by steve higgs
‘Okay, Mr. Blake. If you are quite sure you wish to engage my services, this is what it is going to cost.' I outlined my appearance fee with the aim of putting him off. He was however convinced that he was on the cusp of making the scientific discovery of the century and that I was the key to it. Furthermore, he was happy to pay whatever I asked. I took his address and left the office.
Paul Blake lived in Seal, a small town not far from the very nice town of Sevenoaks. Getting there was simple enough as I would take the A25 out of Maidstone. It linked a whole series of towns and villages going from East to West across the south of England. I could not afford to live in Seal, so felt a little happier about taking his money. My journey took twenty-four minutes and the satnav delivered me right to his door. I say door, but what I mean is his lengthy driveway. There were small terraced houses in Seal, I had passed a few of them on the way. Paul Blake, however, lived in an Oast House on the outskirts of town. His house was fantastic.
I pulled up at the front of the house, the gravel driveway crunching magnificently beneath my tyres. Before I could get out of my car, Mr. Blake was already bounding out of his front door.
‘Mr. Michaels? Thank goodness you got here so quickly. The fairies are in the garden now.' He was perhaps in his early sixties and had a shock of hair sticking out madly from his head at every angle. It was turning from grey to white and matched his overgrown mustache. Much the same effect could be achieved by sticking one's finger into an electrical socket or perhaps simply ignoring one's appearance for a decade or so. He was wearing faded denim dungarees but there was no evidence of any other attire. He may have been wearing some form of underwear but socks, shoes, and a shirt were absent. The dungarees, and to a lesser extent Mr. Blake himself, were covered in spatters of paint in myriad different colours. I passed no judgement, but he was certainly an individual that could be considered eccentric or flamboyant or some other descriptive that would never be applied to me.
I shook his hand as I exited my car. ‘Please show me.’ I asked. I might as well indulge him.
He turned and scurried back into the house, his bare felt seemingly oblivious to the cool air and painful bite of the gravel beneath them. As I followed him, I noted that I had already dismissed one of my explanations for the fairies: He wore glasses, but they were devoid of spots on the lenses.
His house was filled, and I mean filled, with canvasses on which all manner of objects were painted. Some I could discern as a pot or a vase of flowers or in one what appeared to be a cat humping another cat. Mostly though, they looked like globs of paint thrown erratically at a white background. I acknowledged to myself that I knew nothing about art. It was a knowledge gap I felt no need to bridge, but it meant my opinion, should I feel it necessary to air it, was worthless. For all I knew, Mr. Blake was a famous and respected artist and had paid for his lavish house by selling his work.
He threaded his way through the house between canvasses stacked against walls, against furniture and on top of furniture and came to his kitchen. The kitchen was boldly inconsistent with the rest of the house and was not only tidy but also minimalist, modern and devoid of any clutter.
He stopped by the window in his kitchen where it overlooked his well-tended garden. He smiled broadly and pointed. I stared where he was indicating.
‘Can you see them?’ he asked in a tone that suggested I was blind if I could not.
I continued staring. I thought to myself, not for the first time, that I should have refused the case. The poor man was clearly seeing things and taking his money felt wrong. Then my heart stopped.
I squinted my eyes and continued to stare. I had seen something. A few seconds passed. Then a sparkly pink light zipped in front of a clipped privet hedge.
‘I knew it!' exclaimed Mr. Blake loudly, making me jump. He had been watching my face and had clearly seen my expression change. He began to perform a jig next to me. Disbelievingly, I continued to stare at the same spot in his garden. Once again, a tiny streak of light zipped in front of the hedge. This time it had an orange hue. Then two lights simultaneously moving in different directions, one pink and one blue.
‘The pink one I call Delila. The blue one is Bartholomew.' Mr. Blake told me. He was utterly serious. 'I have identified seven different fairies so far. Each has their own colour. Those bloody doubters. Fairies I told them. No one believed me. No one. Oh, I cannot wait to see all their faces when I am on TV and can publicly say that I told them so. I cannot wait.'
‘Sorry to interrupt, dear fellow. I need to get a closer look.’ I said, moving to his back door.
‘Yes, Yes. Of course,' he replied; an enormous smug grin still stuck to his face.
I needed to get a better look because I wanted to find the cause of the dancing lights. Since it could not be fairies it had to be something else. Right? I certainly hoped it was something else because finding fairies would mess with my sense of reality in a major way. The little whizzing balls of light were thus far defying explanation to the extent that calling them fairies made sense.
Mr. Blake had a neat garden path for me to walk down but I stepped off it and onto his neatly manicured lawn as I neared the place where I had seen the lights.
‘Are they still there?' whispered Mr. Blake from behind my right shoulder making me jump once again. In his bare feet, he had made no sound at all.
As I paused and looked, a little light did in fact zip across the same spot. Behind me, Mr. Blake let out a barely suppressed noise of excitement. A shadow then fell across the garden as a cloud moved to block the sun and the lights instantly winked out. I took a few steps to my right and scanned around in the trees nearby. It took only a few seconds to spot what I had expected to find.
I went back to the spot I had been standing in next to Mr. Blake and waited for the cloud to continue its path and once more reveal the sun.
