by steve higgs
‘Oi, wanker.’ The voice came from behind us. We both stopped and turned towards the sound. Two men were coming out of a fish and chip shop we had just passed. They were two of Gina’s crew.
‘You know them?’ Dad asked.
‘I want a word with you.' The man speaking was the one I had pushed over when he tried to swat my dog. The chap with him was one of the other men in the team.
He was coming right for me, his intentions uncertain, but he either wanted to issue some threats and attempt to make me apologise, or he planned to dispense with all that nonsense and just hit me.
‘Be ready.’ I whispered to Dad as I quickly looked around. I had the dogs in my right hand and they would be in the way in no time. The rain helped me though. Dachshunds hate it. At least mine do, so all I needed to do was let go of their leads and nudge them with my boot and they both ran to find cover under the awning of a shop.
The man was almost upon me, his colleague two paces behind. He was bigger than me in every direction and a few years younger. As he closed the final few feet, he raised his right hand with a finger extended towards me. I estimated that his intention was indeed to threaten and berate, so I punched him in the throat.
I hadn’t really planned to, I just did it. He went down, gagging and holding his throat. Whatever message he had planned to deliver went unspoken. With my lips curling in barely contained anger, I stepped over the man and came at his colleague with my arms up and loose, ready to strike.
My father was just to my right and looking just as ready for action. In front of us, the man eyes were wide, panicked. Whatever it was he had envisaged happening, this wasn’t it.
‘Shall we leave it at that?’ I asked him before anything else could happen. ‘My father and I are on holiday. Tell your friend he will be best served to leave me alone.’
He was disinclined to argue with me or even the score for his fallen comrade, so Dad and I let him be and went on our way. The dogs were only a few feet away, cowering from the rain near a shop door. There were faces inside the shop gawping out at us as we took the dogs and continued jogging back to the pub.
We arrived with our hair, clothing and the dog's fur completely soaked, the rain had been coming hard by the time we slipped inside the dry of the Sea Pilgrim. In our room, Mum was awake and sat in a corner chair by the window humming hymns to herself while knitting. Countdown was showing on the television. It was a numbers round.
‘Did you get caught in the rain?' She asked as Dad shut the room door behind us. Dad and I exchanged glances. Rainwater was dripping from our hair, our ears, and our clothing and making the floorboards visibly wet, but Mother was staring at the television and had not bothered to look at us yet.
‘No, Love.’ Dad said. ‘There was a freak wave and the pair of us were washed out to sea, but we swam back to shore carrying the dogs above our heads, fought a giant squid thingy on the way and still had time to learn the secret art to making the perfect Cornish pasty from a mermaid on the way.’
‘That’s nice, Dear.’ She replied, still staring straight ahead, her fingers and knitting needles a blur.
I walked in front of her, crossing the room to get an old towel I used for the dogs. They had short fur and would dry out soon enough but would jump on the bed or furniture unconcerned about their sopping wet coats if I did not deal with them quickly.
Dad was stripping off his wet outer layer by the door, while I towelled the hounds as dry as I could get them. The room, which had seemed cavernous when it was just me, was cramped now. The extra suitcases and bags, as well as the two extra full-sized adults, meant there was too little room to move about. Worse yet, I wanted to get a shower and change, which before I would have just done.
Huffing to myself, I saw the best solution was to sort myself out and leave the room to them. I let Dad know my plan, grabbed some clothes for the evening and locked myself in the bathroom.
An Evening in the Pub. Tuesday, November 1st 1850hrs
It was 1752hrs when I sat in one of the upholstered chairs in the corner of the pub nearest the open fire. The fire itself was already lit, giving the air in the room an enticing smoky smell that reminded me of winter evenings in country pubs back home. The fire was low though, not putting out much heat and I was the only person in the room. It would be much warmer once the pub was full of people. But I had brought a cup of tea down from the room with me as I knew the bar was closed and I had plopped Dozer on my lap knowing that he would help to keep me warm. With no more room on my lap, Bull had stretched his lead as far as it would go, turned around three times and settled in front of the fire to sleep.
