The Sandman

by steve higgs

  The Sandman slipped down my priority list and this is where my lack of vision landed us.

  I knocked on the door of Karen’s neighbour to the left and stood back to wait. A light came on moments later, illuminating the hallway behind the front door and it opened to reveal a woman in her early thirties. She had a baby hooked under one arm and bags under her eyes. She glanced at me, then beyond me to Hilary, who gave her a wave and made a face at the baby, and then back to me.

  ‘Terribly sorry to bother you,’ I started. ‘I’m not selling anything. I’m helping your neighbour, Karen. Can I beg a few moments of your time?’

  The neighbour’s name was Katrina Farthing. She remembered Karen and the night of the fire vividly. Karen had been her neighbour since Katrina moved in two years ago, but they never exchanged more than a few words to be sociable when they passed each other. Katrina could not comment on Karen’s social life – boyfriends, friends, anything that might have been of use in fact, and she had no idea what might be happening to her neighbour’s mail.

  My hope that I might uncover something bore no fruit and after a couple of minutes it became clear the lady just wanted to close her door and go back to whatever she had been doing.

  ‘One last question,’ I begged. ‘I believe Karen has a cat. Do you know who looked after it for her if she ever went away or couldn’t get home at the end of the day?’

  Finally, I asked a question she could answer. ‘That would be Mr Hengist on the other side of her house.’

  Hengist. I’d seen the name in Jane’s notes earlier. I thanked the young mum and wished her a merry Christmas as she closed the door.

  Hilary and I jogged to the neighbour’s house on the other side, closing Katrina’s gate and opening that of Mr Hengist while being swift about it because time continued to dwindle.

  There were lights on in the house, and around the edge of the curtain in the main bow window next to the front door, came the flickering motion one gets from the TV.

  The door swung inward mere moments after I knocked, the person the other side yanking it wide in a rush of sudden movement.

  The man on the other side was somewhere around sixty and about five feet nine inches tall. He wore a suit, as if just in from work but not a sharp one that a lawyer or a business leader might wear; his looked a decade old and was being worn because work policy dictated he do so.

  His hair was thinning and was cut down to bristles so the stubble on his chin was the same length as that on his head. It was a forgettable face. There was a ring on his finger but no sense from the décor inside that he lived with a woman.

  Curiously, his eyes were bugging from his head to make him look panicked and for a moment I thought he was going to slam the door.

  To calm his nerves, regardless of what might have given them rise, I gave him the same welcome smile I offered Katrina.

  ‘Hello, my name is,’

  ‘Tempest Michaels,’ the man provided, effectively halting me mid-sentence.

  ‘Um, yes,’ I agreed, a little off-balance. ‘This is my associate, Brian Clinton.’ I indicated the form standing in my shadow.

  ‘Sorry,’ the man’s face became a smile and he thrust out his hand. ‘I recognize you from the papers, that’s all. I’m Harry. Harry Hengist.’ He was still holding my hand but let it go now that he had said his name. ‘I have … I guess you could call it an amateur interest in the paranormal. I have had for years. It’s all so fascinating and enticing to believe there are devious and magical creatures living amongst us. I’m going to guess you are here to follow up on that thing with my neighbour a few weeks ago. Terrible business.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I agreed again. That he knew who I was and what I wanted was going to speed things up. ‘I’m hoping to ask a few questions.’

  ‘Of course,’ he encouraged. ‘Fire away. I take it that blonde woman was one of your investigators.’

  ‘Blonde woman?’ I questioned before realising he meant Jane. ‘Oh, yes. That’s Jane Butterworth. I’m picking up where she left off.’

  ‘Saucy little thing she is,’ the man commented unnecessarily. ‘I normally go for brunettes, but there was something about her, you know. Did she tell you she tackled me and pinned me to the carpet?’

  I had been about to fire a question at him in a bid to alter the course of the conversation away from Jane and her sauciness, but I needed to hear about her getting physical with Karen’s neighbour.

  Frowning with my surprise, I said, ‘No. How did that come to happen?’

  Mr Hengist chuckled. ‘I was in Karen’s house – she had a parcel come to my place by mistake and I helped her carry it in. Jane saw me, didn’t know who I was, and the next thing I knew, I was getting friendly with the carpet.’ He laughed at his own choice of phrase.

  I would ask Jane about it when I had the chance to, but it wasn’t pertinent right now.

  ‘Mr Hengist,’ I started.

  ‘Harry,’ he cut over the top of me to insist.

  I carried on regardless, ‘I need to track Karen down, has she given you a forwarding address for her mail or any way to contact her?’

  I got an apologetic face in response. ‘No, sorry. Nothing like that. We were just neighbours. I don’t know what she is doing about her mail.’

  ‘Do you have a spare key to her house?’ I had to raise a hand to reassure him when I saw the change in expression. ‘I’m not here to accuse anyone of anything. I’m just trying to establish a few base facts.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t have a key. Maybe one of the other people here does. Have you tried Katrina on the other side?’

  I didn’t answer his question. ‘At the time of Jane’s investigation and the fire that broke out, did you see anyone new in the street? Is there anyone who has moved in recently or anyone you ever saw outside Karen’s house?’

