Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish (11 page)

Nigel hopped up onto his desk and sat down.

"Forget it, you want to fire me, I'm not moving. This is my desk, I have every right to stay here."

There was a stunned silence. Nigel was famous for seemingly ridiculous theories and stunts, but they always had a purpose and always turned up results. This one seemed to have little purpose, and the results weren't going to be pretty.

Captain Jeeves made a
hmph
ing sound. "Have it your way. Baskerville! Carter! Be so kind as to bring the detective and the desk he seems so attached to into my office."

Colin and another wet behind the ears detective picked up Nigel's desk, with Nigel on it, and carried it into Captain Jeeves' office. Nigel seemed unaffected by the move; he pulled out a notepad and started scribbling down a note.

Colin and Carter dumped the desk with a
thump
in the office and left quickly so as to avoid the oncoming unpleasantness.

Captain Jeeves sat down behind his desk, his large frame dominating the small chair that had no choice but to hold his sizeable bulk.

"So, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Nigel ripped a note off his pad and handed it to the captain, who read it aloud.

"I refuse to talk until you give me my job back." Jeeves screwed up the paper and threw it in the trashcan.

"Well, at least we're being mature about this. Not a chance. We've discovered strange anomalies regarding your spending, not only of your own money but of the department's money."

"What kind of anomalies?" said Nigel before he slapped his hands over his mouth realizing he'd just broken his short-lived silence.

"Trip to Vegas last February?"

"It was a vacation!"

"You took the Mayor’s helicopter!"

"I needed a ride."

"And lost it in a game of poker!"

Nigel frowned.

"I did pay you back for that."

"With money, we have now discovered, taken from the evidence locker!"

Nigel couldn't be sure, but it appeared that the Captain's voice got increasingly loud.

"That's circumstantial."

"And then you replaced that money with the money from that drug bust we did in June!"

Nigel couldn't believe what was happening.

"A drug bust that I headed up, a case that I cracked almost single-handedly!"

Captain Jeeves let out a sigh that sounded like a thousand pigeons all taking off at the same time.

"You have a problem, Nigel. A gambling problem. We've overlooked a lot of questionable past events because of your excellent record. But you have to get help. We have enough on our plates at the moment with this whole living dead thing."

Nigel gripped his desk.

"So I'm fired, then?"

Jeeves got out of his chair, which was most relieved to have the large man off it, and leaned on his desk, leering at Nigel.

"Suspended! Pending psychiatric evaluation. Now, get out!"

"I'm not leaving my desk."

Jeeves let out another pigeon sound-filled sigh.

"Have it your way."

Outside the police station, a bird happily munched away at a discarded sandwich that a policeman had dropped. The bird had it solidly fixed in its mind that this was its lucky day. A bird didn't come across a full sandwich every day. He couldn't wait to tell his friends about this; they'd be green with envy. Birds, incidentally, didn’t really go green with envy; they turned a light mauve colour but as they're covered with feathers no one ever saw it; however, they did still use the term
green with envy
as the saying was universal among all species. The bird thought today was going to be a bad day after he saw that fellah hanging off a nearby building this morning. And from what he heard through the amazing bird communication system of the sky, otherwise known as
The Daily Feather
, his friend Martin had been shot up the ass by a deranged old lady.

Well
,
it just doesn't pay to get out of your nest some mornings.
He looked at his sandwich hungrily.
And then again, sometimes it does.
At that very moment, while the bird gloated to himself about having fantastic luck, he was suddenly crushed by a recently suspended detective sitting on a desk which was flung from the station's main entrance.

"The South Pole is a damned cold place to live," said Gerald to no one in particular.

Why anyone wanted to live in such a climate was beyond him. Sometimes, when Gerald went swimming, he would often run into a sort of semi-warm current and imagined the water traveled a great distance from some lovely, hot, tropical place just so it could run into Gerald and remind him that where he lived at the South Pole was not warm in the slightest. It was bloody freezing. And this depressed him.

Lots of things depressed him; the cold, the ice, the angry walrus that wandered around when it was especially cold. Gerald always wanted to just look him straight in the eye and tell him once and for all to stop barging around all the time and to drag his sorry blubbery ass off to someone else's enormous chunk of ice. But he couldn't, and that depressed him too. The crowding was another thing.

People didn’t think of the South Pole as all that crowded but, in actual fact, every time Gerald turned a corner, someone else was always standing there. Trying to get any privacy was next to impossible, and as much as Gerald tried, he couldn't find anywhere where he could just be alone. Or, that's what he told everyone.

