Night Work: Blue Moon Investigations Book 12

by steve higgs

  Just then there was a crashing noise from elsewhere in the house. Karen and I glanced at each other, then we both moved at once, Karen pausing only to put down the cup of tea she had for my grandmother.

  Dashing into the lounge, I feared I might find that gran had fallen over. It was just her walking stick though, which had fallen from her hands to knock into the small rack of brass tools set by the fireplace. The sound we heard was several of them falling off.

  Gran was asleep.

  Or possibly dead. Honestly, it was hard to tell.

  Coming into the room behind me, Karen said, ‘Is she okay?’

  I opened my mouth to give a flippant reply, but gran chose that moment to snort out a loud snore. Well, she wasn’t dead at least, that would have made the afternoon less productive. Karen put the walking stick against a nearby sideboard before following me back out of the room.

  Upstairs, I dusted for more prints, particularly underneath her dressing table stool and on the edge of the dressing table where I hoped he might have placed a hand. There was nothing though. He either wore gloves or he was very careful. Climbing off my knees where I had been crouched beneath her dressing table, I crossed the room to pull her curtains together.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Karen asked.

  Grimacing because I didn’t want to explain it, I said, ‘I need to perform one final check.’ Then I took out a blacklight and a pair of goggles.

  When I switched it on, she gasped, ‘Oh, my goodness. You’re checking for… for…’

  ‘Yes, I’m checking to make sure he wasn’t leaving little knuckle children on your carpet,’ I helpfully filled in her blanks.

  Karen said, ‘Ewwww,’ and did a little unhappy dance as if she felt covered in lice or something. Thankfully, we both got to see that there were no telltale signs of liquid on her bedroom floor. I think we were both relieved, her more than me obviously, but when the light flooded back in through the curtains, she asked, ‘What next?’

  I had to think about that for a while. ‘I am going to set up a pair of cameras, if you will give me permission. It will mean I have recorded material of you in your bedroom. You can have it all back or watch me destroy it, or you can just say no, but I want to see if I can catch him with an infrared camera. I also want to stay here overnight.’ It was something I knew Tempest had done in the past. If he thought a criminal might strike, it could often be the fastest way to bring a case to its conclusion.

  Karen Gilbert looked at the floor as she thought about what I had asked her to agree to, mulling things over probably. When she looked back up though, she didn’t agree to my request. Instead, she had a question of her own. ‘How will you stop him?’ she looked at me for second before adding. ‘I mean, I don’t know how big he is, but he’s not a small man. I wouldn’t want to tackle him. If you stay here at night, what will you do if he turns up? Call the police? The nearest station is Maidstone. It will take them half an hour to get this far out into the countryside.’

  I got what she was saying: I presented her with the image of a reasonably tall, but nevertheless petite woman. I weigh just a little more than one hundred pounds so I can’t use my weight against anyone either. I wasn’t going to tell her I was a man because it really wouldn’t make any difference to my ability to overpower the Sandman. However, it might very well completely change her thinking on whether I was allowed to film her in bed at night though.

  I decided to lie. ‘I’m trained in martial arts. If he turns up, he’ll soon find he has a mouthful of carpet and a small blonde woman making one of his elbows touch his ear.’

  With a perplexed frown, Karen lifted an arm, twisting it around in a bid to work out how I could get an elbow anywhere near his head. She gave up. ‘Okay, well, that answered my question. I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but I’m not staying here tonight unless you are here too.’

  ‘Oh.’ Simon wasn’t going to like this. ‘I thought he had never come two nights in a row?’

  ‘He hasn’t so far. I’m not going to risk it though. I want you to catch him and prove I’m not going nuts. You can put the cameras up, as many of them as you like, in fact. But I’m not going to be here at night without you here as well. Can you do that?’