  Again, Harry shook his head. ‘No. I wish I could help you. This is a quiet neighbourhood. Nothing ever happens here. I don’t even remember the last time I heard about a burglary. I knew nothing about Karen’s situation either. I take it the Sandman is still at large?’

  I reacted instantly, the signal reaching my muscles and telling them to move without my brain getting involved at any point. In a flash, I was inside his house and had Mr Hengist pinned to the wall.

  ‘How do you know about the Sandman?’ I raged in his face. The suspicion that Karen’s attacker had to be someone close to her, either in her life or geographically had remained with me. Now I had the creepy guy next door talking about the Sandman when I was damned certain Karen wouldn’t have told him about it. How did he know it? It certainly hadn’t been in the papers.

  Struggling for breath as my right forearm pressed against his throat, he wanted to say something, but I wasn’t waiting for him to get his wits back.

  A swift leg sweep took him from vertical to horizontal, my arms steering his torso so that he landed face down with his right arm twisted behind his back.

  Hilary gasped and loomed in the open doorway as it spilled cold December air into the house.

  ‘Where is Jane?’ I demanded. ‘What have you done with her? Is she here in this house?’ I was looking along the corridor, wondering if this type of house had a basement. I didn’t think so but there could be a shed in the garden, or maybe she wasn’t here at all and he had her stashed somewhere else.

  ‘Can’t breathe,’ Harry rasped, my knee on his lower back keeping him pinned to the carpet.

  Yanking out my phone, I snarled, ‘That’s the least of your problems.’ I let a little pressure off though. It would do me no good to be accused of excessive force.

  My phone connected to the emergency line and I wasted no time attempting to explain myself. The second I got through the police dispatcher, I started talking.

  ‘This is Tempest Michaels. I have a suspected serial killer in my custody.’ I gave her the address and told her to send everything.

  Only once my call was finished did I turn my attention back to the San
dman. He was trying to tell me something and had been since I threw him to the floor.

  ‘I heard Jane say it,’ he squeaked.

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘The Sandman,’ he attempted to clarify. ‘I heard Jane say it.’

  I let a little more pressure off him now, letting him fill his lungs properly.

  He heaved a deep breath, and then another, before saying, ‘After she tackled me to the ground and pinned me there – I must say you and your employees are very good at it – she asked Karen if she was sure I wasn’t the Sandman. I guessed that was who she was employed to deal with.’

  I did not like it one bit, but I was beginning to worry that I had just slammed an innocent man into his own carpet.

  ‘You overheard Jane say the name and you just happened to guess what we are calling … of Karen’s attacker?’ It was not so much that I didn’t believe him, but that I didn’t want to.

  ‘Yes,’ he squeaked again, craning his neck to look around and up at me. ‘Is Karen all right? After the fire, she just vanished. I thought I might read about it in the paper or see her coming back to get some things, but I genuinely don’t think she has returned since that night. I’m not the one you are after,’ he assured me in a quiet and hopeful voice.

  I closed my eyes and swore inside my head.

  Big Ben. Retaliation. Friday, December 23rd 1735hrs

  Jane’s gran knew exactly where she had placed the note with Karen Gilbert’s number on. Unfortunately, when she went to retrieve it from the small drawer in the kitchen where she kept all her odds and ends, it wasn’t there.

  This led to the drawer being emptied on the kitchen table and when it still didn’t present itself, a thorough ransacking of the whole room ensued.

  Karen Gilbert is the only person on the planet who can describe or identify the Sandman and that made her of vital importance so far as Tempest was concerned. She was in hiding and though Jane might know where she is, my impression was that no one else did and no one had a contact number for her.

  We had no way to get in touch with her unless we could find the piece of paper.

  Then a thought struck me: Jane’s phone.

  I hadn’t checked her handbag to see if it was there, but I should have. If it wasn’t, and she still had it with her or near her, maybe it could be used to track her location. If it was in her handbag, maybe there would be a number for Karen Gilbert in it. Jane wrote it down for her gran, so surely she had it in her contacts log.

  With that in mind, I started for the door. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I called out. ‘I need to check something.’

  From Basic, I got a grunt of acknowledgement and I was out of the door.

  Aylesford is built on the side of a small hill. The whole area: Maidstone, Rochester, and all the surrounding towns and villages rest atop a geographical feature known as the North Downs. They are a series of rolling hills no doubt created when one bit of land bumped into another a billion or so years ago.

  Jane’s gran’s house was right next to the pub which is about halfway up the steepest bit of the street running through the middle of the little village. The carpark is at the bottom next to the river but there is only about a hundred and twenty yards between the two.

  I set off at a jog, excited to see if I could achieve something with this field trip. Maybe if I could produce the phone number everyone wanted and get us to Karen Gilbert, I would be seen as more than just the pretty one with all the muscles.

  The carpark was quiet, the sound of the river gurgling over rocks to create eddies and the sound of a couple having a row in one of the nearby houses, the only sounds to hear.

  Given how quiet it was outside, it came as quite a surprise when I got ambushed.

