Can I Kick a Ghost in the Nuts? by steve higgs

Author:steve higgs [higgs, steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2018-03-28T13:37:14+00:00

A Case for Me Monday October 18th

I heard a text ping through on my phone about half an hour before I was due to take my lunch. I ignored it until my break time came around but pulled my phone from my bag as I stood up to head to the canteen. Patience and I had different lunch break times most days so I would be able to put off telling her about Brett for a bit longer yet. There wasn’t really anything to tell. Apart from that he is gorgeous, ridiculously rich, incredibly well-mannered… I could go on, but I was trying to ignore that he was literally perfect.

The text message was from Tempest to tell me that he had a case he didn’t have time for right now and to ask if I wanted to look into it. He had forwarded me the email from the prospective client, so I switched to my emails to see what it was.

This would be my first case.

The client was the manager of the Pentagon Shopping Centre in Chatham. I knew it well. It was looking a little tired and worn but then Chatham was not really a place one went shopping unless you already lived there, and the indoor area, which was probably quite a draw forty years ago was now losing ground to bigger, brighter indoor shopping areas within an easy driving distance. He reported that he had a ghost living in his elevators. There was a poor-quality picture attached that showed two girls illuminated in the flash of a camera and man standing behind them. Each had a startled expression but the focus of the photo was the blurry, indistinct shape next to the man. It looked like a ghost, if one was willing to believe in such things of course. I could see through it so I had to admit that it had a certain ethereal aspect. The client’s email went on to say that a number of shoppers had suffered frights as the elevator they were travelling in lost power. The lights would go out and in most cases the elevator stopped moving, but only for a second or so. Shoppers had reported that their possessions, mostly shopping bags full of new purchases had gone missing and several had reported that they had felt a draft or had felt something touch them or brush past them in the confines of the elevator. Then there was the picture captured by the two girls.

So, we had an unexplained mystery that the client was willing to pay us to solve. It was damaging his sales, he claimed and the shareholders were squeezing his nuts to get the punters back in and the problem resolved before the Christmas rush started in a few short weeks.

I emailed back to Tempest telling him that I would take the case and would go directly to the Pentagon when I finished my shift this evening. In the meantime, I would contact the client and arrange for him to meet me because it would be after shopping hours when I got there.

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