  I didn’t feel like I had much choice. I wanted to see what it was like to be an investigator and this was it. This was my chance to give it a go. If I could solve this case, then maybe I could solve other cases. Karen was right to ask the question about how I would subdue the man, actual fight training something I had already considered because I recognized it was a weak area for me.

  Slowly, I nodded. ‘I need to take gran home and I need to attend to some other tasks, but I can be back here later this evening.’

  Karen bit her lip. ‘I, ah, I don’t have guests very often. Shall I get a bottle of wine?’

  I knew the answer to this just from listening to Amanda and Tempest talk about their work and from typing up reports for them. ‘No. I’ll need to stay sober and alert. I’m afraid this isn’t a social visit. I’ll enter from the rear of the house under cover of darkness. If the Sandman is watching, I don’t want him to see me and change his mind about visiting.’

  ‘Gosh. Yes, good point. I hadn’t thought of that. It’s clear you’ve been doing this for years.’ I smirked to myself at her comment, feeling it tweak the corners of my mouth. She was looking right at me but didn’t react to it. ‘So, you’ll let me know when you are coming? I’m not staying here by myself, but I will be brave and come back when you say you are on your way.’

  ‘I will do that.’ While I spoke, I mentally totted up all the things on my to do list. My diary was getting busy and suddenly top of the list was finding a self-defense class I could attend. You know, just in case the lies I told about being a ninja came back to bite my backside.

  Jennifer Lasseter. Saturday, December 3rd 1537hrs

  ‘What do you mean you don’t know what time you will be home tonight? Are you kidding me right now?’ Simon’s voice was filled with venom.

  ‘I already told you, Simon: I have a terrified client and I need to see if I can catch her tormentor. It might be late when I get back.’

  ‘It’s Saturday night, James,’ he snapped back at me, using my real name to inflict injury because he knew I was dressed as Jane. ‘What exactly constitutes late on a Saturday night? We often don’t get in until two or three in the morning. Sometimes later than that.’

  ‘Well, it might be around that time.’ Or even later, I didn’t add. I wasn’t expecting the Sandman to turn up, but would it be fair on Karen for me to decide at three that he wasn’t coming and leave. What if he turned up ten minutes after I drove away?

  Simon wasn’t done asking questions though. ‘What is with you, babe?’ At least his voice had softened. ‘You’ve always been such a party girl. Now you want to pretend you are a detective. I get it; you’ve got a crush on your boss. I’m not jealous. I just think this is a silly waste of time. You are the admin assistant. When did you suddenly learn to be an investigator? Have you been watching late night episodes of Mike Hammer?’

  He knew I was a fan of that show, but he wasn’t being fair. I had sprung this on him and ruined his plan for the weekend, but so what? It wasn’t like we were doing anything special. Drinks in town, something to eat and then off to a club until the small hours. What Simon failed to grasp was that where he had found his career and was succeeding, I was still searching for definition.

  I didn’t know how to say all that, so I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ for the umpteenth time.

  ‘You’re sorry,’ Simon echoed. ‘So, you won’t change your mind. You’re going to let me and all our friends down for some silly mission.’

  ‘I’ll be home as early as I can.’

  I got a final, ‘Don’t rush,’ and he put the phone down on me. He actually hung up. I couldn’t believe it. I needed to go by the house later to change clothes and pick up a toothbrush, but his mood was going to make it awkward. I just hoped he wouldn
’t want to get into another fight.

  Huffing to myself, I started toward the address I had for Jennifer Lasseter. I thought about phoning ahead, which was more to ensure she was in and my journey not wasted but dismissed the idea. She would either agree to speak with me, or she wouldn’t, but over the phone I had no ability to see how her face reacted to the past being dredged up or what her body language might tell me.

  With that in mind, once gran was settled safely back in her house in Aylesford, I set off to visit Jennifer. Like Karen, in fact like lots of people in this part of the county, Jennifer lived in a small village. Not far from Biddenden Lake in nearby village Smarden, Jennifer’s address turned out to be a semi-detached house in a winding row of new builds. Houses were still being built in these quiet rural settings, generally against the wishes of the residents in the original village.

