by Robert Innes
“Oh, not at all, not at all,” Jacqueline said, appearing to go almost as red as her hair. “I have the address written down here,” she continued, passing him a piece of paper. “It’s just two streets away, a little further down from the police station. You can’t miss it.”
“Much obliged,” Sebastian replied. “I’ll be needing the hall early tomorrow morning so myself and Amelia can have a few rehearsals, ready for the first performance tomorrow night. Oh, and everybody here will receive a ticket with an eighty percent discount with my thanks for your help.”
Surprisingly, to Harrison, the majority of the room murmured in appreciation. It seemed that even somebody as outwardly unsettling as Sebastian Klein could not put off the residents of Harmschapel with having to pay less for something.
With a final sweep of his coat, Sebastian vanished through the door he had entered from. Amelia quickly followed, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. Benjamin’s mouth tightened. He briefly nodded at everybody, muttered “thanks for your help,” and then vanished out of the door after Sebastian and Amelia.
Jacqueline grasped the flowers to her chest and sighed wistfully. “It’s not even my birthday,” she chuckled to herself.
“Erm, Mum,” Tom said, from behind Harrison. “Can we go yet? Houdini seems happy and frankly, I’m getting hungry.”
Jacqueline appeared to pull herself together. “Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Well, I think we should be able to get the hall all tidied up in not very long at all if we all get straight on with it and then we can go. I should hope that we’ll all take up Mr Klein’s kind offer. I think we can afford to even throw in a free glass of wine into the mix afterwards.”
Predictably, with that, the residents of Harmschapel were sold.
It took less than half an hour for the village hall to be completed ready for Sebastian’s rehearsal the next morning. As Harrison slipped his coat on over his shoulders, he was impressed by what they had all managed to accomplish. To his mind, the stage now looked as professional as anywhere else would manage to achieve.
Harrison zipped up his coat and wandered outside the village hall into the street. The cold night air immediately gripped him, and he stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep warm, making a mental note to hunt around for his gloves and woolly hat when he got home. Winter was coming and Harmschapel was in an area that was known for its harsh winters.
As he turned to walk down the street, he stopped in his tracks and stared as he saw Mattison and Fox a little further ahead. They were talking quietly amongst themselves, looking as if whatever they were discussing was something they wanted to remain secret. As Harrison approached them, Mattison seemed to widen his eyes at Fox as if to signify that their conversation was over for the moment. He then broke into a wide smile, which seemed to Harrison to be slightly over compensative.
“Alright, Harrison?” Mattison said cheerfully.
“I’m good,” Harrison said, narrowing his eyes. “What were you two whispering about?”
Mattison’s expression faltered slightly as his eyes flickered between Harrison and Fox. “Nothing, we weren’t whispering. Just chatting, that’s all. Not about anything in particular.”
“We were just commenting on how cold it was,” Fox offered. She appeared to be very calm as she flicked her blonde hair over her shoulders. “And then we started saying how weird that magician bloke is.”
“Such a weirdo,” Mattison said quickly. “Who dresses like that in everyday life?”
“I mean, I get that it’s his job and everything to be a wizard or whatever, but seriously? A cloak when you’re just driving around?”
Harrison did not believe for a second that he was being told what they had actually been discussing but he had no way of proving otherwise. Instead, he just nodded. “Yeah, he had a really odd vibe about him.”
“Imagine we spent a whole evening sorting out the hall for his bloody magic show and we don’t get anything other than a free glass of wine and discounted seats to see him pull a rabbit out of a hat,” Mattison grumbled.
“I think an early night for me,” Fox said, yawning. “I start at the station at eight tomorrow.”
Mattison glanced at Harrison and then nodded. “Yeah, I’ll walk you back if you want. Night, Harrison.”
Harrison watched them walk off down the road together. “Night,” he murmured quietly.
