The Defective Detective : Cat Chaser (6 page)

“S
o, I think I know what we need to do to catch that bleeding big cat,” I said to my captive audience.

They reacted with effusive indifference. Even Jacob’s enthusiasm, which had so far remained stoically intact, seemed to be wearing thin.

“We are going to capture the tiger, people,” I began, trying to instil some sort of sense of occasion.

Jacob stood up, negotiating his way past Erin and Lori, and started rummaging in some drawers.

“We’re going to trap it in the caretaker’s cupboard,” I continued, unperturbed. “And-”

“Why?” snapped Erin.

“Well, partly because it seemed, geographically speaking, to be in a good position to pull something like this off and partly because I think it’s time we got young Raymond back in the game.”

“Young Raymond?” Erin whined.

“Sarcasm, my dear. Ask me when this is all over and I’ll explain it to you,” I grimaced at her and she huffed back. “Jacob, my good man, can I ask what you’re up to over there?”

“Erm, yes,” he replied. “I just assumed whatever crackpot idea you were going to suggest was going to involve someone leaving this reasonably safe room and so I thought we could maybe use these instead of the Tannoy.”

He placed two walkie-talkies on the desk in front of the monitors.

“Radios the security guards use,” he nodded. “Could be useful.”

“I should say so,” I laughed. “So now all we need to do is go down to the food hall and grab as much raw meat as we can get our hands on. Lori, I think you should stay here and Jacob, you keep one eye on her and the other on those monitors. Erin, you’re with me.”

“I most certainly am not,” she barked.

“You can carry the walkie talkie.”

She grabbed it from the desk and stomped towards the door.

I flashed Lori and Jacob a smile and went after her. The radio almost instantly burped static at us then Jacob’s voice came through. As we moved quickly away from the office the sound of his real voice receded into the distance as his broadcast self remained.

“I can’t see it at the moment so keep your eyes open,” he said. “But it’s not in the corridor to the lift. What?”

Static bubbled from the radio.

“Lori says she can’t see it in the food hall yet either, we’ll keep you posted once we locate it.”

“Over and out!” Erin shouted into the receiver as she stomped into the open doors of the lift and pressed one of the buttons. The doors started to close and I put my hand between them. The doors beeped and re-opened, I stepped into the lift and Erin stabbed at the ‘G’ button.

“So, Mr Detective,” Erin began once the lift doors closed again. “Whodunnit? You seem to be doing a lot more sleeping than detecting. Well, that and running away.”

“Apparently you did it because you asked me who did it rather than whatthey did.”

“I’m not an idiot,” she said. “You want to catch the tiger so you must be investigating who stole it or something like that.”

“Close enough,” I replied. “There’s a bit more to it than that but yes, in a nutshell that’ll be about the size of it. And as for whodunnit… ”

“Yes?” her eyes lit up at the thought of the gossip.

“It could be any one of you.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Well, let’s take you, for example.”

Erin huffed and pursed her lips.

“I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I’ve witnessed enough to assume that you could conceivably be the brains behind the operation. You are conniving, manipulative, bossy and you love to be in charge but above all that you are intelligent. I think it’s entirely possible you orchestrated the whole affair, that you are this elusive Ms Pingoveno.”

“Erm. Thanks, I think,” Erin stepped out of the lift onto the ground floor. She raised the walkie talkie to her face. “Are we safe down here?”

“Still no sign of it,” Lori’s voice spat nervously. “Be careful.”

“Of course the same could be said of Lori. And she is, arguably, even more intelligent.”

“What?”

“Of course if it was either of you I would assume you had an accomplice. Not being sexist, you understand. Just the evidence as it presents itself. If Lori wasn’t just blundering around looking for her laptop and she was up to something then she certainly didn’t know how to handle the tiger, did she?”

“No, I suppose not,” Erin’s brow creased, the wrinkles drawing together to form a furrow. “Trolleys. Grab one and we’ll fill it. Have you got a pound?”

“Eh? Oh, I see,” my hand went into my pocket looking for a pound coin to put in the slot and release the trolley from its chain gang brothers. “Here you go.”

