Atmosphere

by Robert Innes

  Some of the other men in the room gathered around the phone but Blake barely noticed them as he watched a tall figure appear on the screen. He was wearing a black coat and a balaclava that completely covered his face. When he was in full view of the camera, he held his watch up so that the time could be seen. It read ’20:08.’

  “Two minutes ago,” Harrison said, checking his phone. “But it can’t be! How can she be there? Wherever there is?”

  The figure on the phone then produced a paper and held it up so that the camera could see the date. Blake recognised it as the paper he had been reading that morning.

  “This is insane,” Benjamin murmured. “How has…”

  “Sssh,” Blake hissed as the figure threw the paper down and walked towards Amelia. She watched him with fear filled eyes as he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and then forcibly pulled the rag out of her mouth, thrusting the paper into her hands. She stared at it, looking confused for a moment, before the figure stabbed the paper with his finger and then pointed towards the camera before disappearing from view.

  Amelia watched him as he walked away and then began crying again, her hands shaking as she read what was written on the paper.

  “‘I have your daughter,’” she began, her voice breaking. “‘How about that? I’ve pulled off a trick even the great Sebastian Klein couldn’t manage. You’ll hear from me again, very soon. Magic’s biggest secrets are about to be revealed.’”

  Then, the phone went blank.

  “Good God,” Arthur murmured. “Sebastian, we have to find her.”

  Sebastian appeared to be unable to speak. He had gone pale, his eyes darting around between Blake and Arthur.

  “Well,” Blake said, pulling his own phone out of his pocket. “It looks like this just turned into a police investigation.”

  6

  Early next morning, the officers of Harmschapel Police Station were gathered in the meeting room, their attention all on Blake who was standing at the front.

  Blake took a long sip of the coffee he had poured himself when he had arrived. He felt he had barely had a second’s sleep the night before. The one moment he could vaguely recollect as dreaming had involved the screaming woman appearing from a cabinet in the middle of the old house. As he took a sip of the jet-black, thick coffee, his face contorted slightly at the bitter taste. It was going to be a very long day.

  “Right, thanks for getting in on time, everybody,” he began. “I know it’s very early, but let’s try and keep our attentions on the matter in hand. We currently have a girl who, to all intents and purposes, appears to have been kidnapped, somehow, so I think the best thing we can do is to try and gather all we know about our missing girl and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance.”

  There was a murmur of groggy agreement around the room as Blake pulled the photo of Amelia he had been given by Sebastian out of the case file and stuck it to the board.

  “Amelia Klein. Seventeen years old, a magician’s assistant to her father, Sebastian Klein. Both reside in Clackton, but they tour around performing their magic show. Harmschapel was the latest location of their performances. Last night, during a trick in which Amelia is supposed to disappear and then reappear again from a cabinet suspended above the stage, she somehow completely vanished without a trace in front of a room full of witnesses. A few minutes after her disappearance, Sebastian Klein, her father, received a video message from an unknown person which showed Amelia tied up and in some sort of warehouse. Obviously, we investigated anything remotely resembling a warehouse in the vicinity of Harmschapel and found absolutely nothing.”

  Blake leant across to his computer and clicked on the video that had been downloaded onto it from Sebastian’s phone. A moment later, the video played for the officers in the room.

  “We’ve obviously tracked the phone,” Blake said when the video had finished. “Turns out to be a pay as you go, with nobody listed as its owner.”

  “Bought just for the sake of sending Sebastian Klein a video?” Mattison asked, shaking his head in disbelief at what he was seeing on the screen.

  “Poor cow,” Lisa Fox said from her desk. “She looks terrified.”

  “Terrified or a very good actress,” Patil put in, with a slightly disdainful glance at Fox. Blake raised an eyebrow. He was all too aware of Patil’s feeling towards Fox, especially when she was around Mattison. “You’re saying that this girl is a magician’s assistant, Sir? If anyone knows how to vanish from a cabinet, no matter how high it’s suspended above the stage, it would be her.”

