by steve higgs
My own breakfast consisted of a spinach and mushroom omelette with sliced cold ham on the side and a glass of milk. The ingredients were store cupboard standards and I ate it several times a week in a bid to avoid carb and fat-loaded bacon or sausage toasted-sandwiches which is what I really wanted. Body fuelled up, I settled Bull in his favourite spot on the sofa, patted his head and with an instruction to be a good dog left him there. I glanced back as I exited the room, but he had already closed his eyes.
I parked the car back at Kent Predators and Prey Park at 0754hrs and climbed out into the cool September air. My right foot splashed into a puddle and I thanked myself for choosing the Caterpillar boots this morning and not the Italian-leather loafers.
The water dripped off my boot as I took my next step. There was only one other car in the car park which I felt safe to assume was Dr. Bryson's as it looked like crap and was still sporting a space-saver tyre from the puncture. The car was a mid-grey Vauxhall Astra that had seen much better days. It was tired and dirty, and most panels were either scratched or dented or both. The interior was likewise ruined, and the parcel shelf was missing so I could see the punctured wheel lying among typical boot detritus. I also noticed that the car was open as it was an old model that still had the pop-up knobs in the windows.
I checked the building and could see dim light from his office illuminating the foyer area but no other signs of life, so I moved around to stand between his car and mine, making my intentions less obvious. I slipped on a pair of contact gloves from my pocket and gently opened his door. I always kept some gloves in my pocket and had a box in the car just in case. They were great for making sure fingerprints were not left behind. It seemed that an alarm was highly unlikely although I reasoned that if it did go off, I could have claimed to have knocked it or tripped a motion sensor.
The interior smelled musty and vaguely of aftershave, it reminded me of the smell my grandfather's car use to have, old perhaps, yet somehow still manly. I was looking for the boot release which I spied on the driver's side footwell. I cautiously bent down to operate it, knowing that I could not easily explain accidentally opening a car and then its boot.
The boot popped audibly as if there was pressure pushing against it, or it was perhaps out of alignment and had to be forced closed each time. I checked the building for movement and satisfied there was none, I continued.
Quite what I expected to find I was unsure about, a nice big sign saying guilty would be nice, but before I could peer inside the now wide-open boot, Barry spoke.
From behind me a voice said, ‘It's not in there, Mr. Michaels.' I spun around startled, to find Dr. Barry Bryson Ph.D. stood no more than five feet away holding a shotgun tightly in both hands. It was pointed down at an angle rather than at me, but he was clenching it tight from the white showing on his knuckles and he looked both stressed and upset.
Forcing myself to steady my breathing and heart rate, I opened my mouth to respond and hoped that my voice would come out sounding calm. ‘What's not in there, Barry?' It had been a while since someone threatened me with a gun. However, it wasn't really something that one got used to with practice and I didn't like it.
‘The Big Foot suit, of course. That is what you were looking for, isn’t it?’ he said it as a statement, both hands still on the gun. ‘I don’t keep it in the car, too much chance of someone finding it.’
It was an immediate admission of guilt that I had not had to prompt or trick out of him. A tiny bubble of jubilance over the forthcoming paycheck died instantly in my chest as I remembered the shotgun. ‘Why, Barry? Why the dressing up and scaring people?'
‘Does it matter now? No one was supposed to get hurt, but they did, and it was my fault and now I can't eat or sleep or function.' He looked miserable, worse than the last time I saw him. Was he wracked by guilt? It seemed perfectly plausible, so then did that make him suicidal or homicidal? Dangerous either way with a shotgun in his hands.
‘How did you know?’
‘It was the footprint. The footprint was between the trees and it is autumn. There are fallen leaves everywhere. The only way you could have found that footprint was by clearing away the leaves and making it yourself.’
Looking at the floor, he nodded.
