The Defective Detective : Cat Chaser (3 page)

“You had to ask?” Jacob whispered to me then waved us on to a pair of double doors which we opened together and led us onto the real shop floor.

“Need to talk to you if you don’t mind, Miss Erin.”

Erin was a formidable woman, somehow seeming to tower over Jacob in spite of the fact she couldn’t have been more than five foot three.  She was the epitome of a makeup counter girl with her orange face, lashes like Amazonian spiders and what appeared to be perfectly manicured two-inch talons on the ends of her fingers.

“Talk?” Erin spat the words at Jacob, accompanying them with some actual spit for good measure.

“This is Mr Barnum, he’s a Private Investigator.”

“Please,” I said.  “Call me Clint.”

“I will not speak to this, this… ” she turned the corners of her mouth down causing her garish red lipstick to crack.  “… this dick.  I will not speak to him under any circumstance.”

“What can you tell me about woman named Pingoveno?” I said and moved a little closer to Erin.  I was hit by a wall of perfume and suppressed a cough.  “And what can you tell me about Lucky?”

Erin stopped talking and stared at me, her left eyelid twitched, sending shudders through her spiderous eyelashes.  I stared at her, waiting for something more.  Right now this was all I had; one woman’s name, a vague idea of something that had to be retrieved and a taxidermy racket.

Jacob coughed apologetically and reached into his pocket, taking out a clean, white handkerchief and passing it to Erin who took it and appeared to shatter on contact, reduced to a crying, howling mess in Jacob’s arms.  I couldn’t go on like this.

Fishing my phone out of my pocket I dialled Agatha.  It rang twice then she picked up.

“Clint,” she said.  “H-w i- - go-ng up there?”

“Agatha?” I said.  “Can you hear me?”

There was silence on the line, I took the phone away from my ear.  The call was over.  No damn signal.

“Can’t get a signal in here,” said Jacob.  “Walls too thick.”

Right, so this blubbering mess was all I had to work with then.  Okay, on with the show.

“Erin is it?” I said.  “Can you please stop crying and talk to me?  What are you upset about?”

“It’s… ” she managed before breaking down again.  Jacob mopped her eyes and her mascara began to trickle into the wrinkles she had so valiantly tried to conceal.  “I know about the taxidermy if that’s what you’re asking.”

Bloody hell, that was easy, I was getting good at this detective lark.

“Yes,” I said and put my hand on her shoulder taking the handkerchief from Jacob and dabbing her eyes, the handkerchief now looking like some sort of panda-Jesus’ Turin shroud.  “That’s exactly what I was asking about.  And what about Lucky?”

I was onto something here.

“He was,” she took a deep breath, took the handkerchief from me and blew her nose.  She tried to hand it back but I shook my head and smiled.  “But he’s… he’s gone.”

“Gone?” I said.  My mobile started to ring in my pocket.  “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

I took the mobile out.  Agatha’s name was displayed on the screen.

“My little ginger puss. Dead. Stuffed,” she began wailing again.

The phone kept ringing.

“Shh.  Please, can you just hang on for one second?”

I answered the phone.

“Clint? Can you hear me?” said Agatha.

“Yes, listen, quick while I’ve got a signal.  Am I looking for a cat?”

“Clint, Forsyth has been down looking for an update.  It’s imperative you retrieve the animal alive or -”

“Forsyth?  Shit.  Really?  Agatha?” I tried walking away from Erin and Jacob, quickly jogging towards the windows.  “Are you still there?  Am I looking for a bloody cat?”

“C-t - anything you need?”

“Yes, Agatha.  Can you please just tell me if I’m looking for a ginger cat?”

“Y- than we thought - black - orange - cat. Clint?”

“You’re breaking up,” I said, stabbed the disconnect key and hung up on her.

“Stop your bloody snivelling woman!” I shouted from across the floor and began striding towards them.  “Are you telling me that you had a black and orange cat?”

She nodded.

“And am I to understand that he has popped his clogs?”

She nodded again.

“Shit!” I screamed.  “A dead lost cat.  Who the shitting hell sends a private investigator to find a lost cat?  Especially a bloody dead one. Is that what I’m worth?  A dead cat! A lost bastard dead bastard cat.”

“Sir?” said Jacob.

