by S. T. Boston
Tara India Gibb joined Mike’s team around the time she’d split with her second arsehole of a boyfriend. A split eventually aided by the fact he’d been sent to the big house for a five-year stretch having beaten the shit out of her. As it turned out she was smart, pretty and well educated with a natural talent for research and a good knowledge of history, all things that her ability to fall for the wrong kind of guy had put a strangle on.
“I also saw the premier when we had the airing party here back in January,” Mike added, remembering the drunken evening where by the time the credits rolled the room was rolling with them, like a ship listing on a rough sea.
“Good,” Rick nodded, “So you’ve seen that little line at the start of the show, before the main titles roll, the one that says, This Show Is Purely For Entertainment Purposes Only?” Rick didn’t wait for an answer before continuing, “Well that little bastard gives us licence to do whatever the fuck we want.” Rick collected his coffee up again, drained the mug and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “Just work with me Mike, let me go back to the board and see if I can get that second season.”
“You signed us up for two series,” Mike reminded him, opting to use the more British term for several episodes of a television show as opposed to the more American one that seemed to be taking over.
“I know, I know,” Rick straightened the large Windsor knot on his tie. Mike wasn’t sure if the tie was supposed to be smart or novelty, it looked as if it were made of silk and was no doubt expensive, but it sported a number of smiling yellow faces, the kind that had featured on those eighties t-shirts with the slogan Shit Happens written underneath. “But in the contract, you’ll see that we can pull the plug at any point if we see fit,” Rick reminded him. “And after ten episodes of nothing but debunking, with a few poor EVPs that you also discounted due to the fact there’s a production team with you using radios that, as you put it, ‘might have caused the phenomenon,’ then they see fit to pull the plug. Of course, you’ll be compensated, call it a severance package. But let’s not get to that point, let’s try to save it. Have a chat with the team, run it past them. I’m not asking you to be Chrissy Meadows Mike, which is a good job ‘cos you’d look shit in a blouse.” He grinned at his own joke. “Just let us make it a bit more entertaining.”
“I don’t need to talk with the team,” Mike said firmly. He felt his phone vibrating in his pocket, someone was trying to call him. He fished it out and looked briefly at the number scrolling across his screen. His phone told him the caller was in Salisbury, the number wasn’t in his Samsung’s phonebook and as far as he could recall he didn’t know anyone in Salisbury or the entire county of Wiltshire for that matter. Cancelling the intrusion with one quick swipe of his finger Mike tucked the tatty LG phone back into the breast pocket of his shirt. “I have sole right to call the shots and make decisions, and my decision is I’d rather have no show than one that involves trickery.” Mike stood up, affording him a better view of the window behind Rick’s desk. The Manchester skyline stretched out behind it. “I’ll have my legal team contact your team over a severance payment.” His phone began to vibrate again, he ignored it this time, allowing it to ring through to voicemail.
“Maybe you could pedal your show to the History Channel,” Rick said sarcastically. “Just change the name from Unexplained UK to Explained UK!”
“Fuck you, Rick!” Mike said reaching the door. It sounded unprofessional and he knew he’d regret it later, but it felt good at the time, and to be fair Rick was lucky to be finishing the meeting still in possession of his slightly too white front teeth. Leaving the room Mike made sure he had the final word and followed the ‘Fuck You’ up nicely by flipping him the bird before the door swung shut behind him.
Five minutes later Mike was sat behind the wheel of his Jeep, the multi-storey car park had mercifully shielded the car from the July sun. The unusually lengthy heatwave had been baking the UK since the end of May and the weather forecasters were reporting there was still no end to it in sight. Car park shade aside the air was still oppressively warm, and his blue cotton shirt clung uncomfortably to his back, and Mike could feel sweat, partly from his anger but mostly from the heat, forming on his neck and running down below the collar.
With the engine still off Mike reached up and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. He squeezed it tightly until his knuckles turned white and tried not to let that smouldering fire of anger, which was still brewing deliciously inside him, ignite into a full-on rage. It wanted to, it wanted to badly, but with a few long deep breaths, carried out in the manner that his councillor had taught him in the months after the accident, he managed to quell it. He couldn’t believe that Rick had brought up the death of Claire and Megan as if it were a bonus to his life backstory and a matter for entertainment that could be dragged out of the closet and paraded around.
The day Claire and Megan were killed, Mike had gone to work as normal, collected one of the slightly tatty looking pool cars from the force HQ where he was based, and with one of his teams other Detective Sergeants, Mark Samuels, headed to the next county for a meeting on how police forces could better share cross-border information on child abusers. A little project he’d personally spearheaded in a bid to gain evidence for his promotion to Detective Inspector. During the meeting, and whilst Mike was giving his presentation, a senior officer had entered the room and taken him aside to break the news. A drunk driver had lost control of his Ford and planted it into a shop front, at the precise time Claire and Megan were leaving the store. Mike had spoken to Claire just two hours before, whilst on his lunch break. In the call, she’d told him that she was heading to the park with Megan, who’d been cooped up inside for the past week with her first real stinker of a cold, but was finally feeling better. Claire had asked him if he fancied anything special for dinner, and before he could answer she suggested that on the way home she stop and get a couple of nice steaks. She’d often done that, asked a question then answered it herself, just one of her little traits that Mike had come to know and love in the ten years they’d been together, six of which as a married couple.
