by steve higgs
I let the boys out into the garden and watched them water my lawn before shutting them back inside promising to return in a couple of hours to take them out for a proper walk.
I locked up and left the house with my bag of kit heading for the address I had found for Liam Goldhind - the chap that had found the second victim.
His address was listed as 134 Halsted Drive, Cooper Estate Chatham. This was miles from where he had found the body, but the body had been found near a park in Aylesford, so my assumption was that he was walking the dog there instead of around the streets at home. The Cooper Estate is a shit hole, even by Medway town’s standards. Lawn ornaments were white goods and cars on bricks. I wouldn’t live there for free. In my Army days, they used to send soldiers in there on a Saturday night to toughen them up before Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, that is where the man lived so that was where I had to go.
Best brave pants on.
Cooper Estate Chatham. Thursday September 23rd 1552hrs
I parked right in front of his house. It was 1552hrs on a Monday and any decent person would be at work. Of course, any decent person would not be living here. It was benefits country, so I expected to find him at home with Simon the dog, drinking Supertennents and smoking rollies. Okay, I am stereotyping to an extreme, but I am probably still right. The house was a mid-terrace that had been painted what had probably once been white or cream, but the paint was now mostly on the concrete yard at the front of the house having peeled off. I was familiar with this design of house, there were many thousands of them in the Medway area. Many of my childhood friends had grown up in them so I had seen the inside whenever I had visited. Probably two bedrooms with a box room and small toilet upstairs with the stairway right in front of the door when it opened. I hated the design personally and couldn’t imagine how it must feel to live in such a drab house in such a drab area.
Up the short driveway I passed discarded pizza boxes, a few pieces of motorcycle and a refrigerator. There was also a shiny, heavily modified Mitsubishi Evo VIII. I guess that is where he put his money because he certainly didn’t spend it on the house. The door was shut but looked like it had given up on life a long time ago. The doorbell was smashed, so I knocked.
The door erupted in a cacophony of barking as Simon the dog did his best to eat it. My dogs did the same of course, but in a far less convincing manner. They also went away when I instructed them to do so. This was not happening for Mr Goldhind.
From behind the door the dog was still barking and growling, but the effect was now joined by the swearing of Liam as he chastised the dog for its exuberance.
With a final ‘Shut the fuck up and get in there.’ Liam slammed a door somewhere deeper into the house and opened the front door.
I smiled and extended my hand for the obligatory shake saying ‘Good afternoon. My name is Tempest Michaels. I’m a private investigator looking into the Vampire murders.’ I fetched a card from the tin in my bag to give him. He had not spoken directly to me yet and was now looking down at the card which he held with both hands.
Liam Goldhind was a catch. Less than five feet six inches tall with unkempt hair, maybe fifty lbs overweight on his short frame wearing a stained t-shirt and dirty jeans. He wore no shoes and his socks had holes in them.
‘Who is it?’ came a voice from within the house.
‘I don’t fucking know yet do I?’ his response.
‘What?’ the voice again.
‘Mind your own business. You old bag.’ he muttered so that she could not hear.
‘I hoped I might be able to ask you just a few questions about the second victim.’ I said pressing on, ‘I believe you were the one that found her.’
‘That’s right. Well, actually Simon found her. Simon is my dog.’ he explained. ‘I caught him lifting his leg on her.’ Liam looked up for the first time since he had opened the door. I decided I preferred looking at the top of his head.
‘Well, I do not wish to take up too much of your time, I am sure you have better things to do.’ I said while fishing out my notebook and pen. ‘If I can just start by asking what position she was in when you found her?’
‘I have photos if you like.’ he interrupted me. He pulled a phone out of a back pocket, pressed a few buttons and there it was, the crime scene shot from several angles, distant and close-up shots including shots of the wound. The poor lady was lying on her back but not peacefully as if asleep, more as if she had been brutally murdered and thrown away like a rag doll. Her left leg was bent underneath her, her coat was still done up but her tights were ripped in several places. There were bits of twig or leaf in her hair, her skin was deathly pale and her still open eyes stared unseeing to the right.
The wound itself, I observed was a bloody hole rather than two puncture marks. So far as I knew no pictures of any of the victims had been published although details of the deceased persons had been. My prevailing thought was that this was particularly nasty. I had seen death plenty of times in my career, not that I had ever killed anyone, but this was still pretty grim to look at.
‘You want me to tooth them over to you?’ Liam asked.
‘Yes, please.’
‘Well no chance mate, but I will sell them to you at twenty quid a shot.’ No great surprise there.
My head snapped up at the sound of someone behind him. His mother was my initial guess, but then I determined that she did not look old enough; forty perhaps to his twenty-six or twenty-seven. Older girlfriend then, which would probably make this the house she got in the divorce (assuming there had been one) and he was the new, younger stud muffin. She was about as butt ugly as he was.
‘I asked you who it was, Liam. You should speak more lovingly to me. You did last night.’ she purred at him in a voice that I am sure was supposed to be sexy but had made my nuts shrink and try to hide behind each other. She leaned up against him putting a basketball sized boob on his arm where it was bent to hold his phone. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked me.