“‘Bring him back in one piece, Clint,” I shouted.  “Oh and if you don’t you’re sacked, Clint.  Arrrrrrrrrgh!”

I spun around to shout at the two of them again and

~*~

I
woke to what was becoming a much more familiar sight; the wall with the Employee of the Month certificate on it and the still disconcerting knock-hissnoise coming up behind me. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and turned around to see Ray the caretaker looming with a mug in his hands.

“Hope you like your coffee black,” he said, putting the cup on the desk in front of me. “Milk was off.”

“Thanks, black’s fine. You carry me back here?” I asked.

“Jacob. Then Erin started bossing him around so he asked me to keep an eye on you. What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Got angry. Fell asleep,” I lifted the cup to my lips but realised it was too hot before the liquid touched my mouth. “It happens.”

Ray nodded and flopped into a chair, “So what was all the shouting about then?”

“That?” I blew on the coffee. “Was me shouting about the fact that Erin’s dead cat is the end of my brief career as a private eye.”

I gave up blowing on the coffee and sighed on it instead.

“How do you figure that out, then?” Ray scratched at his pirate leg and I tried not to look. Thankfully my mobile phone chose that moment to burst into life, I stood up and answered it, looking at the wall instead.

“Clint?”

It was Agatha.

“You phoned me. Of course it’s Clint. What do you want?”

Agatha began to speak but it was a lost cause, between the dropouts and static the only thing I seemed to be able to make out was some sort of Morse code beeping repeating over and over in the background.

“It’s over,” I shouted into the phone. “It was Erin’s cat. It’s dead.”

The beeps again and then, clear as a bell she said something that nearly caused me to drop my phone in the coffee.

“NOT ERIN’S CAT YOU PRAT!”

“Not Erin’s cat?”

“Not Erin’s cat.”

“I think I love you, Agatha,” I turned back around to face Ray.

Agatha seemed happy to respond in Morse code.

“It’s not Erin’s cat, Ray.”

“So I hear but… ” managed Ray before the mobile gave one last burst of coherence.

“Back on the case?”

“Yes. And thank you,” I hung up, grinning.

This was brilliant. Better than brilliant, it meant that the whole thing still had the potential of actually being a proper case which meant that I might get to be a proper detective.

“You know what this means,” I said.

“I’d hazard a guess it was something to do with Erin’s cat,” Ray replied.

“It means that I should start looking for clues. More clues, more information. That’s what’s required here Ray.”

A smirk was creeping onto Ray’s face, pushing its way through his pock-marked dimples and widening as I spoke.

“For example,” I said, pointing my index finger right at him. “Do you know anything about a woman who goes by the name of Pingoveno?”

The smirk froze as a confused frown began to invade from above.

“Mmm?” I probed masterfully.

He shrugged slightly as the smirk started to fight back.

I nodded.

“Course you don’t,” I smiled and patted the seated caretaker on the shoulder. “Or what about - erm - “

My mobile started making an unfamiliar noise, I took it out of my pocket and found it was trying to communicate with me non-verbally. Through the medium of words. I pressed the appropriate combination of buttons and the phone beeped back, seemingly unwilling to grant me access.

“Hang on a second, sorry,” I said as Agatha’s name flashed up on the screen.

A message, no less. I pressed the buttons again, trying to unlock the keypad and grant me access to whatever nugget Agatha had managed to get through to me.

‘Delete Message Y/N’

No, of course not. Careful now, this was a difficult operation and the phone clearly had a hair trigger. One wrong move and whatever pearl I was diving for would be lost. I pressed the key I imagined represented the negative and was presented with and error message. Apparently in Chinese.

“I hate those things,” Ray tapped his pocket. “My brother bought me one and I can’t even get the bugger to turn on.”

And then there it was:

‘Clint, this taxidermy business is more serious than you think. I need you to be very, very careful indeed. Don’t forget there is alive’

And then it descended into Chinese.

“Balls,” I said.

“Problem?” asked Ray.

“Phone thinks I’m Chinese.”

“A common predicament, I’m sure.”

I reached towards the dusty phone that sat on the desk then stopped. I could do this. Agatha’s message didn’t change anything. I was careful. I was a fucking ninja.

“And,” I turned away from the phone to address Ray. “What do you know about taxidermy?”

