by steve higgs
Jane had not moved from the position I had left her in more than two hours ago and I wondered how much she had managed to get done.
‘All of it.’ She boasted when I asked her. ‘It was much easier than I thought.’ She pulled out a cardboard folder, the type with a flap at the front which opened to reveal a pocket beneath. In it were several sheets of paper which she began to fan on her desk. ‘Here are CV’s for you both. I just copied these from templates on the internet and adjusted them to make you look like cleaners. Here is the letter you wrote earlier. I changed the font and the logo but otherwise it is unchanged.’ She had also found time to create a website which displayed the fake firm, listed its achievements, company history and mundane rubbish like health and safety policy.
‘How did you do all this so quickly?’ I asked.
‘Like I said, most of it was easy, almost cut and paste. Even the website was a simple task. All I had to do was find one similar to what I wanted and use a clone program to rip off the html code, embed it in a new webpage and populate it with some images.’
Easy for Jane maybe. It would take me a year to do the same thing. I picked up the documents. They looked convincing to me. My next task would be to call Julia Jones, the lady responsible for hiring the cleaning staff and convince her to employ me and Big Ben.
Should be easy, I told myself.
She answered on the third ring. ‘Julia Jones. Good afternoon.’
‘Good afternoon.’ I launched into the patter I had been practising in my head. ‘This is Jeremy Carter of Kleaneeze. We supply outsourced cleaning staff and I understand you are in the market to hire some.’
‘Actually, I am. But I have strict instructions on who I can hire. I am being provided with additional cleaning staff soon.’
I grimaced at the news. ‘Are you saying that you cannot hire anyone, no matter their qualifications and experience?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Was all she said in return. Whatever the reason was, she wasn’t going to let me get into the Dockyard the way I had hoped to. Maybe it had been a long shot, I hadn’t thought so at the time.
I thanked her for her time and disconnected.
Nuts.
I called Big Ben. He answered with, ‘Whaddup?’
‘We have a minor setback. The plan to go in as cleaners is a bust. We are going to have to go full ops mode and break in.’
‘Roger. What happened?’
‘I’m not entirely sure. The lady that needs to hire new staff isn’t allowed to hire new staff. She was a little cryptic about it.’
‘She? What’s her name?’
‘Julia Jones.’
‘So, what’s the new plan?’
‘Tactical gear. I’ll come to you at 2000hrs. We go over the concept of the operations, infiltrate the Dockyard and spend a few hours trying to find out what is going on. It’ll be harder this way. We will have to put more effort into dodging the guards and there will be consequences if we get caught.’ I was thinking as I talked. If we were caught it was likely there would be a criminal prosecution as a result. Under different circumstances I wouldn’t consider this course of action, if it were for a client for instance. But someone had hurt my dad and I was going to find out who.
I wanted to tell Big Ben that I didn’t need him, but he wouldn’t believe me. There was a distinct possibility that he could get into deep trouble by coming with me, but he and I had the kind of brotherhood that meant that even though we would never talk about how we felt we would also never let the other face things alone.
‘I’ll be ready.’ He said. ‘See you at eight.’
Sitting at my desk after the call, I ran through some scenarios in my head. Where was the best place to enter the Dockyard unseen? I had to get us in and out without triggering any alarms, using any of the actual entry routes and without encountering the guards. Then I remembered the two Daves that Alan had told me about.
If I could find them, maybe they would help. Suddenly I had an option. What did I do with it? If they worked the night shift, I wouldn’t be able to find them at work now. I hadn’t taken a phone number for Alan or anyone else, so I had no way to contact them. I was going to have to go back to the Dockyard if I wanted to talk to anyone.
Rummaging through my pockets and then my wallet, I found the entry ticket I bought this morning. Having to pay to enter again was insignificant but I was still happy that I had a day pass and could just waltz back in.
I had planned to get some sleep before spending a good portion of the night snooping around, but I would have to go without. I grabbed my keys, told Jane I was going out and headed back to the Dockyard.
The Dockyard. Monday November 21st 1511hrs
I had some very specific tasks for my second visit. One of which was to see if I could pick up a contact number for the two Daves. Their assistance, if I could obtain it, might prove pivotal in my ability to investigate this case. I would speak with Alan and the other tour guides on the various ships and attractions certain that someone would be able to furnish me with a number for them.
I also planned to have a good look around the Dockyard itself. It was a big place with lots of buildings. I would be here at night and trying to evade the security, so a good knowledge of the layout would be my ally. I wanted to see the security for that matter. I spotted a pair of them ahead of me, moving away from me toward buildings at the far end of the facility. I followed.
They were both big men, taller than me and had an ex-forces look about them. They were walking ahead of me which denied me the chance to see their features. I wondered if they would also be Eastern European.
There were crowds of people for a Monday afternoon in November. I had no idea the Royal Historic Dockyard was so popular. I moved through them, trying to memorise the position of the buildings relative to each other and the river and making note of little alleyways that ran between some of the buildings, but which were not visible until one walked right in front of them. I hoped it would not come to pass, but there existed a very real chance that I would be spotted by the security at some point and have to evade them. Knowing which turn led where might prove invaluable and I like to be prepared for the worst.
