Whispers in the Rigging

by steve higgs

  Mum was sixty-four and had no trouble whatsoever with her mobility but liked to have something to moan about. Right now, it was the proximity of my German Sports car to the ground. I did not engage with her comment.

  ‘Have you heard anything from the hospital today?’ I asked to change the subject.

  She shook her head. ‘Not a word.’

  ‘Then his condition will be unchanged.’ This was neither good nor bad. The doctors had told us he might take several days to come around. He was in no danger, but the blow has caused a minor brain bleed and some swelling. He had simply powered down until it could fix itself.

  Mum jabbered about having to make dinner for herself and how she kept turning around to ask Dad something only to find herself remembering that he wasn’t there. I made sure I listened and said yes and no at appropriate points. Letting her talk would most likely help her deal with whatever emotions she was feeling.

  It was the middle of the day, so traffic was light which allowed me to zip through the towns to the hospital where for once I found a parking space easily.

  Dad was in the special care ward where most of the patients were not able to care for themselves. ‘Hello, dear.’ Mum called out as she went into his room. She leaned in to kiss his cheek. ‘He looks so peaceful.’ She commented. Then she took his hand and started talking to him, one of the things the doctors said we needed to do. ‘You missed the snooker last night. Mark Bingham was putting up such a fight against Ronnie O’Sullivan. The final is this weekend so you need to get home in time for that.’

  I moved in to check his colour. He did indeed look peaceful, though I refrained from saying it because it sounded too much like what one said about a dead relative. Looking at him in the hospital bed made me angry, my rage rising despite the company. He had a dressing on his head still and a tube going into his nose to feed him. He was breathing by himself but the nurses were having to wash and clean him and deal with waste.

  Mum had more to say, ‘I miss you in the house. It’s quite lonely without you there. Especially at night. The bed is awfully big for just me.’ Just then the sound of gas escaping from beneath the covers stopped whatever she was about to say next. ‘Well I don’t miss that.’ She stated grumpily as she sat down grabbed her knitting bag.

  A noxious scent of bum-filtered methane began seeping from the sheets. I backed away wondering what they were feeding him.

  From the knitting bag came a part-finished jumper, a ball of wool and two knitting needles. Seconds later the familiar click, click, clickety sound started up as she added another line of wool to the garment. Her blurring fingers seemingly working by themselves as she never once looked down.

  I had no intention of staying. Other than bringing mum so she didn’t have to come alone, my visit was to see how he was doing for myself. His colour looked good, his breathing was even. He just looked like he was asleep.

  I fetched mum a vending machine coffee from around the corner and was about to leave when three of dad’s retired Navy buddies from the dockyard arrived. Leading them was Alan Page, the chap I had met here last night.

  ‘Hello, chaps.’ I shook their hands as I introduced myself. The men accompanying Alan were Stuart Cobb and Fred Radford. They both looked to be in their late sixties but were sprightly still.

  ‘We can’t stay long. We snuck out on our lunch break.’ Alan told me. ‘How’s he doing?’

  I shrugged. ‘The same.’

  Alan inclined with his head. He wanted to talk outside in the corridor. Once outside he said, ‘The boys and me want to help. I told them what you do for a living and that you were planning to look into what happened. Well, we want to lend a hand.’

  ‘Okay.’ I said as I nodded my head. ‘I haven’t got very far yet. But I’ll let you know if I come up with something I think you can help with.’

  Stuart had something to say. ‘We have certain skills that might be of use.’ His voice all but a whisper. ‘Skills honed over decades.’ He was piercing me with his gaze. He was pretty intense.

  They all were for that matter. It made me wonder what branch of the Navy they had served in. The comment about taking decades to hone their skills hadn’t been missed though. To me it meant they were getting on a bit. I would never call them old, but if I was asked if I wanted to have my dad getting into trouble with me, the answer would be a hard no. These chaps were the same age or older.