‘Tempest Michaels.’ I introduced myself.
I was just about to explain what I was doing when her eyes bugged out at me ‘Tempest! It’s me Sarah Griffiths, of course I’m not Sarah Griffiths anymore, I’m Sarah Campbell now and before that I was Sarah Heaton.’ She looked at me expectantly as if this was a big reveal that should mean something to me. ‘We went to school together.’ she explained further. ‘Edgewear Road Juniors in Rochester. You wore glasses then and I was a little skinnier than now. You sat next to Darren Smith in the last year with Mr Baker.’
Okay, so she clearly knew me, but I was going to have to bluff this and what did “a little skinnier” mean exactly?’ Sarah was overweight, but to describe her as such does little to give justice to what must be quite a dedication to food. Sarah looked like she would use a boomerang to put her belt on so wide was the arc prescribed by her belly and arse. Her hair was lank, greasy looking and lifelessly brown, her face a confusion of tiny red veins, laughter lines and pudgy fatness. Even her eyebrows looked overweight.
I could neither confirm nor deny her claim that we had been in school together. However, I believed wholeheartedly that I would remember her if she looked anything like this. Despite my repulsion, I selected ‘Hi Sarah, how is life treating you?’ from my list of possible responses.
‘I’m fine, Tempest. I have this lovely house,’ she gestured ‘and it is all free from the government on account of I have a spacky kid.’
I stood staring at her for a moment wondering if she would say “Only joking” or not. But she didn’t, and I could not work out whether I was more horrified that she had: A. used the word to refer to a person, B. that she had used it to refer to her own child or, C. that she was actually willing to brag about it because it meant she could avoid work. My assessment of her dropped several more points and it was pretty low to start with.
‘I have a handsome man to look after me and I don’t have to do anything all day long. I love being me. You sure grew up big and s
trong looking. You were skinny in school.’
‘I grew up. I filled out. I joined the Army.’
‘You sure did. Come in for a beer,’ she suggested/demanded making urgent come in gestures. ‘It would be great to catch up.’
Not a chance love.
The interior of the house looked like it had been decorated in the style of a Mogadishu slum during a particularly unpleasant fight between warring gangs. Rubbish in bags was strewn at the base of the stairs. On the stairs various items of clothing had been discarded along with about twenty items hooked on the end of the banister rail. The carpet, what little I could see of it through the hall was filthy. I am not a social worker and I have standards, so in the street I stay.
‘Thanks Sarah. Perhaps another time. I have a lot that I need to do today. I am investigating the Vampire murders case and Liam here is assisting me with my enquiries.’
‘No, I’m not. I’m selling you pictures if you want to pay for them mate.’ stated Liam in his annoying tone.
‘What? You are trying to charge an old school-friend of mine for shit pictures that you shouldn’t have taken anyway?’
This might actually work out for me. I was going to bargain with the douchebag, but would have ended up paying something. Maybe I would get them for free after all.
‘Are you mental bitch? These are worth money.’
‘Do you want to hump your hand for the next week?’ wonderful picture now in my head. ‘A word Liam.’ Sarah demanded inclining her head back into the house. ‘Now.’ she insisted when he failed to move.
They retreated, bickering as they went. I will not provide a detailed narrative of their discussion, but I can say that it was heated and short and contained a surprisingly unbalanced number of words starting with either an F or a C. They had gone through a door as they argued, but Sarah re-emerged now with his phone in her hand. Behind her and further into the house a door slammed. Hard.
‘Here you are, Tempest.’ she said handing the phone to me. ‘Liam can be a proper wanker when he wants.’
‘Thank you, Sarah.’ The phone was simple to operate, so although I was not familiar with the make the icons were the same universal ones that I had on my phone. The photographs were in a folder labelled Dead lady which made finding them easy. ‘Can you send them across to me please?’
Sarah took the phone back to fiddle with it and we engaged in chit chat about school while the files were transferred.
I had not wanted to linger outside the house so bid Sarah goodbye and escaped as soon I could. She waved me goodbye with repeated requests to return when I had more time for a proper catch up. I dodged giving any kind of commitment as there was no way I was ever going back but had not wanted to vocalise my disgust.
My car was still in one piece, but I suspected only because I had never actually been more than five metres from it.
Fifteen minutes later I was sat in my car checking through the picture in a supermarket car park halfway back to my house. The pictures were solid gold. Liam might be a thoroughly unpleasant chap, but these were as good as a crime scene photographer would have taken. There were over fifty in total. I gave them a cursory inspection, but they needed proper scrutiny, a task I would have to tackle later as I still had a lot to do today including getting ready to deal with the Cranfield’s Poltergeist.
I checked my watch: 1653hrs. Time to feed the dogs. I fired up the engine and was home in a few minutes. Bull and Dozer were happy to see me as always and buzzed around my feet as I scooped kibble into their little bowls.
I let them out to scare the pigeons off the lawn and sat out on my decking to watch them snuffle about in the undergrowth.
Tomorrow I would track down friends and relatives of the victims and visit crimes scenes and see if I could wheedle some better information out of contacts in the police force and papers.
Tonight though, I had a Poltergeist to catch.
