. ‘What is the doctor doing?’ I guess my face told her enough. ‘Huh.’ she said, looking at the door. ‘Time to go to work.’ She straightened her hat, shuffled her belt a little to pull it up, then grabbed the door handle and threw it open.

  Inside, the lady in her white coat stopped bobbing her head and leaped away from Big Ben in abject shock.

  ‘Police, honey. This is a raid.' Patience announced at high volume as she strode into the room. She stopped as she got to the doctor. The poor woman was one of the young doctors I had seen doing the round with the consultant two days ago when I was here. Her face was bright red. She looked like she wanted to say something but had no idea what that might be. ‘Wipe your mouth before you go back to the ward, sister.'

  At the last comment from Patience, the girl fled the room, wiping her mouth with her sleeve as she went.

  ‘That was fun.’ said Patience. Her voice dropped an octave as it took on a sultry edge when she addressed Big Ben. ‘Hi, lover.’

  Big Ben chuckled. ‘Hi, Patience.’ He was shuffling back into his jogging bottoms and once they were back around his waist I felt it was okay for me to enter the room.

  ‘Hey, Ben.’

  ‘Hey, buddy. Come to rescue me?’

  ‘Do you need rescuing?’

  ‘Kinda. There has been a steady stream of visitors. I could do with some sleep.’

  ‘Sweetie, why are you messing with these skinny white chicks when you could be with me? Patience is gonna take you home but cannot promise you all that much sleep.’

  ‘Patience, dear. You do remember me saying that I have a strict one night, no second date policy?’

  ‘Yes, honey, but there is no way you are able to resist another portion of Patience.’

  He inclined his head, indicating that he did not necessarily disagree.

  ‘I’ll come back.’ I announced, heading for the door. I was getting uncomfortable with the continuous flirting and sex talk, largely because it reminded me how unlikely I was to get any.

  ‘No need to go, Tempest. I have to stay here actually. Doctor Harman turned out to be right, I did have a nick to my bowel. I think someone got in deep doo-doo over not examining me thoroughly enough when I came in. They did a bit of surgery and fixed me up but there was a high risk of infection, so I am on strong antibiotics and have to stay here for a while.'

  ‘How long?’ Patience and I asked simultaneously.

  ‘Another couple of days maybe.’

  ‘I just came to check in on you. Clearly, you don't need me so I will leave you in this lady's very capable hands.' I was already heading out the door. ‘Take care, brother. Call me if you need anything.'

  Quite why I had thought Big Ben might need me to visit I could now not fathom. I was just the type of person that tried to put others first. Maybe it was an Army thing. There had been people under my command. I had always made sure they ate before me, got rest before I did and when they were sick or injured or whatever I always visited them and made sure they had what they needed. It was a camaraderie thing, or a leadership thing, or some thing.

  I shook my head wryly, I was rubbish at working out what I wanted to say, even to myself. My car was where I left it in the carpark and I was home in less than ten minutes.

  My House in Finchampstead. Monday, 24th October 1443hrs

  Rather than go to the office in Rochester I worked out of my dining room/office at home. I was still kind of half-arsing the Klown investigation because I was not sure what to do about it. There were other cases which I was telling myse
lf could be treated as a higher priority because I had a better chance of solving them. One of these was the ghostly footsteps I had sent Amanda to check out on Saturday. It seemed likely to be a simple solution.

  I called the number for the restaurant.

  ‘Fennucci’s, good afternoon.’ A young woman’s voice with a very slight Italian accent.

  ‘Good afternoon. This is Tempest Michaels of the Blue Moon Investigation Agency. Is Georgio Fennucci available please?’

  ‘Just one moment.’ she replied. It sounded like she had placed the phone down and walked away. I waited patiently for almost a minute before I heard someone pick it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  I explained once again who I was but I now had the proprietor on the phone and he was very pleased to be talking to me. He said that he had planned to call me today as he had not heard from the firm but had not yet found time to do so.

