by steve higgs
If there was any doubt left in my mind as to their intentions, Smiler killed them with his next words.
‘You need to watch where you’re going, sunshine,’ he stepped away from the wall to block my path. ‘You need to apologise to my friend.’
I punched him in the face. Three times.
The first rocked his head back and I was coming forward to deliver the next blow with my other hand so it caught the underside of his chin as it presented itself. The third blow required me to take yet another fast step because he was falling backward and away from me.
It was more of a glancing blow than anything else and the whole salvo was only at half pace. I wanted him to go away because I needed to be doing other things not messing around with idiots in the dark.
Flat Top was just getting up as his comrade landed. It would have been simple to swing a haymaker downward to fell him once more, yet I gave him the benefit of the doubt and let him dart backward to get a yard between us.
‘I don’t want any trouble,’ I assured both men. Smiler was on the ground holding his lips, the pair of them looking at me with wide eyes and surprised looks.
This was the point when they would go for their knives or knuckle dusters if they had them.
‘You’re gonna pay, man!’ insisted Flat Top as he grabbed his friend’s robe to help him up. Just as Smiler got back on his feet, I took a menacing step in their direction.
It made them get their feet moving, but they didn’t let up on the threats as they ran away.
‘You’re gonna pay, man. You’re all gonna pay!’
I watched them for a second as they pelted down the road, beating a retreat.
‘Did that strike you as strange?’ I asked Basic.
Basic shrugged. ‘S’pose.’
Expecting a more detailed response from Basic would be folly, but I hadn’t imagined Smiler saying we were all going to pay.
What did that mean?
Jane. Working the Problem. Friday, December 23rd 1645hrs
I used a small piece of the duct tape from my wrists to cover the camera lens in the wall. Something about believing he couldn’t see me was reassuring.
My feet were free of the ropes and able to move around, which made me feel as though I had achieved something. It wasn’t much, I’ll grant you, but at least now I had my feet to kick with.
In the last couple of weeks, ever since I took on the stupid Karen Gilbert case that landed me in this mess, I have been attending a twice weekly martial arts class. I had to change classes after the very first one because one of the instructors made it abundantly clear that he wanted to use me as his personal sex toy.
I hadn’t learned a lot in two weeks, obviously, but at the same time, since my knowledge base beforehand was zero, I now felt that I could defend myself or even go on the attack if the chance arose.
I knew how to use my body to get the most energy into a kick, and how to break holds if I was grabbed. Such skills might have been really useful had I been conscious when the Sandman grabbed me. There was no sense in dwelling on that, but I satisfied myself that I would know he was coming next time since he would have to come into the cell to fetch me.
With the tape over the camera lens, he would have no idea I was free and ready for him. At least, that was the best scenario I could hope for and I was indeed hoping.
There were no sounds filtering down to me from whatever lay outside the four perfectly white walls of my cell and when I put my cheek against them, I felt no vibrations either. It was information, but not exactly useful because I had no clue what it meant. The cell could be soundproofed. Or maybe he lived alone and had gone out after he spoke to me.
There had been no reaction to me attempting to get free of my bindings, so it stood to reason he hadn’t observed me doing it. With that in mind, I used my fingers to pull my boots back on. They were white leather, knee high with a low heel – I didn’t go for big heels often because they made me too tall. They were not the best shoes for escaping a kidnapper, but they were all I had.
What remained as my next task was the bindings on my wrists. Compared to my ankles, which had been sloppy by comparison, bound as they were on the outside of my boots to give me some wiggle room, these did not look like they wanted to yield.
I still hadn’t found an end to pick at, nor anything in the room I could use to scratch or scrape at the rope. I’d already had a go at biting the rope and gnawing on it like a dog might. All I’d succeeded in doing was making the rope pink when my gums started to bleed.
The belt on my coat might have been useful if the buckle was tough enough to dig at the rope with, but it had been taken along with anything else I might have been able to use. For added complexity, my wrists were bound so my hands faced each other, so even if I had my belt buckle, manipulating it into a position where I could then use it on the rope might have proven impossible anyway.
Pushing daft thoughts about items I didn’t have at my disposal to one side, I got on the floor to look under the bed. I jolted when the bare skin of my arms met the cold tile, swore at myself for being weak, and wriggled like an inverted snake on my back to get under the mattress.
The bed was the only thing in the room and though I claimed that it was comfortable, it didn’t have any covers on it, just a memory foam mattress.
There were no springs supporting the mattress; I knew that already, but looked around forlornly for anything I might use to work on the rope.
I almost gave up, but just as I was about to begin shimmying back out, I spotted a burr on one of the legs. It wasn’t much, and it was awkward as hell to get to but as I rubbed the rope down the leg, it caught.
Just briefly.
I turned my hands over and saw a small tuft of rope had been lifted. It might take me a week to saw through them like this, but I wasn’t going anywhere, and I had nothing better to do.
Tempest. The House of Matilda Carpenter. Friday, December 23rd 1648hrs
Hilary opted to come with me on the drive to Chartham Hatch. I still couldn’t remember the name of the couple I was going to visit, but prayed Karen Gilbert was still living with them. The thing is, I didn’t think she was.
