by steve higgs
Ten minutes later I had on skin tight stretchy pants and running shoes, my best sports bra, a light top, plus a pair of thin gloves. I put the key under the doormat, stretched in place for a moment and reluctantly set off. My usual running route was almost five miles and took me around forty minutes. I did not embrace running. However, I accepted that it was a necessary part of my life even though I was not a fan.
It was cold out, not as bad as yesterday and it was dry – I would not have gone if it was raining. I got into a pace I was happy with as I headed down towards the river. My hair, which I had pulled into a ponytail, swished from side to side behind my head, keeping time with my feet. I crossed the road by Maidstone football ground, passed the rowing club and emerged onto the riverside path where yesterday's rain was still visible.
Dodging puddles, mud, and piles of mess left by irresponsible dog-owners, I began to push myself. I passed the spot where I had met Tempest, just past the place where Victoria Turnbull had been murdered by The Vampire a few weeks ago. In my head, I could still see the crime scene tape. Then I passed the River Angel public house and the path alongside the river terminated as it reached a weir. I crossed over the river using the path over the top of the weir and began the hard climb up the hill on the other side.
I clicked my stopwatch off at thirty-eight minutes and twelve seconds just as I reached my building. Not bad. I had been thinking about the day ahead as I had run. I really wanted to catch the ghost today and close the case. It would be nice to feel that I was earning the money Tempest had already started paying me. He had insisted he pay me a full wage in typical Tempest style. To me, it had seemed that he ought to pay me for the hours I was working but he expressed that since I was committed enough to work both jobs simultaneously, the least he could do was make it worth my effort. Although the focus of my thoughts was on the case, I also had a date tonight to consider. Brett was taking me out for food. This was date two if one was content to consider the weekend in Paris as one date, which meant that the next time I saw him after this would be date three and that had potential implications.
I had not had a relationship that was worth labelling as such for over a year now. The last properly serious one was more than two years ago. The problem always seemed to be that boys were such utter twats. I had always been cheated on or messed about. Childhood dreams of whirlwind romances, fancy weddings and happy family picnics in the park had given inevitable way to a focus on my career because it was something I could rely upon. Now though, there was a tiny spark of hope inside me that Brett might be the real thing. I reminded my hopeful inner self continually that he and I had only been on one date and had not slept together yet.
With towels wrapped around my hair and my body to keep in the warmth of the shower, I studied my wardrobe and ignored the voice inside screaming that I had nothing to wear. I had no money to buy a new outfit either, so I was going to have to make do. My favourite jeans were in the laundry basket. Could I wash then dry them and have them ready to wear tonight? They went so well with my blue satin halter-neck top and the pairing worked with my good coat and bag. I was going out for dinner with a millionaire – I needed to look good. Oh, but what about the knitted dress I bought with my birthday money? It was by Hobbs and looked brand new still as I had only worn it once so far. The deliberation went on for a while.
Finally dressed for the day and my outfit (probably) picked out for tonight I settled back in front of the laptop and watched the elevator footage yet again. My excitement last night had been a little premature. I could see how the crime was being perpetrated but I had no useable evidence regarding the criminal's identity. I had a plan. My only question was whether it would work or not. I was likely to have more success if I had help, but I was being stubborn and intended to produce the answer to the mystery and the person behind it all by myself.
Yeah. Strike one up for woman!
It was time to get on with it. I grabbed a few items I believed I would need, went out to my car and drove to Chatham. On the way I phoned Patience.
‘Hey, girl,’ she answered, ‘What’cha doing?’
‘I am back at the Pentagon. I am catching the ghost today,’ I went on to outline what I had seen on the laptop last night and what I planned to do today. I then asked her to look something up for me. My theory had an unknown element to it, which was all to do with what happened to the goods in the shopping bags after they had been stolen.
Patience was back on the dispatch desk today and might struggle to get away, but she was going to find time to get me the information I needed and if necessary, coordinate the response that might follow.
I checked my watch. It was almost quarter past ten.
Time to go to work.
I needed to check the charge on the cameras. The battery life was about twenty-four hours, so they would all be about to run out if they had not already. They had all been working when I checked them this morning on the laptop, but they had been recording all night since there was no way to remotely switch them off. I couldn’t do much about them running out, but I had brought the charging units with me. I planned to retrieve them all and get Martin to charge them up again in his office.
I arrived at the Pentagon shopping mall and paid for a full day’s parking. I could charge it to expenses, Tempest assured me this was necessary as such things were tax deductible. I pushed open the doors that led from the carpark to the shops and emerged by Superdrug on the ground floor.
The shopping centre was quiet again this morning. I could not tell whether it was more quiet than usual or not but there were very few people around.
Collecting all the cameras took almost an hour. I had to ride the same lift up and down on more than one occasion as there were people in the lift with me. The task done though, I called Martin Miller. It took him a while to answer and when he finally came on the phone, he sounded sleepy and distant.
‘Hello?’
