The Sandman

by steve higgs

  From the pile of detritus found in Jane’s handbag, I selected her phone and scrolled through the contacts list. There was no entry for Karen Gilbert, but I knew how protective Jane had been of Karen and how cautious her concern over the Sandman had made her.

  Checking again, the piece of paper from Jane’s gran in my hand, I found the same number listed under a different name. Jane had entered Karen’s number under Kevin Gates. The same initials, but perhaps enough to throw someone off the scent if they grabbed her phone.

  I slapped myself in the head and put the phone down.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Alice after seeing my display of self-targeted frustration.

  Running from Tempest’s office to my own, I called back. ‘The Sandman must have touched her phone. He changed her voicemail answer message so it plays Mr Sandman. Chances are he had a look for Karen Gilbert’s number too – I’m guessing he still plans to kill her. Either way, unless he used gloves, his fingerprints will be on it. I’ve stupidly been touching it, but we might get lucky.’

  From my handbag, I fished a fingerprinting kit. Not one of the ultramodern ones that does it by photography and ultra-violet light, but the old-school powder and sticky tape style. It would do the trick well enough.

  With the phone positioned on the desk, I put the kit down next to it and used a pen to select Kevin Gates to call – I didn’t want to put off calling Karen any longer.

  The phone rang and rang. In my mind, I could see Karen looking at her phone and wondering whether to answer it. Why was Jane calling her? Was it with information regarding the Sandman?

  Just when I thought the phone would switch over to voicemail, it was answered, but no one spoke at the other end.

  I gave it a two-count, then spoke myself, ‘Karen this is Amanda Harper at Blue Moon Investigations. Jane Butterworth has been taken by the Sandman.’ I blurted the words out, fearful Karen might decide it wasn’t the voice she expected to hear and hang up instantly.

  Another beat of silence followed before a voice at the other end of the line finally said something. ‘Jane’s been taken?’ Karen repeated my words as a question.

  ‘That’s what we believe. It happened earlier today. She was snatched when she got home but we don’t know where she is or how long he might keep her for. We could really do with your help.’

  ‘My help?’ Karen wasn’t saying much, keeping her responses short and possibly still trying to decide whether to hang up the phone or not.

  I pressed on. ‘I want to send Tempest Michaels to speak with you. You met him, didn’t you? We are closing in on who the Sandman is,’ I was exaggerating hugely, ‘but if we can narrow it down, you are the only person we know of who has seen him. If we could just send you pictures …’

  Karen cut in over the top of me. ‘Look, I want to help, but Jane was adamant that I should tell no one where I am and move about if possible.’

  ‘Yes, we already tried Matilda Carpenter’s house,’ I let her know. ‘I understand your desire to be cautious, it is absolutely the right thing to do, but we are all working on this now. We have Jane’s notes and a whole team of people going through them. The police are lending officers to help us,’ I added, factoring in the probability of Jan joining us soon. I wanted to call Patience, but I knew she was working and already had a bunch of reprimands against her. Sneaking off to help me might get her sacked.

  ‘Okay,’ Karen snapped out angrily. I didn’t think her anger was aimed at me, but was born of frustration due to the situation she found herself in. ‘Do you think you can catch him?’

  ‘That is what we are trying to do,’ I assured her without committing anything. How could I? We intended to catch him, but until we knew more than we did, our chances were slim. That is where Karen came in. ‘We need your help to do it though.’

  I had her on the hook and though I knew it was cruel to bring her out of hiding and to expose herself, we needed her.

  ‘I want Tempest to call me,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll give him my address and no one else.’

  It was as good as I was going to get and I took it, thanking her for cooperating.

  Disconnecting the call with another jab of the pen, I picked up my own phone and called Tempest back.

  He answered before it even had a chance to ring. ‘Babe.’

  ‘I spoke with Karen, but she will only give her location to you. She knows your voice, I guess.’

  He sniffed thoughtfully. ‘Right. Send me her number. I’m already in the car. I’ll go straight there and see if I can convince her to come back to the office with me.’

  Dutifully, I sent him the contact details and crossed my fingers that she wouldn’t change her mind. We needed a break in this case and soon.

  Would Jane’s phone provide it? I knew two chaps in the crime scene science lab who would help me out for a pack of donuts. If I could lift a fingerprint, and if the print was in the database, maybe, just maybe, we would find out who we were looking for.

  I put on gloves and started with the fingerprint kit. With my eyes focused on that task, I asked Alice and Jagjit what treasures Jane’s laptop had yielded.

  It had been another one of Jane’s clever IT ideas to install a central password override system. Each of us had our own passwords, but to protect us against exactly this type of event where the person who knew the password became unavailable, Jane created a secondary password. Using it would unlock the computer though I don’t think any of us had tested it live before today.

  Jagjit and Alice were staring at the screen, the light from it illuminating their faces. ‘It doesn’t look like there is anything else here that we haven’t already seen,’ Jagjit let me know. ‘The file headings are all the same, but we are going through each one to double check.’