‘I can bring you your fairies, Mr. Blake.'
‘Can you?’ his voice full of awe and so excited I worried that he might faint.
‘In just a moment, yes. It may not be what you have expected or hoped for though.’
He gave me a quizzical look.
The shadow cast by the cloud moved across the garden, bathing us in sunlight once more. A second or so later the fairies reappeared, dancing in front of the privet hedge just a few metres away.
Mr. Blake squeaked with excitement again when I took a step forward. I only took two paces though then stopped under a silver birch tree. I reached up into its lower branches and after a few seconds of fiddling, I withdrew a broken and tangled coloured-glass windchime. It had been snagged in the tree and had not been visible until I stepped beyond the tree and looked for it.
‘Here are your fairies.’ I said handing the windchime over. ‘Light was refracting through the glass and causing the moving lights you have been seeing.’
His reluctant hands took the windchime from me. His mouth was opening and closing as if he was supposed to be talking but could find no words inside his head. When he looked up at me again his eyes were filled with tears.
‘You were supposed to prove that I have fairies.’ he wailed.
I genuinely felt sorry for him. ‘I'm sorry, Mr. Blake. I did state during our first phone call that I did not believe you had fairies. I'm afraid there is no such thing.'
He looked miserable.
‘Can you put it back where it was?’ he asked meekly. His voice barely more than a whisper and threatening to break into sobs. ‘I think I would prefer to continue seeing them and pretend to myself. I will miss Delila otherwise.’
I nodded, took the windchime from his unresisting grasp and did my best to fix it back where it had been, tangled and forgotten in an old silver birch tree.
As I stood back, the lights appeared once more, dancing across the privet hedge.
Mr. Blake smiled as a single tear ran down his left cheek.
I was very glad to collect my fee and get back into my car. Despite doing exactly what I said I would do, I
felt as though I had just told a child that Father Christmas was not real while simultaneously setting fire to their presents.
I pointed the car in the direction of my office and left Mr. Blake and his fairies behind me.
My Office. Thursday, 7th October 1511hrs
The clock on the wall told me it was 1511hrs. I had done nothing much constructive for the last hour so decided it was time to knock off. It was sunny out if a little cool, but the smell of autumn was ripe, promising conker battles for the kids, sweet chestnut stuffing freshly made for my Sunday roast and the glorious changing colours of the countryside. I got up to leave, grabbed my bag from the desk to pop a few pieces of paperwork in it and just as I was leaving, the phone rang. I sat on the corner of my desk to answer it.
‘Blue Moon Investigations. Tempest Michaels speaking. How may I help you?’
‘Mr. Michaels, jolly good. My name is Margaret Barker. I believe I need to engage your services.' The lady's voice told me lots. She was educated or well bred, probably had money and was used to having people do as she asked. The accent I could not place though. Distinctly English but it just came across as posh to my untrained ear rather than giving me a region of the country.
‘I can make myself available at your convenience.’
‘Today would be convenient, Mr. Michaels. Can you meet with me this afternoon?' she asked.
‘I can, but I think it prudent to establish what it is you wish to engage my services for before I commit to anything further. Can you outline the nature of your enquiry please?' I had no other cases to distract me, but without a little more detail I could easily be suckered into investigating a ghostly goldfish. Plus, she had not yet told me where I would be going.
‘Well, Mr. Michaels,' she started and then paused as if gathering her thoughts or taking a moment to determine what she wanted to tell me. ‘My Husband was killed three days ago. The police are claiming natural causes because he had a heart condition, but he is,' she paused again, ‘was the owner of the Barker Steel Mill in Dartford. The Barker Mill has long been plagued by a phantom, a phantom that causes accidents and breaks equipment and has been responsible for deaths in the past. Now, I wish to be clear that I do not believe there is an actual phantom involved here, but I do believe that the recent sightings reported by the staff are real and that my husband was murdered. In essence, there is a murderer dressing as a phantom and I want you to catch him.' There was some distress to her voice, which given that her husband had died very recently, seemed perfectly normal. I was going to take the case, there was no doubt about that.
‘Thank you, Mrs. Barker. I can be in Dartford within the hour, does that suit you?' My interest was definitely peaked. A murder, a phantom, a history of acts blamed on an apparition. Honestly, I could not wait to get started.
I could hear Mrs. Barker making hmming noises. ‘Very good, Mr. Michaels.' she replied after a few seconds. Her voice was breaking, she was struggling to get the words out without crying. ‘I will meet you at my private residence.' She gave me the address and disconnected. I had promised to be there by 1630hrs.
I swung myself off the desk and back into my seat behind it. I grabbed the mouse and clicked it a couple of times while moving it to make the computer wake up. I did not need to set off yet, it was only about a half hour drive to the address she had given me, so I was going to spend a few minutes researching the Barker Steel Mill and in particular the phantom.
The search did not take long, in fact, all I had to do was type Barker Mill Phantom into the search engine and it pinged back images, newspaper report extracts, and a Wikipedia page. The phantom had first been reported in 1912 when two deaths had occurred. There was a grainy black and white photograph that showed what appeared to be a cloaked figure on a walkway above the mill equipment.
