by steve higgs
‘Kent League of Demonologists,’ Frank corrected him.
‘Codswollop,’ commented gran.
‘Can you back up a bit and start again?’ Jan asked.
Frank pursed his lips. ‘How far back do you want me to go?’
Jan rubbed his forehead. ‘From hello, I think. After that it all seems fuzzy.’
Frank didn’t start again though. Instead, he turned around to speak with Poison. ‘Poison, dear, can you get the reality-shaken juice, please?’ when he turned back to me, he saw the curious look on my face. ‘We get this sometimes. People believe they have a firm grip on reality and then discover that most of what they believe isn’t real. It shakes them to their core and can make them spiral if not treated quickly enough.’
Poison came from behind the counter with an ancient-looking hip flask. It looked to be made from pewter, but it had a leather binding around it that looked more like alligator skin. She was wearing a glove to hold it and had another glove for Frank to put on before she passed it to him.
Then she took off her glove and passed it to Frank, who in turn offered it to Jan.
‘What’s this?’ he asked staring at the glove he now held.
Frank paused with the glove in one hand and the flask in the other. ‘The flask is coated in dragon hide. It’s perfectly safe to work and touch right after the dragon has been slain, but a few years later it begins to take on magical properties and can burn your skin on contact. A quick swig of this will see you right though.’
‘I don’t think so. What the heck is it anyway? Vampire’s blood? Juice fermented from the brain of a werewolf? Zombie spit?’
Jan was being flippant, but Frank said, ‘How can it be vampire blood? They don’t have any. It’s the accelerant found in a dragon’s firesac. It’s what ignites when it breathes fire.’
Jan fixed him with a disbelieving look. ‘Really?’
Frank flipped his eyebrows. ‘No, not really. It’s whiskey. Good stuff too. So have a drop and shut up before I change my mind.’
When Jan hesitated, gran made a grab for the flask. ‘I’ll have some, thank you.’ The dragon skin on the flask didn’t hiss and scald her hand when she touched it, but Frank made a dive for it anyway as she put up a hand to ward him off and took a healthy belt of scotch. ‘Cor, that’s better,’ she announced as she handed it back. ‘I can feel that warming my toes.’
‘Crikey,’ said Frank as he held up the flask once more. ‘It’s half empty. Is she going to be alright?’
‘Compared to what?’ I shrugged despairingly.
This was becoming quite the pantomime. I checked my watch to find it was approaching noon. I needed to get on with things so I could keep my two o’clock appointment with Karen Gilbert.
‘Thank you, Frank,’ I offered my hand to shake as I moved toward the door. ‘I think we have taken up enough of your time.’ Jan was following but I had to give gran a bit of a shove to get her moving and grab her shoulders to turn her around.
She was too busy looking about, trying to see all there was to see in the bookshop. ‘This is a very odd place, you know,’ she commented as I managed to get her through the door. ‘It reminds me of the first time I went into one of those sex shops back in the seventies. Mavis Gowling dared me to go in and buy something. Well, I was shocked by what I found in there, but I bought myself an enormous…’
Mercifully, Frank called out a final piece of advice to drown out what she said next. ‘Remember to use salt. Water sprites hate salt,’ he said in a loud voice so we would hear him over the noise of the traffic outside.
I raised a thumbs up above my head as I swung out of the bottom door.
Lunch. Saturday, December 3rd 1227hrs
Saturday in Rochester is not the time to look for somewhere to eat lunch if you haven’t reserved a table. Yes, there are lots of places to eat, but there are also lots of tourists flocking in from Europe on the nearby high-speed train line, plus citizens from the local towns descend upon the picturesque High Street every weekend. Had it been one of the many festival weekends, we would not have stood a chance, but we lucked out on the fourth attempt with an Italian place.
My attempts to discourage Jan from staying with me for the cringe-worthy event with my gran were to no avail. He claimed he was hungry and said my gran was funny. She could be funny, but I wasn’t sure that this was going to be one of those times. The whisky had indeed warmed her toes, but on the way down it made her legs drunk and she was swaying from side to side as she followed the waiter through the tables.