That I could not remember the things Jane had told me about this case banged around in my head like a haunting reminder. I knew she had talked about Karen Gilbert in the last week or so, and that I was guilty of only half listening. Admittedly, I had several distractions of my own, but it didn’t feel like a justifiable excuse right now.
With a huff, I pressed my accelerator a little harder.
‘You’re worried about her?’ asked Hilary, breaking the silence in the car.
I pursed my lips and grimaced into the darkness ahead. ‘I am. I don’t see how we can possibly work out who this guy is and find him before he does whatever he has planned.’
Carefully, Hilary asked, ‘Have you told the police?’
‘I shoved it down Quinn’s throat,’ I growled. ‘He will react, but his focus will be on covering his backside, not saving Jane. He would most likely throw all his officers at it if I could provide him with a reliable location and therein lies the crux of our challenge.’
Hilary added up what he already knew. ‘No one knows who the Sandman really is.’
I gritted my teeth. ‘No. We’ll figure it out, you can bet on that. The question is whether we can do that before he kills Jane.’
I fumbled in my jacket pocket to retrieve my phone without taking my eyes off the road. Tossing it to Hilary, I asked, ‘Can you call Amanda and put it on speaker, please?’
He fiddled for a moment with the unfamiliar device, but within seconds, Amanda’s voice crackled over the airwaves.
‘Tempest? Any luck?’
‘Not yet. We are nearly there though. Did Jan call back?’
I got a similar answer to the one I gave her. ‘Not yet. I’ll try him again, but I already left messages and a voicemail. He finished his shift and went home so I guess he is in the bath with the music loud or so
mething.’
The Friday before Christmas – chances are he and Jane had a table for dinner booked somewhere and plans that were completely scuppered though Jan didn’t yet know it. I wanted him on the team.
Amanda asked, ‘Hey, I just wondered why you hadn’t called in Frank and Poison?’
I considered including them right off the bat when we were still running from the hospital. Frank Decaux is the owner of an occult bookshop just around the corner from my office. He’s chosen to involve himself in my adventures many times, usually because he believes in everything paranormal and wants to be there when I meet a real vampire or werewolf. If I made the call, I would find him ready to throw his lot in without even telling him what it was that we were doing. Yet his particular brand of wackiness was one that might not lend itself well to this investigation.
Frank would always choose to believe a supernatural explanation first and my head was filled with visions of him extolling the office with tales of demons who liked to sing to their victims. Or he would claim the Sandman was a land-based siren or come up with something even more daft than I could imagine.
I didn’t need the distraction and that was how I explained it to Amanda.
Our call ended as I left the motorway near Canterbury. It was less than two miles to the village of Chartham Hatch which we covered in three minutes.
In the street I remembered visiting once before, it took me a few seconds to work out which house I wanted. I was doing it only from memory of a single visit in the daylight and the Christmas lights dotted about were throwing me.
Mercifully, I got it right and the name of the lady of the house popped into my head just as a shadow behind the door opened it.
‘Matilda?’ I asked as the door swung wide to reveal her grumpy face.
Now I remembered her. She had a brow-beaten husband who she berated constantly during the few minutes I was in the house last time. I came to visit Karen, but Matilda refused to let me out of her sight.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, her tone unpleasant.
‘Merry Christmas,’ I replied studiously, to which I received a sneering expression. ‘I need to speak with Karen.’
‘Well, she is not here,’ Matilda snapped back at me. ‘She moved out two days after you were last here.’
I could not say I blamed her, but I needed to speak with Karen Gilbert more than I needed oxygen, so I said, ‘It is urgent that I talk to her tonight, Matilda. If you are her friend, you will tell me where she is or give me her number.’
She snorted a laugh. ‘No chance.’
Unable to stop myself, I closed the gap between us, fighting my rising anger to keep a face that begged for trust.
‘Matilda, the Sandman has taken Jane, the investigator who helped Karen three weeks ago.’
‘You mean the crossdresser,’ she sneered.
Unwilling to be drawn into an argument, I said, ‘Yes, that one. Karen could be next. I need to be able to warn her.’
‘Well, you’re out of luck,’ Matilda told me with a shrug of indifference. ‘We had a falling out,’ no surprise there, ‘and she went somewhere else. I don’t have her number because she changed her phone. I expect she was trying to stop people like you from contacting her.’
Matilda was beyond belief.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ I wanted to grab her by her shoulder and give her a good shake. ‘Karen could die. I need to find her.’ Okay, the truth is that I didn’t know if Karen was in any danger at all, but it was also true that once we caught the Sandman – potentially with Karen’s help – the need to be in hiding would evaporate and all danger of being murdered in her sleep would pass. Being involved was therefore very much in Karen’s interest.
Infuriatingly, Matilda shrugged again. ‘I can’t give you what I don’t have. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m watching TV.’ She stepped back and closed the door.
It bounced off my foot.
