by steve higgs
‘I am not sure there is a case,’ he replied, ‘I tracked him down and spoke with him, but since he does not want to come home and is doing nothing criminal, I don’t see what there is that I can do. I am considering giving the client her money back.’
‘Have you spoken with her?’
‘Not today. When we spoke yesterday, she once again implored me to bring him home at any cost. That would be kidnap though. He has every right to join a Klown cult and wear odd clothing if he wishes to.’
We talked for a few minutes more and I promised to keep him updated on the case as it progressed. As I disconnected, Patience was arriving back at the booth with the open bucket of chicken and a drumstick sticking out of her mouth. She shoved the coke at me and pulled the drumstick away ripping a large chunk of meat off with her teeth. Grease was already visible on her fingers.
‘Damn this is good,’ she said between chews. I wondered if she planned to eat the entire bucket. It was designed for a family to share. Generally, I did not allow myself to indulge in such fatty treats, but it did smell good and my stomach gave a little growl as I considered maybe having one piece.
‘Are you sharing?' I asked, lifting my right hand to snag a piece of breast.
She scowled at me from across the table, ‘You said you didn’t want anything.’
‘Hey, Hotstuff,' came a familiar voice. I turned to see the huge form of Big Ben blocking out the sunlight. He had just come through the door uncharacteristically alone. Big Ben usually had a woman with him, or so it seemed. Admittedly, I usually saw him with Tempest, but listening to the stories about Big Ben and the inordinate amount of shagging he does, my senses told me he had to be in the company of a woman pretty much all the time.
‘Hello, Benjamin,’ I replied pleasantly. I turned to introduce Patience only to find her with her mouth open and a piece of chicken hanging out. She looked like a dog staring at an especially tasty string of sausages.
‘Hi. I’m Big Ben,’ Big Ben said, introducing himself. He was smiling at Patience and she was completely bewitched. I had to admit it was a smile that was nice to look at. Big Ben was good for looking at if nothing else. He fell firmly into the category of man-candy at six feet and seven inches of solid toned muscle topped with an unfairly handsome face. I would never allow myself to be attracted to him though because I knew about his social habits: He went through women at the rate of one or more a day. I would have to fill Patience in on this later.
‘Murgh murrf,’ said Patience. She had managed to find enough self-presence to swallow the piece of chicken she had been eating but coherent speech was still evading her.
‘This is Patience,’ I explained.
‘Patience,’ Big Ben repeated, ‘That is something I could do with more of in my life. Maybe you can help me out with that,’ he said hitting her with a huge smile. I rolled my eyes.
Big Ben slid in next to her, forcing her to scooch along a bit to allow him enough space. Smiling amiably still, he wiggled his eyebrows and selected a piece of chicken.
‘Help yourself,’ Patience invited him, finally finding her voice. She leaned forward at that point, pulling down her top slightly to reveal even more cleavage. It was a slick and clearly well-practised move.
‘Hmmm… leg or breast. I am a big fan of both,’ Big Ben claimed, his voice now taking on a husky edge, ‘Of course, I really like the dark meat,’ he said locking eyes with Patience. The usually sassy woman, who bossed men around and totally owned her own life just sat there and swallowed nervously.
Goodness I was starting to feel uncomfortable. They were doing verbal foreplay in front of me.
‘Patience?’ I called across the table to get her attention.
‘Hmmm?’ I got in reply with a single raised eyebrow. It was as if she had forgotten I was there.
‘I need to go and check on the lifts. Are you coming, or shall I leave you here to eat?’
‘You go,’ she said, still looking at Big Ben, ‘I’ll catch up.’
That would probably work better for me anyway. Minus Patience, I could check out the lifts without her trying to drag me into any shops. I put my phone away, picked up my diet coke and left her with Big Ben. I bid them both goodbye but neither one looked in my direction.
