by Syd Moore
It was Joel. Full of gel and wrapped in another extra-large tracksuit. This time it was a dirty blue. ‘You found it yet? This ghost?’
‘Nice of you to say goodbye the other day,’ I said pointedly. ‘We went and looked for you.’
Sam tutted. Okay, well, he was the one that had actually gone into the alley but Joel wasn’t to know.
‘No news, I’m afraid, Joel,’ Sam told him. ‘But we’re collating the information. Might stake the place out soon.’ I wondered if he should have told him that.
‘How’s Mary?’ he asked. ‘You seen her?’
I replied that we had and that we were also processing the information we’d gleaned from our professional interview with her.
‘Good work.’ He bowed his head and smiled revealing those triangular teeth. ‘Who’s next?’ And he looked around at the restaurant, which had filled up a bit since we’d been here. Not by much but there were about four more bods in the area, all donning aprons and getting stuck into the mops and brushes.
I looked at the list of several names Ray had given us upon arrival. ‘You’ve got a Mary-Jane and a Jarvino?’
The boy bowed his head again, then stuck two fingers in his mouth and gave a long and very loud whistle. ‘MJ,’ he yelled to a young woman in a black T-shirt and jeans. ‘You’re time has come.’
‘MJ? Oh, Mary-Jane?’ I asked as he flowed into a standing position.
‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘We got three here – Mary Boundersby, MJ and MT.’
‘Oh, yes, the lovely Marta Thompson?’ said Sam.
‘Marta’s not Mary, is it?’ I frowned.
‘I imagine it probably derives from Mary,’ Sam replied with a gleam and a grin in my direction.
‘That’s right,’ Joel responded with a little wink at my colleague. ‘I take it you met her then?’ Then he did something crude with his lips.
‘Where does Marta, MT, come from?’ I asked to remind them I existed.
Joel sent me a greasy smile. ‘Born over here but I think the mother is German. Come over to London for work and met the dad. They both worked on building the NatWest Tower in the eighties. He was an engineer, she worked with the architects or somethink,’ he said. ‘She always banging on about it, like she built the friggin’ thing herself.’
‘Three Marys,’ Sam murmured.
I was going to ask him if that was relevant but Joel clicked his fingers and started wobbling his neck. ‘And here be coming the hottest of the lot.’ Then he jumped up and pulled the seat out for her to sit down. Mary-Jane rolled her eyes but smiled. She was pretty. She liked him. But not in that way. Not that Joel knew.
‘Okay,’ she said, and tucked herself into the table. ‘Fire away!’
So we did.
MJ was one of the more senior waitresses. She told us she hadn’t been here Saturday but had been here on the night of the writing and the bloody chandelier. She had a different perspective, literally. She’d seen the red liquid coming down through the chandelier, then gone upstairs. In the offices that were being renovated she found a new floor was being laid. The old one had been pulled up and someone must have accidentally kicked or knocked what looked like a bucket of rusty water across the dismantled floor. It was a chance happening, she said, and just plain bad luck that it had gone straight through to the chandelier below. Some of it must have got into the wiring and fused the lights. She did her best to mop it up then after she came back downstairs the lights had come back on and people were leaving. She didn’t hear about the writing on the wall till later because it had got washed off by the time she returned. All in all Mary-Jane suspected that it was more likely the culprit was someone taking advantage of the blackout to muck around. She darted a micro-glance at Joel. And no, they hadn’t had the water tested to see if it was dye or paint. Why would they? The upstairs office was a construction site. Shit happened.
I asked her why nobody had seen the writing go up. She told us that it wasn’t busy that night so the mezzanine had been closed. Everyone was focused on the main ground-floor dining area.
You could see the mezzanine floor from our table but not the wall on which the writing was meant to have appeared. In fact, you might only see it from the entrance and a couple of tables. Unless you were standing, you’d have to walk a few yards.
Concluding that it was ‘all bullshit’ MJ did concede something ‘pretty awful’ was going on. Though she thought it was all human hands, she did confirm seeing a canister of salt fly off the shelf in the cellar as Femi had attested. However, the waitress pointed out there was a Tube line nearby and that it was more likely that vibrations from the trains had shaken the foundations and thus the shelf.