Barker Mill was a steel mill that created several steel products for the construction industry a new search revealed. The firm's website showed various pictures of the mill itself, both inside and outside and on a separate page, pictures of their products. I did not know much about steel, but I recognised beams and flat bars and had seen them being used in the erection of steel framed buildings. I guessed there were other uses for them, but it seemed unimportant to the case in hand. The Barker Mill was opened by Mr. Tristan Barker in 1907 and had stayed in the hands of the Barker family ever since. Passing from father to son, the recently deceased Mr. George Barker was the fourth Barker to run the Mill. It would now pass to his son I assumed. Was there some motive there? Too early to tell.
The phantom I read, had struck terror into the mill's employees and brought destruction to mill property over several generations. It had never been caught. In 1912 there had been a series of accidents where equipment had been tampered with or sabotaged. The two deaths occurred when an overhead crane broke free from its moorings and poured molten steel onto the hapless workers below. Since then there had been phantom sightings reported in the forties, fifties and seventies but nothing from then until this year when a new series of accidents had led to an investigation and an employee had been fired after safety lockouts from a crane had been found in his car.
There had been investigations in the past, most notably in 1912 when they had hired Archibald Quibly. The article I was reading went on to describe that Quibly was a special investigator often hired by the police of that era to assist them with unexplained crimes. Quibly had been a police detective originally but had moved to the private sector after the death of his wife in unusual circumstances. It did not elaborate on what the circumstances were.
I felt that the further back in time I looked, the more superstitious and ready to believe in unnatural explanations people were. I could well believe that in 1912 the workers at the Mill and the general populace would buy into the idea of a phantom.
I had scribbled a few notes on a pad I kept on the desk while I had been reading. I looked through these again now.
Mr. Barker was dead, probably of natural causes
Mrs. Barker was convinced he had been murdered
The phantom had been blamed for the recent spate of accidents
Someone had been blamed and fired
The phantom seemed to be the first cause considered whenever anything occurred at the Mill
It was an intriguing case. I considered whether I should call Amanda. If she was to be my partner from here on I would need to include her. It felt like the right thing to do, so I picked up my phone once more and placed the call.
The caller ID on the phone screen read PC Hotstuff, I would need to change that before she saw it.
Amanda answered almost immediately. ‘Tempest.'
‘Amanda, we have a case. I will be off to interview a lady shortly. Are you available?’
‘Bugger.' she swore. ‘I have an interview with HR in thirty minutes. Thank you for including me but my proper start at the firm will have to wait I guess.'
‘Understood. Well, I don’t suppose I will solve this one this afternoon.’ I outlined the case to her. She asked a couple of questions I did not yet have an answer to and we disconnected with a promise that I would fill her in on the case tomorrow morning when she had more time off.
It was time to go. I placed my notebook and pen in my shoulder bag, along with a camera and a few other items, and headed out to my car.
Traffic could be quite iffy at this time of the day on the run to Dartford. It is close to London and the motorway bridge over the Thames where altogether too many cars try to funnel through a small gap. At peak times all movement appears to cease. I had allowed fifty percent longer than the journey ought to take and hoped that it would be enough.
Mrs. Barker. Thursday, 7th October 1630hrs
On the way to Dartford, the phone in my car rang. Caller ID claimed it was my mother. I groaned a little internally and debated not answering. My mother probably caused me no more grief than other people suffered from theirs, but for me, our conversations were a continuous loop of what so and so's son is doing now, how many ch
ildren he and his wife have produced etcetera. Each time the theme would culminate in the eternal question of when I planned to settle down and provide her with Grandchildren. You are the only male in the family, Tempest. You must continue the family name. Her voice echoed in my head.
In the end, I hit the answer button because I knew she would just keep calling if I didn’t. ‘Hello, mother.’
‘Where are you, Tempest?’
‘Working mother and currently on my way to Dartford on the M2.’
‘Dartford?’
‘Yes, mother. Dartford.'
‘What is in Dartford?’
‘A client, mother.’
‘A client?’ Good God this conversation was becoming a struggle already. I elected to move it along at a pace that might be slightly less than glacial.
‘How can I help you, mother? I will arrive where I am going soon, so you do not have long.’
‘I need you to organise your sister’s baby shower.’ I have a twin sister; she is fifteen minutes older than me and never lets me forget it. Rachael already has two children, a fact that I had expected would alleviate my mother’s pressure on me to produce a grandchild for her but apparently, I simply failed to grasp the requirement of the male heir. I let the demand sink in for a few seconds while I considered what I was being asked to do.
‘Am I not missing a vital piece of equipment required to take that task on, mother?’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘I don't have a vagina, mother. Organising and running a baby shower is principally the remit of the female relatives and friends of the expectant mother’s, mother. I do not have any children, my friends do not have any children, I don't know anything about babies or childbirth and have never been to a baby shower to have gained any experience from which I could plan a baby shower.'
‘That is a little sexist, Tempest.’ Chided my mother.
My right eye was starting to twitch. I indicated to leave the motorway and cruised down the offramp. The satnav claimed that I had less than one mile and only one minute to go to my destination.