  Her house was in one such development on the edge of Smarden, but the area had been tastefully built and landscaped so I found it hard to see what everyone complained so bitterly about. People had to live somewhere, surely we couldn’t shove all of them into the cities to preserve the rural areas.

  I parked in front of her drive, relieved to see there was a car on it. That had to mean there was someone in, right. I knocked on the door, then stood back to wait.

  Jennifer’s picture was in the case file Jan gave me this morning but lying in bed next to Simon’s cold shoulder last night, I had looked at her social media profile and found lots of pictures, so it was easy to recognize her when the door opened.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, sounding quietly curious as I was not someone she recognised and not what she expected if I was about to sell her something.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I started, then corrected myself; I wasn’t supposed to be apologizing. It felt like a very weak way to lead off. ‘Jennifer Lasseter, my name is Jane Butterworth, I have been hired by Kent Police to look into recent deaths at Biddenden Lake. Can I have a few moments of your time?’

  The woman looked me up and down, quickly as if assessing me, then stared directly at me. ‘Kent Police, huh? You know they made my life hell for months. Now they think I have something to do with the recent deaths, I suppose?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, nothing like that. I am not here on their behalf. I am just looking to better understand what happened… for perspective in my own investigation.’

  She wriggled her mouth around as she considered my request, arriving at a decision a few seconds later. ‘You had better come in.’

  I squeezed around her as she took a step back to let me in then paused while she closed the door because I didn’t know where she would want me to go. She led me through to her living room where she invited me to sit. ‘I assume you have a list of questions you’d like to ask?’ she said once I was settled and had my tablet poised for taking notes.

  It was at this point that I realised I didn’t have a question for her. Why was I here? Too late now, I was going to have to bluff my way through it. ‘Is that him?’ I asked, pointing to a picture on a side table. I already knew that it was because, like everything else, his photograph was in the casefile.

  ‘Yes, that’s him,’ she said sadly. ‘You’re going to ask me why I still have a picture of him on display in my house.’ She didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘He was taken from me in the most terrible way. I haven’t been able to move on. I haven’t had another boyfriend since. So, Ian stays with me. In some small way, we will never be apart.’

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. I was surprised by it, but maybe it was normal for trauma to manifest like this. I didn’t know any different. Scrambling for another question, one popped into my head. ‘On the morning of his death, you were camping, yes?’

  ‘That’s correct.’ Her reply added no additional information.

  ‘He had to have left the tent at some point. Did you not notice him leave?’

  Jennifer stared at her fingers and then back up at me. ‘I woke up when he got out of the sleeping bag, but only briefly. He didn’t speak and I assumed he had a call of nature. He left the tent but it was dark and I fell back to sleep without really noticing him go.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her answer was laced with impatience. ‘It was dark, I barely remember him leaving the tent and I certainly didn’t check my watch. When I finally woke up to discover he hadn’t returned I went looking for him. That’s when I saw the creature and spotted his body in the water.’

  ‘Can you describe the creature for me, please?’ I had no particular purpose for my questions, I didn’t think she was guilty, but now that I was here, I felt like I had to ask something.

  With a quiet tut, Jennifer began to describe the swamp monster. It was standing in the water with everything above its waist showing. It was dark green or possibly grey and had a head a bit like a crocodile. The eyes sat at the front of the face like a human but were large and buggish. She had only seen it for a second in the early morning half-light, but it was long enough for her to memorise what she saw.

  I pushed forward with another question, one I was sure must have surfaced at the time but the answer to which was not in the information I found so far. ‘Prior to his death, you were hospitalized several times. I flicked to the page of notes from last night. ‘You broke your right forearm twice, you needed stitches to your lips, your nose was broken, your left cheekbone was broken; all of these were separate incidents. Since his death you haven’t suffered a single injury. These look like domestic injuries, Jennifer. Did he beat you?’