As the pair of them disappeared around the corner of the street, Harrison bit his lip. He had heard from Blake over dinner one evening that Lisa Fox, the newest addition to Harmschapel police station, had caught Mattison’s eye and that his girlfriend, fellow police constable Mini Patil, had been less than impressed. From what Blake had said, Fox had done very little to discourage the blatant effect that her arrival had had on Mattison, and now Harrison saw for himself that, if anything, she was encouraging it. Harrison was good friends with Patil, she had been extremely helpful during the difficult time he had had after his parents had been sent to prison, and he did not want to see her getting hurt.
“Harrison, darling, what are you doing standing out here on your own? It’s getting cold, you’ll catch your death!”
Harrison’s thoughts were interrupted by Jacqueline closing the door of the village hall and locking it. Tom was standing behind her, paying no attention to either of them, but intently tapping away on his phone.
“Shall we walk together?” Jacqueline asked as she chucked the village hall keys into her handbag.
Harrison glanced at Tom, who had still not looked up from his mobile. Tom was the last person Harrison wanted to walk with at this moment, but there was very little he could say in front of Jacqueline, especially as Tom had appeared to be trying to apologise earlier.
“Well, we do live opposite each other,” Harrison said, smiling.
Jacqueline chuckled cheerfully and then looked up at her son and shook her head.
“Tom, will you put that phone away? Honestly, he’s just on it nonstop at the moment.”
Tom grunted in reply and thrust his mobile into his pocket. Then he began following his mother, before stopping at Harrison’s side. He tutted, with a knowing expression on his face, and straightened the collar of Harrison’s coat.
“Honestly,” he said with a smile. “Can’t take you anywhere.”
Harrison raised his eyebrows in surprise as Tom winked at him and followed his mother down the street. Harrison shook his collar back to the way it had been and reluctantly went after them.
As the three of them walked down the road together, Jacqueline began chatting about Sebastian Klein.
“Such a lovely man. And so charming. I was really lucky to be able to get him actually. I saw him advertised in the paper and then read some of the reviews and he seemed a perfect fit to the village! His daughter seems a shy one, but she must have the confidence to go on stage and help him with all the tricks.”
“I dunno, Mum,” Tom replied. “He seemed like a complete fruit loop to me. I half expected him to disappear in a puff of smoke.”
“He is not a fruit loop or anything of the kind!” Jacqueline argued. “He is just clearly very devoted to his art. You get method actors, why not method magicians? Did you like him, Harrison?”
“I thought he was a bit…” Harrison began, but his voice trailed off. He was unsure of whether it was deliberate or not, but Tom seemed to be walking very closely to him, almost pressing up against him. As quickly as the thought had landed in his head, Tom had moved away again and was at a normal distance.
“A bit what?” he asked Harrison.
Harrison stared at him for a moment, then pulled himself together. “A bit weird. I mean, he was wearing a cloak.”
“It wasn’t a cloak,” Jacqueline replied dismissively. “I think it’s all to do with building an image. It’s like seeing your favourite stars on television. I heard one of the actresses from Downton Abbey in an interview the other day. She plays one of the ladies in that, but her real voice sounds like she was brought up in a s
teelworks! Completely shattered the illusion. I imagine it’s to avoid something like that happening.”
Harrison was about to argue that it was hardly the same thing when he suddenly felt Tom’s fingertips against his own. Harrison pulled his hand back as if he had just been given a sharp electric shock. He was sure he had not imagined it that time, but just before he could tell Tom to stop touching him, Tom had put his ringing mobile to his ear.
“Sorry,” he said as he turned away from them and walked back in the direction they had just come from. “I have to take this.”
Harrison stared at Tom as he strode away from them, his fingertips still tingling from the unwanted contact.
Jacqueline sighed and shook her head. “Honestly, that boy. He’s been taking secretive phone calls and typing messages on his phone a lot recently.” She leant forwards and whispered, even though there was nobody else around them. “Between you and me, I think he might have met someone. You know, on one of those dating apps or something. My guess is that it’s somebody older. I don’t think he would be that cagey about it if it was someone like you.”
