Strange Sight

by Syd Moore

  ‘So, who sent you?’ he asked predictably. His cronies had already nudged us off our game of pool.

  I waited for Sam to answer. There was so much testosterone in the room, I knew if I were to jump in first it might emasculate my colleague. Nuance you see. I was getting there.

  ‘Actually, we don’t know,’ said Sam and nodded at me. Fischman had become intrigued.

  With great theatre I cleared away the glasses, shook out the napkin and spread it carefully across the table. ‘This,’ I said. ‘Was slipped into my bag at a restaurant, last night. Do you know it – La Fleur?’

  He stared at the napkin and shook his head silently.

  ‘La Fleur restaurant,’ I repeated. ‘In Fleur de Lis Court. Off Fetter Lane.’

  Pots Fischman sucked his teeth and continued shaking.

  ‘Translation is The Flower,’ I added.

  ‘Je sais ce que cela veut dire,’ he snapped back.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you spoke French.’

  ‘What’s this all about?’ he asked. He had knitted his hands together and lowered his brow.

  ‘You don’t have a connection there?’ I pressed on.

  Sam cleared his throat ‘Do you know Seth Johnson?’

  ‘Ah-ha,’ he said, and pushed back from the table, smiling. ‘He work there? I knew he was a chef. Didn’t know where. What’s he done?’ He pointed his chin at the napkin.

  ‘How do you know him?’ I pressed on. ‘Professionally?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I spun him out a few bags of sand over the years. He’s been a good customer. Enjoys a bit of a flutter on the horses now and then. Well, more now than then. He’s always on ’em.’ He laughed at the chef’s weakness.

  ‘So he’s in debt to you?’ I asked, beginning to view Pots Fischman with new eyes: he had a couple of heavies, he knew the victim, he didn’t have the most noble of businesses. What if Seth hadn’t kept up his payments?

  Pots was obviously getting my drift too. He sat up a bit. Then he opened his legs wide and put an elbow on the table, so he was occupying a hell of a lot of space. ‘No, not any more. Why what’s he done?’

  ‘So he doesn’t owe you anything now, Mr Fischman? He’s got a clean slate?’ Sam interjected. He’d got his notebook out and was writing something down. This action seemed to make Pots nervous.

  That was something I could work with. ‘When exactly did you last see him, please?’

  Pots finished watching Sam then answered me. ‘’Bout two weeks ago. He came and paid off his loan. In full.’

  ‘How much was it?’

  He cocked his head and squinted, calculating. ‘Then? About 3k.’

  That was a fair chunk of cash. ‘He was a chef, Mr Fischman,’ I said, and tried to make my eyes piercing. ‘At La Fleur. Not a stockbroker or a hedge fund manager. That’s unusual, isn’t it? Suddenly coming in like that to pay it off?’

  Pots looked from me to Sam and back again. ‘You told Gregory you weren’t no police.’

  I was guessing Gregory was the landlord then. Funny that. He didn’t look like a Gregory. More like a Bill. Or a Buddy or an Elvis. ‘We’re not,’ I added. ‘But we’re investigators. I take it the police haven’t been here yet?’

  Now his eyebrows shot up. ‘No, they ain’t. Whatever he done, I ain’t got nothing to do with it.’

  Sam also knew weakness when he saw it. ‘Did he tell you where he got the money from?’

  Pots shook his head quickly. ‘Not my business to ask.’

  The place was starting to make me feel grubby. I got up as if to leave. ‘Well, we’ll pass on the information to the police. I’m sure they’ll come and find you to confirm.’

  ‘Hang on,’ he said, and touched my arm. ‘I think he might have said he’d had an unexpected bonus come his way.’

  ‘Those were the words he used? “An unexpected bonus”.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Pots lounged back and crossed his arms again. I couldn’t tell whether he was lying or not. I knew body-language experts suggested that when people crossed their arms they were putting up a barrier but sometimes I’d found the complete opposite to be true. It meant they were comfortable or relaxed. Or finished.

  ‘Note it,’ I said to Sam who did, then also got to his feet.