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ I replied. ‘I met with the CEO, Alex Jordan this morning. He was disinclined to help me. He thinks the ghost rumours are helping business. However, I plan to join the night cleaning crew today so will be able to get into the Dockyard at night to look around.’

  ‘Join the cleaning crew?’ Remarked Alan. ‘Good luck with that. They only employ Eastern Europeans there now.’

  ‘Not just the cleaning crew.’ Added Fred. ‘They are replacing everyone with Eastern Europeans now.’

  I thought about the Ukrainian personal assistant the CEO had and the dictionary on his desk.

  ‘You know there’s only two English guys left on the security detail?’ Alan asked the other two. ‘All the others have been replaced already.’ He turned back to me. ‘You should speak with them about the ghosts.’

  I pulled out my notepad. ‘Their names?’

  ‘Dave Saunders and Dave McKinnon.’ He supplied. ‘They have both seen them. The ghosts that is. They work the night shift, but I don’t know for how much longer. I do know they are both worried about their jobs and how long it is until they are pushed out as well. I think management would get rid of us if they could.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure they won’t.’ Said Fred. ‘You think they will keep us on as tour guides because we were in the Navy, but would the public really care if it was a foreign chap answering their questions and guiding them around?’

  ‘Cheap labour.’ Commented Stuart.

  I noted the two names. I would track them down tonight. Then I thanked the chaps for their time and promised to call them if I thought of a way they could help me.

  ‘We’ll just go and pay our respects to your mum.’ Alan said, and the three men filed into dad’s room.

  I left them and the hospital behind as I went back to my office. I would return at 1700hrs to collect mum.

  Bluffing an Entire Business. Monday, November 21st 1447hrs

  Jane had not moved from the position I had left her in more than two hours ago and I wondered how much she had managed to get done.

  ‘All of it.’ She boasted when I asked her. ‘It was much easier than I thought.’ She pulled out a cardboard folder, the type with a flap at the front which opened to reveal a pocket beneath. In it were several sheets of paper which she began to fan on her desk. ‘Here are CV’s for you both. I just copied these from templates on the internet and adjusted them to make you look like cleaners. Here is the letter you wrote earlier. I changed the font and the logo but otherwise it is unchanged.’ She had also found time to create a website which displayed the fake firm, listed its achievements, company history and mundane rubbish like health and safety policy.

  ‘How did you do all this so quickly?’ I asked.

  ‘Like I said, most of it was easy, almost cut and paste. Even the website was a simple task. All I had to do was find one similar to what I wanted and use a clone program to rip off the html code, embed it in a new webpage and populate it with some images.’

  Easy for Jane maybe. It would take me a year to do the same thing. I picked up the documents. They looked convincing to me. My next task would be to call Julia Jones, the lady responsible for hiring the cleaning staff and convince her to employ me and Big Ben.

  Should be easy, I told myself.

  She answered on the third ring. ‘Julia Jones. Good afternoon.’

  ‘Good afternoon.’ I launched into the patter I had been practising in my head. ‘This is Jeremy Carter of Kleaneeze. We supply outsourced cleaning staff and I understand you are in the market to hire some.’

  ‘Actually
, I am. But I have strict instructions on who I can hire. I am being provided with additional cleaning staff soon.’

  I grimaced at the news. ‘Are you saying that you cannot hire anyone, no matter their qualifications and experience?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Was all she said in return. Whatever the reason was, she wasn’t going to let me get into the Dockyard the way I had hoped to. Maybe it had been a long shot, I hadn’t thought so at the time.

  I thanked her for her time and disconnected.

  Nuts.

  I called Big Ben. He answered with, ‘Whaddup?’

  ‘We have a minor setback. The plan to go in as cleaners is a bust. We are going to have to go full ops mode and break in.’

  ‘Roger. What happened?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. The lady that needs to hire new staff isn’t allowed to hire new staff. She was a little cryptic about it.’

  ‘She? What’s her name?’

