The church was not what had drawn Hannah’s eye, though – there was a queue of people outside it, stretching right around the block. Some had animals with them. Several were in fancy dress, although they might not have considered it so. One man was riding a donkey. The donkey was wearing a tutu.
‘Oh my …’
‘Yes,’ said Grace, with a nod. ‘Loon Day.’
CHAPTER 12
Simon passed the pad and pen back and forth between his hands, wiping the sweat from his palms on to his jeans. He’d never done this before. He was finally working on a proper story – it was so exciting.
Earlier, a reporter from the Evening News had arrived, taken a few details from one of the PCs and then slouched off to the pub. Not Simon. He’d got the tip-off from his ‘network’. Well, from Keith who he’d been in chess club with. Keith’s sister was in the police and she said they’d found the body of a homeless guy at the end of the night shift and there was something really weird about it. ‘Really weird’ was what Simon lived for. If he got a scoop, an exclusive of his very own, Mr Banecroft would have to let him join the staff of The Stranger Times, and that was all he’d ever wanted.
It was now 3 p.m. and he’d been on the case for six hours. When he’d got here, he’d taken as many pictures as he could from behind the cordon. When he’d been told to bugger off by a grumpy policeman, he had informed him that he was a reporter for The Stranger Times and that he was covering the story. This wasn’t technically true, of course, but Simon considered it to be positive reinforcement rather than a lie. It wasn’t as if it had helped, anyway. The officer had then told him to go away using a word rather stronger than ‘bugger’.
Undeterred, Simon had gone looking for more information. He’d bought some Styrofoam cups and Hobnobs to supplement the contents of the massive flask of tea his mum insisted on giving him every morning. When he wrote his book of advice for the budding journalist – as he no doubt one day would – his first tip would be that nothing got you further with the Great British Public than a brew and a biscuit.
DI Sturgess stretched out his back; it ached from the amount of time he’d spent looking down at the crime scene, asking questions, grilling the SOCOs. The whole thing was a mess. An utter mess. After it had become clear that the victim must have somehow hit the wall from a distance, he’d sent a couple of PCs to the far side of the canal to look for signs of a struggle.
They’d found some spots of blood, but on a paving stone which, by that time, must’ve been walked over by a thousand pairs of feet on their way to work or elsewhere. He’d taken a sample and sent it to the lab for analysis, but he wasn’t holding out much hope. If DI Clarke was remotely competent maybe they’d have had more to go on, but the lazy good-for-nothing had done bugger all except wait for Sturgess to take the investigation off his hands.
There’d been a few of these cases. Not quite like this one, but, well … strange. He’d had that murder down on Deansgate a few years ago. The victim, a young lad of only nineteen, had been found in the middle of a nightclub dance floor. He was as dry as a bone, but the cause of death was drowning. Sturgess had pushed and pushed on that, but it’d been weird. He had kicked over rocks and then, out of nowhere, the medical examiner’s report was changed and the cause of death was given as a heart attack brought about by dehydration owing to a bad batch of ecstasy. It hadn’t made any sense, and when he’d pushed it further he’d been warned off. Then he’d been reassigned and told to leave it well enough alone. As the DCI had said at the time, they had enough open murder cases without needing to reinvestigate the closed ones.
Since then, there had been a couple of other strange cases. Modern policing was all about statistics and nobody else wanted the unsolvables, so they tended to come to him – along with awkward questions and the potential to come out of them looking bad. In four years, Sturgess’s previously meteoric ascent in the force had rather stalled. He was bad at knowing what was good for him.
Today, he’d asked for twenty officers to canvass the area over the course of a couple of days. He’d been given four, plus a couple for crowd control. It hadn’t been said, but in the currency of death a homeless guy was spare change. If a student dies, the city looks bad. Things must be seen to be done or else Mummy and Daddy will send little Jeremy elsewhere to splurge their money on a useless education. A homeless junkie, though – dying is just what they do. Nobody wanted to hear about unusual circumstances.