That was not true. Gerald found his own little hiding place, deep in the water, just left of the iceberg they all liked to call
Snuggles
, although no one could remember why. An ice tunnel went deep into the iceberg itself. And if one swam far enough through the tunnel, one found an opening into a large ice cave, which was nice and dry, with lots of fish in the little pond that led to the tunnel. Gerald often went there to get away from it all. But not too often; otherwise, someone might follow him. Gerald shivered.

"Damn blasted cold!" he said.

He'd often thought about writing to someone and complaining about the cold. Maybe there was some kind of politician who held jurisdiction over the area? It would only take maybe a few hundred space heaters to make the place more livable. But no, Gerald would probably just live out his days in a state of constant coldness.

Gerald's condition of feeling constantly cold caused a great deal of amusement to most of his friends, who were rarely cold and thought that the South Pole was one of the best places on Earth to live. Not that any of them were all that aware of any other places, really. They were so content to be living in their own little bubble that they knew little of the outside world. And furthermore, they had no wish to find out anything about it. Gerald would have very much liked to tell all of them to piss off, hop on a passing cruise liner, and sail away to freedom and hopefully warmer climates.

Unfortunately, Gerald couldn't do any of these things, because Gerald was a penguin.

Celina couldn't see anything. The reason for her not being able to see anything was due to the fact that the lights were not on. The reason that the lights were not on was due to the fact that a group of hyper-artificially-intelligent-made-for-good-but-turned-evil elves had taken over the building. Or, that was what it seemed like, at least. And no one in the outside world had any idea what was going on.

Majestic Technologies wasn't exactly the most public of companies. The sensitive nature of its operations and the fact that, with a slight tweaking, a large amount of what was created within those hallowed walls could be turned to wreak the most unimaginable amount of destruction upon the world, were the main reasons for such privacy. The inventions would highly appeal to any number of armed services, as one of their favorite pastimes just happened to be wreaking unimaginable amounts of destruction upon the world. With this in mind, Celina took a good hour before deciding to call the local cop shop and trying to explain the situation to them. Needless to say, the call didn't go very well and there was a fair amount of giggling on the other end. The conversation began something like this.

"9-9-9 Emergency Services, how may I direct your call?" came the entirely too chirpy voice on the other end of the line.

The question stumped Celina. She wasn't entirely certain which department handled the apprehension of deranged robotic elves.

"Well, you see, the thing is," she said, "I'm trapped in the kitchen."

"One moment, please, I'll connect you with the fire department."

"No, no! I don't need the fire department!" But her plea came too late. A strange sort of punk version of elevator music signaled she'd been put on hold. Celina thought it both amusing and disturbing that the emergency departments even had a hold on their phone service. What if she'd been burning to death? She'd almost be crispy right about now.

A burly, pudgy-sounding voice that Celina highly suspected was emerging from somewhere behind a beard brought the disturbing elevator music to a standstill.

"Fire Department! How may I direct your call?"

"Well, I didn't really want the fire department. You see—"

"Is your house on fire, ma'am?"

"No, you see, I'm not in my house and—"

"Is someone else's house on fire?"

"No, I'm trapped in the cafeteria at work and—"

"Would you like us to send out a locksmith, ma'am?" interrupted the fireman.

"No, I don't want a bloody locksmith!"

"There's no need to raise your voice, ma'am," said the fireman calmly. "If nothing's on fire and you don't want to get out of wherever you're trapped, then why did you call the fire department?"

"I didn't call the damn fire department! Can you please transfer me back to 9-9-9?"

"Absolutely, ma'am, one moment, please." There was a click and then the distinct sound of the dial tone.

"Bastard!" said Celina.

Ring
went the phone. Celina answered the phone with a sharp and in no way polite, "Yes?"

There was a brief pause while whoever was on the other line calmly and courteously explained their situation, during which a certain heated redness filled Celina's cheeks. This couldn't be seen due to the current darkness and the fact that there was no one else in the room to see it anyway. There was another brief pause while Celina chose the correct words to answer the question.

"No, I didn’t bloody well rent
Good Loving in the Amazon!
"

There followed a pleasant
beep
as she hung up the phone and tried to breathe calmly. She punched 9-9-9 for the second time.

"9-9-9 Emergency Services, how may I direct your call?"

"Listen to me very carefully," began Celina. "I am trapped in the cafeteria at work—"

"There's a lot of that going around today, ma'am, one moment, I'll transfer you to the fire department."

The elevator music started playing once more but quickly got drowned out by Celina screaming something that sounded like it might rhyme with
clucking bell
.