The Sandman

by steve higgs

  It is a gift.

  To start with, the man is perpetually happy. Nothing comes along to ruin his mood and he is entertained by the simplest things. Second, his lack of intelligence gave rise to marketing ideas no one else in the world could ever dream up.

  Recently, he quit his job at the supermarket to pursue a career as an internet entrepreneur. He started by selling air guitars. Yes, that’s right, people were paying him for fresh air. They could even pay extra for a signed limited edition. Not long after this took off, he diversified into selling wicked air and radical skids which he performed on his old BMX. His only overhead was the tyres he kept destroying.

  I stopped what I was doing to hear what his latest idea might be.

  From inside his winter coat, Basic produced a coat hanger. It was a blue plastic one. He held it in the air, looped over the index finger of his right hand. He had a broad, dopey grin on his face.

  ‘It’s a coat hanger,’ Amanda pointed out.

  ‘S’not,’ argued Basic, his grin widening just a little further.

  Big Ben bit. ‘Okay, what is it then?’

  Hilary was struggling to keep his mirth inside.

  Basic waved his left hand through the air as if drawing the attention of a crowd to what he held in front of his body.

  ‘It’s a camouflage jacket,’ he announced.

  I blinked.

  Amanda turned her head my way, an uncertain expression on her face.

  I was trying to fight the laughter, but it forced its way out. Big Ben started howling and soon the five of us were all falling about.

  When I could form a sentence, I asked, ‘How many have you sold?’

  Hilary, Basic’s business partner and the one converting the insane ideas into real money, wiped his eyes. ‘Twenty-five thousand.’ My jaw dropped open. ‘In a week,’ he added.

  It was enough to silence the room. I really wanted to ask how much they were selling them for, but that would be vulgar, so I let it go and got on with making coffee.

  Sensing the shift from humour to the deadly business for which we were assembling, Big Ben asked, ‘What do you need us to do?’

  From her office, Amanda wheeled a large whiteboard on an easel. The pair of us found it easier to visualise the clues in our cases sometimes. Names and places could be quickly jotted with lines connecting them.

  As she approached, I started talking.

  ‘At this point, all we know is that a person we suspect to be guilty of killing several women has taken Jane.’

  Big Ben shrugged. ‘So all she needs to do is fish out the ol’ meat and two veg and Robert is your father’s brother.’

  It had crossed my mind that discovering Jane to really be a man dressed as a woman might ruin the Sandman’s plans. However, I doubted the killer’s first reaction would be to shake Jane’s hand and let her go.

  When I expressed that, Big Ben asked, ‘You have a plan though, right?’

  ‘Not a plan, exactly. I have a list of things to do and the fervent hope we can work out something from Jane’s notes and what we already know. Which isn’t a lot,’ I added.

  ‘We need to check on Jane’s grandmother,’ said Amanda, writing Grandmother on the whiteboard in big letters.

  Big Ben started for the back of the office and the car park beyond. ‘Text me an address, I’ll see what the old lady knows.’

  ‘Take Basic with you,’ I called out. ‘He’ll be bored here.’ Basic jogged to catch up.

  Big Ben didn’t break his stride. ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘And see if Jane’s car is there,’ I yelled just as the door swung shut.

  Big Ben’s hand came back through the gap, a thumbs up gesture showing me that he heard.

  Then he was gone.

  Crossing to the board, I picked up a spare pen to write Jane’s car in big letters. If we could find it, the location it was in might give us a clue about where she had been taken. Or it might tell us nothing and lead us after a red herring. We wouldn’t know until we found it.

  Blowing out a breath to steady myself, I was just about to start discussing tasks when someone knocked on the office front door.

  Peering to see who it was, I spotted Alice and Jagjit outside looking in.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ volunteered Hilary, no doubt feeling like a fifth wheel. Our friends came in, adding two more to our number. How many we might need could be debated forever, but I wanted more yet and their arrival had prompted me to consider someone else.