When her angry face reappeared, I handed her my card and begged. ‘If anything occurs to you, please call me.’
She kicked at my foot and I removed it. The door slammed in my face.
Hilary said, ‘Goodness. What a cow.’
‘Christmas spirit,’ I commented flippantly.
We had wasted over half an hour already and now we had to get back to the office.
Big Ben. A Show of Strength. Friday, December 23rd 1652hrs
I don’t really know Jane/James and haven’t shared many conversations with him/her ever. I find the crossdressing thing a little odd but make no comment about it. It’s not my place to do so and while he and other men are chasing men, I figure that leaves more ladies on the buffet table for me.
It was enough for me that Tempest chose to trust her/him. Tempest never had a bad word to say about his former assistant. In fact, it was more the case that Jane/James continually impressed my old army colleague. She was part of the team. My team. And that someone had chosen to mess with that team did not sit well with me.
So I was going to find the person behind it all and introduce their teeth to their feet. By which I mean I was going to shove one of the feet into their mouth. The other foot I was going to shove … well, I’m sure you can imagine.
Jane’s gran lived in a narrow terrace house right on Aylesford’s main street. If you can call it that. Aylesford is more of a hamlet than a village though when you examine the buildings you can see how many used to be pubs or small shops of some kind. Several hundred years old, the street where we found granny’s house was no doubt a hub of commerce once.
With Basic looming on my shoulder – he loomed better than anyone I knew; it was his vacant expression and all-round hugeness that created the effect - I politely knocked on the door.
Standing back, so we wouldn’t crowd the old dear when she answered the door, we were forced to wait. A minute ticked by, and getting impatient, I stepped back into the narrow street to look up at the house.
There were lights on inside but otherwise there was no sign of life. It presented me with a dilemma.
Given that Jane’s things were all inside her car, I doubted she’d made it to the house, but did that mean the Sandman wouldn’t come here? From the little I knew, his normal method of working involved going into people’s houses. Had he done something to granny?
Eyeing the front door and biting my lip, I considered kicking it in. I knocked again for good measure and got the same result as before.
Time continued to slip away.
There was no point calling the police – they would take ages to do anything and that was if I were able to convince them to act at all. I didn’t live here and could provide no evidence there was anything untoward occurring.
Nodding my head as I accepted the damage I was about to do, I swept my left arm through the air to shift Basic back a couple of feet.
‘What yer doin’?’ he asked.
‘Granny might be hurt, or she might be kidnapped like Jane. There might be clues inside. There could even be a note from the Sandman for all I know. We can’t leave until we know the answers.’ Looking at the solid oak door which had probably been inside the frame since the house was erected in the eighteenth century, I reconsidered my plan. Or rather, I upgraded it.
‘Go for it, Basic. Knock the door down.’ Rather him than me because it looked like it wasn’t going to give on the first go.
His forehead shifted slightly, Basic frowning as he processed my instruction.
‘Knock it down?’ he questioned.
I nodded encouragingly. ‘Yup.’
He was about to take a run at it when voices cut through the late afternoon air. I gripped Basic’s arm to stop him moving.
To the left of Granny’s house is Aylesford’s one remaining public house still in business. I couldn’t guess how long ago the others shut down but this one was doing a good trade. It was the Friday before Christmas and no doubt most of the people inside were already finished with work for the holiday.
The voices were coming from th
e doorway of the pub as a gaggle of ladies left. They were all in their twenties and they were not only attractive but also clearly a few glasses of pinot into their Christmas spirit. The jingle of keys told me one of their number was a designated driver and they would have to walk past us to get to the carpark.
‘Best if I tackle this one,’ I announced loud enough for them to hear. Then I stripped off my jacket to reveal the tight t-shirt I wore beneath.
You would too if you looked like me. Trust me on this.
Making sure to flex and look dramatic, I paid the young ladies no attention at all but made it clear I was about to kick my way into the house by calling out, ‘Don’t worry, Granny. We’re coming!’
The ladies were watching me. I didn’t have to check to make sure - all women watch me, it’s just one of those things I learned to accept a long time ago. They were watching me, and their hearts were going pitter-patter as their eyes picked out the stark outline of muscle moving under the single layer of thin cotton covering my torso.
Having no doubt the door would require extra welly if I were going to burst the lock with one kick, I thrust off in a charge. Three paces later, I swivelled on my left foot, brought my right up and drove it through the door about two inches above the handle.
Except I didn’t.
I bounced off and felt like I broke my leg in about eight places.
The door didn’t shift so much as a hair’s breadth, but I was right that the ladies were watching me.
I could tell by their laughter.
The right thing to do at this juncture was deliver a cool line about them not making doors like that anymore, but I kept my mouth shut for fear I might squeak if I attempted to speak.
Mercifully, the ladies decided they were getting cold watching the muscular buffoon who was now lying on the ground wishing he’d let Basic have first dibs after all.
‘Dat didn’t work, Ben,’ Basic pointed out helpfully.
I staggered back to my feet, still unable to speak.
‘I fink ders someone coming,’ Basic commented just before the house’s outside light came on.