I shivered from the cool air I had not dressed for as I had expected to be inside. Barry was wearing a thick parka and heavy boots, so he was probably warm enough. If he had been outside for long though his hands might be getting cold and thus his reactions might be slow. If he elected to kill me to cover his tracks all he had to do was raise the barrel and shoot, a range of motion that might take half a second. It would be too little time for me to do anything to stop him. I took a half step forward and held my hands out to either side in a placating fashion. I focused on his eyes hoping I would see a decision there first.
Barry didn't move but the shotgun twitched upwards slightly. ‘Don't move,' he ordered.
‘Tell me what it was for, Barry,’ I tried. ‘If no one was supposed to get hurt then you won’t be found guilty of murder. If it was an accident, then we can get this cleared up. No one else needs to get hurt here.’
Especially me.
I angled my feet so that I could better push off from my right foot and lunge forward to meet him should he elect to attack, but before I could consider another move, he slumped his whole body. His shoulders dropped, and his hands appeared to get a foot closer to the floor. His eyes were staring blankly at nothing. He sagged for half a second and then in a single move he reversed the shotgun and swung the double barrels up towards his own head.
I still don’t remember consciously deciding to move but I crashed into him as the shotgun went off, my left hand instantly hot where I had grabbed the barrel. My left shoulder met with his chest and we pitched over into the mud as one.
I landed with my shoulder in his rib cage and heard the breath whoosh out of him. Left hand on the weapon, I whipped my right elbow around to connect with his head but missed and struck his throat instead. He went limp beneath me as any fight he may have had left him. I yanked the gun from his grip and rolled onto my knees next to him.
Wonderful adrenalin washed through my system, making me shake and feel sick. Barry was heaving and holding his throat, he posed no further danger, so I sat and watched while he slowly recovered. Gentle drizzle began to fall.
I wondered idly if anyone would react to the shot. It seemed unlikely in such a rural area where shotguns were common. I stood, broke the breach of the shotgun to eject the spent shells and moved to check what damage the shotgun had done. Barry had some carbon marks on the left side of his face where the shot had missed but got darned close to his skin. The blast would have taken his head clean off had he released the trigger under his chin.
‘Barry?' I called to get his attention. My ears were ringing from the noise of the shotgun, so I was probably speaking louder than I needed to. ‘Barry. Let's go inside and talk. I need a cup of tea and you need to get your head straight, so let's go and see if together we can make some sense of this.' Barry was looking at me from the floor. He was lying on his back still rubbing his throat, he didn't speak but he nodded, a brief dip of the head as if that was all he could manage. He didn't move though, and I let a minute pass.
I was about to reinforce the idea of moving when he rolled onto his side, then onto all fours and then onto his feet. I pointed with the shotgun and he trudged in front of me towards the park main entrance.
Pausing to fish in his coat pocket, Barry produced a large bunch of keys, selected one and opened the door. I followed him as he shuffled through the foyer and back towards his office. The kettle I had spied when I first visited must have been already full because he flicked it on without adding water and proceeded to organise two mugs and two teabags. He turned to face me with the sugar pot and a spoon. Wordlessly he enquired, and I declined, still leaning in the office doorway.
Tea made, the time to talk was upon us, but I did not have to prompt him this time, Ba
rry started his story and kept going until it was told. I interrupted only to clarify bits and pieces and right at the start to advise him that I was going to record the conversation.
Dr. Barry Bryson Ph.D. had invested in the Park because he believed he could make it a flourishing attraction that would make him rich while allowing him to work for himself and interact daily with animals. For him, it was the greatest opportunity he could have been afforded. Against his wife's wishes, he remortgaged the house and plumbed everything into his dream. It failed miserably. He was a poor businessman and got further and further into debt. His wife had left him, and the subsequent divorce had applied even more financial pressure. The Park barely broke even and he needed capital for investment to make it more interesting. He had hit upon the idea that he could create a new area of the park devoted to British mythical creatures. There were not very many of them and most were very local to particular areas, it would be an informative area, rather than actually having mythical creatures in it, of course, he explained.