  ‘Does anyone have the number for Jane’s boyfriend?’ I asked.

  Jagjit and Alice knew Jane was missing, presumed kidnapped, because Amanda told them as much on the phone. However, they were in the dark about the Sandman, as was Hilary. I would fill them in as best I could as we went along.

  Alice frowned. ‘I thought Jane broke up with her boyfriend?’ she questioned.

  ‘Jane started dating a cop,’ I let her know. ‘She met him when we were all in France with the Yeti.’

  That appeared to satisfy her thirst for knowledge but if she wanted to know more, Amanda cut her off. ‘I know Jan. I’ll call one of the girls at the station and get his number.’

  ‘Jan and Jane?’ questioned Jagjit. ‘That must get confusing.’ Putting the matter to one side, he asked the same question Big Ben posed, ‘What can we do?’

  It was reassuring to have so many good people I could call on at such short notice. Between us, we were going to sift the clues and find Jane. If only I felt as confident as the voice in my head sounded.

  Mentioning Jan reminded me to send Quinn Jane’s file. Yes, it felt like I was aiding my enemy in a way. The information sharing would never be reciprocated, yet I told myself the chief inspector was not my enemy, he was a tool to be used. My goal was to get Jane back and capture the Sandman. To do that, I should employ every tool I could access.

  I sent the email, with almost no text. Just the attached file, and a simple instruction: Read the file, catch a serial killer.

  Amanda ended a swift phone call, pulled the phone away from her ear, and focused on the device in her hands still, she said, ‘I’ve got his number. I’ll call it now.’

  We waited silently, listening to see if her call went through. Quinn might not be on our side but having a serving officer to assist us would be a big boost if Amanda could contact Jan.

  She showed us a frustrated face. ‘No answer. I’ll leave a voicemail and send him a text.’ When that was done, she suggested, ‘How about Alice, Jagjit, and I go through Jane’s notes in my office.’ Looking at me she said, ‘You and Hilary can work on the same notes out here and we see what we come up with. I haven’t looked at her file on the Sandman yet, but since it’s Jane it is bound to be extensive. It’s going to take all of us to go through it if we want to do it fast.’

  Fast was necessary.

  We broke into two groups, each heading in a different direction. The coffee machine pinged to let me know it was ready for use, but it got ignored as I slotted into the chair at the reception desk.

  Finding the right file was easy enough; we all obeyed a file naming system to make it easy for each other and they all sat on a central server. The file was huge, just as Amanda predicted. It contained photographs, maps, newspaper articles, and statements from relatives. How Jane found all the information was testament to her ability as a researcher.

  Plus, she was invested in identifying the person behind the mystery – he was threatening her life too.

  ‘How long have we got?’ Hilary asked nervously.

  I huffed out a hard breath through my nose. ‘I don’t know. Not long probably. My guess is that once he takes his victims, the Sandman kills them the same night, but talking to Jane about it, he messes with them for days or weeks before he gets to the point where he performs the kidnap.’

  Hilary sounded incredulous when he asked, ‘Why?’

  I could only shrug. ‘Why do any of it? The Sandman is crazy. He breaks into people’s homes, sings to them, and then murders them.
I think the why of it is irrelevant. The point is, someone has to stop him, the police don’t even know he exists, so right now that someone is us.’

  ‘Karen Gilbert,’ shouted Alice from Amanda’s office. Hilary and I looked up to find her hanging in the doorway. ‘Do you have a number for her?’

  I knew who Karen was – the woman Jane saved from the Sandman.

  I had to shake my head. ‘I don’t. But I know where she is.’ I leapt to my feet. ‘I had to visit her, remember? She went to stay with friends. I don’t have their number or their address, but I remember where their house is and can find it again. What the heck were their names?’ I racked my brains, tugging at my hair and demanding it dredge up the information I so desperately needed.

  ‘Is she important?’ asked Alice.

