Night Work: Blue Moon Investigations Book 12 Page 3

I checked my watch to find it was almost six thirty. This had taken longer than I estimated. ‘I have to get going, I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Like a gentleman, he zipped around me to open the front door. A blast of cold air hit me, making the skin on my neck goosepimple. I suppressed a shudder and pulled my coat tight.

  As I walked the few steps down from the station to the pavement, I grimaced to myself about the conversation I most likely had waiting for me at home. Simon had been surly earlier, a behavioural trait most usually brought on by a bad day at the office. That I was unexpectedly late getting home and dinner was thus delayed wouldn’t help. Thinking about Simon made me think about PC Van Doorn though and how nice he had been. However, as I fished around for my car keys, I told myself that he was being nice because I was dressed and acting like a pretty blonde woman and he was doing what most young men would do in such circumstances.

  Better for me that he was pleasant to spend time with though, if I was going to have a crack at this case. I would do some research into the swamp monster before bed.

  Then a thought occurred to me.

  My Apartment, 0643hrs Saturday, December 3rd

  The thought I had thought kept me awake half the night. More so than the fight with Simon did anyway. Simon was calm when I got home, even apologizing for being short with me on the phone. But his attitude soon shifted when I told him I would be working over the weekend and couldn’t predict how many hours I would be putting in.

  The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to be an investigator like Tempest and Amanda. I was a little worried about how often the two of them seemed to get into fights or scrapes of some kind, but I would just have to toughen up. Maybe I would take a fight class like Tempest and Big Ben.

  Anyway, Simon had come close to ranting at one point. He planned for us to visit friends and have lunch out while doing some shopping; Simon’s favourite activity. That his hobby was buying things had always worked out well for me, but it wasn’t much of a hobby in my opinion; I wanted something more exciting to do. It was one of the reasons the vampire LARP club enticed me: I got to dress up and pretend to be someone else and… well, it’s behind me now, but Simon insisted I call the police and tell them I wasn’t available until Monday when normal office hours resumed.

  I refused, of course, and he slept with his back to me as I sat in bed with my laptop. Going back to the thought that kept me awake; it was about a Yeti. I hadn’t heard from Tempest since early on Friday morning when he needed more research; this time on plastic surgery in Paris. He was getting close to cracking the case it seemed so not hearing from him either meant he was dead, or they had caught the bad guys and were celebrating. I emailed him but got no reply, which again, was unusual.

  Tempest always sent me a text or email to say a particular case was closed so I could record it for billing purposes. Then I remembered Amanda. She had gone out there to join him and I had only one reason why she would do that: they were hooking up. I saw how they looked at each other so maybe they finally worked it out and were even now, rolling around in bed together.

  It was that or he really was dead; he took such incredible risks sometimes. That was my last thought as I finally fell asleep and my first thought when I woke up. I fished for my phone on the bedside table, but my arm was the wrong way up as I lay in bed, so I had to sit up a bit to spot where it was. There, on the screen, was a message from Tempest answering my email from last night.

  I read his message with my jaw hanging open. We deal with weird all the time, but this was right up there on the unbelievable scale. The Yeti was a surgically altered polar bear and the client’s daughter, the one that was supposed to be dead, was behind it all.

  The clock on my phone told me it wasn’t even seven yet. Our usual Saturday routine involved sex and a lie in and watching TV with cups of tea sometimes followed by sex again. We hadn’t been together all that long, a few months really, so the shine of the new relationship and the newness of exploring each other was still there.

  Except it wasn’t. Not this morning anyway. Even if he had gotten over himself in the night, I was feeling disinterested and I had purpose to my day. I slipped silently from the covers and went for a shower.

  Having two personalities, one male, one female, meant I had a larger wardrobe than most people. I actually felt like being James today, but all my boy clothes were in the bedroom with Simon and my Jane wardrobe was in the spare room so that was where I got dressed.