  There was no need for further discussion, so after assuring him that despite my firm belief that there was no ghost haunting his premises, I would visit him this evening and do my best to determine what was actually going on.

  He thanked me and promised me a meal on the house for my efforts. Checking my watch, the time was 1521hrs. I needed perhaps forty minutes to get to the restaurant and park, leaving me three hours to fill. I needed to get clean, so a bath rather than a shower as I had plenty of time. First though, since it was so nice out today, I called the dogs for a walk.

  They ignored me as usual until I went to the fridge, whereupon the noise of the light inside it coming on had its magnetic effect to drag them from their slumber and off the sofa. They arrived, skidding to a halt by my feet in the kitchen. I gave them each a small chunk of carrot and slipped their collars on.

  They were happy enough with a slow meander around the village which gave me some time to consider the restaurant haunting. What equipment would I need? I made a mental note of a few items that I thought were likely to prove useful. Most of them were in my bag already but I wanted to take a tuning fork with me and could not remember where mine was. It was an odd artefact that I had picked up at a church jumble sale where my mother had been running a stall. She was selling cakes and I had gone along to show my support. Where had I put it? I narrowed the search down to a few hopeful locations which I would check when I got home. As I wandered, I discerned a niggling concern that I was forgetting something. Like there was a task I had committed to but could now not remember. It refused to surface and there was no appointment on my phone calendar which there would have been if it were work related. Jane was very good at organising my diary.

  At almost the furthest point of the walk, fifteen minutes from the house a gentle drizzle started. An ominous dark cloud had been visible over Bluebell Hill as we set off, my guess that it would move towards Maidstone had ultimately proven erroneous as it had instead made a beeline for me and the two Dachshunds.

  Had we been closer to home and still on the outward leg I would have turned around and headed for home. As it was, all I could do was quicken my pace and call instructions to hurry the dogs along. The rain picked up, driven by a breeze, fat blobs of it hitting the top of my head and visibly getting the dogs wet. I quickened my pace a little more, then noticed that the dogs were not with me. I turned around and went back to find them safe and dry under a thick bush. They refused to come out, forcing me to get on my knees to clip their leads on and drag them from their refuge.

  Ten minutes later we were all back in the house, the walls of my entrance lobby were sprayed with muddy marks where they had shaken themselves, and the kettle was burbling away to make a nice cup of warming tea. I was soaked. However, I had to put up with my own wetness as the dogs would dry themselves on the sofa if I did not intercept them with a towel.

  As my tea brewed, I slowly pulled off my wet garments and taking the hot beverage upstairs, I ran the bath I had already felt I needed. My ribs were hurting, the soreness there accented by having to struggle out of clothes that were sticking to my skin. I popped two of the strong painkillers I had been given at the hospital and swallowed them with a slurp of tea.

  I awoke in the bath sometime later, confused by the darkness. I had no watch or phone with me so had no idea what time it was. Sliding out of the bath to flick the light on, I popped my head around the bathroom door to see the clock in my bedroom.

  It was 1807hrs!

  I needed to leave in a few minutes and had not fed the dogs or sorted out anything to wear. I fumbled and fiddled as fast as I could to get myself dressed then had to convince the dogs to go into the garden and pee quickly – not a concept a Dachshund understands.

  I drove a little more swiftly than I otherwise might have and somehow arrived on time. My rigid discipline that I was never late anywhere remained intact.

  Fenucci's Italian Family Restaurant, Faversham. Monday, October 24th 1900hrs

  Having called the proprietor earlier, he knew to expect me and had set out a table at a point that intersected where he claimed the footsteps usually tracked. The restaurant was completely empty, I was the only patron. Okay, it was 1900hrs on a Monday evening but even so, a successful place would have people in it. The owner's name was Georgio Fenucci which sounded very Italian, unlike the man himself who sounded like he hailed from Essex. I wondered if the name was fake but refrained from asking.