  I nodded my head, puffing out my cheeks and closing my eyes as I tried to connect the dots. The names of her friends wouldn’t come, but even if they did, I might not be able to get a number for them. It was going to be easier to go there.

  To answer Alice’s question, I said, ‘Karen Gilbert saw the Sandman. She knows what he looks like. In the limited window of time we have to find him, we are bound to come up with a few options for who it might be. If she can point the finger at one of them for definite, well …’

  ‘You need to find Karen Gilbert,’ Alice concluded.

  Amanda called out, ‘There’s no number for Karen that I can find in this file.’

  Would there be a number on the invoice Jane filed? I spun the chair around and got up, crossing the office to the back room beyond where we kept equipment and hardcopy files. Behind me, Hilary slipped in the chair to carry on looking through Jane’s notes.

  Passing me, Jagjit went to the board to start adding notes.

  I found the file I wanted in the back office, checked the contents, and took it with me. As we close each file, we write a short report about the case, the persons involved, the outcome, etcetera. It was an additional work burden I often questioned the validity of, but this was not the first time one of us wanted to look something up and found the information easily to hand.

  It was filed on the computer system too, but this was swifter with everyone already using the electronic database.

  Coming back through the main office space with the file open in front of my nose, I glanced up to see Jagjit write a name on the board: River Tam.

  Seeing the name jogged my memory and I stopped to stare at the name. ‘She’s the one victim Jane found that she was certain the Sandman killed.’

  Jagjit wrote down the location where she was found. ‘It was two years ago. Jane’s notes suggest there are many others, but she admits to guessing. She found River Tam talking about being sung to in her sleep on a website for insomniacs.’

  ‘I’ve got a printout of the whole thread here,’ yelled Amanda so we would hear her. ‘It sounds exactly like what happened to Karen Gilbert.’ I heard her get up and come to the door of her office. ‘You should see her and Karen side by side.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘What?’

  ‘They could be twins,’ she told me, gesturing with her head for me to see.

  Hurrying across the office, Jagjit and Hilary on my heels, I asked, ‘Are they?’

  Amanda shook her head. ‘No. However, if you look at some of the other victims Jane believes to have identified … well, see for yourself.’

  On the screen of Amanda’s monitor was a series of pictures. Each was of a woman while still alive with the exception of River Tam. River had been arranged in death so she appeared to be sleeping peacefully. That she had been abandoned in a muddy field notwithstanding, there was nothing about her appearance that suggested she was dead.

  What drew the eye though, was how similar the women all looked. Their ages ranged from late twenties to early thirties, each had shoulder-length brown hair and their features were similar too – high cheeks bones and full lips. They were attractive women and every last one of them was missing except River Tam, who we knew to be dead, and Karen Gilbert, who was in hiding after a lucky escape.

  Beneath each picture, Jane had noted the date they went missing, their age, and the location where they lived.

  ‘Is there a map showing these?’ I asked, my voice a sudden noise in the otherwise silent office.

  Amanda leaned forward to click the mouse, bringing a fresh tab up. Efficient as always, Jane had marked each point on an interactive map. Scrolling over the little red dots showed who had gone missing from which location.

  Jagjit made an uncomfortable noise as if his stomach were squirming. ‘They are all from Kent,’ he observed.

  I let my eyes flit across the screen, performing a swift count. ‘Twenty-seven,’ I announced with a grimace.

  Amanda straightened up and stood back from the desk. ‘That Jane found so far. There could be many more.’

  ‘Or some of these might not be his victims,’ added Alice. ‘Isn’t that right? We don’t know for sure.’

  ‘It’s moot,’ I argued. ‘Whether they are or not, the Sandman has Jane and plans to kill her. We have to work out where he has taken her, or where he will take her, or who he is.’

  My words acted like a shock to get people moving again, all five of us going in different directions with different approaches in mind. I was heading back out in the car to visit the house of Karen Gilbert’s friends.