“Ah, now there I can help you.”

“You can?”

“Oh yes,” Ray scratched idly at his knee above where I imagined his wooden leg was strapped on. “Jacob is quite the aficionado.”

“Jacob?”

“Security Jacob, yeah. He’s been an amateur whatdoyoucallit for years. Sometimes brings stuff in to show me.”

“Stuff?”

“Yeah, you know. Squirrels in hats, playing cards around a poker table, looking like people,” he laughed. “It was funny for a bit but I sort of got bored of it and, well, I just humour him, you know?”

I nodded.

“I mean I’m sure it was all road kill and the like. Rats, mice… Squirrels like I said. This one time he did a squirrel like that cat, what was he called? Garfield. He stuffed the bugger and put suckers on its hands, stuck it to his car window.”

Apparently this was one of the funniest things Ray had ever heard. I probably would have laughed but this was good stuff, it felt like the sort of thing I should be finding out.

“And no-one minded?”

“Of course people minded. Nearly got him sacked. Bet he’s got something worth looking at in the back of his car,” Ray waved at the wall to his left.

I looked over to see the board with the hooks and keys.

“It’s the one top right there if you want to have a look. His car keys.”

“Bloody right I do.”

~*~

T
he wide expansive corridors had begun to smell damp and were narrowing claustrophobically as I followed Ray towards the staff car park.  I’d been fortunate in that, unlike the public who were forced to park half a mile away and walk to the shop, the staff had the privilege of parking in the lower basement.

“But only if you get here early otherwise you’re proper stuffed,” Ray had been keen to point out.

“Number of times I’ve arrived for work then had to turn around and drive away,” Ray’s leg tap-tapped along at a reasonable pace and I’d noticed that it acted like a metronome.  Whenever he spoke the rhythm of his words followed the beat perfectly and was encouraging the sleep in me so I was glad when he finally lapsed into silence and just walked.

Reaching the end of the corridor we stood in front of a service elevator.  Ray leaned forward and slid the outer cage door, the diagonal bars folding flat, and carefully stepped inside.  I waited for a moment as he adjusted himself into the tiny space, at first not quite sure if I would even fit in there with him and then turned around and reversed into the space.

“If you don’t shut the door then it won’t move,” Ray grunted, the force of his words blowing the hair on the back of my head.

I slid the cage door shut.  This didn’t feel right, I didn’t trust any of these people and I was letting one of them take me down to a deserted car park in a building the police couldn’t get into even if we could call them.

Ray contorted his body, freeing his arm and putting it over my shoulder, readying himself to put me in a headlock.  I moved backwards to avoid it and bumped into his Santa-gut as he reached even further forward, avoiding the headlock and instead pressing the ‘B2’ button on the panel to my right.  He retracted his arm, folding it down by his side once more.

“You’re not my type,” he said then grimaced a smile at me.  I raised my eyebrows and smiled back then the lift lurched into life and began to drop.

And when I say drop I do mean drop.  My arms shot out to brace myself on its sides as a feeling rose in my stomach.  A familiar feeling, but one I would usually only expect to feel if was on a roller coaster and certainly not in a plummeting metal cage.

I stared about me and tried not to think about it but everything about this contraption seemed designed to intimidate, from the cage door to the low ceiling to the metal sign screwed to the wall warning that no more than seven persons should be allowed in at one time.  Since it was extremely unlikely that you could fit three people in this space without them becoming intimately acquainted with certain areas of one another’s anatomy, presumably the only way to fit seven in would be if they were dwarves and the lift was fitted with some sort seven-tier bunk bed affair.

With a snap the lift reached the bottom of the shaft, Ray and I were both lifted a few inches into the air and the lights of the lift went out.  For a moment I thought it was the narcolepsy and then the light blinked back on and we dropped down and I shakily reached forward and slid the reluctant cage door open, stepping out into an unlit corridor.

“It always does that,” said Ray, walking out and flicking a collection of light switches on the wall next to the lift.

As the lights came on I could see that we were inside the car park itself and that it was practically empty.  I suppose it was to be expected but for some reason I’d thought there would be a collection of cars in there.  Instead there were just one or two around the edges and one blue van sitting alone in the very centre.  I looked at Ray, he nodded and started walking towards it.