The Cranfields’ Poltergeist. Friday September 24th 0213hrs
I had convinced the Cranfields that the most likely culprit was someone with a key, entering and leaving without needing to force entry and that the best way for me to catch the perpetrator was to set them as bait and lie in wait. So, it was now 0213hrs and I was sat in their living room in the dark. I had tucked myself into one corner where no light from outside would illuminate me. I was dressed in my standard rip-stop, hard-wearing, black, combat gear and boots and had blackened my face for good measure. I had not brought any weapons with me as I felt it unlikely I would need to use them and because bringing them shows intend to use in the eyes of the law. Should the perpetrator elect to fight I did not want there to be weapon inflicted injuries to explain to the police.
As agreed with the Cranfields I had snuck into their house by entering from the street behind and jumping over a fence. There was a slight risk that I might be spotted and cause alarm, but there seemed a greater chance that the house might be watched by the culprit so I wanted anyone watching to think it was just the Cranfields here by entering undetected.
The clock kept ticking on despite the bent hands. The annoying tick, tick, tick had been keeping me awake but it was late now and with nothing to do I was beginning to fail in my fight against sleep. My eyes were getting heavy and I really wanted to get up and move about as my back was stiffening from keeping still. I felt that I needed to remain quiet and motionless though.
A few minutes later I realised I had dozed off and as I snapped my head back up I heard a noise coming from the fire place. No. It was to the left of that. The fire place was quite ornamental and had a well-polished brass coal scuttle one side and an equally well polished set of brass tools for tending the fire on the other. Above the aperture was a brass hood which, unsurprisingly was well polished. To either side were built in cupboards where perhaps a younger Winston had fashioned storage and shelves in the two recesses created by the prominent chimney breast.
I did not know what I could hear but it sounded much like someone patiently moving things about inside the cupboard. I resisted the temptation to get up to investigate and was rewarded by the cupboard door opening slowly outwards a few moments later. In the shadows created by the street light a few doors down I could now see a head emerging followed by the rest of a man’s body.
‘Wooooo.’ he said. ‘Wooooooo.’ As he clambered stealthily out of the cupboard and stood up.
‘Arrgggh, woooooo, arrrgggh!’ was his next sentence. He was making ridiculous, cartoonish ghost noises that should not have fooled a ten-year-old. However, he was both loud and confident.
He continued the general Wooooo Arrrgggh theme while kicking the sofa on the opposite side of the room from where I sat and beginning to tilt the pictures which hung on the wall behind it. I had instructed the Cranfields to stay in bed regardless of what they heard. Sat here now watching this idiot I was thankful that they had obeyed me as I could not hear their footsteps above me.
He was working steadily around the room and I was content to let him continue as I had two cameras placed high up on bookshelves recording the entire event. Dim light from the window revealed that the chap was perhaps mid to late thirties and five feet eight inches tall with a slight build. His hair was beginning to thin and he had a weak chin and big nose. He was wearing a tracksuit, the grey flannel type with elasticated cuffs at the ankle and wrist. I could see tattoos on his neck.
Knowing that it was not a poltergeist had meant it was always going to be some idiot and my first thought had been that someone was trying to scare them from their home for some kind of financial benefit. To rob them while they were out being an obvious motive. Since they had not been burgled at any point I had struck that theory from the list. Alternatively, I could believe that they were being persecuted over some family dispute. I had seen this before and it was usually a relative so my instant, but unspoken suspicion, was their son. He seemed likely to have a key and thus be able to achieve the unforced entry. Quite how this chap got in through the wall was a mystery still, but
not one that was going to be difficult to solve. I had seen a picture of their son and he was not only older and wider but also shorter and better looking.
I felt it was time to find out who this chap was.
He was moving around the room still having gone along the wall opposite the window tilting every picture and tipping a lamp over and was now in the corner by the light switch.
He tripped on something invisible in the dark and uttered a ghostly, ‘Bollocks!’ As he got up again.
He was about to move to the dresser where Barbara kept her nice ornaments and I did not want any further breakages. I elected to use minimal force in order to avoid problems with the police later, although I will admit I wrestled momentarily with the concept of whacking him with the solid oak paper rack next to the chair I was sat in.
As he stepped in front of the dresser with another good ‘Wooooooo!’ I stood up and in one fluid motion, planted my right foot solidly behind his back, grabbed him around both lateral muscles and using my body weight as a lever I turned him into a pendulum, swung him around and off his feet and threw him onto the sofa.
The next ‘Wooooo!’ changed halfway through to an ‘Aaarrrggg!’ and then into a ‘What the Fuuu’ before his face slammed into a cushion and silenced him.
‘Excuse me?’ I asked politely and calmly as I stepped to the wall and turned on the light. I then fixed him with the best menacing stare I could muster. Of course, menacing stares are not something one practices in front of a mirror so I just hoped it was menacing and that I didn’t just look like I needed to poo.
The man looked like he wanted to jump up and leg it. He had come to land face down against the back of the sofa so had rolled over onto his back and now had one leg over the end of the sofa and one leg on the floor. He was clutching his chest with one hand and breathing heavy. His face was white - like he had seen a ghost. I ha-harred to myself.