‘Mr. Miller? This is Amanda Harper from the Blue Moon Investigation Agency.'
‘Oh. Good morning. How may I help you?’ he asked, audibly stifling a yawn.
‘I have a lead on your ghost. I believe I may solve the case soon,’ the term soon quite deliberately not being a measurable unit of time, ‘I need to charge some equipment in your office.’
‘Oh. Sorry. I am not at work today. It was my birthday yesterday; I was out late and took today off. I have a bit of a hangover.' It was more information than I needed. The pertinent fact was that he was not at work and I would have to manage without the cameras for now.
I thanked him and said that I had to go.
‘Hold on,’ he pleaded, ‘You said you think you know what is going on. What is it?’
I stayed quiet for a second deciding what I wanted to tell him, ‘I will be able to give you a full report later, Martin. For now, it would be wrong of me to speculate. I can tell you that you do not have a ghost, just a clever criminal.’ I disconnected and put my phone away.
Back at my car, I swapped the box of cameras for the bags I had in the boot. I was going to pose as a shopper. What I had seen on the footage last night made me believe that the ghost was hiding in a false panel that had been built into the lifts during the recent refit. I had looked for and immediately found a small spy hole in the panel. From it, the ghost was able to watch the people inside the lift. If they had shopping and put it down, the ghost would flip a switch to kill the power, step out, snag the bags and get back inside the panel. That was my theory anyway.
What I had not been able to establish, was how the panel was accessed. I had inspected every lift that I had gone into this morning. All six of them were the same design and same dimensions and since ghost attacks had been reported from each it seemed logical that each of them contained the same hidden compartment.
I had six shopping bags, three for each hand. I had dug them out of the little bag receptacle in my kitchen where I stuffed bags in case they came in handy for something. These had been in there for months and
they were badly crumpled which had necessitated some clever use of a pillowcase and my iron to make them look flat and new again. They didn't really look new and would not fool anyone if they took a close look, but I gauged that a man peering through a tiny spy-hole would not be able to tell the difference. From my closet, I had filled them with some folded clothes and an old shoe box I had kept.
I picked the lift that I had seen the ghost in yesterday, got in and rode it up from the ground floor to the sixth floor at the top of the car park. Then I rode it down again. Nothing happened. I realised my mistake and got out. I got into the lift next to it, its pair in the bank of lifts and pressed the button to go up again. This time I put my bags down, encouraging the ghost to flip the switch and grab them.
The lift pinged to announce my arrival at the top floor again. I pursed my lips. No ghost. I rode the lift back down again, arrived on the ground floor, picked up my bags and picked a different bank of lifts to try. I got the same result there and at the next bank of lifts and at all the others. Somewhat deflated, I went for coffee.
Stupid, unreliable ghost.
With a tall flat white in my hand, I slumped into a chair in the open-air coffee shop and wondered what to try next. Do I just keep going with the same tactic? If I want to try something different, what would that be? My phone pinged with a text. I took a sip of coffee and swiped my phone screen to open it.
I had two text messages. The first from Tempest wishing me good luck today, the second from Patience telling me that I was right, and she that had found it. Her message went on to ask what I wanted her to do next. I had been playing a hunch when I had asked her to perform a quick task this morning. It had probably only taken her a few minutes once she had a break from work but was key to unravelling the mystery. I sent her a reply asking her to wait and promising to get back to her later.
I gave myself a mental shake. I was going to catch the ghost today. I just needed to be patient and keep going. I would target all the lifts, moving between the banks until I got lucky. The attacks did not happen every day, but I could not let the possibility that the ghost had taken the day off deter me.
My watch told me it was just a few minutes after twelve o’clock. I finished my coffee and went back to riding the lifts. I can report that riding lifts is boring. By two o’clock my feet were sore, making me wish I had worn my running shoes, my back was aching, and I had had quite enough of staring at the inside of a lift. My stomach growled its insistence that I put something in it, so I trudged back to the coffee shop where I ordered another coffee and a roasted vegetable panini.
I allowed myself a thirty-minute lunch break but ten minutes in I got the latest update from Steve Brooms. There had been an incident in the right-hand lift of the orange lift bank.
Dammit! I had just been in that lift.
I left the last few bites of my panini, as it wasn't all that nice and headed for the lifts. A small circle was visible close to where I wanted to go. Sure enough, in the centre of it was a young woman in tears along with security guard Karl, who waved a hello as he spotted me and a chap in a suit who I was fairly sure would prove to be Steve Brooms. I had yet to meet him, but he fit my mental picture having listened to his voice and he appeared to be taking charge of the situation. He had a radio in his left hand and had his name on a badge pinned to the right lapel of his cheap suit. Beneath the name, it said Head of Security. I quickly introduced myself and quietly insisted that we take the lady to one of the backroom offices so that we could take her statement.
Steve had looked like he was going to argue but instead, he nodded and led her away. I wondered if the girl was upset because it had been another sexual attack. Had the ghost grabbed her as he had Poppy? I then wondered how many other girls might have been fondled but not reported it. Experience told me that for every victim that came forward there were many more that did not.