The line cook, Jarvino, was a Kiwi travelling around Europe. She had been here a month and planned to ‘get the fuck out’ before too long. Saturday night after work she’d gone straight out to drink at some Australian backpackers’ pub, called the Ozzy Dina, and won a wet T-shirt competition. There were photos of her on Facebook which confirmed her presence there. Sam said he was surprised to hear the place was still going. I said I was surprised to hear that wet T-shirt competitions were still going, but she just shrugged and said, ‘Free beer.’
She did, however, confirm Mary’s sighting of the spook in the yard but hadn’t seen it herself. Though she was adamant that whatever Mary had witnessed she absolutely believed. Mary didn’t lie or make things up and thus the whole caboodle was really giving her the creeps. Jarvino also mentioned that she’d smelt horrible whiffs about the place but accepted that was entirely likely in a restaurant kitchen and also threw disparaging glances at Joel.
Another prep chef, Tim, reported to us. He had an exceedingly long hipster beard that was mostly orange and which I thought looked rather unhygienic for food preparation. But no one was asking me. The jaw growth was compensated for by lovely green eyes, a chiselled face and well-spoken, pleasant bearing. He’d been visiting his parents in Derby over the weekend. He confirmed MT’s version of the floater in the toilet, at least he confirmed after her encounter she was ‘in a complete state’ to which Sam replied he found that ‘very hard to believe’.
I flirted mildly with Tim in revenge and complimented his beard, which I didn’t particularly like, then got the accountant, Kundan, in. She stated for the record that she believed Mary, a growing trend, and that it was all generally weird but hadn’t anything else to add and never worked nights or at the weekends. She gave off a really sweet, honest, family-lady vibe. But I told Sam to check her out anyway. We all know looks can be deceiving.
Gabriel, another waiter, was over here from Brisbane. He sat down and took off his whites. Underneath them he was wearing a T-shirt which featured Eeyore. The caption read Nice ass. Apart from that he seemed sensible and fairly grounded. He reported hearing the ‘odd shriek’ which he put down to revellers in the streets about and remarked that there was so much history in London and this area, it wasn’t surprising that people’s imaginations went wild. He went home after his shift and straight to bed Saturday night. There was no one else around to confirm. I put a question mark by his name.
By the end of the day we worked out that we’d pretty much seen all the workers, apart from the remaining waiting staff, John and Anita, a busboy called Nicky, and Agatha the bartender, all of whom were in tomorrow night.
Most of the La Fleur team, we concluded, were disturbed in varying degrees and said they’d felt uncomfortable in the place but apart from that there were no new incidents to report.
‘So,’ said Sam, leaning back and steepling his fingers, ‘that was rather much a haul.’
‘Do you reckon?’ I said.
‘Well.’ He yawned, leant back heavily into his chair and pushed his hands into this pockets. ‘They’ve collectively attested to poltergeist activity, wailing, crying, floating apparitions, bad smells, cold draughts and clanking chains.’
‘Line!’ I shouted. ‘I reckon all you need is a cute child that turns out to be evil and you’d have a full house
there.’ I smiled at his confusion and added, ‘If we were playing supernatural bingo.’
‘What?’ he said, and mussed his hair up. ‘Actually don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. What I’m saying is we’ve got a veritable smorgasbord of phenomena. Could be an interesting case study for the museum if we are able to come to any conclusions. Perhaps a paper.’ He lapsed into thought for a moment then sat up straight. ‘Right, well, we’re definitely going to need to do the stake-out. And soon.’
Oh God, I thought. ‘Tonight?’ I so did not want to sit alone in that blood-darkened cellar. Even if Sam was there too. I mean, who would?
‘Depends, doesn’t it?’ Sam said, and rose. ‘Let’s go and find Ray.’
Thankfully, according to the boss, the clean-up was going to take longer. He suggested we finish up and come back tomorrow night, adding that he wanted to get his staff together and talk to them. They’d had a shock and needed ‘a steer’ and a ‘pep talk’. I found myself pleasantly surprised by the unexpected soft side of the restaurateur once more.