  “I would agree with you there, Mini,” Blake said with a nod. “In any magic trick I’ve ever seen, whoever is in the box, or cabinet, or water tank, or whatever, is always in on the secret as to how it’s done. And if we didn’t have a video of the girl tied up, looking like she’s being held God only knows where, I would just put all this down to a seventeen-year-old girl rebelling against her father for whatever reason. But somehow, she’s been taken from that box and then transported to a completely different location.”

  Sergeant Michael Gardiner, sitting in his usual position at the back of the room behind his desk, cleared his throat.

  “What about that stagehand you were going on about last night?”

  “Benjamin Lakes,” Blake said. “He works for Sebastian, or rather he did. He, apparently, is the one that makes all the magic happen backstage. He’s the one who was operating the winch that lifted the cabinet above the stage.”

  “And so, he’d surely be able to see what was going on,” Gardiner replied. “If anyone is going to know, it would be him.”

  “That’s the thing though,” Blake replied. He pulled the board down to reveal a diagram he had drawn on the other side before the rest of the officers had arrived. It detailed the stage layout, where the cabinet was and what perspective the audience could see.

  “My, haven’t you been busy?” Gardiner said, with a raise of his eyebrow.

  Blake gave him a sarcastic smile. He had become more than used to Gardiner’s waspish attitude since he had arrived in Harmschapel.

  “The problem with that theory, Michael,” Blake said, pointing at the diagram with his board marker, “is that Sebastian Klein employs the use of a mirror in this trick to give the audience a full view of the back of the cabinet. I’ve stood on that stage myself, I’ve seen that it’s all legit.”

  “Why would he do that?” Mattison asked, frowning. “Isn’t that making his job ten times harder?”

  “I would presume it’s to make the illusion more convincing,” Blake replied, shrugging. “Because it doesn’t matter what the audience can see on stage when this trick is happening, because all the ‘magic’ is going on inside the cabinet. The bottom of it is deeper than it appears from the audience’s perspective, so all she had to do was drop herself down and squeeze into a compartment at the bottom of the box. Then she just stands up and reveals herself and Sebastian Klein gets a round of applause for standing there and waving his arms around.”

  Blake’s boss, Inspector Jacob Angel, who was standing at the back of the meeting room with his long, stick thin, arms crossed raised his eyebrows.

  “You seem to be very reluctant to talk very positively about Mr Klein, DS Harte. Is there a problem?”

  “No, Sir,” Blake replied. “I just don’t trust him.”

  “More of your wily intuition at work, I take it?” Angel said wryly.

  Gardiner, who was always pleased to witness Blake receive an admonishment, chuckled slightly behind his cup of coffee.

  “I’ve always been one to follow my instinct, Sir,” Blake said to Angel.

  “Well, forgive me for appearing old fashioned, DS Harte, but I’ve always been one to gather evidence first, before I start gathering a suspect list, circumstantial or otherwise. Do you think Mr Klein has something to do with his daughter’s disappearance?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Blake replied.

  “Why would he kidnap his own daughter?�
�� Gardiner exclaimed.

  “Sergeant Gardiner does have a point, Sir,” Patil said. “I mean, I’ve seen Klein on all his posters and in the streets, I can understand why you’d think he was weird, walking around looking like he’s on stage all the time in those ridiculous cloaks, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s got anything to do with the kidnapping.”

  “I’ve seen him too,” Fox said, with a flick of her hair over her shoulders. “I wouldn’t say that he’s even tall enough to be the masked bloke in that video.”

  “I’m not saying he’s kidnapped his daughter,” Blake said sharply, the lack of sleep already starting to get to him. “But, the man is clearly hiding something. That argument I overheard between him and Benjamin was more than just about Benjamin being made redundant. Our young stagehand knows something.”

  At that moment, Sergeant Mandy Darnwood poked her head around the door.

  “Sir,” she said to Blake, in her usual bored tone that was the reason Blake preferred her behind the reception desk than anywhere more important. “Benjamin Lakes is here, I’ve put him in interview room one.”