‘Sorry,’ she said as she bumped a table with a hip. ‘Sorry,’ again as she bumped the next one. ‘The floor in here could be a bit more even, you know,’ she complained to the waiter as we reached our table.
‘I’m sorry?’ he said, confused by her comment.
‘I should think so, young man. Tell the owner to get a builder in to look at it.’ The poor man shot me a questioning look to which I just shook my head and gave him a grimace that suggested she was a getting a little senile.
Settled in our chairs, he handed out menus and left us with the advice that Sarah would be our server. Jan excused himself to head to the gents and I took the opportunity to ask gran why she had decided to find me today.
‘Well, dear,’ she started. ‘I decided that I miss having you around. After all the nonsense with the vampires I was glad to see the back of you; it’ll be years before my geraniums grow back properly. I could do with a hand around the house though. I’m eighty-four after all. So, I just wanted to say that if you were to need somewhere to stay, you can have your old room back. Or the basement if that is what you prefer.’
This was a surprise. I didn’t need a place to stay but had lived with my gran since I was thirteen and her place felt like home. My parents weren’t dead, they weren’t even divorced. They just weren’t very good parents, so I had been lucky to have a grandmother who was prepared to take me in. I had to acknowledge though that I deserved to be kicked out when it happened. At the time, I was deep into the pretend vampire lifestyle and had begun to treat her place like it was my own and could be taken for granted.
I placed my hand on top of hers. ‘Thank you, gran. That’s very kind of you. I don’t need a place right now, but it would be nice to come and visit you again.’
‘I thought so,’ she replied kindly. Then the serious look left her face as she glanced around the restaurant. ‘Where’s that lazy waitress? I need a drink.’
‘Shouldn’t we wait for Jan?’
‘Nah, stuff him. I’m an old lady. He will be just fine.’ As if forgetting her quest for more alcohol, she looked back at me and gave me an appraising once over. ‘I have to say that you are much prettier as a girl than you ever were as a boy.’
‘Um, thank you. I think.’
‘It’s so nice that you are one of those homosexuals now.’
Startled by her statement, I glanced about to see who was looking. ‘Is it?’
‘Oh, yes. All the other ladies at bingo have a grandson or a granddaughter who is gay or lesbian or something different. I have been the odd one out for too long. I used to boast that you were a vampire, but they just laughed at that. Since you came out, I have been able to join in the conversations properly. And then, well, when you started dressing as a girl, I became the queen bee. No one else has a transgender homosexual in their family. Hah! Top that Doris Halfpenny.’
‘What are you ladies talking about?’ asked Jan as he retook his seat. The waitress arrived to take our order though, so the question never got answered and our conversation turned to what case I was working on right now. I told gran about Arthur the ogre and then about the swamp monster making sure I kept away from any details because of the non-disclosure agreement.
The drinks arrived first; diet coke for me, water for Jan and a double gin and tonic for gran. I was going to have to drop her home. There was no way I could put her on a bus; she might end up anywhere.
‘You keep checking the time, dear,’ observed gran halfwa
y through her meal. It is a point worth noting that it was halfway through her meal but not halfway through mine or Jan’s. Gran ate slow.
‘I have an appointment at two o’clock, gran. I don’t want to be late.’
‘Well, don’t let me keep you, dear,’ she replied around another mouthful of pasta. Looking across at my plate and then Jan’s she realized we were finished and waiting for her. Signing she put her knife and fork down. ‘It’s these infernal teeth,’ she said. ‘They won’t stay still so chewing takes ages. I don’t bother with them at home half the time.’ Then, just like that, she reached into her mouth and popped out both sets of dentures. ‘Parsh me that glarsh, love,’ she pointed across the table.
Jan’s eyes were widened in mute horror as he watched the teeth plop into the glass of water. Then, scooping up her cutlery once more, a fresh mouthful of pasta went in.