  Big Ben. Jane’s Gran’s House in Aylesford. Friday, December 23rd 1622hrs

  We found Jane’s car easily enough; the dark grey Aston Martin Vantage wasn’t exactly hard to spot. It was testament to the tranquil, safe setting in which her grandmother lived that Jane’s handbag, laptop, and other possessions were still in it even though the car wasn’t locked.

  ‘She forgot her things,’ said Basic with a grin. He probably hadn’t fully grasped that Jane had been kidnapped and was most likely in mortal danger even as we poked about her car.

  I took her things, unlocking my car again to place them in the rear footwell behind my seat. There was no sign of a struggle and no sign of her keys. I got into a press up position to check under the car just in case the keys went skittering underneath or Jane, sensing her attacker, threw something under there for us to find.

  There was nothing. Dusting my hands off as I got up, a glint in the moonlight drew my eye to exactly what I was looking for. Her keys had fallen and come to rest in the shadow of the tyre of the car next to hers – I’d been looking the wrong way.

  I fished them out and locked her car.

  There was no obvious sign of a struggle, no tell-tale scuff marks on the ground or drops of blood. We checked a wider swathe of the carpark – the only one in Aylesford – but could find no drag marks where someone might have hauled a limp form, their feet trailing behind to leave me something I could follow.

  Given that Jane couldn’t weigh more than about a hundred and twenty pounds (if that), I accepted that most men could carry her a fair distance should they need to. The Sandman had incapacitated her, either with a stun gun or perhaps by use of an injection of something. Heck, the guy could have gone old school and used chloroform on a rag for all I knew. Either way, the image in my head was of Jane exiting her car and the Sandman coming from behind.

  She most likely never saw him.

  Finding nothing of use, I gave up and set off for the address I had for her Gran.

  We had to cross a small stream to get there, passing through the rear yards of several premises. One was an accountant, another a printing firm. The carpark was dark, the lights erected to chase away the shadows spaced too sparsely to do much about the encroaching night.

  I guess that’s why I didn’t see them.

  As I rounded the rear wall of the accountant’s and came into an alleyway between the buildings, I bumped into a man. He must have been moving at speed because he hit me far harder than walking pace would allow.

  He bounced off, falling backward and tangling his feet to sprawl on the cobbled street.

  ‘Hey!’ growled a
nother voice, his friend standing just a few feet away.

  It’s a truth about me that I have a naturally aggressive posture. Combined with fast reactions, and a willingness to hit first, my senses switched to fight mode the moment the first man stepped from the dark to collide with me.

  It is another truth that men see my size as intimidating and often react by starting a fight to prove to themselves that I am not scary. I know, it’s completely illogical. However, it happens a lot and I felt sure these two clowns were going to get in my face until I saw what they were wearing.

  Aylesford exists because monks built a monastery there many hundreds of years ago. I got to visit it once on a school trip when I was maybe seven or eight. I don’t remember much about it other than it was a gloriously hot day and Emma Rigby took off her dress so she could run around in her knickers. I think they had Thursday printed on them.

  Anyway, my point is, both men were wearing monks’ robes. There is probably a name for the garment, but I had no idea what it might be.

  Basic stepped out from behind the wall to join me just as the first man was rolling over to get his feet back under his body.

  ‘Goodness, I’m sorry,’ I apologised, reaching out to give the religious man a hand to get off the cobbles.

  He slapped my hand away. Roughly and deliberately as if angry at me. It jarred against my image of how he was supposed to behave.

  Taking a step back, I had to reassess what I was seeing. They were in their thirties and carried themselves like thugs. Which is to say, they both looked like they were used to throwing their weight around and probably had weapons tucked away somewhere. Their robes were black, not the usual brown I had seen elsewhere and now that I was scrutinising them, their appearance, their postures, and the way they were looking at me told me they were not part of a religious order at all.

  And that made them part of a cult.

  I mentally labelled the one I knocked down as Flat Top because he had a hairstyle that should have been left in the nineties. His friend I labelled Smiler because his lips were twisted into a sneer that elegantly showed off several missing or chipped teeth.