  A couple of weeks ago, I went undercover for Amanda as a date for a suspect and needed to look more convincingly female so had worn a fake bra. It was supposed to be a one-time thing, but I liked how it filled the loose material in the front of my dresses so now I wore it whenever I was Jane. Wearing that, a satin camisole and matching French knickers, I selected a white cotton blouse with thin pink pinstripes and a grey skirt suit. Delicate heels would work best with the outfit, but I could see the clouds outside despite the darkness, so I went with knee-high black leather boots, the ones with the chunky heel. They would be both safer to walk in and keep my legs warmer.

  After toast and eggs for breakfast, I left Simon a note expressing that I was excited about what was happening with my career and hoped we could talk about it tonight over a bottle of wine. He mostly scoffed at my job, not in a scathing way, but he didn’t see how it could develop into something more worthwhile than the admin role I currently held, and said as much last night. Maybe he would be proven right. Maybe I would stuff up this investigation and make the firm look bad. But maybe I wouldn’t and last night, while doing some research into the first murder three years ago, I decided I was going to find out.

  It was just after eight thirty when I parked my car in its usual spot behind the office. I didn’t go in straight away though. I left the house before Simon got up and made as little noise as possible so I wouldn’t wake him. Doing that though meant I didn’t get a decent cup of coffee, just the instant stuff, and I wasn’t going to wait for the fandango machine in the office to warm up. Instead, I walked to the coffee shop across the High Street.

  Rochester High Street is a delightful place, filled with little eateries and completely devoid of franchise chains. One could find rare first edition books in quaint little shops or Victorian sweets in Ye Olde Sweete Shoppe. It was a tourist area with the castle, cathedral, and one-time house of Charles Dickens, and the architecture was incredible. The buildings in the pedestrianized High Street were hundreds of years old but all in fine condition and supported by funding to keep them that way. Of course, the tiny alleyways and dark shadows were also home to cutthroats and thieves so murder and other crimes would and did occur when the sun set.

  Right now though, even though it was still dark, the early morning sun was beginning to chase away the black of night and I could see it glinting off the fancy weather vanes high above me.

  A bell tinkled above my head as I pushed the coffee shop door open and went inside. The scent of fresh coffee hit me instantly but mixed in with it I could discern the smell of warm toast and sweet pastries. My stomach gave a growl as it placed its vote.

  At the counter was a brunette woman. ‘Good morning, Jane. What’ll it be this morning?’

  The badge pinned to the top of her apron gave the world her name, but I already knew it. ‘Hi, Hayley. I’ll take a tall americano and a cinnamon bun, please.’

  ‘Nothing for Tempest?’ she asked. I had the sense that she and Tempest had a little history. I didn’t know what it was, and I wasn’t going to ask, but she always found a reason to ask me about him.

  ‘He’s away,’ I replied, handing over my card to pay. If she was disappointed, she masked it well, dismissing me with a smile as she moved to the next customer. Standing at the end of the counter while one of her colleagues made my drink and brought my pastry, I checked my phone and wondered if I should send Simon a message. I could easily convince myself I was in love with him, but we had been a little shaky recently; I wanted to get back to how we were.

&nb
sp; I couldn’t think what to write though, so I put my phone away as the drink and little bag arrived, thanked the server and went back out through the door as a pair of workmen held it open for me. I could feel them staring at my bum as I crossed the street, the tinkling of the bell absent behind me as they were still standing in the doorway and probably nudging each other.

  Lights blinked into life as I settled at my desk and put my coffee down. The office was a large rectangular space with two separate offices at the back. Tempest and Amanda took one each, using them for private meetings when clients came to the office. Often as not their offices were empty and client meetings were conducted at the client’s house or place of work.

  My desk was set up in the main office. There wasn’t room for it anywhere else and it doubled as reception for anyone that chose to visit us. My first task this morning was to put more time into researching the drowning three years ago. PC Van Doorn was bringing me the file, which would contain interview information and other details I wouldn’t be able to find online. Last night, while distracted by worry over Tempest’s silence and filled with concern over my fight with Simon, I had found newspaper articles from the original case. Such things were simple to find online, but right there had been the drawing of the swamp monster. It looked ridiculous; a mishmash of different parts or monster clichés all thrown together. It had a lizard face and spines running down it back. It could have been Godzilla from an early movie and for all I knew, it was.