  Leaving them to continue by themselves, I started to lay out the fingerprinting kit and made a call to a pair of chaps to whom I already owed a whole bunch of favours.

  Tempest. Closing In. Friday, December 23rd 1812hrs

  Karen Gilbert’s house is in New Ash Green which is near to nothing much at all. Though I had no idea where Karen Gilbert might be and thus which direction I would have to travel, I nevertheless chose to head back toward Rochester and the office when I left Harry Hengist’s house. There was more in that direction, including the motorways.

  When my phone pinged with an incoming message, I had to take my eyes off the road to squint at the screen. Hilary was holding it for me to see. It was the highly anticipated message from Amanda, which was a few words plus a number highlighted in blue and underlined – a link to make a call.

  Swinging my gaze back to the road, I said, ‘Punch it.’

  Hilary dutifully did just that. My Porsche, apparently fixed and waiting for me to collect it – it had gotten a little busted up by some werewolves - was decked out with a hands-free kit and voice recognition. Not so the Lotus which was built before such things were dreamed of.

  The number for Karen Gilbert rang once and was answered.

  Timidly, a voice said, ‘Hello?’

  I opened my mouth to start speaking but caught myself because there was something wrong.

  ‘That’s not Karen Gilbert,’ I said confidently. ‘This is Tempest Michaels. Is she there?’

  I heard quietly exchanged words in the background, too indistinct to make out, but a moment later a new voice came onto the phone.

  ‘Tempest this is Karen.’ My memory matched the voice I was hearing to the one I expected. ‘Do you know someone called Amanda Harper?’

  Nodding to myself in the dark, I admired how cautious Karen was being. ‘Yes. She is my business partner. Thank you for agreeing to help.’

  ‘Has Jane really been taken?’

  This time I nodded glumly. ‘Yes. I intend to get her back, but I need your help to do it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Karen sounded terrified at the prospect. ‘Your colleague said you want me to help you identify him. I don’t think I can do that though.’

  ‘Why not?’ I almost sn
apped the question at her, biting my tongue only as the words left my mouth.

  She sighed with frustration of her own. ‘Because I never really got a good look at him. I explained this to Jane at the time. I was always immobile in bed, unable to move yet conscious enough to hear him. Looking down my nose at him while I was in bed and he was sitting in the chair across my bedroom, I got an impression of his face, but I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a line up.’

  I had to unclench my hands from the steering wheel I was gripping it so tightly. I could not recall a case that defied me more than this one. There had to be a chink in his armour, a way to work out who he was and how he selected his victims.

  ‘I need to meet you tonight,’ I stated boldly. ‘You want this to end as much as I do. Together we can work out who he is and get him locked up once and for all.’

  She said nothing for several seconds, making me wait while she tried to decide whether to trust me or not. Possibly feeling like she had no way out of this nightmare unless she faced it, she reluctantly agreed.

  ‘I’m staying at number fifteen Iden Rise in Harrietsham. What car are you driving? I will look out for it.’

  Harrietsham wasn’t hard to find, but it wasn’t close either. From where we were, I figured it would take most of an hour to get to.

  I said as much, adding a promise to get there as swiftly as I could. Once the call disconnected, Hilary set the satnav on his phone to find the address she gave us.

  It confirmed my guess, estimating the time to destination at fifty-six minutes. It was already mid evening, and I was no closer to achieving anything. Was Jane even still alive?

  Jane. A New Challenge. Friday, December 23rd 1836hrs

  If I thought my arms, shoulders, and abs hurt before, it was nothing compared to the screamingly intense misery I felt now. I would sooner have tried to circumcise myself with a soldering iron than commit to cutting through a third rope.

  The second rope gave with a twang as it parted, the two ends finally giving up their fight and I felt an instant change in the ropes holding my hands together.

  I almost whooped with joy and probably would have done if I didn’t already feel like crying. What I did do was sag, letting my whole body go floppy as I relaxed every muscle. Lying under the bed, willing myself to get moving again, I tried hard to not think about how much I still needed to do. Getting my hands free was reason to celebrate, but if I couldn’t get out of my cell, it did little to improve my situation.

  What surprised me was the Sandman not coming to see what I was doing. He had been able to see and hear me until I covered over the lens of the camera, effectively blinding him. Even so, I had been making grunting noises for more than an hour as I fought to cut through the ropes around my wrists and surely the lack of camera feed would make him want to check on me.

  The questions about where I was and whether he was able to watch me the whole time remained.

  After a minute of getting my breath back, I shimmied out from under the bed and prayed I never had to go under there again.

  The ropes around my wrists were loose but they didn’t cooperate and fall straight off. It took a further ten minutes of biting them and pulling with my teeth to feed the loose pieces back through the remaining knots. Each time I got another loop off, my wrists came farther apart until they were suddenly free.

  In a flurry of movement, I shed the ropes, multiple lengths of it falling to land at my feet as I pushed myself upright. I was battered and bruised, but I was free of my restraints and ready to inflict pain if I got the chance.