That was not the case though she assured me. She was upset because she had just bought herself a bracelet in Pandora and some new underwear and a pair of shoes. Her boyfriend was a soldier at the local Army unit, but he was in Afghanistan currently, so had sent her money for her birthday with instructions on what to get herself. There was a lot of sobbing in her retelling of the incident.
I had missed the ghost by a minute or so. Had I ridden the lift again it might have been me. I was annoyed and could not decide if I was more annoyed that the ghost had not picked me to attack or that I now had to go back to riding the lifts once more. The ghost was here today. I had to hope he would strike again.
I left Steve and Karl to deal with the tearful young woman and went back to the lifts. Did I try the orange lifts again or would he have moved on to a different one? I figured it was absolute guesswork, so I went to the nearest bank of lifts and pressed the call button to summon one of them. Seconds later the right-hand lift pinged, and the doors swished open. I stepped in and got an instant hit of garlic sausage. I suddenly knew that this was the smell that people had been trying to describe to me. I also knew that I was breathing in the smell of Charles Spencer's farts.
Wrinkling my nose and putting up with it, I turned around to face back towards the doors and put my shopping down. I pressed the button for the top floor. Just as the doors closed a hand snuck through the gap and stopped them. Two boys in their late teens got in as the doors reopened. They were laughing about something and barely acknowledged my presence. The taller of the two leaned across and pressed the button for floor five.
My heart was beating hard when the doors finally closed, and the lift started moving. I was convinced that this was it. Any second now…
Then the lift pinged and stopped at the second floor to let on an old couple. The two boys moved further back into the corner of the lift. It was getting crowded in the small steel box and it would have been more polite for me to pick my bags up and move, but I kept myself and my shopping next to the panel. I needed to be ready. The doors shut just as the old man pressed the button for floor four. I had only a few seconds now until the lift would stop again. Would the ghost attack now?
The lights went out and the lift jolted to a halt.
One of the boys let out a squeak.
‘Danny, you faggot,’ his friend laughed.
Then I felt it. There was movement next to me. I could not see anything but that didn't stop me from acting. Imagining where the ghost might be, I turned towards it and reached out with both hands. I intended to grab hold, get the person into a lock and subdue them. At that second, I realised that once I had done so I would still be trapped in a lift with no power or light and could not get out, but too late now, I was committed.
My right hand caught hold of an arm, which shoved me away. I lost my balance momentarily but threw myself back at the place it had been, grasping for purchase again. This time I got a good hold. The ghost had his hands full of my shopping bags, which he tried once again to use to push me away. He was retreating into the hidden compartment. I pushed off my left foot, stepped into him and kicked my right knee upwards. Hard.
It connected. There was an audible outrushing of breath and the figure I was holding doubled over.
I followed him down to the floor of the elevator and knelt on his back, ‘Oh, my balls!’ he groaned pathetically. I needed light to be sure, but the voice sounded like it was Charlie. He had curled into a foetal position. I had hit his nuts hard – he was going nowhere.
Suddenly the interior of the lift was bathed in light. One of the guys had turned on the light on his phone. The other chap did likewise, making it almost as bright as it had been with the main light on.
Beneath me was a man wearing a mask.
‘What the devil is going on?’ asked the old man. He was backed into a corner with his wife pushed behind him protectively.
‘All is well, Sir. This man is a thief that has been plaguing the Pentagon and stealing shopping using a false panel he fitted in the lifts,' I explained without taking my eyes off the man beneath me. He was groaning softly now and
nursing his testicles with both hands.
‘I told you we should have gone to Bluewater,' the old man's wife complained, referring to the bigger and newer shopping mall a few miles away.
‘Guys,’ I said looking over my shoulder at the two younger men, ‘Can one of you please check inside the panel and see if you can find a switch to turn the power back on?’
‘Err, yeah,' one said. He had to climb over me to get to the panel and peer inside it, but he found the switch almost straight away. The light flicked back on and the lift started moving.
I pulled out my phone and called Steve Brooms, ‘Steve?’ I confirmed when he answered, ‘I have your ghost. Meet me on the ground floor of the blue lift bank in two minutes. Okay?’
He said that he would. He sounded shocked.
The lift pinged as we reached the fourth floor and the old couple got off looking thankful to be able to leave. Still kneeling on the ghost's back, I turned to the two young men again and asked them if they would kindly accompany me back to the ground floor where I would be met by security. They said they were happy to do it. The lift continued to the fifth floor and to the sixth because it knew no better than to do as it had originally been instructed, then started back down again. It stopped on the third floor where a family of five wanted to get on. With shocked faces, they elected to wait for the next one.
Charlie appeared to be recovering from his abdominal discomfort. He was beginning to move about and make noises.
‘Get off me,’ he demanded. I ignored him. The lift was on its way down now, just passing floor two, ‘Get off me,’ he repeated with more force and volume.