  As I booted my computer to life, a voice disturbed my train of thought. ‘Hello.’

  I looked up to see a nervous-looking woman standing just inside the doorway. I hadn’t heard her come in, not that we had a bell like the coffee shop, but she seemed rooted to the spot with indecision.

  I fixed a welcoming smile to my face and took a mental second to make sure my vocal cords were set to girl voice; I didn’t want to startle the poor woman. ‘Good morning, how can I help you?’ Sometimes we got people that wandered in thinking the business was a recruitment agency or a stationer despite the sign outside that clearly stated Blue Moon Investigation Agency. This wasn’t such a case though, the lady had apparently deliberately sought us out, and had just been lucky that I had come in on a Saturday.

  ‘I’m, ah. I’m not sure,’ she stuttered. The woman was somewhere in her early thirties with dark brown shoulder length hair. It had a natural curl that threatened unruliness but was tamed with clips and pulled into a ponytail behind her head. Her eyes peered out from round, wide-rimmed glasses and she wore little make up, perhaps a swipe of mascara only. Her outfit was jeans, ankle boots and a Hermes jacket, expensive and tasteful. All this I took in and considered in the first second. She looked about ready to bolt but she also looked like she had a genuine problem to discuss. Tempest would offer her a drink and a soothing tone, so that was what I did, teasing her toward the couches next to the expensive coffee machine.

  Her feet moved reluctantly, but she sat when I suggested she make herself comfortable and I took a moment to turn on the coffee machine before I sat opposite her. ‘I’m Jane,’ I introduced myself. ‘If I can help you, I will. The Blue Moon Investigations Agency specialises in… unusual cases. While the machine warms up would you like to tell me what brings you here today?’ When she hesitated, I added, ‘I can assure you complete confidentiality.’

  The lady hung her head as if ashamed for what she was about to reveal but then brought it up again to meet my eyes. ‘I am having vivid dreams that I don’t think are actually dreams.’ It was a simple statement but contained a lot of potential.

  I made a quick note on my tablet. ‘Can you expand please… Sorry, I didn’t get your name.’

  ‘Yes, sorry. It’s Karen Gilbert.’ She paused as I made another note. ‘For a month or more now, I have been waking in my bed to the sound of someone singing. There is a man sitting in the chair by my dressing table and he is singing Mr Sandman by the Chordettes. Singing or humming as if he doesn’t know all the words. The dream is always the same and I can’t move.’

  I was typing fast to keep up. ‘You cannot move? Are you strapped down or otherwise pinned in place?’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘No, I just can’t move. It’s like I have been drugged or something. I can speak though, just about anyway, but the man never answers.’

  ‘What does the man look like?’

  ‘Old. Like maybe sixty, with grey hair but I can’t see all that well because the lights are off and I am lying down meaning I have to squint down my nose to see him. I think he has a phone in his hand because there is a light playing onto his face. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to see him at all.’

  She stopped speaking again so I asked a question, ‘How often has this happened? How many times over what period and when did it first happen?’ I realized I had just thrown in multiple questions, which I was certain was a poor interview technique, but I stayed quiet to let her answer them all.

  She swallowed and glanced at the coffee machine. I followed her eyes, looking at it just as the little green light flicked on to announce its readiness. ‘I could do with a coffee,’ I said getting up. ‘Can I get you one?’ The coffee I bought in the coffee shop was still sitting untouched on my desk. I would reheat it later maybe. The Danish pastry was also over there laughing at me while my stomach gurgled its emptiness, but I wasn’t going to deal with my needs while I had a client here.

  ‘Um, yes. Thank you,’ she replied though I had already picked up a cup for each of us.