  ‘Julia Jones.’

  ‘So, what’s the new plan?’

  ‘Tactical gear. I’ll come to you at 2000hrs. We go over the concept of the operations, infiltrate the Dockyard and spend a few hours trying to find out what is going on. It’ll be harder this way. We will have to put more effort into dodging the guards and there will be consequences if we get caught.’ I was thinking as I talked. If we were caught it was likely there would be a criminal prosecution as a result. Under different circumstances I wouldn’t consider this course of action, if it were for a client for instance. But someone had hurt my dad and I was going to find out who.

  I wanted to tell Big Ben that I didn’t need him, but he wouldn’t believe me. There was a distinct possibility that he could get into deep trouble by coming with me, but he and I had the kind of brotherhood that meant that even though we would never talk about how we felt we would also never let the other face things alone.

  ‘I’ll be ready.’ He said. ‘See you at eight.’

  Sitting at my desk after the call, I ran through some scenarios in my head. Where was the best place to enter the Dockyard unseen? I had to get us in and out without triggering any alarms, using any of the actual entry routes and without encountering the guards. Then I remembered the two Daves that Alan had told me about.

  If I could find them, maybe they would help. Suddenly I had an option. What did I do with it? If they worked the night shift, I wouldn’t be able to find them at work now. I hadn’t taken a phone number for Alan or anyone else, so I had no way to contact them. I was going to have to go back to the Dockyard if I wanted to talk to anyone.

  Rummaging through my pockets and then my wallet, I found the entry ticket I bought this morning. Having to pay to enter again was insignificant but I was still happy that I had a day pass and could just waltz back in.

  I had planned to get some sleep before spending a good portion of the night snooping around, but I would have to go without. I grabbed my keys, told Jane I was going out and headed back to the Dockyard.

  The Dockyard. Monday November 21st 1511hrs

  I had some very specific tasks for my second visit. One of which was to see if I could pick up a contact number for the two Daves. Their assistance, if I could obtain it, might prove pivotal in my ability to investigate this case. I would speak with Alan and the other tour guides on the various ships and attractions certain that someone would be able to furnish me with a number for them.

  I also planned to have a good look around the Dockyard itself. It was a big place with lots of buildings. I would be here at night and trying to evade the security, so a good knowledge of the layout would be my ally. I wanted to see the security for that matter. I spotted a pair of them ahead of me, moving away from me toward buildings at the far end of the facility. I followed.

  They were both big men, taller than me and had an ex-forces look about them. They were walking ahead of me which denied me the chance to see their features. I wondered if they would also be Eastern European.

  There were crowds of people for a Monday afternoon in November. I had no idea the Royal Historic Dockyard was so popular. I moved through them, trying to memorise the position of the buildings relative to each other and the river and making note of little alleyways that ran between some of the buildings, but which were not visible until one walked right in front of them. I hoped it would not come to pass, but there existed a very real chance that I would be spotted by the security at some point and have to evade them. Knowing which turn led where might prove invaluable and I like to be prepared for the worst.

  The pair of security guards I was following met with two more that rounded a corner just ahead of them. The two new men were facing toward me and both possessed the blockish features I associated with Eastern European men. They too looked well-trained as if all four were part of a military unit.

  After a few exchanged words they separated, the two I had been following continuing on the way they had been going.

  Using the mental map in my head, they were heading straight for the rigging room. A guess that proved to be correct as a sign declaring rigging room became legible as I neared it. They went inside with me following no more than a few yards behind. I approached the door they had gone through intending to peek inside and catch them doing something incriminating. Would careful observation reveal something?

  The answer to that question was no as the rigging room turned out to be full of tourists. A tour was in fact in full flow, the gentleman giving it gesticulating wildly as he explained what the piece of equipment behind him did. I joined the back of the small crowd for a while.