‘Thatsss, mush better,’ she announced as she chewed with renewed vigour while Jan and I tried to ignore the bits of half-chewed pasta falling from her dentures to the bottom of the glass.
Gran didn’t bother to look up when she said, ‘It’ll happen to you as well, deary. Everyone getsh old.’ Sage advice indeed, but I checked my watch again and raised an arm to signal the waitress.
‘I’ll get this,’ volunteered Jan.
‘Nonsense,’ I replied and the inevitable tussle over who would pay for what raged for a few seconds until gran reached into her purse to produce a wad of fifty-pound notes.
‘I’ll get lunch. That’s the other thing about getting old, dear: you haven’t got much to spend your money on anymore. It’s not like I get to go clubbing and need to buy new shoes every week.’
The waitress took the cash away and returned with gran’s change, however, my hope that I might now get her moving and be able to get to Karen’s house were dashed when she announced a need to use the ladies and requested my help.
As I helped gran from her chair, I turned to Jan. ‘You should go. I have tasks to perform this afternoon and probably tonight, but I will be doing research into your case in between them. I’ll call tomorrow if I have any questions or need your help with anything, okay?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ Jan replied with his usual wide smile. ‘This was a fun lunch, but you’re going to have to explain about how you used to be vampire at some point.’ He said it with a smile, curious about me but not sure what to make of all the weird that revolved around my life. He hesitated for a moment, looking at my face as if trying to work out whether to shake my hand or something. The voice in my head told me he wanted to ask me out but hadn’t plucked up the courage for that yet. I was going to have to tell him I wasn’t a girl before he did. Now wasn’t the time though.
He settled on giving me a quick wave, said, ‘See you later, Jane Butterworth,’ and was gone, leaving me to deal with gran. Fortunately, the only help she wanted with her trip to the ladies was finding it. Waiting for her to come back out ticked away too much of my remaining time though, so when she was ready, I unhappily accepted that in order to keep my appointment with Karen Gilbert, I would have to take Gran with me.
This was going to be embarrassing.
Karen Gilbert’s House. Saturday, December 3rd 1400hrs
‘Where is it we are going again?’ gran asked for the third or fourth time.
‘To a client’s house. She has a man disturbing her sleep.’
‘Hah! Does she really?’ cackled my grandmother from the passenger’s seat. ‘There a word for girls like that.’
I sighed, worrying that this afternoon might be more painful than it needed to be. ‘No, gran. The man is getting into her house uninvited. She hired me to find out how he is doing it and why, and then to find a way to stop him.’
‘Stop him?’
‘Yes, gran. That part will probably involve the police, but I need to identify the person and gather sufficient evidence for the police to respond first.’
Gran turned in her seat to look at me, paying attention for once. ‘Why don’t they investigate?’
It was a valid question. ‘Because at this point, there is no perceivable crime. The police have no evidence that anything has happened. The man hasn’t harmed her, but he is freaking her out.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘He sings to her.’
‘That sounds nice,’ gran said with a smile.
I rolled my eyes. ‘The poor woman wakes up in the night to find a strange man sitting in her bedroom singing her Mr Sandman. I wouldn’t find it nice. It would scare the crap out of me.’
‘Yes, well, it’s been a while since I had a man in my room. Strange or not,’ gran said with a wistful look in her eyes. ‘The Sandman. That’s what you should call him.’ It was as good a name as any and I doubted I would now be able to think of him by any other.
Moments later I stopped my car outside the address Karen gave me. It was a pretty cottage in rural Kent and had a real fire inside unless the smoke rising from the chimney was a clever bluff. Red London brick surrounded small windows set equidistance either side of the centrally-set front door, and rose bushes, clipped for the winter, grew on wood trellis right up to the upper story windows. It looked delightful, almost like something from a story, though for the occupant, right now the story was one from a horror book.
I hoped I could help her with that.
With the engine off, I went around to gran’s side and helped her out, then, walking slowly as gran hobbled along with her walking stick, we set off down the garden path.
‘This is nice,’ said gran.
‘It looks a lot like your cottage, gran.’