The pair of security guards I was following met with two more that rounded a corner just ahead of them. The two new men were facing toward me and both possessed the blockish features I associated with Eastern European men. They too looked well-trained as if all four were part of a military unit.
After a few exchanged words they separated, the two I had been following continuing on the way they had been going.
Using the mental map in my head, they were heading straight for the rigging room. A guess that proved to be correct as a sign declaring rigging room became legible as I neared it. They went inside with me following no more than a few yards behind. I approached the door they had gone through intending to peek inside and catch them doing something incriminating. Would careful observation reveal something?
The answer to that question was no as the rigging room turned out to be full of tourists. A tour was in fact in full flow, the gentleman giving it gesticulating wildly as he explained what the piece of equipment behind him did. I joined the back of the small crowd for a while.
The rigging room was long. Like really long. Its original purpose to craft the long ropes that would control Royal Navy warships back in the day when they had sails. Running down the length of it was a contraption weaving and winding the rope together. It wasn’t making a lot of noise, but there was certainly enough to drown out any whispers that might be there to hear. That was why they could only be heard at night when the machine was off. Another task for me tonight then.
While I was listening, I lost sight of the two security guards I had followed in. They were no longer in the room so far as I could tell although it was possible they were behind one of the pieces of equipment further down the room.
I moved on, looking for them. ‘Please stay with the tour group, sir.’ Called the guide.
&n
bsp; I stopped, caught in indecision. If I ignored him, he would likely call after me again and I did not wish to draw attention to myself. Instead, I went back outside, leaving the rigging room behind. I would be back soon enough.
I wandered around some more, orientating myself and trying to remember the buildings and the surface beneath my feet. A lot of the streets between the buildings were paved with old, worn cobble stones, their dull grey blockish tops looking very much at home as the entire vista appeared to have been frozen in time. In several places though, the cobbles had been replaced by tarmac. The look, sound and feel of it was not only different but seemed wrong. Like fitting an amplifier to a flute, to me one thing did not go with the other. I could only assume the cobbles had to be taken up at some point during the 20th century and budget at the time dictated a cheap solution be employed to repair the hole. It would have been before the Dockyard was recognised as a national treasure so might have occurred just before it closed and had been considered a huge drain on the economy.
Whatever the case, there were only three places that I found the tarmac, so if I did end up running away from the guards at any point it was something I could use to work out where I was.
I walked back to the ships that were sitting in dry dock by the river’s edge. They were the main tourist attraction, at least that was my understanding from talking to my father. He took tours around the submarine mostly, a cold war artefact he had once lived in for months at a time.
I spotted Alan. He had clearly spotted me first as he was heading toward me with Fred, Stuart and a new man I had not met yet.
‘Young Mr Michaels.’ Alan said in greeting. ‘This is Boy George.’ He introduced the new man. ‘We call him that on account of he is the young one on the crew and because he is so pretty that he must be a wooftah.’
‘You can suck my plums you miserable, ugly old git.’ Replied Boy George. George, assuming that was his actual name, couldn’t have been a day younger than sixty, but if that was his age, he probably was the youngest one of them by a good margin. He was my height at around six feet tall and it was obvious he would have been aftershave model material a couple of decades ago with a chiselled jawline, piercing blue eyes and a mop of blonde hair. The hair was mostly grey now, but the looks had not left him. I had no intention of asking about his sexual orientation.
Instead, I shook his hand. ‘Tempest Michaels. Good to meet you.’
‘You’re going to help us find out what is going on here?’ He asked.
‘Something like that.’ I answered. ‘I will be investigating. My only real purpose is to find out what happened to my father, but I understand there are ghosts here and that usually means someone is doing something they ought not be doing. If I stumble across one thing while investigating the other, then so be it.’
Alan spoke up. ‘Don’t forget to enlist our help when the time is right, young Mr. Michaels. I know you was Army, but we can forgive you for that and work with you this once.’
‘He was Army?’ Echoed Boy George. ‘Goodness, you’d never know to look at him, would you?’
Banter between the various arms of the services was normal. Stepping into a Navy environment I had expected some nonsense to surface and here it was. Oddly enough it was almost always the Royal Navy boys that started it, spouting off about being the senior service as if there hadn’t been armies first. The individual Regiments all had names like The Duke of York’s Regiment or the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment as they were raised and paid for by Lords as fealty to their king. It was a proud mark of stature to have a Regiment of soldiers at the nation’s disposal. Who could afford a Navy though? The Royal Navy was created through taxing the nation, so as a singular service the Navy did indeed come into existence first. It was just several hundred years after the armies were formed but the Navy boys tended to brush over that inconvenient bit of information. By comparison, the Royal Airforce were so new the paint was still drying on the planes they flew, and they tended to stay quiet.
I wouldn’t normally rise to the bait, but I recognised that they wanted the banter. ‘Really? You old knackered turds want to trade insults just because I didn’t feel like hiding two hundred miles offshore and went to wherever the action was instead of working on my tan? Tell me, what was the second world war like for you?’