Back inside the Pentagon, I checked every one of the lifts in turn. Both lifts on each bank. I could find nothing out of the ordinary in any of them. The two that had not been refitted this year stood out because they were old and grubby and graffitied. They seemed to be a little bigger than the others, which struck me as odd, but I assumed that the new panels to be fitted inside were thicker or something. There seemed to be little more I could gain by staring at the inside of the lifts. I had ridden each one up and down with no ghosts jumping out at me and no loss of power at any point.
I sent a text to Patience as an hour has passed and I had not heard from her. I was planning to leave now. A few seconds later a text message pinged back to tell me Patience had already left Chatham with Big Ben. She had called me three times before giving up. Sure enough, there were missed calls on my phone when I looked properly. I guess the signal didn’t get through while I was in the lift or something. Her text said she would see me in the morning and she felt no need to expand on that. I wasn’t sure what I should write back. Good luck? Hope he is hung like a donkey? I elected to just leave her alone and hope she did not feel the need to regale me with any stories tomorrow.
I checked my watch: It was 1757hrs. The Pentagon shops had already closed and the centre itself would be shutting its doors very soon. I walked back to my car and set off to interview some of the people that had reported the ghost attacks and missing shopping. Martin Miller had furnished me with a list of names last night. I had then found addresses for the names while I was in work today. Most of them were local. The nearest was a man who had been the second to report that his shopping had gone missing. He was walking distance from where I was but for speed and efficiency, I drove to his house with a plan to drive onwards from there anyway.
Tyreke Franklin was a Jamaican man in his late fifties. He answered the door in house slippers, grey hopsack trousers held up with bright red braces and a white vest. He had a thick head of dreadlocks going down his back to almost touch his trousers and he had a great smile with a single gold tooth in place of his top right incisor. He invited me in almost before I had introduced myself.
The house had a trace of marijuana about it, the sweet smell lingering in the fabric of the soft furnishings. I wanted to speak with as many people as I could, or perhaps as many as it proved necessary to form a consistent picture of the incidents, so I ignored the obvious smell, declined his offer of a drink and pushed the conversation forward.
‘You reported the incident on Friday 8th. This was at,’ I checked my notes, ‘four o’clock. Yes?’
‘That is correct, my dear,’ he said, his voice a rumbling baritone.
‘Can you please describe the event? Give me as much detail as you can please.’
I listened as he started to describe going to the roof to have a smoke. The pentagon is the highest structure around that is easily accessed and he liked to go up there and enjoy the view. On the way back down, the lift had stopped. The lights went out at the same time, but it was only for a second or so. He thought nothing of it until he had arrived on the ground floor and noticed that his bag was missing. He had just bought a new pair of Nike trainers in Foot Locker and was going home. He assumed he had left them on the roof and had just imagined bringing them into the lift with him, but he could not find them there either. It was only then that he remembered hearing something about odd occurrences at the Pentagon on the local news the night before. He told me that he had wondered who he should tell, but then while he was standing next to the lift, he had spotted a pair of Police officers and waved to them. He told them the tale but could see one smiling to the other while he took notes. Then they asked him how much weed he had on him and confiscated the tiny bit he had left with a warning.<
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I wondered who the cops had been as this was pretty dodgy behaviour. I did not ask though. Instead, I pressed Mr. Franklin for more information. Asked him what else he remembered. There was nothing though. I thanked him for his time and thanked him again when he wished me good luck in my quest to solve the case.
I moved on to the next address. Two hours later I had visited six more victims, all of whom had similar tales to tell. There were a couple of differences though. One was a pretty girl called Poppy who had taken her little brother shopping to get a present for their mother's birthday. Poppy was seventeen, her baby brother, as she called him was fifteen and had a black eye. The black eye it transpired had been delivered by Poppy in the lift when the lights went out and someone had grabbed her left boob. She thought it was her brother and had whacked him in the face. Only when she saw that the shopping was gone, and he continued to deny any wrong doing did she concede that it might not have been him after all. Then she said something else that sparked my interest. She said that the lift had an odd smell to it. Like someone had been in there with food. I asked her to describe the smell but neither she nor her brother could pin down what it was they had been smelling. The best they could do was label it as something meaty. My interest dwindled – it was probably nothing more than the previous occupant getting in the lift with their lunch. Walking away from their house, I wondered if the smell meant anything, but I had learned that the ghost liked to cop a feel. My guess would have been that it was a man behind this anyway, but it seemed more certain now.