Mike guessed that she had stopped at the shop for the steaks, and maybe some nappies for Megan, who knew? The contents of her spilled shopping bags had not been the first thing on his mind that day. Mike had run through how he could possibly be to blame more times than he cared to remember. Eventually, he’d exorcised those demons and come to the realisation that the only blame to apportion was down to the selfish drunk who’d been too lazy to walk the mile home after his lunchtime drinking session, choosing instead to take two lives and ruin another forever.
That day, now just over seven years ago, still seemed unreal to him. Mike could still remember word for word the last call he’d taken from his wife and the words of the Chief-Super who’d broken the news. He could recall every wrinkle and detail of his face, the salmon pink tie he'd worn, especially the too tight looking knot, but after that, it was a blur.
His time on compassionate leave ran through to sickness leave, being signed off with depression and pumped full of various drugs, none of which he took regularly enough to be of any benefit. Counselling sessions came and went, as did the councillors who never seemed to actually help.
After several months of being locked in the family home, staring at the walls, or occasionally poring tearfully through photographs with thoughts of what might have been, Mike had his epiphany. He knew he had to change or he’d end up worse off than Claire, alive but dead inside and a shell of the man he’d once been. Confident that even with the help of his latest councillor he’d never be mentally strong enough again to do the job he loved; he tendered his resignation from the force. At thirty-six and with no other qualifications to fall back on other than those gained through the police, Mike threw himself into gaining his Private Investigators qualification. It was his way of remaining within a trade he knew and loved, whilst having the luxury of being his own boss and with none of the bureaucra
tic nonsense that he knew he’d not be mentally able to cope with if he’d gone back to the force. That aside, working on the child abuse team came with its own dose of other people’s suffering and misery. Mike had enough in his own life, and enough to last him the rest of it, too.
He found that throwing himself into study helped numb the grief, he knew that many would be throwing themselves off the nearest bridge in his situation, or at the very least into a bottomless bottle of Jack, but that wasn’t his style. It hadn’t been Claire’s, either. Mike owed it to her to be strong, to live the life she’d have wanted, and there was no way she’d have wanted him consumed with grief whilst sitting in a darken room pickling his liver every hour of every day on a bottle of malt. In fact, not a drop of booze had passed his lips since their passing, grief was bad enough without the demon drink along for the ride. Nothing like a good-ole depressant to cheer you up, he’d thought, when reading how many in his situation did turn to alcohol.
Having gained his Private Investigators licence, and whilst gradually building up a portfolio of regular clients, many of whom only needed his services the once, to catch out a cheating spouse, or partner, his interest in the paranormal was stirred. One night, whilst doing some work on his website, Mike’s attention had been drawn to an American woman on a show called Ghost Stories. He hadn’t intentionally put the show on, it was just background noise. He liked background noise, without it the house felt very empty, empty and sad, as if the bricks and mortar missed Claire's laughter and Megan's occasional crying fits, or those cute little giggles she’d just started to have, her tiny yet developing brain just learning when something was funny. Maybe he should have sold the place, it was too big for one. But selling it was like closing the door, finally admitting that, that chapter of his life, the one that should have been the longest, had been cut short.
The lady on the show, who looked a little like she spent too much time in Taco Bell, or Wendy’s, was claiming that her twenty-year-old son, who’d been tragically killed in a car crash the year before, was still in the house with her. Leaving the laptop on the side, Mike had watched transfixed as she played audio recordings called EVPS of her son’s voice from beyond the grave, recordings she’d supposedly captured right in her own home with nothing more than a digital voice recorder. That night, with the ever-faithful help of Google, Mike learned that EVP stood for Electronic Voice Phenomenon, and all you needed to capture this paranormal wonder was a basic voice recorder, much like the one the lady had used. Other snazzier versions were available, aimed specifically at those involved with paranormal study, but most investigators just used normal audio recorders, the likes of which you could buy at Argos for no more than forty pounds. Or for a few quid on eBay if you were willing to wait for delivery from China, and you didn’t care too much about the quality of your product.
Reading into it Mike learned that EVP existed somewhere around fifteen to twenty hertz, and below what adult ears could hear. However, with the aid of a voice recorder which could record sound at that low level, you could pick them up, and then on playback the sound became amplified and audible. The evidence offered by the woman in the show was compelling and made Mike, who had never really had any interest in such things, wonder if his wife and child were still with him, as the woman claimed her son had been.