They all grinned. ‘You’re going to fit right in.’ Said Alan.
‘I need a number for the two Daves. Or at least one number for one of them. I might need to enlist their assistance.’ I didn’t say that I might be sneaking around the Dockyard at night. The fewer people that knew my plan the better.
Boy George whipped out his phone and gave me a contact number for Dave Saunders. I would try it shortly and see if I could meet with him before he started work tonight.
I thanked the chaps and turned to move away. Alan caught my right arm in a vice-like grip. ‘Don’t forget. We can help.’ His eyes were boring into mine. The three other men came to stand beside him. ‘We have… what was it the chap on the film said? Oh yes, a particular set of skills.’ Once again, I noted just how intense Alan was and wondered again just what he had done in the Navy.
I assured them I was just going to quietly conduct an investigation and was unlikely to need any help unless I needed some questions answered. As I shook each of them by the hand, they drifted back to their stations and were immediately gobbled up by tourists with questions.
Off to one side, away from the stream of human traffic, I dialled the number Boy George had given me.
‘Dave Saunders.’ A man’s voice answered.
I launched into a quick explanation, ‘Mr Saunders. My name is Tempest Michaels. I am the son of Michael Michaels, one of the tour guides at the Dockyard. Are you aware that he was attacked and injured recently at the dockyard?’
‘Here, are you that ghost detective bloke?’
‘Yup. That’s me.’
‘I heard about you. What can I do for you?’
This was off to a helpful start. ‘I may need your help. Can we meet tonight before you start your shift?’
‘I’m free now if that is convenient.’ He replied straight away. I took his address in Gillingham, thanked him and promised to arrive in the next thirty minutes. I checked my watch when I disconnected: 1612hrs.
It was dark. The sun had been starting to get low when I arrived. Now floodlights high above the street were illuminating the main tourist areas and more lights set into the ground were highlighting the old buildings. The Dockyard took on a romantic tone in the dark, but I hoped the lighting would be switched off once the tourists left to preserve electricity. There was far too much light for me to sneak about. I would be visible from one end of the Dockyard to the other like a dancer on a stage being tracked by a spotlight.
I would find out soon enough. It was time to go, but as I headed back to the carpark, wishing I had been able to secure a job on the cleaning crew and thus not need to sneak about tonight, a familiar voice called out to get my attention.
I turned to see Big Ben approaching. What the hell was he doing here?
Cleaning Crew. Monday, November 21st 2000hrs
Several hours later, I nodded to Dave Saunders as we filed out of the briefing room. Big Ben and I were new, so we had been assigned to work with two of the longer serving cleaners, two Ukrainian ladies named Anyanka and Anna.
If you are wondering how it is that we came to find ourselves on the cleaning crew after I had failed to secure employment, well… I guess you don’t know much about Big Ben. He had asked me the name of the lady that did the hiring and firing and once he was off the phone he had driven to the Dockyard, asked for her in an insistent way and then seduced her in about ten seconds flat. He had finished the deed and was leaving when he had spotted me.
I still didn’t know quite why his smile and a few words were enough to make ladies throw their knickers in the air, but it worked ninety-nine percent of the time and he was at it again now because the cleaning crew were almost entirely fe
male. The three men out of the forty cleaners, if one didn’t count Big Ben and me, were almost pensionable age, so my tall, handsome colleague, and to a lesser extent even I, were getting eyed up a lot by the ladies around us as the supervisor, also female, handed out the assignments.
The supervisor was something different though. Standing roughly five feet nine inches in flat shoes, she was almost as broad as she was tall, but it was all muscle. Like the head of security, she looked like a bodybuilder combined with a strong man competitor. Even her jaw muscles appeared to be developed. I was impressed because of the effort, determination, focus and sacrifice that went into transforming one’s body like that, but I was equally horrified at the same time. To me it was not an attractive look. I could barely tell she was a she. From behind I would have assumed it was a man with a lady’s hairstyle.
Pasha had eyed Big Ben and me suspiciously but had made no comment about our employment yet. She had made it clear we were not being trusted with even a simple task though, which was why we had chaperones. However, I had seen the faces of the two ladies we had been paired with when Pasha made her announcement. They were over the moon at the prospect. Next to me, Big Ben had winked at them, eliciting a giggle and some nudging between the pair. It was already clear that Big Ben’s plans and theirs were about to align.
Our first task was to empty out the many bins located around the open areas of the dockyard. Anna had a map which showed where all the bins were located. The task seemed simple enough but there was a list of things to do after that.
I wondered how fast we could get the work done and how we would lose the two girls so we could snoop about by ourselves. Big Ben had a plan for that as well. As we left the room, he delivered a playful nudge to Anyanka’s hip with his own, then whispered in her ear.
She giggled at him and danced away as he tried to grab her. Anyanka was a thickset woman with wide hips and a roll of fat hanging over her belt. In her later thirties or perhaps a little older, she was no kind of catch and way below the batting average for Big Ben.