by steve higgs
Just then, the Superintendent walked into the room and with a quick, ‘Oops.' Patience put on her headset and made it look like she was working.
Thankfully we were busy then and I could avoid further interrogation for the rest of the morning.
A Case for Me. Monday, October 18th 1230hrs
I heard a text ping through on my phone about half an hour before I was due to take my lunch. I ignored it until my break time came around but pulled my phone from my bag as I stood up to head to the canteen. Patience and I had different lunch break times most days, so I would be able to put off telling her about Brett for a bit longer yet. There wasn’t really anything to tell. Apart from that he is gorgeous, ridiculously rich, incredibly well-mannered… I could go on, but I was trying to ignore that he was literally perfect.
The text message was from Tempest to tell me that he had a case he didn’t have time for right now and to ask if I wanted to investigate it. He had forwarded me the email from the prospective client, so I switched to my emails to see what it was.
This would be my first case.
The client was the manager of the Pentagon Shopping Centre in Chatham. I knew it well. It was looking a little tired and worn but then Chatham was not really a place one went shopping unless you already lived there, and the indoor area, which was probably quite a draw forty years ago was now losing ground to bigger, brighter indoor shopping areas within an easy driving distance. He reported that he had a ghost living in his elevators. There was a poor-quality picture attached that showed two girls illuminated in the flash of the camera and man standing behind them. Each had a startled expression, but the focus of the photo was the blurry, indistinct shape next to the man. It looked like a ghost if one was willing to believe in such things, of course. I could see through it, so I had to admit that it had a certain ethereal aspect. The client's email went on to say that several shoppers had suffered frights as the elevator they were travelling in lost power. The lights would go out and, in most cases, the elevator stopped moving, but only for a second or so. Shoppers had reported that their possessions, mostly shopping bags full of new purchases had gone missing and several had reported that they had felt a draft or had felt something touch them or brush past them in the confines of the elevator. Then there was the picture captured by the two girls.
So, I had an unexplained mystery that the client was willing to pay us to solve. It was damaging his sales, he claimed, and the shareholders were squeezing his nuts to get the punters back in and the problem resolved before the Christmas rush started in a few short weeks.
I emailed back to Tempest, telling him that I would take the case and would go directly to the Pentagon when I finished my shift this evening. In the meantime, I would contact the client and arrange for him to meet me because it would be after shopping hours when I got there.
I ate the salad I had brought with me for my lunch and drank a glass of milk. My lunch break was nearly over so I used the facilities and went back to my desk just as Patience was getting up to take her break.
She made it clear that I still needed to spill the beans on my weekend but hustled off to get her lunch, leaving me to settle back behind my desk. Today the pair of us were dealing with converting calls into dispatching uniforms in response. It was often tedious, and it was not what I was usually assigned to do, but in the dying days of my career with the Police, it was what they had given me. I slipped my headset on again and the afternoon drifted away, absorbed by myriad minor incidents.
It got quiet around three o’clock, so I pushed my chair back a bit and stretched without getting up.
Patience swivelled in her chair to face me, ‘So?' she asked.
‘There really isn’t much to tell,’ I started.
‘Don’t give me that. You spent the weekend in Paris with a multi-millionaire Adonis. There has to be something to tell and if there isn’t something to tell then you need to tell me what the heck is wrong with you,’ Patience had fixed me with a look that made it clear I wasn’t going to get away without telling her all about it. I opened my mouth to speak but she was already talking again, ‘That man is fine with capital letters. F – I – N – E. If he had taken me to Paris for the weekend, I would have ridden him like a pony on a carousel. That boy would be ruined for all other women for eternity. That’s how good sex with me is, girl.’
I stared at her, slightly scared and very much in awe of her self-confidence. Maybe she was right. Was I stupid to have resisted sleeping with him? Had he expected me to and through not fulfilling my end of the bargain had I now ruined any chance of a second date? My mind slowly started to drift, filled with thoughts of Brett naked. I was willing to bet that sex with Brett would be good. Maybe good. I was ready to bet that he knew what to do with a woman.
Suddenly Patience’s voice cut through my fantasy, ‘Girl, are you even listening to me? I know that look. You’re thinking about sex with him right now, aren’t you? You have that look in your eye and a stupid grin on your face.’ I shook my head and cursed myself silently.
Patience had crossed her arms and was glaring at me, ‘If there was no sex then tell me about the romance. I am single and need to hear that romance still exists for someone.’
I conceded and spent the next twenty minutes describing the hotel, the opera, the first-class seats on the plane, the first-class treatment everywhere we went and how he had been such an absolute gentleman all weekend. She was amazed that he went to the trouble of opening doors for me, shocked and envious that he had bought me a dress that was so expensive it didn’t even have a price tag and had then bought Louis Vuitton luggage, so I could get it home, and she was utterly confused with how I hadn’t thrown myself at him when we had kissed passionately in the elevator. I had shrugged and said that it was too soon to be falling into bed.