He could feel one of his headaches coming on. He’d sent Wilkerson off to canvass the nearest two buildings, but he wasn’t expecting much.
Sturgess glanced around. When he’d been working the case last year, there’d been a … He hated even thinking it, but there had been something odd. Everywhere he’d gone, he’d experienced a creeping sense that he was being watched. There had never been any evidence to back up the suspicion, but the feeling had stayed with him for weeks. It had got so bad that he’d considered taking his first holiday in six years. Gradually, after a few weeks, the feeling had started to fade. Or perhaps a certain level of paranoia had just become part of his daily life. Still, he glanced around again. Nothing to be seen.
The only person who seemed to be paying him any attention was a spotty kid in glasses on the other side of the crime-scene tape. Sturgess lifted it up and ducked under it, nodding to one of the PCs as he did so.
‘DI Sturgess, Simon Brush from The Stranger Times,’ the kid introduced himself as Sturgess breezed past.
‘The who from the what?’ Sturgess kept walking towards where his car was parked.
‘Simon Brush from The Stranger Times,’ he repeated.
Sturgess stopped. ‘Wait, that joke weekly newspaper thing? Shouldn’t you be off hunting Nessie or some such crap?’
The kid looked back at him with a face full of earnestness and acne. ‘We report on all manner of unexplained phenomena across the globe, that is correct. Have you any statement to make regarding the nature of the occurrence last night?’
Sturgess started walking again. ‘Give me a break.’
The kid scampered to keep up. ‘I have witness testimony that says a creature might have been involved.’
Sturgess stopped again and noticed a woman staring at them, having caught the last sentence. He gave her a smile he wasn’t feeling and waited for her to move out of earshot.
‘All right, kid, who put you up to this? Was it that prick Clarke?’
‘I don’t – ehm – nobody put me up to anything. I’m a reporter from The—’
‘Yeah, you said. Look, I know you like playing silly games, but a man is dead and I happen to take that seriously. Do not try to turn it into some bullshit sideshow or I will have your arse for obstruction of justice faster than you can say “abominable snowman”, are we clear?’
The kid looked as if he might cry. ‘As a member of the press, I am entitled to investigate goings-on as—’
‘Fine.’ Sturgess sighed and looked away. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what I told the real press earlier. A fifty-two-year-old man has been found dead in the Castlefield area. At this time we have not ruled out foul play. The Greater Manchester Police are pursuing several lines of enquiry and, as always, we welcome any assistance the general public can give us. Now off you pop, sonny, I’m a busy man.’
Sturgess strode towards his car and rubbed his hand over his eyes. He was definitely getting one of his headaches.
Ghost of Bowie Keen to Record New Material
Good news for fans of David Bowie: Jonathan Warwick, 38, from South Shields, claims that the ghost of the rock legend has possessed him and wants to go into the studio to record new work. According to Warwick, ‘I woke up one morning feeling funny and I had no idea what it was until I picked up my lad Darren’s guitar and started strumming away. I’ve never even played guitar before. Turns out I’ve only been possessed by David bloody Bowie and he wants to record an album.’
Mr Warwick, however, does not share the enthusiasm of hardcore Bowie fans. He claim
s that he himself has no time for the Thin White Duke’s music: ‘I’m a big fan of hardcore techno – y’know, something you can get off your face to and just bounce about. Mind you, I like that “Jean Genie” song – I know that one.’
Mr Warwick’s family say that his behaviour has been entirely out of character and that he had previously shown no interest in becoming a musical legend.
‘I can’t be doing with all of this nonsense,’ says Mr Warwick. ‘I’ve got plumbing jobs on. If I’m hanging around the studio, engaging in free association, boundary-pushing musical experimentation, who is going to get Mary Daniels’ downstairs loo flushing properly? She can’t get upstairs these days with her hips, and her downstairs is causing her no end of problems.’