  My friends would be coming for me, that much I was certain of. Tempest and Amanda, Big Ben probably, and whoever else they could drum up to help. If Jan knew, he would lend his help too. Maybe they would find me before I needed to escape. Maybe when the door opened it wouldn’t be the Sandman standing outside, but my handsome boyfriend here to rescue me.

  These were positive thoughts and they buoyed me up as I turned my attention to the door.

  I like to think that I am fairly good with computers. It’s mostly self-taught but I found their inner workings and how the operating systems function simple to grasp and then manipulate. I enjoyed it too, but the electronics for a door, vastly simpler in design no doubt, well I had no idea how that worked.

  Quinn. Steely Eyed Thief Taker. Friday, December 23rd 1842hrs

  Chief Inspector Quinn had spent the last two hours going over the information Tempest Michaels sent him and the last ten minutes swearing. So far as Ian Quinn was concerned the reasons to dislike the local paranormal detective were long and varied. However, his annoying habit of being right was at the top of the list.

  River Tam, a woman found in a field two years ago was an unsolved case. Had it been his case, the blemish would not have been tolerated, but since it impacted a different senior officer in a different district of Kent, he hadn’t given it a moment’s thought and could only vaguely recall the case now.

  She had been murdered, injected with a drug that shut down her respiratory system. The file from Tempest suggested there were two dozen other cases. On the face of it, they were all recorded as missing persons, the ladies vanishing as so many did each year. However, when examined with a less cynical eye, Quinn could draw similarities that linked their disappearances.

  He even recalled some of the names and it went back more than twenty years. The women were all similar in appearance and age. All lived alone and all just up and vanished one day. Checking the filed missing person reports was a simple matter. Family members came forward to state their daughter/sister/whatever had gone missing but in the police reports that followed, there was never any suggestion of foul play.

  Their homes had not been broken into, there was no sign of a struggle. Their cars were generally found still in their garage or parked outside their house. There was nothing to suggest to the police that a crime had been committed and therefore no investigation followed.

  However, now that he was looking deeper, half a dozen of the women reported having a stalker at some point in the weeks or months leading up to their disappearance. In the last two hours, Quinn found three separate reports from the last decade in which the women reported someone being in their house at night and singing to them. It was always the same song. That the reports were not linked to the missing person reports prevented anyone from following up, and they came from all over Kent which meant different officers in different departments had filed the reports. Twenty years ago, there was no central database, but even now, such a tenuous link was unlikely to be spotted.

  How he hated that Tempest Michaels was right.

  What to do about it though? How could he turn this into a personal win? There was a simple and immediate answer to that question – he needed to let Tempest Michaels lead him to the so-called Sandman and swoop in to make the arrest with his men.

  With the evidence Tempest Michaels so generously sent him, he could claim it was his department’s fine detective work, undertaken in secrecy to protect … he couldn’t remember the name of the woman from New Ash Green but remembered that was when he first heard the name Sandman. He clicked back into the file, searching until he found the name he wanted. It would be a simple thing to claim to his superiors his investigation had to remain secret even from them. He had been ensuring Karen Gilbert remained safe from the serial killer.

  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Catching a serial killer, that was going to ensure his next promotion. It was the sort of bust that became legendary. Fellow officers would refer to him as a steely-eyed thief taker or the man who put the Sandman to sleep.

  ‘Ooh, that’s catchy,’ he said to himself.

  Pushing away from his desk, he went in search of Sergeants Faraday and Kenya. They were two of his finest, by which he meant they could be relied upon to do exactly as he said and follow him to the top by riding his shirt tails.

  Ambition. Some saw it as a bad thing, but Chief Inspector Ian Quinn knew it was what made him great. He w
as a great cop because he had ambition. Using Tempest Michaels to aid his climb up the ranks was no different to a great craftsman selecting the right tool from his box.

  According to the annoying Mr Michaels, his odd crossdressing assistant, James Butterworth, was to be the Sandman’s next victim. That had to be avoided at all costs, not because Quinn cared what happened to him; he could not have cared less. He needed to prevent it if possible because Butterworth reporting it was the police who saved him would put Tempest’s nose out of joint and sound better than Quinn reporting his own glory.

  Then again, a voice in Quinn’s head argued, a fresh grisly murder always grabs the front page. If you catch the killer right afterwards …

  Happy with either scenario, he clicked his fingers to get the attention of one of his officers.

  Tempest. Start Talking, Punk! Friday, December 23rd 1903hrs

  About halfway to Harrietsham, it was silent in the car. Hilary wasn’t much of a conversationist and I was lost in my own thoughts. Currently, I was thinking about Big Ben’s random and unexpected attack earlier. If there was a gang targeting us, the chance of them finding me could not be ignored. A worrying voice reminded me my home was undefended and that caused me to call Mrs Comerforth.

  The lady in the house next to mine considered herself too old to own a dog but loved looking after my miniature Dachshunds. In the recent weeks, they had been in her house so often it was beginning to feel like joint ownership.

  My pair of black and tan sausages were easy company for her and thus leaving them snoozing on her couch was a mutually beneficial arrangement. However, she tended to put them back in my house at bedtime in anticipation that I would come home and want to find them there.