‘No, I mean getting out. I don’t get out much. Bingo twice a week, of course, and I have afternoon tea with the ladies from the women’s institute every Thursday. But I don’t get out in the country like this anymore. Thank you for bringing me.’
It was nice of gran to thank me. Okay, I didn’t have much option and she was sharp as a tack so had probably engineered things at the restaurant so I had to bring her with me, but she was my gran and far more maternal than my mother had ever been.
I was smiling to myself about her as we neared the house, but the door opened before we got to it. Karen appeared, an anxious look dominating her face. ‘I was worried you weren’t coming.’
‘I’m right on time, am I not?’ I knew I was because I checked the clock a dozen times on the way over.
‘Yes, yes. Sorry. I’m just nervous about being back in the house. I know it’s irrational; it’s daylight after all. But, well…’
I raised a hand to stop her. ‘It’s perfectly alright. I’m sure I would be feeling unsettled if this were happening to me. I brought equipment with me,’ I said, holding up a backpack. Tempest kept gear in lockers in the storage area of the office building and a couple of backpacks so he and Amanda could easily stuff things in and go when they needed to. Some of the items I wanted had gone with him to France but there was enough left for this case.
‘This is my gran, by the way,’ I said aloud, then dropped my voice to a soft whisper. ‘I don’t usually have her with me. She came by the office and I didn’t have time to drop her off and still get there on time. I hope you don’t mind.’
Karen gave me an awkward smile which I took to mean she has a gran too. ‘Shall I make tea?’ she asked, looking at my gran rather than me.
‘That would be nice, dear. I’m Vera. Vera Cambridge. Is there somewhere I can sit while James gets on with his business?’ I froze, wondering if this was going to lead to an awkward conversation.
‘James?’ asked Karen, her brow wrinkling in confusion.
‘Sorry. Sorry, I meant Jane. I do get myself confused.’ Karen politely assumed that my grandmother was just getting a bit dottery in the mental arena and led her through to her tiny cottage lounge where an armchair and a large ginger cat awaited.
Remaining in the hallway, I started talking as Karen came back out, ‘I have some questions, Karen, if you are ready?’
‘Of course. I’l
l just put the kettle on.’ Karen went around me and through a door on the other side of the hall. I followed her into what turned out to be a small galley kitchen. A window provided a view over a lovely garden. A feeder full of seed hung in front of the window with birds pecking hungrily at it. They burst into the air as one when I looked at them. ‘What it is you would like to know?’ Karen asked as she took the kettle to the sink.
‘I need you to show me your bedroom so I can set up a pair of cameras and the seat he was sitting in so I can dust for prints. I doubt he will have left prints on the door handles, but I will check. What I want to ask you about is your neighbours, work colleagues etcetera. If this man has targeted you specifically, my assumption is that he knows you from somewhere. He might live down the street or be a man that sees you each week at the supermarket.’
‘You really think this is a person and not some disquiet spirit. Mr Bagatus gets antsy sometimes and I always thought it was because he could detect an evil presence.’
For clarity I needed to ask a question, ‘Mr Bagatus is the cat?’
‘Yes. Yes, sorry, I should have introduced him, shouldn’t I?’
While the kettle boiled on her gas stove, I took out the finger-printing kit and asked her for a full set of prints; I needed to be sure I was looking at ones that were not hers. Then, I set about dusting the frame and handle around the back door. ‘Does anyone else have a key?’
‘No. Well, my mum does.’
‘I want you to check she still has it please. Do that now, if you will.’ I waited while she used her phone to send a quick text message. ‘How long ago did you move in please? And who was the previous tenant?’
‘I…’ her phone beeped to interrupt what she planned to say. ‘Mum say the key is hanging where it always hangs: in her utility room. I moved in six years ago, but the previous occupants were a couple that lived here for sixty-three years and died of old age. They were known to the family, so I got the house cheap before it even went on the market.’
‘I need to see your bedroom,’ I said, slipping items back into the pack that came with the fingerprint kit.