That was an hour ago and now the bar was open and most of the tables were filled with people ordering food or already eating. I was staring at the list of notes on the pad in front of me. I had spent the last hour talking to the people that had witnessed the ghosts – the list Jane had sent me.
Jane, being super-efficient, had provided me with names, addresses, mobile and home phone numbers and information regarding what they had seen and when. I had started at the top of the chronological list and worked down.
A couple in Scarborough were the first one I got through to. The conversation went like this:
‘Hello.’ A man’s voice.
‘Good evening. My name is Tempest Michaels. I am hoping to talk to you about the ghosts in Cawsand.’
‘Hello.’
‘Hello?’
‘Hello.’
‘Yes, hello. My name is Tempest Michaels and I am hoping to speak to you about the ghost you saw in Cornwall.’ The voice at the other end was elderly. The age of the witness was the one item of information Jane had left out.
Then I could hear the person at the other end talking to someone else. ‘Well I don’t know, do I. Someone called Temple Smichael.’ A pause. ‘No, about the ghosts we saw.’ A pause. ‘Alright, alright, I’ll ask him.’ Then finally, he aimed his attention back at me. ‘Are you a reporter?’
‘No, Sir. I am an investigator looking into the murder of Philip Masonberg in Cawsand.’
‘A murder?’ he blurted. There was further muttering in the background, a couple of heated words, then a woman’s voice replaced the man’s.
‘What do you want?’ she snapped.
‘Good evening, Madam.’ I liked to address people politely. ‘I hoped to ask you a few questions about the ghosts you saw.’
‘Oh, right. What do you want to know?’ I suspected the lady I was talking to was the elderly gentleman’s wife, but she sounded less aged than her partner if it was.
‘Can you describe what you saw please, giving me as much detail as possible?’
I had to explain who I was again and why I wanted the information, but she was happy enough to launch into a long-winded description of the scene. There had been two skeletal figures with tattered clothing, each brandishing a cutlass. The couple had been staying in a local B&B and had ventured down to Cawsand because they had heard about a fantastic pub there – The Sea Pilgrim, had I heard of it? I had to steer her back onto the subject of the ghosts as she was telling me all about the menu at the pub and laying it on thick about how amazing it was. It wasn’t. It was nice, but the food was not about to win Michelin stars. I had her describe the ghosts in detail, which she did with what I felt was too much embellishment about how scary they were. She had lots of detail to provide though. One of the skeletons had a gold tooth in place of his upper right incisor and his left incisor was missing. Who on earth recorded that much detail while being terrified?
I got through to six more people that claimed to have seen the ship or the skeletons. They were dotted all over the Country but had all been in Cawsand in the last week or so. Each of them described the skeletons in a very similar way to the first lady, but not similar enough for me to cry foul and declare that they were reading from a script.
The reports, or rather the descriptions were not all the same. Where tourists had seen the ghosts, they reported that they glowed with an
inner light and described them as nothing more than skin and bone, much like the first description I had listened to. I managed, after several attempts, to get through to the Indian family that had fled their restaurant. Their tale was much the same as that of the Muslim couple. Their description of the ghosts differed though from that of the tourists. The man I was speaking to, Rajesh Patel, was the owner of the restaurant and still very upset about having to leave it. He described the ghosts he had seen as skeletal, much like everyone else, but then said that they also looked like they were well fed. He could see their bones, but they also filled their clothing well. They were tall also, around six feet he estimated, which did not align with what I knew about average height in the 17th century.
I was staring at my notepad. I had several notes underlined or circled. The gold tooth was a central theme to every recanting of the ghosts. It was all too neat, too polished for me to believe. The descriptions of the ghost ship were different though, they felt more genuine as if the people I was speaking with had indeed seen something and could not determine what it was. Most of them were not convinced it was a ghost ship but could offer no better explanation of what it was that they had seen.