The Bowie estate for their part have clarified that the star is still dead and is unlikely to have possessed a plumber from South Shields.
CHAPTER 13
Hannah had always liked to consider herself a people person. She was now realizing how badly she had misjudged herself.
She had spent the last two hours at the business end of a conveyor belt of humanity. It had been relentless. Grace had given each member of the queue a numbered raffle ticket – apparently there had been some altercations over queue-jumping in the past. As each person sat down in turn in front of Hannah, she took their ticket, and then their name and contact details – when they were willing to give them, at least – and then she listened to the tale they had to tell, the weird and wonderful thing they believed the rest of the world would be dying to know.
She was stationed in reception at a foldaway desk and chair, with a pad, pen and egg timer. Hannah had told Grace she wouldn’t be using the timer, as it seemed very rude to limit people in that way. Grace had merely raised an eyebrow before going to hide behind her own desk. As she’d explained, she was admin staff and not a member of the ‘journalism team’ like Hannah, so it wasn’t her job to gather stories. Hannah had felt a flush of pride – back in the day, she had always wanted to be a journalist.
How naive the two-hours-ago version of her had been. This was to journalism what working in an abattoir was to fine dining. Hannah had no idea how long the queue was now; she could see only the next five people in the chairs at the other end of the room and the two on the sofa. Every time a seat was vacated, another person appeared from the top of the stairs to fill it. It was like trying to dig your way through water.
She had started using the egg timer after only the fourth person – a man who’d explained how everything from the weather to the price of a Pot Noodle was down to the Jews – and just before the woman who’d invented her own language, which she claimed everyone on the planet could understand instantly. It involved repeating the phrase ‘oooohhhhh’ in a series of subtle variations. It seemed to have been developed through the close watching of old Carry On films.
Hannah watched the egg-timer sand as it slowly – oh, so slowly – trickled from the top chamber to the bottom. The woman opposite was called Mrs Deveraux, and she had launched into a stream-of-consciousness rant about her husband as soon as she’d sat down. She was in her seventies and wore one of those hats that you never saw on anyone younger. It’d taken Hannah five minutes to get a word in edgeways – just to get her contact details. The most impressive thing about the woman was that she never seemed to draw breath. She spoke in one never-ending sentence.
‘… and he never picks up after himself and he’s always going down the pub and he never invites me, in fact he leaves if I turn up, and he expects me to darn his socks and he never cuts his bloody toenails, which is why he always needs me to fix his socks, and he doesn’t maintain the car properly, which is why I had to fix the fan belt last month, and I had to take all that stuff up to the attic and I had to take it back down again when I changed my mind, and he never shuts up, he’s always yack-yack-yacking – he just doesn’t listen – and he never buys me flowers and—’
‘Mrs Deveraux,’ said Hannah, louder than she’d wanted to. ‘Sorry, but what exactly is the story you think the readers of The Stranger Times would be interested in?’
Mrs Deveraux shot Hannah a look of outrage. ‘Well, I was trying to tell you that next door’s cat is a ghost, but screw you if you won’t let a woman get a word in edgeways!’
And with that, she was gone, storming out of the office like a talkative tornado.
Hannah let out a sigh and looked over to the row of chairs – a man holding a chicken was standing up and looking at her excitedly. His face fell as Grace walked past and gave him the universally understood signal for ‘one minute’. She leaned over Hannah’s desk, blocking the rest of the room’s view of her. Hannah took the opportunity to place her head on the nice cool surface of the table.
‘How are you holding up?’ asked Grace.
‘Let me put it this way: you remember that scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy Dufresne escapes through a pipe filled with—’
‘Yes,’ interrupted Grace. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, it’s like that. Without the escape bit.’
‘Hang in there. The worst of it is over.’
Hannah lifted her head slightly. ‘You’re lying to me, aren’t you?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘I’m on ticket’ – Hannah raised her head just enough to look at her pad – ‘forty-nine. How many more are there to go?’