That idea had stalled though due to lack of funds but gave birth to the idea that he could write a novel that would generate cash, allow him to rejuvenate the park and prove all the doubters, especially his wife, that Barry Bryson was a winner. A novel costs you nothing but time, right? And since he had no life, and no money to go out and get one, he dedicated every spare hour to writing his first novel.
No one wanted to publish it though. He tried everyone he could find and then some, and finally, just as he was about to give in, he discovered that he could publish it himself. He felt convinced that the story was a masterpiece, a bestseller if he could only get it into people's hands. The publishers must be blind that they did not see its worth.
As luck would have it, a favoured aunt had died leaving him a small amount of cash, so he invested it in the book and bought ten thousand copies on the advice of a brother-in-law who had spoken very knowingly about the subject despite having no tangible link to the industry that Barry could perceive. Broke again, Barry pestered local bookshops, papers and radio stations until he was able to get some publicity and a couple of advertised book signings in the nearby towns. Start small and get the stone rolling was his philosophy. The book was slated by the critic in the local paper though, cited as being poorly written, confusing and boring. He sold twelve copies. That was two years ago, and he had taken some time to accept the shortfalls in his book and produce a new draft. This time though no one would speak to him at all and he had no cash to pay for a new run of books.
Unable to come up with anything else, he had hit upon the idea to create a real beast of Bluebell Hill one night while watching a documentary on the North American Sasquatch and the various faked pictures and footage. All he needed was a suit, he could make that himself, and to make sure that no one got a good look at it.
It had worked better than he expected although he went out in it five times before anyone reported what they had seen. He would set up in places where he could park his car, spy over an area and then, when he saw people, put in a brief appearance before disappearing back into the bushes. He decided to make a report himself because he wanted to get some of the information correct and give his opinion as an expert. He could thus also plug his book and had a simple plan to make it onto daytime TV where he could show off his new book and get a publishing deal.
I let him ramble on for a while before I steered him towards the fatal incident.
Barry had been talking for half an hour by that point and getting more animated as he went. Now his mood shifted again. He said he had wanted to be seen a few more times but the accident happened, and he couldn't put the suit on again after that. On the morning of the accident, he had parked down a narrow lane and was just getting his headpiece on when he heard a car approaching. He was stood next to his car, unsure what to do as there was no time to go anywhere and getting in the car would give the game away. Instead, he chose to cross the road. It would ensure he was seen and with their attention on him, he hoped they would not see the car he had just left. Then the car passed him, jerked hard to the right, lost control and disappeared down the bank.
Barry had wanted to go to the rescue but terrified of being revealed he fled and hid the suit. He didn’t know that the driver had been killed until the following evening when the details were read out on the local evening news. He burned the suit and tried to forget his involvement.
By the time he had stopped talking I could hear a car pulling across the gravel outside. Barry looked at me, something he had not really done at any point while telling his story. ‘That will be Margaret arriving to open up and get ready for the day. Pointless really, but she has an easy job and no aspirations, so I think it suits her.'
‘I need to call the police, Barry. They need to take your statement and decide what to do. I am just an investigator, I get paid to solve crimes or mysteries, what comes after is not within my power to decide.’
Barry looked at his desk and fidgeted a little. ‘What will they do?'
I considered that for a moment before answering. ‘I don't know.' It was the best I could offer him. ‘You left the scene of an accident and it could be argued that you caused it. However, I believe it will be difficult to show intent to do harm. Other than that, I am not sure what they could charge you with.'
I left Barry to consider that, while I placed the call to PC Amanda Harper. I figured I might as well give her the collar. It would ingratiate me if nothing else.
She answered on the second ring. ‘Hey Tempest, any luck finding Dozer?'
‘No. No, I'm afraid not,' I replied glumly. I did not want to discuss the subject, so I told her about the Bluebell Hill Big Foot and got her moving in my direction.