Then she asked when I was seeing him again and I didn’t have an answer. Should I text him? Thus far all the pursuing had been done by him. Was that fair? Would he welcome an invitation from me? Did I then invite him to my flat and make him dinner? I certainly couldn’t stretch to a night at the opera with champagne. What if he turned up in a Bentley or a Lamborghini? It would get stolen in seconds outside my place in Maidstone.
‘Patience?’
‘Yes, Honey?’
‘How long do I wait before I text him?’
‘Girl you don’t need to text him. Wait for him to text you.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Why? Girl, how is it that a woman with an ass like yours is so dumb about men still? He spent all that money, he wined and dined you and treated you like a queen because he wants to get at that ass. Until you give it up you don’t have to do anything. After that, then maybe you got to call him or do things for him occasionally. Right now, though, that boy is yours. Make him work for it.’
I mulled that over.
‘How long since you last saw him?’ Patience asked rhetorically then answered her own question before I could speak, ‘A few hours, right? You saw him yesterday. Don’t you go looking all pathetic and needy by calling him just because he is hot and rich.’
‘Okay. Okay.’
‘You promise now?’
‘Yes, Patience. I promise that I will not call,’ she seemed satisfied finally, ‘For how long?’ I asked.
This prompted another lecture about being the one that is chased rather than the one chasing. It went on for a while, interrupted only by us having to actually do our jobs. Patience was single as well and I wondered if her stance on approaching men or putting herself into a relationship was holding her back from changing her relationship status. I kept my mouth shut on that subject though.
The Pentagon Shopping Centre, Chatham. Monday, October 18th 1924hrs
I had contacted the shopping centre manager during my afternoon coffee break and arranged for him to meet me after my shift finished. I didn’t tell him I had to wait to finish work of course as I was representing the Blue Moon Investigation Agency and had changed into my usual clothes
before I left the station. As far as he knew, I had been on other casework until this evening and this was the earliest I could get to him.
The shops were all shut, and the building was locked up at this time of day, so we had agreed to meet at a service entrance on The Brook, the road that runs between the Pentagon and the County Courts. I must have driven or walked past it hundreds of times but had never once noticed it was there. Looking for it though I had spotted it immediately and the client, Mr. Miller met me outside as I pulled up.
‘Am I alright to park here?' I asked, half out of the car. I couldn't be sure it was the client, so it could be a security guy coming to usher me away.
‘Amanda Harper?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Good evening. Are you Martin Miller?’ I offered him my business card; Tempest had provided a box of them last week.
‘Yes. Good evening. Thank you for being on time.' I had agreed to get there by half past seven, so I was a few minutes early but had not been sure where the service entrance door was and had allowed some time for circling.
I locked the car and followed him inside, pulling my notebook from my bag as I went. The corridors were darkened but not dark, only minimal lighting was on at this time of day. He told me we were heading to his office and that it overlooked the shopping centre, but we could have been going anywhere. The maze of corridors was vast and the route we took was intersected several times. He knew where he was going, but I would need him to escort me back to my car when I was finished here, or I would never find it.
We came to a lift. We had been talking as we walked, although the corridor was narrow, and I was walking behind him with him talking over his shoulder. He was a thoroughly average Caucasian man, by which I mean that he had no outstanding characteristics by which one could describe him. He was wearing a cheap but functional and new looking suit over his average frame. He was about my height, but my boots had a short heel, so he was roughly five feet eleven inches tall. His hair was brown, his eyes were brown, his complexion was clear and free of any trace of a suntan. He had told me that he had been the manager of the shopping centre for eight years and that it was rarely eventful or exciting. I had to steer him onto the subject of the spooky elevator he had reported, for fear he might ramble on about his job and the shopping centre for hours.
As we got into the lift, he finally started telling me about it. ‘We have eight banks of two lifts here. Five of which service the shopping centre and the car park. The remaining three service just the car park. There has never been a problem with any of them until two weeks ago apart from the odd breakdown.'
‘What date was the first reported problem?’ I asked, pen poised.
‘I have it all diarised in my office. We are nearly there,’ he answered. Sure enough, the lift pinged and stopped at the second floor. We exited onto a corridor running perpendicular to the lift and turned right. His office was the second door on the left. He opened it with a key.
Inside was just as drab as the outside. There clearly wasn't much budget for decorating or improving any of the functional areas. The wall opposite the door was one large window which looked down onto the central atrium in the middle of the shopping centre. Looking down at the shops I worked out that we must be above Wilkinson’s. Odd that I had never noticed the window from the other side before. The area looked very different at night and devoid of people. I felt a little voyeuristic as if I was peeking inside someone's house when they were not there.
‘Here it is,’ Martin announced holding up a piece of paper, ‘I made a copy for you,’ It showed the events in a chronological order and recorded which lift the event had occurred in, whether anything was taken and what the shopper reported had happened.
‘There are forty-seven reports from four different lifts, Martin. Did you shut any of the lifts at any point?’ I asked.