  The rigging room was long. Like really long. Its original purpose to craft the long ropes that would control Royal Navy warships back in the day when they had sails. Running down the length of it was a contraption weaving and winding the rope together. It wasn’t making a lot of noise, but there was certainly enough to drown out any whispers that might be there to hear. That was why they could only be heard at night when the machine was off. Another task for me tonight then.

  While I was listening, I lost sight of the two security guards I had followed in. They were no longer in the room so far as I could tell although it was possible they were behind one of the pieces of equipment further down the room.

  I moved on, looking for them. ‘Please stay with the tour group, sir.’ Called the guide.

  I stopped, caught in indecision. If I ignored him, he would likely call after me again and I did not wish to draw attention to myself. Instead, I went back outside, leaving the rigging room behind. I would be back soon enough.

  I wandered around some more, orientating myself and trying to remember the buildings and the surface beneath my feet. A lot of the streets between the buildings were paved with old, worn cobble stones, their dull grey blockish tops looking very much at home as the entire vista appeared to have been frozen in time. In several places though, the cobbles had been replaced by tarmac. The look, sound and feel of it was not only different but seemed wrong. Like fitting an amplifier to a flute, to me one thing did not go with the other. I could only assume the cobbles had to be taken up at some point during the 20th century and budget at the time dictated a cheap solution be employed to repair the hole. It would have been before the Dockyard was recognised as a national treasure so might have occurred just before it closed and had been considered a huge drain on the economy.

  Whatever the case, there were only three places that I found the tarmac, so if I did end up running away from the guards at any point it was something I could use to work out where I was.

  I walked back to the ships that were sitting in dry dock by the river’s edge. They were the main tourist attraction, at least that was my understanding from talking to my father. He took tours around the submarine mostly, a cold war artefact he had once lived in for months at a time.

  I spotted Alan. He had clearly spotted me first as he was heading toward me with Fred, Stuart and a new man I had not met yet.

  ‘Young Mr Michaels.’ Alan said in greeting. ‘This is Boy Ge
orge.’ He introduced the new man. ‘We call him that on account of he is the young one on the crew and because he is so pretty that he must be a wooftah.’

  ‘You can suck my plums you miserable, ugly old git.’ Replied Boy George. George, assuming that was his actual name, couldn’t have been a day younger than sixty, but if that was his age, he probably was the youngest one of them by a good margin. He was my height at around six feet tall and it was obvious he would have been aftershave model material a couple of decades ago with a chiselled jawline, piercing blue eyes and a mop of blonde hair. The hair was mostly grey now, but the looks had not left him. I had no intention of asking about his sexual orientation.

  Instead, I shook his hand. ‘Tempest Michaels. Good to meet you.’

  ‘You’re going to help us find out what is going on here?’ He asked.

  ‘Something like that.’ I answered. ‘I will be investigating. My only real purpose is to find out what happened to my father, but I understand there are ghosts here and that usually means someone is doing something they ought not be doing. If I stumble across one thing while investigating the other, then so be it.’

  Alan spoke up. ‘Don’t forget to enlist our help when the time is right, young Mr. Michaels. I know you was Army, but we can forgive you for that and work with you this once.’

  ‘He was Army?’ Echoed Boy George. ‘Goodness, you’d never know to look at him, would you?’

  Banter between the various arms of the services was normal. Stepping into a Navy environment I had expected some nonsense to surface and here it was. Oddly enough it was almost always the Royal Navy boys that started it, spouting off about being the senior service as if there hadn’t been armies first. The individual Regiments all had names like The Duke of York’s Regiment or the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment as they were raised and paid for by Lords as fealty to their king. It was a proud mark of stature to have a Regiment of soldiers at the nation’s disposal. Who could afford a Navy though? The Royal Navy was created through taxing the nation, so as a singular service the Navy did indeed come into existence first. It was just several hundred years after the armies were formed but the Navy boys tended to brush over that inconvenient bit of information. By comparison, the Royal Airforce were so new the paint was still drying on the planes they flew, and they tended to stay quiet.