I could hear Margaret approaching down the short corridor, so I leaned against the doorway a little harder and held the shotgun against my body so that it was less visible.
‘Good morning, Dr. Bryson,' she chirped merrily. ‘Can I get either of you a cup of tea?'
‘Yes, please,’ I answered. Barry nodded towards her expectant expression.
Margaret bustled off once again and I brought the shotgun back into both hands. ‘Is this licenced?’
'Yes. I have a cabinet for it in the back.'
'Better put it away then. Clean the carbon off your face as well. The police take a dim view on discharging firearms near people.' I held the gun out for him to take and, trusting that he would not reload it and pop himself, I went back into reception to wait for Amanda.
The runtime from the Maidstone station to the park was only a few minutes and my tea was still too warm to drink when Amanda arrived. I was back outside where the sun had come out and the warmth from it had made the carpark pleasantly cool now rather than cold. I fiddled with my phone while I waited for the tea to cool but as the squad car swung into the carpark, I slipped it back into my left back trouser pocket and pushed away from the wall.
There was still a little mist hugging the trees as I looked up towards Bluebell Hill, it would burn off soon as the day took hold and warmed the earth. For now, it gave an eerie effect. I imagined then the Bluebell Big Foot emerging from the treeline and smiled wryly to myself that it would have been fun to see and questioned what I, as a total non-believer, would have made of it.
Amanda was in the driving seat of a silver, 2013 model, Ford Focus police car, beside her was PC Hardacre. I had learned his name last night when he had offered his assistance in looking for Dozer and I had gladly accepted it. She turned in a wide arc and pulled to a stop in an empty part of the car park opposite where Barry and I were parked. The front bumper nosed into the blackberry bushes that edged that side of the car park.
I could see them exchanging a few words and watched Brad pass Amanda her hat as they open their doors and got out.
‘PCs Harper and Hardacre,' I acknowledged as they approached. ‘Dr. Byson is inside. He has confessed to be the Bluebell Big Foot and I have it all on a recording on my phone. He seems genuinely very upset about the
death of Simon Monroe.' I omitted to tell them about the attempted suicide this morning. ‘My interest in this case is pretty much finished, I was only hired to solve the mystery.'
‘Just like the Scooby gang,’ smirked PC Hardacre.
‘Yes. Just like the Scooby gang, but better paid,’ I replied taking a slurp of tea and smiling.
‘Will you show us to him?’ asked Amanda taking the lead, her voice soft and friendly but professionally curt at the same time.
I nodded and led them into the Park reception, past a startled looking Margaret and through to Barry’s office. He was sitting patiently at his desk with a half-drunk cup of tea by his mouse mat.
While they dealt with Barry, I made the call to Mrs.
Sweeting-Brand. It was not a call I was relishing, even though I could impart news of my success. Yet the call was less unpleasant than I had anticipated.
Mrs. Sweeting-Brand listened patiently while I explained how I had tracked down the culprit, as she liked to call him, then assured me that she would be following up the case with her own legal team. I immediately felt quite sorry for Dr. Bryson.
Mrs. Sweeting-Brand thanked me for my efforts, which surprised me, but then chided that I shouldn’t have needed her pressure to get the job done, which I felt summed her up nicely.
Call completed, I tucked my phone away but remained leaning against the wall I had come to rest against. I was tired. The last few days had demanded I run on pure determination and it was taking its toll. Last night I had bagged a few scant hours of sleep, most of it broken by vivid dreams. I looked back in towards the reception area, made a decision and went home. Bull met me at the door, wagging his tail the same as any other day but sadly still very alone. I scooped him and the two of us went back to bed.
Lunch. Wednesday, September 29th 1412hrs
I had slept until just after noon. When I awoke, the time on the clock by my bed had said 1217hrs, so I had laid there for a bit and patted Bull before forcing myself up and into the shower.