  ‘Thanks Mr Fischman, for your information,’ he said.

  Pots leant forward. ‘You gonna tell me what he done?’

  Of course – quid pro quo. ‘He’s dead, Mr Fischman,’ I told him.

  He looked confused for a moment. ‘Shit, no! He ain’t the body in the restaurant, is he?’ he said. ‘I read something ’bout that in the Metro. Just said a body bin found in a City food place. What happened to him then?’

  ‘He was strung up like a piece of meat and then gutted,’ I said, and turned on my heel. As I did, I was surprised to see one of Fischman’s hard men flinch.

  It reminded me it was a horrible crime.

  And that whoever had done it, ghostly or not, was still out there at liberty, prowling.

  ‘So is that relevant?’ Sam asked, as we got outside.

  ‘Difficult to say. Is that what “Pots Fischman knows”?’ I shrugged. ‘That Seth came into some money? Does it matter how? Or is that precisely what matters? We can’t know, can we? I mean he might have got a big win on the horses.’

  Sam walked alongside me. ‘“A bonus”, is what he called it. Wouldn’t you call a “win” a “win”?’

  ‘Yeah, I would. But a) I’m not a gambler, I don’t know the lingo, and b) this has all come out of the mouth of the delightful Pots Fischman. We have only his word it’s verbatim. And I don’t reckon that’s worth the paper it’s not written on.’

  Sam looked around for the car. ‘And it doesn’t help us with the paranormal element of it all, does it?’

  I had to concede he was right there.

  ‘We should tell the police,’ I said. ‘It’s the right thing to do. But let’s do it from La Fleur. We have those other staff to interview.’

  ‘And equipment to set up,’ said Sam.

  I shuddered. I didn’t want to spend the night in La Fleur. Even if it was with Sam. A weird creeping feeling was niggling me.

  I couldn’t shake the notion we wouldn’t be alone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The moon was bright, just off full, arching its way across the metropolitan skyline.

  I had come outside to get a bit of fresh air: we had been at La Fleur since early afternoon and because we’d set up as much as we could, equipment-wise, there was little more to do. The restaurant wasn’t particularly busy so Sam had nipped up to the mezzanine, ostensibly to check the ‘writing’ wall, but really to have a little kip: we had a long night ahead.

  I agreed to take the kitchen as long as Sam did the cellar. I couldn’t sit down there all night, no way. It was spooky at ten o’clock in the morning. At midnight, it would most certainly prompt imaginings in the most grounded of minds. And mine.

  The kitchen, however, was not going to be a walk in the park. It had been very noisy during the day: not just with the sounds and yells of cooking, chopping, cursing, boiling and bubbling, but also because there was a lot of clanging and clanking coming from above. The workmen were back in, trying to finish off the offices upstairs. At least, they’d be long gone by the time we began our vigil. I might get a little peace and quiet. Though I doubted it.

  The information we’d got from Pots Fischman had been helpful and cast a different light on the victim: we now knew Seth Johnson was a gambler. We’d heard that from the staff. Femi had been rather emphatic about that side of the chef’s character. But it had been confirmed by Pots himself, who had first-hand experience of lending to him. Just because Seth had paid Pots off it didn’t necessarily suggest that he’d redeemed all his debts. He might have taken out a new one with someone even dodgier. Maybe he’d got himself into trouble with them and they’d made an example of him. It did mean, however, that his death might not have had anything to do with his job. The
n again it still might.

  I rubbed my chin as I considered this and hoisted myself on to a wide stone bollard that stood at the end of Fleur de Lis Court fronting on to Fetter Lane.

  The new information would have to go to the police for sure. I would do that later. But, I thought Sam was probably right – this news didn’t help get to the bottom of the ghost thing. I mean Mary had seen a woman in a bonnet leaving the scene. If Seth’s murder was tied in with the loan sharks, the idea that someone like Pots Fischman might send in a chick to do his dirty work didn’t cut it with me.