I would have ignored the remark about the smell had I not heard it again from a different victim that had lost their shopping on a different day in a different lift. Alison Daniels had not had her boobs fondled but she said the lift stunk and she almost got out again when she stepped in and gagged on the smell. Her description was of very heavy garlic but somehow not. I filed the information away, wondering if I could add two and two together to arrive at four, or if this was a red herring that I should ignore.
I was tired when I got home. Too tired to cook anyway, so dinner was a fishfinger sandwich using bread I had in the freezer. I made a few notes about the case on an A4 pad I had to hand but when my eyes started to droop, I went with them and fell into bed.
My Apartment. Wednesday, October 20th 0600hrs
The alarm went off at 0600hrs, drilling a hole into my brain until I found the off switch. My shift was the last in this particular sequence. Usually, the pattern was four earlies, then two off then four lates then two off ad infinitum, but in my notice period I had unused holiday to take so was using it up by chipping days off. I had three days off after this one. Buoyed by that thought I swung my legs off the bed and headed to the shower.
As I lathered my hair with the last dregs of my favourite Aussie shampoo, I made a mental note to add it to my shopping list and considered what I needed to do about the Pentagon ghost today. I wanted to get some cameras and see if I got lucky with them but would not have enough time after work to collect them from Tempest in Rochester and get them to the Pentagon in Chatham unless I arranged it with Martin and I did not want anyone to know that I was doing it. Maybe I could get Tempest's LGBT, cross-dressing assistant Jane/James to drop it off on his/her way home. He/She lived near Maidstone somewhere, so it felt possible.
While I was in the shower, I decided I ought to perform some downstairs maintenance before my date with Brett. Just in case… I had no intention of him seeing any of it yet, but equally, there seemed no harm in paying some attention to detail. I also shaved my legs and then went the whole hog, scrubbing my body with my favourite Molton Brown exfoliator. I left the shower, dried myself then liberally applied a matching Molton Brown moisturiser all over. I felt good and that was probably all that mattered.
I blasted my hair with the dryer and went into finishing touches. A tinted moisturiser, a swipe of mascara, nothing else. I didn’t feel the need for a huge effort at work. I had no interest in the men there and honestly could not care what they thought about my appearance.
I threw on skinny jeans and a jumper, added a pair of boots and headed for the door. I would change into uniform once I got to the station.
On my way there I called the Blue Moon office from the car. It was Jane/James that answered. How did I address him/her if he/she did not say who was speaking? I decided to always go with James if I did not know.
‘Blue Moon Investigations, Jane speaking. How may I help you?’ That made things easier. He had decided to be a girl today.
‘Hi, Jane. I need to use some of the camera equipment, the really small ones, but I cannot get there today to collect them. Will you be able to drop them off at the station on your way home later?’
‘Err, yeah. I don’t see why not. How many do you want?’
‘How many do we have?’ I asked.
‘Six, I think. I will check. Shall I just bring them all?’
How many did I need? I have eight banks of two lifts, so I would have to put whatever we had into some of the lifts – probably the ones with the most frequent occurrences and hope for the best. ‘Yes, that would be great. Thank you. You can ask for me at the front desk but if they say I am unavailable you can just leave them there for me.'
‘No problem. See you later.’
I pulled into the carpark behind the station where the sky was threatening to rain. There was moisture on the breeze and a dangerously dark sky in every direction. I was down to work the dispatch desk again today so it hardly mattered.