  ‘Then, I think we should move to my office,’ I stated. It wasn’t my office, of course. I was going to use Amanda’s, but telling the woman I was just the admin assistant wasn’t going to imbue her with a sense of confidence, so I glossed over that detail. ‘Just in case someone else comes in.’ I added for clarity. PC Van Doorn was going to arrive at some point, but anyone coming in would effectively end our conversation so moving was prudent.

  With a coffee in each hand and my tablet tucked under an arm, I ushered her into Amanda’s office at the back of the building. Over the next thirty minutes I extracted all the detail she had to give me. The first dream occurred a little more than a month ago and at the time she had awoken the following morning to assume it was nothing but a dream. When it happened a second time a few days later, she dismissed it again though she admitted it felt odd that the dream was exactly the same. A few days later, it happened yet again and that time she woke the next morning in a complete panic and started looking for evidence that someone really had been in her room.

  Reporting it to the police had no positive effect as they took a statement but effectively dismissed her. That was two weeks ago, and the dream had occurred four times since and then again last night. When she called the police at six o’clock this morning, they sent a squad car to her house. In her words, they were sympathetic but dismissive. ‘I get it,’ she said. ‘I sound like a crazy woman because no matter how I describe it, it sounds like I have had a bad dream. There’s no evidence that anyone was there, and I am not reporting an attack. I can’t sleep there again though and I didn’t know where else to go. My sister lives in Dudley. I can go there but it’s a four-hour drive so I can’t be there when I have to go to work on Monday.’

  Karen stared at me expectantly. While she was speaking, I had listened, asked questions and made notes. That was the easy bit. Now, she expected a response from me, and I had butterflies in my stomach like never before. Did Tempest ever feel like this? I decided the answer was probably not, but whether he did or not, I was here alone and though I felt like a fake, I wasn’t going to admit the truth now. I set the tablet down on the table. ‘Karen, I believe we can help you,’ I said, not really believing a word of it. ‘I want you to return to your house. I will visit you after lunch today and will bring some equipment with me.’

  ‘Is that to measure for ghost energy, or something?’ she interrupted. I gave her a curious look. ‘It’s a ghost, isn’t it? The old man in the chair by my dressing table. He’s the g
host of someone that used to live in the house. I figure he doesn’t mean me any harm because he’s had plenty of chance to hurt me if he wanted to. Do you have a way to get rid of him?’

  I shook my head to clear it. ‘The equipment will be to record what is happening in your room. Has the man ever appeared two nights in a row?’

  ‘Um… no,’ she answered, confirming what she had already told me.

  ‘Then it seems unlikely he will visit tonight. Do you have any idea how he might be getting into your house? Does anyone have a spare key? Did you change the locks when you moved in?’

  Now it was her turn to squint at me. ‘He’s a ghost, isn’t he? Surely he is always there and manifests when he wants to or when triggered by something else.’ Her jaw dropped open. ‘Oh, my goodness. Have I made this happen?’

  How on earth did Tempest deal with the delirium without going nuts. ‘Karen…’ Just then the door to the main office opened. I hadn’t shut Amanda’s door, somehow keeping it open made it feel like we were just popping in for a moment; closing the door made it feel like I was invading her space, but when I saw PC Van Doorn closing the main door behind him I got up from behind Amanda’s desk. PC Van Doorn threw me a wave and a smile, but I offered him only a curt nod as I closed the inner office door and shut him outside.

  ‘Who was that?’ Karen asked.

  ‘A err…. A special consultant from the police. We help them out with their enquiries sometimes,’ I lied smoothly. ‘Now, Karen. I need to make something clear.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said sounding guarded.

  ‘There is no such thing as ghosts.’ I let my statement hang in the air for a few seconds to see what her face did. She looked surprised.

  ‘But that means…’

  ‘It means, you are either making the whole thing up. Which I don’t believe you are, ‘I added quickly when she opened her mouth to protest. ‘Or, you have a man sneaking into your house at night to sing you a song.’