Sam and I returned and packed up our table. We stowed away our equipment in a locker that Ray had cleared for us, waved to the rest of the team, then headed for the door.
It was as I stepped over the threshold, coming out of La Fleur, that the weird thing happened: it hit me like a ton of bricks, a feeling that someone had, just then, thrown an invisible shroud over me. And that the shroud was made of an absolutely horrible material. Like, stonkingly, gut-wrenchingly bad.
For a moment it covered me. Entirely. A kind of revolting emotional stew – shards of anger, spikes of fear, a terrible sinking weight around my stomach, dread and doom, helplessness. And pain. Sharp, angled pain. All around my shoulders. It came on so suddenly, wrapping around me and extending to the length of my body, suffocating, shrinking, contracting with me in it, that I howled out loud.
Sam turned round to look at me and gave me a half-laugh.
But I couldn’t speak.
An excruciating heat was burning down from the top of my head bringing with it dizziness, acute nausea and a deafening tinnitus in my ears.
With all the strength I could muster, I thrust out my hand to try push the feeling, the shroud, off. Crazy reaction, I know, but I was reacting not thinking things through.
The sudden action, however, overbalanced me.
As I fell back against the glass of the window, the ache in my stomach turned into a bite. I bent double expecting to vomit.
My handbag clattered to the floor. Its contents spilt over the pavement.
The noise, the smashing and rattling, however, seemed to have a weird effect, for it dispelled the nastiness.
In my head I experienced the absurd notion that an invisible hand, a giant invisible hand, was flinching, letting go of me, and the horrendous thing, this welter of appalling sensations, simply slipped away.
I sank down and put my hands on my knees, took a breath in and tried to steady myself. My temperature was coming back down but I could still feel a stickiness around the back of my neck. Sweat.
Surely I was too young for a hot flush? I tried to normalise by focusing on the grey cobbles of the street outside.
‘Rosie!’ Sam’s shoes hurried into my circle of vision. ‘Are you okay?’ He bent over and began to pick up some of my handbag detritus. His face loomed up beneath me, all concerned and wriggly.
‘I just, I just …’ How could I begin to explain that? It was totally weird. And, jeez, what if it was early-onset menopause?
Screw that.
I made my mind up that I was definitely not going to go into details.
‘Rosie!’ Sam crawled underneath my face and wiped my hair back. ‘You’re sweating. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, and tried straightening up. For want of something better, or maybe because I wasn’t thinking right and wanted to distract his attention away, I said, ‘Wind.’
‘Okay,’ he said, and retreated.
Maybe it was.
Bit excessive though.
I watched Sam pack the bits and pieces back into my bag like a proper gent. I knew I should help but I just needed to catch my breath.
My head rested against the glass frontage. It felt cool there. I was becoming calmer now, breaths slowing.
I had no idea where it came from. Perhaps after last night’s Buttery Nipple, the brandies at the Witch Museum had been a bridge too far? Or maybe it had been something I ate? I supposed it could be a delayed reaction to the scene in the cellar. It had been disgusting and gross, after all. Freaky. But I wasn’t sure. Nothing like that had happened to me before.
Then again I hadn’t visited a crime scene before. Not that I knew of anyway.
‘Tsk tsk,’ Sam was saying, shaking his head and wagging a thin purple rectangle at me. ‘Stealing the cutlery, Rosie? Well, really!’ He laughed and handed it over. I reached out to grab it but only managed to catch the top section of the linen cloth. The napkin unfolded and a knife and fork rolled out of it and fell to the ground with another couple of clangs.
‘I didn’t put that there!’ I said with sincere indignation, glad to hear my voice was steadier again. ‘I didn’t take it.’ As I brought it up to inspect the linen I saw something dark and squiggly across the width. ‘Hang on, there’s something written here. Come and shine your phone on this.’
We both gasped as the light revealed a message scrawled there.
Pots Fischman knows, it read. Tomorrow. Noon. The Traitor’s Gate. E17.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The landlord eyed us suspiciously.