I was still staring at the notes when a firm hand came to rest on my shoulder. ‘What you up to, kid?' asked my Dad as he sat down opposite me.
‘I’ll get my own chair, shall I?’ Mother said snippily as Dad had failed to draw her chair out for her.
‘Watch it can take your weight first, Love.' He replied then held up both hands to defend his head from her attack.
‘Gobby old git. Go get me some wine.’
My parents were a lot of fun to be around. They had been married for a long time and had fallen into a sort of comedy double act routine they never seemed to grow bored of. Their arrival on my holiday had annoyed me to start with, although I had not voiced my thoughts, perhaps this evening was going to be fun after all.
‘A pint of pear Rattler.’ I said as Dad inclined his head to me in question.
‘What have you been up to down here?’ Mum asked leaning over to look at my notepad. ‘Gold tooth.’ She read. It was the first thing anyone would see on the page as I had underlined it twice, drawn a circle around it and linked it to other bits of the description I had written down.
‘I was talking to the people that have claimed to have seen the pirates or the pirate ship.’
‘What did you learn?' she asked taking an interest for once.
‘Hard to say. It feels as if some people are making it all up, but others must have seen something, and the reports are conflicting. I have to assume someone is dressing up.’
‘Why would someone go to the trouble of doing that?’
‘My question too. I don’t have an answer for it though. If I knew that I would probably be able to solve the case right now.’
Dad arrived back with three drinks clustered together as one between his meaty hands. The cider had spilled slightly and was running down his arm to wet his cuff. Mother reached over to snag her wine then took a mighty glug from it.
‘That’s better.’ She announced.
‘Have you seen the size of the guy behind the bar?’ Dad asked.
Both Mum and I swung our gaze to the bar where Thirty-Three was stood looking dumb and not doing anything. He wasn’t serving drinks, but he was holding a tray, so he was probably going to be taking food out and collecting glasses again shortly.
‘Yes, he is quite a size, isn’t he?’ I replied. ‘They call him Thirty-Three.’ I explained and then had to explain why. Dad sniggered.
‘Shall we order food?’ Mum asked. ‘I’m starving.’
There were menus on the table next to us. I stretched across, snagged them and handed them out. It was the same menu I had ordered from on Sunday, so I knew what choices I could select from. I settled on sausage and mash with onion gravy and mushy peas served in a giant Yorkshire pudding. It did not sound like food I should be eating, but it did sound tasty.
Mother bustled off to the bar to order our food, leaving Dad and me to chat. ‘The ghost ship, Dad.’
‘Yes, son.’
‘I think someone is creating an illusion of some kind. I spoke to some of the people that have reported seeing it and I believe they saw something. I don’t know what they saw, but their descriptions were all convincing. The ones that reported seeing the pirates though had varying descriptions. I still cannot decide if I think they are lying or not. The accounts were… disconnected somehow, as if some had seen one thing and others had seen something different.’
‘So, what is it they are seeing?’ asked my Dad. We spit-balled a few ideas but could not come up with anything tangible. There were a few possibilities though, such as a dummy ship hung from a helicopter with a light shining on to it to make it visible. Turn the light off and it vanishes. Or a yacht with a shaped spinnaker sail. Again, a light can be shone onto it making it visible from the land and then turned off again to make it vanish. The only problem with both of these or any other theories was that people had already gone to sea at night to search for the ghost ship. They would notice a helicopter hovering above them and while a small yacht might slip around unnoticed it would need to be a big ship to hold a spinnaker large enough to be seen from the shore.
‘What is keeping your Mother?' Dad asked, turning in his chair to look towards the bar. Mum was still at the bar but was nattering with Tilda and Gretchen again. They were all a similar age and had hit it off. Next to Mum though, were all four of the supernatural science squad. Gina was absent, so they were once again off the leash. They were all staring at me. The chap I had knocked to the ground twice now, smiled at me and made a big show of counting the four of them. One, two, three, four he mouthed silently while pointing at each man in turn. Then he pointed at my father and I and counted two in the same manner. Dad stiffened and made to rise from his chair. I placed my hand on his forearm to stop him.
