Secret Garden 2013

By Mike Scantlebury

2012 was a great year, and the 'Secret Garden Festival' was a wonderful success, involving the whole community. 2013 was meant to be even better. Instead, nothing happened. Nothing. A complete waste of time. No Festival. No fun. No community. It seems that the budget had been moved to a new cost centre. Resources had been re-deployed. There was going to be art, of course there was, but it wasn't coming from the community - it was coming from the Centre, the professionals. The people who knew best. Now why would that upset anybody? Is it possible it would make someone want to commit crime, in retribution? Like, murder, for instance? Well, as Melia found out, stumbling on these gruesome events, this was a time of drama, right enough, and the biggest mystery - for such a seasoned investigator - was how such civilised people could bring themselves to act like beasts. Hardly the Age of Enlightenment, was it? Not really the 21st century that everyone had been hoping for in Salford, England.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326295189

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Secret Garden 2013

SECRET GARDEN 2013

(Amelia Hartliss Mysteries: Book 8)

by

Mike Scantlebury

This ebook comes from Mike Scantlebury.

ISBN issued by Lulu.com -

978-1-326-29518-9

This is the Post-Brexit Edition 2018

Copyright 2013 by Mike Scantlebury

The right of Mike Scantlebury to be identified as the author of this work is and has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owner, which is Mike Scantlebury, Internet Author and collector of books on science fictioney fantasies.

This here is a work of fiction, based on no real happenings.

DEDICATION

Thanks to the city of Salford, for failing to put on the 'Secret Garden Festival' in the summer of 2013, and thus allowing the residents to make their own amusement, and art.

Thanks to writers of crime fiction, both now and in the past, especially Mickey Spillane, for continuing to be an influence, after all these years, showing how to construct a mystery and how to end a story with a bang.

Chapter 1

Marc Suttelberg was buying. It was an usual occurrence, apparently, so Melia decided to make the most of it and ordered a glass of the very good red wine that the Arts Centre upstairs bar was famous for. She knew it wasn't cheap: she was making him pay.

She didn't want to be there. It was a cold, dark March evening, and there was a sharp wind whipping off the water of the old docks and slicing between the tower blocks of Salford Quays. It had never been Melia's favourite destination, if she had a choice, of anywhere in the North West of England, day or night, and she never would have chosen it for any normal rendezvous, romantic or otherwise.

She was helping a friend, not even a close one at that. But Mickey had mentioned the problem: a woman he knew and had done some work for in the recent past, Jan Branch, had been deserted by her husband after thirty-odd years of married life and she wanted him back. He had always been unpredictable, she said, but nobody - not even his long-suffering spouse - had expected him to pack a bag the week before Christmas and leave the marital home. For good, he said. He was living in a houseboat down on the Docks, Jan had told her old pal Mickey, and Mickey had told Melia. Mickey was a seasoned investigator and trouble shooter but Marital Disputes weren't his speciality, he said apologetically. And for Melia, they were? Melia had never been married, and, worse than that, the only man on God's green earth that she had ever come within a mile of marrying was Mickey. Now he was asking her to help his 'friend' - how did that make her feel? She felt used. She felt undervalued, patronised and looked down on. It wasn't a good start.

Marc Suttelberg was enough of a man not to turn down a date with a pretty girl. Well, it wasn't really a 'date', of course, but Melia had phoned him and asked him - purely based on the coincidence that he now lived on The Quays - to meet her for a drink at the Irwell Arts Centre, on the left bank of what had once been the old 9 Dock. It was near to him, practically his 'local'. She had something to discuss with him, she said. He, being short of cash, and a struggling freelance, was allowed to understand that there might be some work involved. That lowered the temperature a little - less 'romance', more business - but Melia was entertaining as well as beautiful, Marc knew that, and a night in her company was something no male body with a pulse could refuse. He played it cool, but really, he was flattered. Melia wanted to meet him? Say where. Say when!

The Balcony Bar was a bad choice. It was close to the water, and therefore, in Melia's estimation, convenient for the man to find. Still, there were other bars, other restaurants. How was she to know, when offering the meet, that it would be the same night as the 'Festival of Flames'? Who knew? Nobody locally. It hadn't been well advertised in Salford. The artists who put the show together had jetted in from Scotland for a few days, now and a few weeks ago, and the whole thing had been put together on the back of an envelope and with a couple of tubes of glue. Wings! Electrified, illuminated wings. Melia shook her head. What the hell was passing for 'art' these days? She didn't know.

Marc came back from the bar, pushing between the bodies, the heaving crowd, and was smiling. He seemed oblivious to what else was happening in the room. He only had eyes for Melia. He was happy to be there, and couldn't keep the grin off his face. What could she want with him, really? It could only be good.