  Something inside the back of my head picked up the sound of an object travelling through the air and told me to duck. Instinct could have advised me to turn around to face the threat, but had I done that I would have got a house brick to my face.

  It sailed over my head as I shot downward, smashing into my car where it shattered the driver’s side window.

  Well, if they wanted my attention, they had it now.

  Spread out around me were a dozen men. Every last one of them wore the same black robe with the big hood and the flappy sleeves. In the middle, facing me, were Flat Top and Smiler from earlier. They were leering at me from the centre of the hemisphere surrounding my car and they had only one purpose in mind – to settle the score.

  I retrieved the house brick and hefted it in one hand as I looked along the line of men.

  ‘Feeling confident, chaps?’ I asked. Before anyone could answer, I lifted the house brick to my mouth and bit off a corner. I felt the enamel on my incisors chip off and knew I would need some dentistry work to fix my perfect smile.

  However, the effect on the witnesses was as intended. The smiles that dominated half a second earlier were replaced by hastily exchanged glances.

  Who is this guy?

  I was maybe three or four when I discovered my ability to fight. At the park with my parents, I wanted to play in the wooden fort climbing frame, but three larger boys were already in there and denied me access. I tried to push my way in and found myself shoved to the ground. It was the one and only time that has ever happened to me.

  My mum saw it, and came running, my dad hot on her heels, but by the time they arrived the three boys had all run away crying. I had a broken metatarsal in my left hand from an ill-timed punch that hit the wood and not its intended target, but otherwise I was not only unscathed but imbued with a sense of what I could do. It wasn’t rage that drove me to attack them with my fists, it was a sense of injustice and of moral right. What right had they to impose their will on me? If I didn’t stand up to them, who would they pick on next?

  It wasn’t just my desire to even the scales though, I had ability to back it up. I was the tallest kid in my class by the time I started school and carried on growing. My height gave me reach, and the musculature I developed naturally was enhanced by training as my father agreed to my request to join the local kickboxing dojo.

  You could say I never looked back.

  That’s why with odds of twelve to one, my only concern was that I might do permanent damage to someone.

  You might think I would be wiser to jump into my car and get away from them, but that’s just not how I am wired. Outnumbered that badly, I did the only sensible thing: I attacked.

  I had no idea who these guys were – some cult of weirdos Tempest upset was my current guess - but when I sent the first two packing earlier, they went away to get reinforcements.

  They should have got more.

  They were spaced more or less equidistance from me and had they all moved at once, they could have attacked me simultaneously. They didn’t, and before they could consider what strategy to employ, I went left, heading for the man one in from that edge of the semicircle.

  It caught them all by surprise. The last thing they expected was resistance and my guess was they planned to make me apologise before giving me a fat lip anyway. None of them expected to actually have to fight and they probably all had day jobs as delivery drivers or schoolteachers or something equally benign.

  The first chap had enough time to look panicked and no more. Five paces of my long legs carried me across the gap between us. I leapt into the air, throwing myself at him and powering a punch that connected with his right cheek to explode his face.

  The men to his left and right had turned inward, their brains screaming for them to neutralise the menace and quickly. This was why I chose the man one in from the edge.

  The one at the very end of the semicircle grabbed for me, found his arms caught in mine as I anticipated his move. Then, still using the energy in my run and punch, I pivoted off my back foot. Using it as a fulcrum, I lifted the lighter man and threw him at his colleagues. It was like playing skittles.

  I figured he was close to a hundred and ninety pounds and about six feet tall. Travel
ling through the air three feet off the ground, he was unavoidable for the three men nearest me. That was five down in roughly three seconds and the other seven were having second thoughts.

  Two of them had their feet rooted to the ground. I could ignore them because they had no interest in getting involved. That left me five.

  I squared up to them, lancing out a foot to land a kick here and then another there as the fallen skittles attempted to get up. It convinced them to stay down but my focus shifted in the next instant as the second wave attacked.

  Among them were the original two including the one whose nose I mashed earlier. They wanted revenge.

  This time I let them come to me, reading their body language, and watching to see who would come first. You may think that one man against many can never win, but even two men trying to hit the same moving target are going to struggle and get in each other’s way. When you see it on TV or in films, it is choreographed, so, when the first came, I jinked, went under his arm, and popped up holding him.

  We were chest to chest. Sure, he could kidney punch me, but he couldn’t get much energy behind the blows and he was down a second later when I spun him around and into the path of a punch heading for my face.

  The blow to his skull turned his lights out and the resulting crack of knuckles and squeal of pain told me another was out of the game.

  I caught a blow from behind at that point, a hard fist into my left kidney and then a glancing blow on my jaw from a high elbow when I swivelled to face the attacker to my rear. The strike brought the taste of blood to my mouth but far from discouraging me, it was like injecting nitrous oxide into a car’s inlet manifold.

  I lunged for him, chasing as he saw the madness in my eyes and tried to get away. He couldn’t back-peddle fast enough and got a hard knee between the legs for his trouble. I shoved him away to make some more space and found myself left facing just Flat Top and Smiler.