Harrison narrowed his eyes as Tom slowly continued walking away from them and sat himself down on a bench. He was talking to someone with a serious expression on his face, illuminated from the street lamp above him. It did not look, to Harrison, to be the type of conversation that was the result of a new and exciting romance.
“He needn’t worry,” Jaqueline went on as she pulled her cottage keys out of her handbag. “I’m the last person who he would get any judgment off from starting a relationship with the wrong person.” Her eyes seemed to glaze over. “Trust me,” she murmured. “I know all about that.”
Harrison frowned but as quickly as Jacqueline had appeared to disappear off into her own world, she seemed to snap out of it.
“Well, thanks very much for your help, Harrison, darling,” she said, smiling broadly. “I hope I’ll see you at the first performance tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Harrison said. “I’ll try and get there, no worries.”
They parted as their respective cottages came into view and Jaqueline soon was inside hers and slamming the door behind her without another word, leaving Harrison alone in the cold, dimly lit road in front of Juniper Cottage.
Ordinarily, Harrison would have been preoccupied with what Jacqueline had said about knowing all about being in the wrong sort of relationship, but his mind was more distracted by Tom. As Harrison pulled his door key from his pocket, he put it into the lock and looked down the road at Tom, still talking on the phone.
Harrison wanted to believe that he was just being paranoid and that the unwanted contact they had shared on the journey home had been the result of them just being too close together on the pavement. The last thing Blake needed at this moment was the thought that Tom was trying to do anything to threaten their relationship. Yet, there was something that seemed to be going on with Tom that Harrison felt he was hiding, even from Jacqueline. As he unlocked the door and stepped into the cottage, Harrison could not help but feel that his words of reassurance to Blake would soon mean very little.
3
“A week to go! Can you believe it?”
Blake smiled as he strolled through the street to work the next morning, the voice of his best friend, Sally, in his ear.
“Trust me, it can’t come soon enough,” he said, grateful of the hands-free aspect of his phone that meant he could talk to her with his hands thrust deep into his pockets to keep out the cold.
“Maybe for you,” Sally grumbled. “But I’m going to be thirty, Blake. Thirty. That’s my twenties done. In a week’s time, whenever anybody asks me my age, there will never be a two in front of it ever again. I’m into a new decade!”
Blake chuckled, fully remembering having a similar internal crisis when his thirtieth had been on the horizon. “Are you having a meltdown?”
“Well, yes! If I’m honest!” Sally replied, slightly shrilly. “I mean, I’m still single, I live in a rented flat, my career is slow at best. And what happens from this point? Am I going to start tutting at youths for being too loud? Bed by nine, because that’s what adults do? Do I have to start buying things like ironing water? And what about the hangovers? Blake, I can’t take nights out like I used to, are you telling me that gets worse?”
Blake shook his head, grinning broadly. “Not only do they get worse, you’re not even that keen on going out in the first place. You’d rather stay in, curled up with a good book. Or even worse, curled up with a cup of Horlicks.”
Sally’s response was far from polite.
Blake laughed loudly. “Don’t worry. It isn’t some weird metamorphism that takes place over night. You’ll be fine. I’ll make sure of it.”
Sally sighed heavily. “Anyway, enough of my ramblings. How are you? You’ve had your first therapy sessions now, haven’t you?”
Blake’s smile quickly disappeared from his face and the tiredness he had been feeling from his lack of sleep the previous night instantly returned. “Yeah. Could be better.”
“Oh, Blake,” Sally murmured. “Don’t get yourself down. Therapists are basically witches these days. It’s a nightmare, that’s all it is. Just a bad dream.”
“I wish I could say the same, Sal, I really do. Linda reckons the memories of that bloody house and the woman have been triggered by some of the murder cases I’ve had to deal with the past couple of years. I was thinking about it, and she’s probably right.”