He looked exactly like landlords used to in the eighties: white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, tucked into a pair of grey slacks fastened with a leather belt beneath a big old beer belly. Occupational hazard, I expect. He had a blurred blue anchor tattooed on his forearm and had been polishing a glass pint mug with a handle since we walked in, though I could see a whole fleet of scratched and blurred glasses on the shelves above his head in various shades of limescale residue.
‘What do you want with Pots Fischman?’ he said. But what he meant was – you don’t want to meet Pots Fischman. Though he was curious to know why we did.
‘Is he here?’ I said again.
The landlord stopped polishing and put the pint glass in front of us on the counter. He rested the tea towel next to it and patted his hair, which was a shiny shark grey and swept back in a DA, the kind of quiff sported by ancient rockers. There was more than a palmful of Brylcreem keeping the structure upright.
‘He’s not in yet. You police?’
‘No,’ Sam said. ‘Not police. We’re independent, er …’ he struggled for a word to describe us.
Ghostbusting wasn’t going to go down too well here.
‘Independent investigators,’ I finished.
Though I had never been in the Traitor’s Gate before, I had a sense that if I started flashing my Benefit Fraud credentials we would be given an arctic version of the cold shoulder, maybe even booted out on our rears. Believe me – worse things had happened in Leytonstone.
The landlord’s expression transformed from scepticism into a leer. ‘What’s he done then, eh? Does Suzanne know?’ Then he straightened up. ‘He’s not the heir to a fortune, is he? It’d be typical for someone like him to, you know,’ he shrugged, ‘land on his arse.’
Sam shook his head, ‘Nothing like that I’m afraid. We just need to ask him a few questions about someone else.’
He sniffed and nodded. ‘All right. Well, he’s usually in around now. Sets up out back by the pool table.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, and was about to follow his directions when he hollered out, ‘And so what you having?’
Ah yes, of course, this had the flavour of what my dad would call ‘a tinker’s pub’. It wasn’t just where you went for a drink. It was an unofficial marketplace. You bought, you sold. Everything came into that equation – information included.
‘Diet Coke. In a bottle or a can
.’ I remembered the state of the unpolished glasses above. ‘Got a straw?’
‘I’ll have an orange juice,’ Sam suggested.
The landlord looked briefly disgusted, muttered something under his breath and went off to fix them.
Sam leant against the bar and said in a low voice, ‘This is a proper East End pub, isn’t it?’
‘Not really,’ I replied, taking in the swirly Aertex ceilings, mock-Tudor beams, and worn-out green carpet. ‘No hipsters or property developers.’
‘You know what I mean,’ he said, and paid the landlord.
We took the drinks out through a narrow hall into the rear bar. There was a large snooker table in the middle. Beyond it a smattering of round tables. I had the impression of dirty redness everywhere – the lino, the painted casements, old photographs of Walthamstow High Street that were dotted about in similarly claret-coloured frames.
We had already had a big discussion this morning raking over the possibilities of who might have put the napkin in my bag. Sam agreed with me it wasn’t going to be Ray Boundersby; there was no reason why he wouldn’t have volunteered this Pots character before. It had to be one of the staff. Sam was edging towards Femi, while I was more inclined to go with Joel. Maybe the charming MJ. Though we had both agreed that it didn’t really matter to a certain degree. What mattered is what exactly it was that Pots Fischman knew. If indeed Pots Fischman was a person, which it now seemed he was. Our plan was to show him the napkin and take it from there.
We were playing pool when the elusive Mr Fischman turned up with two cronies and informed us we were sat at his table and playing his pool. It wasn’t a great start for it got my hackles up. My fingers twitched towards my ID. I wasn’t sure what business this bloke was in but I was pretty convinced it wasn’t a hundred per cent legit. There would be consequences to that. Some of which I could use if necessary.
‘We just want some information please. That’s all.’ Sam offered him a chair. He was being extremely polite.
Pots, who we were asked to refer to as Mr Fischman, seemed to be a moneylender of sorts, which I was quite surprised about considering his years. He was swarthy, possibly of Mediterranean or maybe Middle Eastern descent, and, though his face was of that indeterminate range that could have started in the twenties and ended in the thirties, he had a young (immature) way of conducting himself. Exaggeratedly playing with the chunky gold chain around his neck, he sprawled into one of the pews lined up against the rear wall.