  “Thank you, Mandy,” Blake said, grabbing hold of his case file. “And we’re going to find out what it is. Lisa, would you like to join me? The rest of you, I want to know the exact movements of Amelia Klein throughout yesterday. Find out who she spoke to, where she went. Someone out there knows something. Remember, we’ve got a young girl out there, terrified and trapped somewhere with someone who has made it quite clear that they’re only just getting started. Fox, let’s go.”

  Benjamin’s head shot up as Blake and Fox entered the room. He looked very nervous as he watched the two officers take their seats opposite him.

  “Okay, Benjamin,” Blake said as he opened his file. “Do you prefer Ben or Benjamin?”

  “I don’t mind,” Benjamin replied, watching Blake apprehensively.

  “So, it’s been quite a twenty-four hours for you.”

  “You could say that, yeah.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Not the best.”

  Blake nodded, then leaned forward with his hands clasped together.

  “I wanted to ask you a little bit more about how you came to work with Sebastian and Amelia. How long have you been working for him?”

  “About three years,” Benjamin replied. “I started with him pretty much as soon as I left school.”

  “And you lived in Clackton, did you?”

  “No, actually I was in Bristol. I left home to tour with Sebastian and Amelia.”

  “Oh, right,” Blake said, with a smile. “Being a stagehand is something you’ve always wanted to do, is it?”

  “Well, it’s a job,” Benjamin replied. “It beats doing the sort of jobs that most of the people in my year found themselves doing anyway. I went to see one of his shows and got chatting to him afterwards, and then three weeks later I was working backstage.”

  “So,” Fox said, leaning over and giving Benjamin a wink. “chances are that you know how each and every one of his tricks works.”

  Benjamin nodded. “Yeah. I sort of have to. There’s even been tricks when I’ve been on stage hidden from the audience making something happen.” He turned back to Blake. “Nothing in the show you saw though. Sebastian has been pretty keen to keep me well out of the way the past few performances.”

  “Why would he want to do that? Just because of this whole redundancy thing?” Blake asked.

  Benjamin did not reply, he merely wrung his hands together tightly.

  “There’s something going on, isn’t there, Benjamin? What exactly were you and Sebastian arguing about this morning I saw you? You said you were going to find proof on something. What was that?”

  Benjamin sighed and put his head in his hands. “I’m not entirely convinced I’ve got this right, you know. It could be absolutely nothing.”

  “Whatever it was, you were sure enough to be pretty bloody angry with him,” Blake reasoned. “So, come on. What’s going on?”

  There was a long pause. Benjamin seemed to be very interested in watching his fingers intertwine around each other.

  “Benjamin?”

  Benjamin looked up and sighed again. “The other morning, the day you saw us arguing, I walked into the village hall to prepare for this rehearsal Sebastian wanted to have. When I got there, the hall was empty, so I went backstage to try and find them.”

  “And did you find them?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “And?”

  Benjamin glanced across at Fox.

  “Go on, darlin’,” she said encouragingly. “It’s alright.”

  Blake raised an eyebrow and turned his head towards her. Her expression suggested she had no idea what his problem was.

  “They were both backstage, behind the curtain. Amelia was sitting on a chair, in her outfit for the show, and Sebastian was kneeling next to her. He had his hand on her thigh.”

  Blake raised his eyebrows. “On her thigh?”

  Benjamin nodded. “Yeah. And he was sort of rubbing it. Quite high up.”

  “Rubbing her thigh?” Blake repeated. “What, you mean in a sexual way?”

  Benjamin shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not. I mean, it’s his daughter, I must have been seeing things. But the thing is when he realised that I had seen him, all of a sudden he started going on about how he couldn’t afford to keep me anymore.”

  Blake leant back in his chair and considered what he was being told. “And so, when I saw you arguing, that’s what you were accusing him of? Sacking you because you caught him getting a bit hands on with his daughter?”