“Yeah. I suppose you’ve seen and dealt with more than the average cop,” Sally replied. “Not to mention Thomas Frost.”
Blake shuddered at the mention of Frost’s name.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Him too.”
As Blake rounded a corner, he could hear the sound of raised voices. It was coming from the village hall further down the road.
“…sick! That’s what you are, you’re sick!”
“Look, Benjamin, I realise this is difficult, but that’s just how it goes in this business.”
“I’m not talking about that, and you know it! It’s not legal what you’re doing! You know that!”
At the sound of something ‘not legal’ going on, Blake frowned.
“Sal, I’ll call you back later, I think I’m needed.”
“Alright,” she replied. “Keep your chin up though, Blake. Everything’s going to be fine. This will get better, I promise.”
“I know. Love you. Bye.”
As he hung up, Blake slowed and glanced around the wall near the hall.
Two men, one much older and dressed extravagantly in a long silk coat, and the other a much taller younger man, were arguing in increasingly raised voices. As Blake watched them, he realised that the older man was Sebastian Klein, recognising him from the poster that Jacqueline had been brandishing. He remembered Harrison mentioning a Benjamin when he had returned home the previous night.
“What you are doing is wrong,” Benjamin snapped. “And if you think I’m going to let you get away with it, then you are very much mistaken.”
“Benjamin,” Sebastian replied calmly, stroking his goatee, “I would hate your future to be made even more difficult by a lawsuit for slander. You have absolutely no proof or basis for any of these wild accusations. I would suggest you think very carefully about your next movements. I think it would be wise for you to just accept my offer of these final two shows, take your money and then go on with your life with my gratitude and excellent references. There’s no need whatsoever for you to make things tricky for yourself.”
Blake’s frown deepened as he watched Benjamin tower over Sebastian and glare down at him furiously. “Oh, don’t you worry. I’ll be taking the money I’m owed. And then I’ll find proof. I know what I know. You’re going down, trust me on that.”
With a final curl of his lip, Benjamin stormed down the path and collided with Blake, who had begun to walk towards them in case the argument turned physical.
“Woah,” Blake exclaimed, gripping
hold of the wall to stop himself from falling over. “Everything alright here, gentlemen? Seemed to be a bit tense.”
Benjamin stared at Blake, his nostrils still flaring furiously. “What’s it got to do with you?”
“Plenty.” Blake pulled his ID out of his pocket and opened it up. “Detective Sergeant Blake Harte, Harmschapel police. I thought I was going to have to break the two of you up then.”
“Everything’s absolutely fine, Detective,” Sebastian said smoothly, stepping forwards. “Just a little disagreement. I can assure you that there is nothing going on that needs the police to get involved, isn’t that right, Benjamin?”
Benjamin’s head turned sharply towards Sebastian and then back to Blake again.
“No,” he murmured. “Not yet anyway.” Then, he stormed off down the road without another word.
Sebastian chuckled as they watched Benjamin disappear around the corner. “Teenagers,” he said, shaking his head. “Honestly, hormones flying around like jet airplanes.”
“So, care to shed any light on what was actually happening there?” Blake asked.
“Of course, this is your village and why wouldn’t you want to prevent any unpleasantness?” Sebastian said cheerfully. “Allow me to introduce myself. Sebastian Klein. I’m a touring magician. I’m performing here the next couple of nights.”
“I know who you are,” Blake replied, shaking his hand. “My partner, Harrison, was helping put everything together for you last night.”
“Oh, I see!” Sebastian enthused. “Well, then he may have told you that Benjamin is, what would I call him? A right-hand man, so to speak. Unfortunately, I can’t afford to keep him anymore. Oh, he’s been vital to the running of the show, maintaining props and scenery, making bits of magic happen backstage. But sometimes, like any business, budgets sink and rise.”