Inside though, once I was in my uniform, I found that I had been switched out and would be on the streets instead.
‘Hey, girl,’ called Patience as she crossed the room juggling a set of car keys, ‘Dannermann and Jones got injured and are on the desk. You and I get to go out for the day.’ She was looking rosy and chipper. Why was she looking so pleased with herself?
OMG she actually slept with Big Ben last night!
‘Did you shag Big Ben?’ I said a little louder than I ought to. Everyone in the room turned to look at us.
‘Damn, girl. Can you say it a little louder?’
‘Sorry,’ I blushed, ‘You did though, didn’t you?’ Our voices were hushed now so others could not hear what we were saying, and they had gone back to whatever they were doing.
‘A lady never tells,’ she said demurely.
‘Yes… but you’re a total slut,’ I pointed out politely.
‘Girl, that boy is fine. What is wrong with you that you didn’t already hit that? How come you’re always around all these fine-ass men and you never get any dick? I wasted no time. I rode him like a carousel.’
I couldn't deny that Big Ben was incredibly attractive, but like David Beckham, the illusion was broken when he opened his mouth.
I needed to move Patience onto a new subject before I got a full breakdown of last night while we stood in the office. What I said was, ‘Never mind that. How did you wangle getting the two of us on patrol together?’
She checked around to see if anyone was listening then leaned in close like she had something secret to tell me, ‘I didn't. They put you on with that Hardacre doofus, so I switched the names around on the board. We need to get out of here quickly before someone notices.'
‘Patience…' I started but then realised that I didn't care. I was no longer chasing a career here. I had nine shifts left including this one, so the old me that would have toed the line and done as I should have, was rebelling and up for some fun.
‘Let’s go,’ I said snatching the keys from her hand.
‘Hey! I’m driving,’ she yelled after me as I headed for the door. The hell she was. Patience was a terrible driver. It was one of the primary reasons she was on the dispatch desk.
Outside the rain had started, it was a steady drizzle that threatened to get worse. I held the key fob in the air and watched to see which car would react. A silver Ford Fiesta plipped its lights, so I dashed across to it and dived in before I could get too wet. Seconds later, Patience plo
pped into the passenger seat. If she really wanted to drive the car, she was showing no sign.
I started the car and pulled out into traffic. We had nowhere that dispatch was trying to send us yet, so we were supposed to take up a position on the outskirts of Maidstone town, close to the motorway. The inactivity was unlikely to last long, but now that I was not trapped at the station, I wondered if I could get away with whizzing over to the Blue Moon office in Rochester. I could grab the cameras and then later, if we were quiet, I could whizz to Chatham and put them in.
Yup, I was going for it. The best route at this time of day would be up Bluebell Hill and then down through Borstal to the back of Rochester Castle. It wouldn’t take long.
I knew Patience well enough to know that she was waiting for me to ask her about Big Ben. I also knew that if I ignored the subject or danced around trying to avoid it, she would get ratty.
I gave in and asked her, ‘Soooo… about last night?’
‘Girl I am exhausted! That man is like the energiser bunny. He kept going for hours. We did it in positions I’ve not seen before and trust me I’ve done a few. My Hoo-ha is still recovering this morning. I feel like I have been riding a horse all night.’
I could not say I was surprised. Ben had apparently slept with a lot of women and had a lot of random, emotionless sex. What did surprise me was the look on Patience’s face. ‘Patience, do you like Ben?’
‘Honey, I don’t know Ben, but I like his body. And his dick,’ she whispered, ‘So that’s enough for me to give him a second go.’
‘Patience, I hate to break it to you, but Big Ben doesn’t do second goes. He’s a one night only kind of man from what I know. I don’t want him to break your heart.’
Patience burst out laughing, ‘Honey, don’t you worry about me. This has nothing to do with my heart and the only thing likely to get broken is my Hoo-ha.’