  “Dirty sod,” Fox murmured beside Blake. “Although, are you sure that’s what you saw?”

  “No, not really,” Benjamin replied. “I was angry and it made perfect sense to me at the time, but I dunno. Sebastian has been known to be referred to as a bit of a creep. He’s quite intense.”

  “And this was the first time you’d seen anything like this?” Blake asked him, frowning. “You’ve never seen him act like that with Amelia before?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Benjamin said. “And to be honest, that’s what makes me think I must have been seeing things. I mean, I spend so much time with the pair of them, I surely would have noticed something. Most of the time they’re just a normal father and daughter.”

  “Did you notice how Amelia reacted?” Blake said, folding his arms. “Did she appear uncomfortable?”

  Benjamin bit his lip. “I don’t know. She was the first person to see I was standing there and then the pair of them sort of sprung apart.”

  “Sprung apart?” Fox repeated. “Like you were catching them doing something?”

  “I guess,” Benjamin said shrugging. “But now this has happened, I have no idea what’s true and what isn’t anymore.”

  Blake’s eyes narrowed as he mentally stored away what Benjamin had told him to peruse over later. For some reason, he was not that surprised by it.

  “So, the night of the show, you’re standing backstage, operating the winch that pulled the cabinet up and down. How does that all work?”

  “It’s pretty simple really,” replied Benjamin. “The wires are connected on all four corners of the cabinet, they’re attached to a winch which I can then turn to lift the cabinet up. It would be a bit of a struggle with anybody larger than Amelia but she’s pretty light so it’s easy enough to lift it up. Then, when she’s been revealed as disappeared, I just lower it back down again.”

  “And from where you were standing backstage, there was nothing out of the ordinary going on?”

  “Nope. Anyway, I could see what you could see. That mirror lets the audience see behind the cabinet. There was no way she could have got out without anybody seeing her. I don’t care what Sebastian says, I’m as clueless as you are.”

  Blake watched him as he leant across the desk and put his head in his hands with a deep sigh.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do from he
re,” he mused mournfully. “I’m going to have to find a job of some sort, but I dunno what I’m actually any good at. I didn’t go to college or get any qualifications apart from a ‘C ‘in English. I mean, I know, I know. Amelia could be anywhere with some sort of psycho and me not having a job is literally so not important, but still. I haven’t even got a girlfriend. I feel like I haven’t got anywhere to be.”

  Fox smiled at him. “Hey, now. None of that. We’ll find Amelia. And as for you, you’re a young, very good-looking young man.”

  Benjamin seemed to blush slightly. “Really?”

  “Absolutely,” replied Fox firmly. “Companies will be clambering over themselves to hire you one day with your experience in the theatre, all that handy work you’d have had to do. Big strong lad, hauling and carrying stuff around all day. The ladies will like that too.” She winked at him and Benjamin looked down at the floor with a bashful smile on his face.

  Blake stared at Fox in bemusement and then told Benjamin that he could go for now.

  “We’ll be in touch if we need to ask anything else,” he told him.

  “What about Amelia?” Benjamin asked as he stood up. “You’re going to find her? What are you doing?”

  “Everything we can,” Blake replied. “We have officers from not only here, but around the county looking for her. Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”

  Benjamin nodded. “I hope so.”

  He left the interview room and when the door closed behind him, Blake turned to Fox.

  “Quite finished flirting with somebody we’re trying to interview, are you?”

  Fox raised her pencilled eyebrows in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “‘Don’t you worry, darlin,’” Blake repeated in a fairly good representation of Fox’s northern accent. “‘You’re a very good-looking lad, you’ll soon find yourself a girlfriend. We’re supposed to be looking for a young girl, not giving teenage boys an ego boost and a quick flirt.”

  “I was trying to make him feel better! He was feeling down about himself!” Fox argued.

  “I’m not disputing that,” Blake replied, gathering up file notes. “But for God’s sake, there’s other ways of doing it when you’re interviewing a potential suspect.”