  He had opened the restaurant five years ago and had enjoyed a steady stream of clients ever since. That was until three weeks ago when the footsteps started to occur. On the first night that they manifested he was in the kitchen when he heard a rush of people coming down the stairs from the upper dining room. Worried there might be a fire or some other disaster unfolding, he had rushed out into the restaurant still clutching a spatula in one hand, then watched in horror as almost all his customers disappeared out of the door. His staff had gone also, all except his wife and the slightly deaf barman.

  He found his wait staff outside in the street and slowly convinced most of them to come back inside. Maria, one of the girls that had been working upstairs, explained what she had heard. They went back upstairs and, of course, there were no ghostly noises to listen to. Maria and the others had been adamant that they had not imagined it and corroborated each other's stories.

  Georgio described being angry at the time because he suddenly had an empty restaurant and he had to throw food away. He did nothing about it though and since so many of his staff were telling him the same thing he felt that he could not hold them to account or call them liars. Then the same thing happened the next night, after which, some of his staff quit and then the night after that. It was on the third night that he witnessed the phenomenon himself. By then he had become convinced that this was an elaborate hoax and so had seated himself in the upper dining room to see if they dared to perpetrate it with him there.

  Instead, he got the fright of his life as, clear as anything, an invisible person walked across the room, their footsteps audibly striking the floorboards. A few seconds later he was alone in the room still rooted to the spot when the ghost ambled back again.

  I listened to all this with my notebook out, taking notes while we were still downstairs in the bar area. He regaled Amanda with the same story on Saturday morning, but her shift pattern had not permitted her to stay for the evening to witness the event. There was one detail missing though.

  ‘My colleague made a note that you heard music.’

  ‘Yes.’ he replied. ‘The ghost walks across the room several times most nights. Some nights not at all, but more often than not now the haunting occurs. It is usually accompanied by the sound of someone playing the cello. It is much fainter than the footsteps and I dismissed it the first time I heard it. After three weeks though I believe the two noises are linked and I have the ghost of a musician haunting my restaurant.’

  Georgio went on to complain about how his business was suffering and how he could not sustain the current level of income for very long. The phenomenon only occurred in the evenings, so he was
able to conduct lunch trade, but the word was getting out and a number of customers that he had considered regulars because they came in most weeks, had already stopped visiting.

  I thanked him for his detailed explanation and went upstairs to find a seat. There was a lot of choice as I was the only person in the restaurant. Presently a waitress appeared and took my order, returning a few moments later with a glass of ice and a bottle of sparkling mineral water. I had ordered carpaccio to start and a seafood pizza as my main course. I was hungry and looked forward to the food. While I waited, I pulled out a few items I felt I might need: A piece of chalk, a tape measure, a stopwatch and a tuning fork. I placed each on the table at the seat adjacent and to the left of mine so that they were within easy reach when I needed them, and so that I could grab them with my uninjured side.

  Idly wondering how long I would have to wait for my food, I remembered that there was something niggling at me. I had forgotten to do something or was supposed to do something. It was the same feeling I had been wondering about earlier, but the memory still refused to coalesce. It was hiding in the corner of my mind, showing me glimpses but not revealing itself. I told myself that if I concentrated the answer would come to me. Just then I heard the door open downstairs. That I could hear the entrance door moving was a clear demonstration of just how quiet the restaurant was. I had instructed Georgio to not play any music tonight – I wanted as little background noise as possible, but the silence in the building was striking. Then I realised that it was Frank's voice coming from downstairs. He was talking with Georgio and there was a third man's voice in the conversation.

  Clomping footsteps on the wooden stairs preceded the appearance of Georgio, then Frank and then Dr. Lyndon Parrish.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen.' I said to attract their attention. Frank and Lyndon both looked surprised to see me, so they were not deliberately gate crashing. ‘What a pleasant surprise. Won't you please join me?'