  Women were generally shorter and, though it bugged me to admit it, not as strong as men. This made them an odd choice of heavy. It was a generalisation of course, but could a woman really have overpowered Seth Johnson? By all accounts he was strong and muscular. Joel had described him as fit. If that was the case, then the only thing I could think of that might have enabled a woman to overcome him was the threat of violence in the form of a gun. But if they had a gun, why didn’t they use it? Why go to such elaborate lengths to string him up, lash him and make those sadistic incisions to his neck and body? There was something in that.

  I took out my notebook and flicked back over the pages. Our last interviews with the remaining members of staff had been patchy. Nicky, the busboy, who actually turned out to be a busgirl, came over and complained about her pay. Didn’t add much else. Another part-time waitress, Anita, encountered the odd unaccounted moan or two and reported draughts in the kitchen. Possibly near the back door. I had worked hard on keeping my face neutral.

  The waiter, John, had been mentioned in our first encounter with Joel. John confirmed Joel’s account of the bleeding chandelier but added that he believed he’d glimpsed a dark shadow on the mezzanine just before the writing appeared. Thus Sam’s excuse for a nap. Only Agatha the bartender had a little bit more to add. She was a plump girl with dark black hair and was, I think, Polish. She told us she hadn’t known Seth very well, as she was engaged and poor so of no interest to him.

  It was a throwaway comment that was muttered under her breath. But obviously it spoke volumes: in addition to his long list of faults, Seth was also, according to at least two people, a womaniser. Definitely a flirt. Perhaps there was an element of jealousy in the killing?

  Thing was, I didn’t figure it as a crime of passion, as such. True though, there were eccentric passionate elements to the murder. Like I said, the staged, almost ritualistic quality of the way the body had been left, the stringing up, the posing, to my mind indicated something weird and sexual was involved. It was certainly a little bit S&M. Same with the wounds he suffered: whippings. If not so vicious, nasty and fatal, the scenario might have appeared a little nudge-nudge wink-wink.

  It would be really helpful to know what a pathologist made of it. Whether those marks we’d been told about were inflicted pre-, post- or mid-mortem. I’d seen the TV shows, I knew they could work that stuff out. Maybe I could do an exchange of information with DS Edwards?

  At the end of the day though, however intriguing it was to speculate on this, none of it particularly shed light on the ghostly happenings and sightings at the restaurant. Or did it? Did it mean we were dealing with a sadistic ghost? If ghosts actually existed. Which they didn’t.

  Or did they? I asked myself to develop nuance.

  Who knew?

  I sighed out loud and saw my breath make a cloud in the air.

  Interestingly Agatha had declared that she knew the place was haunted way before Mary came out about what she’d seen. Said MT told her.

  I flicked back through my notes to check that. MT had said it was a Henry Warren but then altered her statement to indicate Seth as the original source. Seth, we couldn’t ask. Femi had reported that the bloke next door had told him first before anyone. Some guy called Jackson. I’d have to talk to them both – Jackson and Warren. When I went back into the restaurant, I’d ask Agatha to get me Mr Warren’s contact details from the bookings system. I’d pop next door and see Jackson. Maybe tomorrow.

  I flipped my notebook shut and took a final breath of fresh air.

  A thin mist was curling through the tall leafy trees across the road. Somewhere down by the crossroads a motorbike backfired. A bunch of birds, black ones, took off from their branches but instead of flying away, circled thirty feet above my head, squawking with fright.

  Not an omen. Or a portent, I carefully told myself.

  None of that actually existed.

  As I walked back up Fleur de Lis Court, one of the birds above let out a shrill caw. The street lights flickered on and off. Shadows danced wildly in the alley.

  I stopped and waited for them to straighten out.

  The street lamp beside me came on then popped and spluttered.

  Electrical interference probably. Maybe a faulty cable.

  I wondered if that might affect the EMF monitor.

  Oh god, I thought, this is stupid and ridiculous.

  I was becoming a blimmin’ ghostbuster.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Despite the fact it had been a relatively slow night, the kitchen didn’t close till about 10.30 p.m. What with all the cleaning and the prep for the next day, barked out under Femi’s eagle-eyed supervision, we weren’t allowed to set up video cameras and recorders till after 11 p.m. when the place was almost deserted but for a few core staff.