‘Actually,’ said Grace, sounding chipper, ‘hardly any.’
Hannah lifted her head again, her eyes full of hope. ‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ said Grace. ‘Wait, you’re on the yellows now, right?’
‘There are yellow tickets?!’
Grace winced. ‘Not that many.’
‘You really are lying to me now.’
‘Look at it this way …’ Grace stopped.
‘What?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I cannot think of anything. I really thought something positive would come to me.’
Hannah put her forehead back down on the table. There was a jangle of bracelets as Grace placed her hands on either side of Hannah’s head and gently raised it up. ‘OK, come on now. You are tougher than this. You are a fighter. You got through a terrible marriage; you can get through this.’
‘Really? That’s your motivational gambit?’
‘Sorry, all of my husbands died loyal and decent men. I have not got a frame of reference for infidelity.’
‘Seriously, just stop.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
Hannah sighed. ‘Yeah, OK.’
‘That’s the spirit. And pick your face up – the man with number fifty has a chicken! Who does not love a chicken?’
Certainly not the man with ticket number fifty. It turned out he really did love a chicken.
The next three hours passed in a tortuous blur of insanity and halitosis.
Fifty-seven pink – a short man with a wide grin and beady eyes: ‘I seen a UFO – yours for ten grand.’
‘I’m sorry, as a matter of policy The Stranger Times does not pay for stories.’ Hannah was only guessing on that front, but seeing as they barely paid for biscuits, it seemed like a reasonably educated guess.
‘Sure you don’t. Wink.’ He actually said ‘wink’.
‘We really don’t.’
‘Right. Wink.’
‘Will you please stop saying “wink”? It’s really annoying.’
The smile crumbled. ‘I have to. I had a thing as a kid – means I can’t wink.’
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry.’
‘Yeah. It’s quite a story. Yours for five grand.’
‘No. As I said, we don’t—’
‘Ten grand, I seen a ghost.’
‘No.’
‘I seen a tiger eating a ghost – fifteen grand.’
‘How would a … Never mind, it’s still a no.’
‘Five grand – I had sex with a ghost.’
‘A minute ago you wanted to charge me ten grand just because you’d seen one.’
‘See, we’re negotiating. You’re an astute businesswoman and, may I say, a very attractive one at that. If you’re free Thursday—’
‘No.’
‘To what bit?’
‘All of it.’
‘Is there anyone else I can speak to?’
‘Sure. My boss.’
‘Excellent. Well, can I—’
‘It’ll cost you ten grand, though.’
Seventy-three pink – a woman in her forties, long black hair, dangly earrings.
‘And what is the story you’d like to share?’
‘I have recently discovered that I was Cleopatra in a past life.’
‘I see.’
‘By which I mean Cleopatra the Seventh Philopator, the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. Diplomat, naval commander, polyglot and medical author.’
‘Yes, that’s the one I thought you meant.’
‘It’s really quite extraordinary.’
‘I can imagine. Can I ask, did you happen to find this out from a medium called Mrs Bryce who recently opened up in Stockport?’
‘Yes, as it happens, I did.’
‘I thought so. You’re the third person I’ve spoken to today whom Mrs Bryce has assured they were Cleopatra in a past life.’
‘Really? Fascinating. Well, she did have a very full life, didn’t she?’
Hannah was distracted by a collective gasp from those waiting on the chairs, and looked across to see the cause of the disturbance.
The second most striking thing about the man who had just walked into the room was his long white dreadlocks, which were so long he wore them wrapped around his neck like a scarf. The most striking thing about him was that the dreadlocks were the only thing he was currently wearing.
Hannah turned to the reception desk for Grace, but she must have nipped off somewhere while the last gentlemen was explaining how he was haunted by the ghost of Macbeth, the fictional character.
The Stranger Times Page 10