While he ogled her, the tight, fitted top, the leather jacket and boots, the trademark jeans, the tumbling auburn hair framing the pretty face, she studied him. He wasn't looking after himself, Melia decided. The split from his wife had allowed him to eat less often and dress in rags. Right then, he was wearing a heavy greatcoat, grey - good for the temperature outside, maybe - but under it he wore a threadbare old string vest, and baggy jeans held up by a loop of what looked like rope from a lasso. His shoes, well, they were old too, scuffed, and seemed to have holes in, bulges along the sides. His face was even more grizzled than usual, several days of scruffy beard, and unwashed hair hung over his eyes, a look that went out with sheepdogs. I could lend him a brush, Melia was thinking.

About this job, he said happily, raising the glass to his lips.

Plenty enough time for that, Melia told him. Let's hear a little about yourself. What have you been doing recently?

She'd already guessed the answer to that. 'A little bit of this and that', he would say. Marc Suttelberg did everything: he wrote books, songs, poems and radio plays; he made films and acted a little; he painted, badly; and when he wasn't being artistic, he made a bit of money from being a Security Guard around MediaLand, the studio space opposite. They gave him a uniform for that, a blue serge number, so at least he was dressed better on the Night Shift.

I've got this great idea I'm working on - he started.

Melia's eyes glazed over. She had heard something like it the last time they met. Her total experience of the man only amounted to handful of hours in total, and yet, in all of that time, he had always managed to bore her. Usually, because he was always saying the same thing: every time, he had the 'best' idea he'd ever had. Whether it was a film, a play, a book - it was going to change the world and 'make people think differently'. Yeah, yeah. She knew that. He'd told her.

Melia tried to make eye contact, but her gaze kept drifting away. She was looking out, over Marc's shoulder, to the glass folding doors that led out to the balcony. They were sitting in a bar on the first floor, and it looked out over the plaza in front of the shopping mall opposite. It was a large, open space, where Food Fairs happened, and musical events. In fact, one of Marc's more believable 'great ideas' had been to stage a Singer-Songwriter afternoon, here in the bar, with the performers in the open air, out there on the balcony, singing their hearts out to the adoring crowd below. For some reason the idea hadn't been acceptable to the Arts Centre management, and it had never happened. But Marc resurrected the plan every now and again, floating it off to anyone who would listen, hoping it would catch attention. So far, as with many of his plans - Nothing.

Out there now, on that very same balcony, the performers were getting ready.

Melia couldn't understand how they would have 'got ready': it must have taken ages. Firstly, they had to dress in black, from head to toe. That meant black shoes; black trousers; black wooly jumper; and black ski mask, with only two narrow slits for eyes and, presumably, something to let air in to their noses. Then they had to help each other on with their backpacks, some kind of heavy rucksack, which again, presumably, contained the batteries for their lights. Finally, well, she could see what happened last, they were helping each other on with their 'wings'. A harness, like you would need for fairy wings, was strapped to their backs, on top of the rucksack, but the outline of lamps and wires that stretched a foot over their head and down to their knees, wasn't some kind of angelic construction. It was more like a neon sign, with lights but without the tubes. Still, Melia had seen one or two rehearsing downstairs as she made her way in to the building, and it was clearly intended to have the same effect. It flashed a red and blue intertwine of colours, up and down. It looked like flames.

From the back. From the front, all you could see was the tip of the lights poking out over the person's head. But from the back, the body of the actor was invisible - concealed under black clothes - and the 'flame' was all you saw. Glancing out of the window, when she was bored, she looked down and noticed a line of performers snaking out around the perimeter of the plaza. If they all turned their backs and switched on their lights, the vast area would seem to be ringed by a fence of flames. If, as she feared, they then started moving in time to some obscure modern music, it would be a magical show. Perhaps they were being choreographed. What effects could they create in the gloomy Spring air? It would be great.

Total waste of money! Marc Suttelberg was complaining.

For once they were talking about the same thing. He had moved round the small table to a chair closer to Melia, which was his first concern, but it also allowed him to look at the people getting ready, too. His attention had been drawn that way, away from his own obsessions, and on to the activity of the evening. It didn't make him happy. He saw things happening, while all he could talk about was what he might do, some day, given the same level of support, backing and money.

He tut-tutted. Money was a sore subject in his head. What a fortune was being spent tonight, he moaned.

Melia understood something about him then. She had seen it before, of course. All artists were obsessed with their own little niche, whether it was events, or dance, or music, or drama. They wanted to do their own thing. They were focussed on their own achievements. It could make them brittle, easily provoked and jealous. Marc was looking now, and seeing someone else doing something, which only served to remind him what he could do with equivalent funds, the same resources. Maybe it would have been better, maybe worse, but it would have been his. This wasn't. This was someone else's. Melia had to smile to herself. The arts world was riven by hot feelings, strong emotions, big egos, 'tragedies' and minor spats. It was torture to Marc, then, that he was on the edge of the well-funded world that was The Irwell Arts Centre, but not part of it.

It made him grumpy, it seemed. He slugged back his wine and stood up abruptly, as if something had made up his mind.

Toilet, he announced, and stalked off.

It was careless, unpredictable. Typical of the man. He started off attentive, but now gave all appearances of seeming to care