  We had already installed the infrared equipment on the dining floor in the afternoon. Sam had attached motion sensors after the customers had left. We used the waiting staff to test that the equipment worked as they tidied and cleared the room. It did. It was pretty amazing. I was a little bit impressed.

  Downstairs, Sam set up a thermal scanner, a thermal imaging camera and several normal video cameras on various tripods, which occupied most of the cellar floor space. Another digital stills camera was fixed on the wall and there were several audio recorders dotted around the room. He had also switched on the Spirit Box and EMF detector and was holding the latter in his hand doing a ‘control’ survey of the space, when I came down to check on him. He was miffed that Ray hadn’t let him put talcum powder on the floor, to check for imprints/footprints, as he’d only just managed to get rid of what he had referred to as ‘that bleedin’ flour’, a rather accurate though horribly evocative choice of words.

  I thought it was fair enough, and I told Sam so. ‘Talc is a nightmare to clean. My friend Cerise uses it sometimes.’ I was playing with a bunch of leftover cable ties. We’d used them to secure some of the equipment in place. ‘But even though she confines it to the bathroom, it gets everywhere. Ghostly footprints all over the hallway.’ I shivered. ‘Could complicate things in this case.’ I didn’t add that I had my new boots on and I didn’t want them getting dusty either.

  Sam put the EMF detector down on a nearby stool. I thought he was going to argue with me, but he didn’t. ‘So when am I going to meet this legendary Cerise?’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘Why?’ There’s usually only one reason single men ask to meet your single friends.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ he said, and grinned. ‘She sounds funny and a bit scary. Like you.’

  I stopped twiddling with the cable ties and rammed them in the back of my jeans. His last words, you see, had really caught me. ‘Like me? Why am I funny and scary?’

  His eyes locked on to mine. I could tell he was building up to something: his lips twitched and he paused for a moment then, to my amazement, said, ‘The way you make me feel sometimes – it’s scary.’

  Whoa, that was out of the blue.

  For a moment it felt as if everything stopped. Except for my heart which began to accelerate. ‘What do you mean?’ I stuttered. ‘Good scary or bad scary?’

  His face opened, the smile deepened, amber flints in his eyes shone under the glare of the lights he had erected. ‘You’re funny, you’re smart, you’re beautiful.’ He took a long breath. ‘You hold my destiny in your hands.’

  I couldn‘t help it – a smirk was out before my b
rain could snap to action and rein it back in. ‘Your destiny!’ It was just that Sam didn’t usually use such florid language. My knee-jerk reaction was to poke fun. My knee-jerk reaction was dead wrong.

  I saw his shoulders tense, then he took a step back, and said, ‘The destiny of the Witch Museum is what I meant. Of course with my studies, I am inextricably bound to it for the next few years. Unless you sell.’ But a blush was spreading across his cheeks. ‘The future is scary.’

  Damn and blast. Stupid me!

  ‘That’s what you meant, is it?’ I said inching across the floor towards him. ‘It’s all about the museum?’

  He didn’t move although I could sense a faltering within. ‘I, I …’

  My god – I had caught him on the hop.

  There was only a couple of feet between us now and I was conscious of some kind of window of opportunity closing. I didn’t want it to shut. ‘Sam,’ I said, and reached for his hand.

  I picked up the long, slender fingers. Cool and soft, the hands of an academic. They fluttered like ribbons around my hand then deftly closed over it.

  We were holding hands! I could feel sparks where our flesh touched. It was stunning, it was breathtaking. It was weird.

  ‘We should talk about this,’ I said after a moment.

  He brought his chin up and took in a long breath. Our eyes met and zinged as a bold frisson of energy passed between us.

  Then a voice broke in from above. ‘Hello? Rosie? You there?’

  I jumped and looked around. Sam instantly opened his fingers, dropped my hand, then took a step back. Flustered, he ran the hand that had been holding mine through his hair and forced a smile. ‘Perhaps not the time nor place. A fitting reminder,’ he said croakily. Then he coughed and shouted up the stairs to where the voice had called, ‘She’ll be right up.’