He looked at me quizzically. He wanted to deal with the blatant threat now. ‘Later.’ I told him. ‘Let them have a few first.’ The four men were drinking pints. A few drinks would dull their senses, weaken the reactions and impair their balance. Dad and I would need to hold off drinking ours to gain the advantage, but it seemed a small price to pay.
Oblivious to the interaction, Mother returned bearing another large glass of wine. ‘Food will be ten minutes.’
‘Ten minutes from when you ordered it ten minutes ago, or ten minutes from now?’ asked Dad for clarification.
‘Never mind. Here it is.' I said. Thirty-Three was making his way through the crowd towards us bearing three plates. I could see my huge Yorkshire pudding towering over the surface of the plate in his huge left hand. I was ready for some food, but as he put the plates down I saw that it was going to have to wait. The four guys from Gina's crew were coming our way.
They threaded their way through the bar, full of false bravado and probably egged on by one another. Had peer pressure pushed the man to come at me for the third time?
I stood up and moved away from the table. The inside of a pub was not the place to have a fight as too many other people could get hurt. Inevitably, most fights end up on the floor. With the tables so close to one another we would knock drinks over, bash into people and no matter what, we would make an unwelcome mess. Seeing me stand and tracking my gaze, my Dad turned to see the four men arrive.
I planned to invite them outside where the matter could be settled without any innocent bystanders getting their evening ruined.
‘Hello again, wanker.' The man said. Before I could reply, my father came out of his chair, the back of which was against where the man was now standing. In a single motion, he stood, turned and delivered an uppercut to the man's jaw. I knew my Dad had boxed when he was in the Navy, it was a regular thing to do in the forces, but I had personally never seen him hit anyone before.
There was a momentary stunned silence which my Dad broke by saying. ‘Language. There are ladies present.' The man was on the floo
r, not unconscious but looking quite dazed. My father's hands had gone back to resting at his sides, making him look like a wizened old Jedi Master that had just dispensed a lesson in humility. I was grinning from ear to ear. All hope of going outside was gone, but with the ringleader on the floor, the remaining three men seemed confused about what was supposed to happen next.
‘Oi.’ Came a screech across the pub. ‘There will be none of that in here.’ It was Gretchen, who had somehow grown a foot or more, so must have been standing on something behind the bar to see over the crowd. Thirty-Three and John the chef were both heading our way and I worried for a second that we would all be turfed out.
Thankfully the supernatural science squad knew they had overstayed their welcome and were already apologising to my parents and the people around us for the fuss. Under the watchful gaze of the huge, lumbering Thirty-Three, they made their way to the pub door, dragging the man Dad had punched with them.
As they left, a middle-aged lady at the table next to us began clapping, then someone else did and seconds later my father was getting a standing ovation. I joined in.
‘Goodness, Michael.’ My Mother said. ‘That was ever so impressive.’
My father was sitting himself back at the table and collecting his knife and fork. ‘Let’s eat, shall we?’ he replied, tucking in. He was doing a great job of being cool.
The food was hot and tasty, and it was a big portion. I declined dessert, which Gretchen assured us was on the house. She was full of apologies for what had happened. I could not see how it was her fault, but it was her establishment and she probably wanted to protect its name. She made a comment about knowing better than to let their kind in as she was departing. It sounded like another racist slur, but she was gone and no one else seemed to have heard it.
The clock ticked on and all too soon I started to yawn. I checked the clock on the wall. It was 2116hrs. I was such a lightweight. With three pints of cider in me and a day of adventure that had included two fights behind me, I was ready for my bed. I was tired. Mum and Dad wanted to stay for a brandy, so I bid them goodnight and went outside to walk the dogs.