He drew my attention to a map of the shopping centre on the wall to my right. ‘The lifts are colour coded. The first event occurred in the rightmost orange lift on Wednesday 6th at about three o'clock. A pair of old ladies reported that their shopping had been taken, that the lights had gone out etcetera. I saw them myself actually because they were harassing security and making quite a fuss. We called the Police in the end, who came and took a statement, but they left it at that and I dismissed it, assuming they had just put their shopping down somewhere. Then it happened again the next day and twice more the day after that. I decommissioned the lift at that point and had the maintenance team check it out. I figured if no one went in it for a while the problem would cease.'
‘But it didn’t.’
‘No. It didn't. I have two engineers that are responsible for the lifts and the escalators among other things. They checked the lift out and said there was nothing wrong with it. They both reported that they felt cold when they were inside it though. I went into it and couldn't feel anything,' he paused then as if remembering something, ‘Sorry, would you like a cup of tea or something?' he asked. ‘I totally forgot my manners.'
‘No. Thank you, Martin.’
‘Are you sure? I am having one.' I shook my head as he moved to turn on the kettle which sat on a small table next to his desk.
‘You were telling me about the lifts,' I prompted, rather than wait for him to finish making his beverage.
Well, the orange bank of lifts was out of commission but the next day we had the same problem in the blue bank.' He indicated where the blue lifts were on the map. It was at the northernmost end of the complex where it exited onto the bottom end of Military Road and The Brook. On the Saturday morning, the lift opened, and six lads spilled out screaming and yelling. They were in their early twenties or late teens and convinced there had been something in the lift with them. Something had touched one of them. We had seven more incidents that day, so I shut that lift down as well.'
I was scribbling notes furiously. He waited for me to finish. ‘Then what?’ I asked.
‘Then it was Sunday and there were two more incidents that morning. At that point, I shut down all the lifts but that lasted about thirty minutes as apparently, I am not allowed to stay open if there are no lifts. There are stairs going to the upper carpark floors but too many persons with mobility restrictions to make that a viable access route. I thought about closing the whole centre but got quite a few threats from store owners, so I had to abandon that idea,' he seemed a bit lost for direction, ‘So, the attacks have continued, and everyone is looking for me to solve the problem. Visitors have decreased by forty percent and I doubt I will keep my job long if I cannot sort this out.'
‘I need to see the lifts please.’
‘Which ones?’
‘All of them.’
Martin nodded and led me out of the office. We took a long winding walk around the shopping centre using torchlight in places to illuminate the dark corners. This took a good while and there was no power to the lifts at this time of day so all I could do was look at the closed doors. I gave up before we got to the ones that served only the carpark.
‘Are the lifts all the same make?’ I asked as we headed back to my car.
‘Oh. I don’t know the answer to that question.’
‘Who would?’
‘The service engineers, Charlie and Jack. They will be in tomorrow if you want to come back and talk to them then. I can arrange for you to be shown the lifts then as well, although I suppose you can just go and look at them yourself at that point.’
I got their full names and told Martin I would be back by four o’clock the following day. I was working a shift until three o’clock, so that was the earliest I could return. He had led me back to my car by a completely different route, but we had been on the ground floor of the complex, not the second floor where his office was. When he had opened a door and street light from outside had flooded in, I had been surprised. We were right by my car though, so I bid him goodnight and plipped my car open.
Then I thought of something and called out to him before he could get back inside and shut the door.
‘I need to be informed whenever there are any other incidents.’
‘Or. Err, of course. I can do that. Or I can get my head of security, Steve Brooms to do so. Is that okay?'
‘Yes. Please pass him my card,’ I produced a new one from my pocket, ‘and have him call me. Also, I need a list of what was stolen. Do you have that already?’
‘Yes. Of course, the Police have it already but do not appear to be doing anything with the information.’ I rolled my eyes. The poor police have plenty to be getting on with and this was petty crime that sounded more like lost shopping when one listened to the explanation. I opted to stay silent on that thought though, ‘Can you email it across to me please?’
‘I will do it before I go home tonight,’ he promised. I nodded my thanks and bid him goodbye again.
Driving home, I went through what I knew. I wanted to find the answer to this case without needing to involve Tempest. He seemed to just eat these cases up, finding the answer as if it was obvious all along. This was my first case though and I needed to prove that I could do this to myself as much as to him. He was so relaxed and laid back that he would think nothing of helping me to work out what was going on.
What I had was a series of odd and unexplained thefts when I boiled it down. If I ignored the selfie with the ghost in it, the reports all said that the lift had lost power, a presence was felt in the lift and shopping bags had gone missing.
But what about the mist like figure in the selfie?
My phone rang loudly in the confined space of my car and I almost wet myself. I punched the button on my steering wheel to connect the hands free. ‘Hello?’
‘Amanda?' It was Brett's voice. The sound of it made my pulse quicken which surprised me.
‘Good evening, Brett. How are you?’ Was that too formal? Did I sound standoffish?
‘Very well, thank you, Amanda. I wanted to see when you were free this week. I had hoped I might entice you into joining me for dinner.’