Trying to replicate the results caught by the lady in the show Mike had set up recorders in every part of the house, hoping to capture just one word from his wife, or hear just one cry from Megan, wanting just one sign that they were still with him. However, no matter how much he recorded, all he tuned up was endless hours of empty hissing static. Frustrated, confused and starting the think the woman had been nothing but an attention seeking fraud he turned his attention to other supposedly haunted places, believing that if he could just capture one piece of evidence it would put his mind at rest that his wife and daughter were in a better place. Mike found that unlike many paranormal investigators, who seemed to claim that every particle of dust caught on a digital image was a benevolent spirit, he had a flair for debunking and finding reasonable explanations. In fact, the harder he looked the more blanks he drew and the more blanks he drew the more sceptical he became, almost losing all hope that they’d moved on to another life where one day he’d be reunited with them again.
Whilst researching various paranormal forums for other locations who might let him set up his equipment, that had now grown to a bank of audio recorders, some of which by now did recorded down into the infrasound, and a basic four channel portable CCTV system, Mike had found two others fairly local to him who’d been looking to join a team. Tara aka Tig, who lived just fifty miles away in North Dorset and Scotty, real name Scott Hampton who lived on The Isle of Wight, both just a stone's throw from him geographically. Scott was a big Trekkie and had given himself the nickname of Scotty when they’d first met, no one argued with him over it, and to be fair, Scotty was not the kind of guy you argued with. At just over six feet three he made Mike’s distinctly average five-eleven feel small, he was also as wide as a church door and had hair that was about as black as it could be without coming from a bottle. When not with Mike and Tara, Scotty could usually be found in the gym or on the rugby pitch, and if not on the pitch in the club bar. He wasn’t what you’d expect appearance wise from your archetypal Trekkie and it amused Mike to think of him at conventions dressed in his Federation replica uniform. Scotty was the youngest of the team at twenty-five. He was Mike’s tech specialist and despite his oppressive appearance Mike had learned that he was really the gentlest of giants and apt to never hurt a fly.
Before being given the show, Scotty had worked for a local security firm, fitting and supplying CCTV systems on the Island, a life which it seemed now that he would likely end up going back to. In the early days, Scotty had secured them some blinding deals on equipment and helped Mike upgrade his basic eBay purchased cameras to a more professional setup. However, the kit budget they’d been given before the show started filming had seen them being able to purchase equipment the likes of which only ever made it as far as the dream list for most teams, things like full HD recording equipment and two FLIR thermal imaging cameras.
Around the time that they’d put the lid on the paranormal side of the Sleaford case, and the adult portion of the family were facing charges of fraud, benefit fraud, and tax evasion, Mike found that his approach to paranormal research had changed. Instead of longing for that one undeniable snippet of evidence, he found satisfaction in explanation, in debunking, a trait that had followed through to his show, and a trait that had ultimately been its downfall. Sure, over the time he’d been investigating he’d captured a few EVPs, it seemed they were by far the most common form of paranormal evidence up for grabs. However, in a society packed with WiFi, mobile phones, and radio waves, the evidence was too prone to contamination for Mike to hold any faith in. He certainly had never found anything as clear as the voice on the American woman’s recordings, the ones that she’d claimed had been her son, and over time Mike had come to wonder if she was nothing more than an attention seeking fraud. He’d fast learned that in paranormal research frauds were about as common as crooked car salesman in the automotive industry.
Sat in his Jeep, his hands now off the wheel Mike held them before his eyes for a brief moment, almost perplexed at the way they trembled slightly, the last aftershocks of the rage that had almost consumed him now ebbing away like a tide.
Feeling more in control, and with less of a yearning to storm back into the office and grab Rick Livingstone by his stupid smiling tie and plant his face into the desk, ‘cos after all shit happened, he slid his phone from the breast pocket of his shirt and tapped the screen to life. With a few quick swipes Mike was into the call history. The second call, the one he’d ignored, was from the same Wiltshire number. He stared at it for a while, as if just looking at the digits would cause some synapse of recognition to fire in his brain. When it didn’t come, he copied the number and pasted it into Google to
see what information the internet held on it, a habit he had picked up from working as a Private Investigator. Mike scrolled past the first few sponsored links, the ones that asked you to list the number if it was linked to a high-pressure seller or general nuisance caller. The third link down was for the Cottage Holidays UK website and provided a sub-link through to a property on their books called The Old Chapel in the village of Trellen, Cornwall. Intrigued, Mike opened the link and scrolled through the myriad of images taken by the owner and then went on to read the well-worded description of the place. It looked impressive and whoever had carried out the conversion work, turning it from place of worship in to a holiday home, had done a top job, but he was mystified as to why he’d been called by the number on the advert. He sure as shit hadn’t booked a holiday and whilst the place looked five star there was no way he’d have paid the eight hundred pounds a week price tag the property was commanding in July. Instead of going back into his call history Mike used the link on the advert to call the number back. It rang and rang, and just as he expected it to click through to answer machine the phone was answered.