  Jennifer sighed an exaggerated sigh of boredom. ‘The police kept asking the same question three years ago. I got mugged twice, that’s what happened to my face. I broke my arm once when I slipped on the decking and Ian broke it once when we got a little bit vigorous in the bedroom. He was mortified that he had managed to hurt me, but it was entirely consensual. I have answered all these questions before, Miss Butterworth. I don’t see why I should be subjected to answering them again if I am not a suspect in the latest deaths.’

  I couldn’t find an argument and had exhausted my hastily thought up list of questions. I shut down my tablet. ‘Thank you for your time, Miss Lasseter.’

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ she replied though she did not sound like she meant it.

  With us both standing once more, she escorted me to the door where I collected my coat and slipped it on. It was cold out, but I took my time and made her wait because I came up with another question and wanted to frame it right.

  Just as her hand touched the lock to open the door, I asked, ‘The creature you saw, the so-called swamp monster, why do you think no one was able to find it?’

  A wave of irritation shot across her face, gone as soon as it appeared. ‘I couldn’t possibly say,’ she replied. I saw something and clearly it is there because it came back and has killed again. The papers believed me, why can’t the police?’

  I extended my hand for her to shake. I had been poking at her to see if there was anything shaky or dubious about her story. There wasn’t though. Chief Inspector Quinn still suspected her but his evidence against her seemed circumstantial and superficial.

  ‘Thank you for your time,’ I said again and this time I let her open the door for me to leave.

  Back outside her house and heading to my car, I considered whether I had learned anything. Jennifer was never brought to trial the first time, which, in my opinion, was most likely because she wasn’t guilty. She was a small woman; smaller than me both in height and weight and her boyfriend was a big man. The file Jan gave me contained details about the first victim, Ian Dexter. Photographs from when he was alive and several from his autopsy showed how big he was; a bodybuilder, but one who was also tall and broad naturally. Not that his size was ambiguous because it was listed in the file. He had been six feet three inches tall and weighed two-hundred and thirty-five pounds when he died. Jennifer’s lawyer picked the right argument: she couldn’t have drowned him.

&nb
sp; I checked the time on my phone, but I knew from the darkness now descending that it was getting close to four o’clock. I had a beginners’ self-defense class booked at six o’clock, one which offered taster sessions for free and a great picture on their website of old ladies beating up young men.

  I would need to go home to grab some clothes for that, but I really didn’t feel like dealing with Simon yet. To put off that particular drama, I went to the office instead. Jan’s file was there too, and I wanted some peaceful time to go over it carefully.

  My hope for a quiet hour or so at the office wasn’t to be though.

  Frank’s theories. Saturday, December 3rd 1624hrs

  Frank hammered on the glass of the office door, peering through it to where I sat at my desk. I had barely made contact with the chair and the coffee machine was still coming up to full working speed, but there he was, his odd little face visible above the frosted portion of the glass.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I asked as I unlocked the door.

  Frank came in though I hadn’t invited him. ‘Poison said the light was on. I expected to find Tempest had returned, but it was you I really needed to speak with.’

  Curious, I asked, ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Witches,’ Frank replied while hunching over to look like a withered crone and making his voice sound mysterious. When I didn’t react, he waggled his eyebrows mysteriously and when I still didn’t react, he gave up and straightened himself to his unimpressive five-foot four-inch height. ‘I knew there was something I was forgetting about Biddenden Lakes. It came to me this afternoon, but I don’t have your number.’

  ‘What about the lakes?’ I asked, walking over to the coffee machine as the green light flicked on.

  ‘Ooh, is that fresh coffee on offer?’ Frank asked, peering around me to see the machine. ‘We have terrible coffee at the bookshop.’

  I turned to face him. ‘Isn’t it your shop? Couldn’t you just get better coffee?’