“I don’t think it’s Lori,” Erin wrestled a trolley free and started pushing it in what I presumed was the right direction. There was a whine of white noise from the walkie talkie and we both jumped.

“Sorry,” Lori’s voice was faint. “I dropped it.”

We reached the butcher’s section of the food hall and proceeded to fill the trolley with meat. Lots of meat. Chickens, ducks, mince, pork chops, beef joints and then, to top it all off, the head of a pig staring blankly as our trolley’s figurehead. It seemed strangely ominous.

“What if the tiger smells the meat and comes after us?” Erin wrestled the trolley into the lift and pressed the button to get us moving again.

“Best we don’t think about it,” I stepped inside and the doors slid shut. “And anyway, we haven’t covered Ray or Jacob yet. Both of them could be our man.”

“Ray’s the type if you ask me. Not even supposed to be here. I’m the one who decides what shifts to put him on and I can promise you he is not supposed to be here. But Jacob? No.”

“Jacob? Afraid so. Found this in his car,” I briefly brandished the claw in front of an aghast Erin.

“His car? He doesn’t-”

The radio spluttered once more into life. They’d caught sight of it. On the second floor. Where we were headed. This was really not good.

“And don’t even get me started on where the fuck Ray fits into all this. Especially the fact that-”

I was interrupted by the doors of the lift sliding open. We stared out. Nothing stared back. Yet.

I dragged the trolley pig-first into the corridor as Erin spoke to Jacob on the walkie talkie. It was around on the second floor. They didn’t know where.

“Listen, Erin,” I said as I took the radio from her. “Go back up and join them. I’ll find Ray and we’ll do this together.”

“Okay,” she said. Her face was pale and her makeup had begun seriously to falter. “Good luck.”

I grabbed the handle of the trolley and began wheeling it slowly down towards the dead end that housed the caretaker’s office. The steps echoed and I could feel my heart beating heavy in my chest. I tried not to think about it but there wasn’t really any way I was going to be able to get it out of my head.

The door was in sight. I could do this, I thought, looking over my shoulder to make sure there was nothing there. There wasn’t, but I was sure I’d heard something. I stood still and listened.

Nothing. Just the sound of water dripping somewhere far away and something else. What was it? I couldn’t quite work it out. The noise was familiar but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

I held my breath and listened harder. A burst of white noise cracked the silence, blaring out from the walkie talkie.

“Clint!” it was Jacob, there was panic in his voice.

There was that noise again. What was that-

~*~

R
ay’s face was upside down.

Oh, hang on a second, no.  That’s wrong.  He was leaning over me and I was on the floor.  I turned my head and could see the grain of the wood on his leg.

“You must have balls of steel to wander about with that thing on the loose and your condition.”

I yawned.  “Piss off, peg leg.”

Ray laughed and helped me to my feet.  “Fair enough.  So, what the hell is going on with all this then?”

“You know how when you go to the zoo there’s big signs saying ‘don’t feed the tigers’?”

He nodded.

“Well we’re going to feed the tiger.”

And then I explained the rest of what was a remarkably simple plan.

“Okay then,” he said.  “Worth a shot, I suppose.  Let’s give it a go.”

The walkie talkie fizzed back into life.  “Clint?”

It was Jacob.

“Here.”

“Good.”

“You okay up there?”

“Yeah, it’s up on three with us at the moment.  The girls are safe in the security office.  I’m going to come and help, the damn thing is way over the other side of the floor so should be easy for me to get down.”

“See you in a minute then.”

Ray propped open his office door with the pig’s head and I pushed the trolley a little further away then dropped a handful of mince.

Two pork chops and a rump steak later, Jacob stepped out of the lift onto the floor.  He was drenched in sweat and looked pretty twitchy.

“You alright?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s just getting to me a bit,” he said, then grabbed a chicken breast and chucked it on the floor.

“It’s getting to all of us,” muttered Ray.  “‘Cept sleeping beauty here.  You look fresh as a daisy.”

“Amazing what forty winks can do for the complexion,” I dropped a particularly bloody rib-eye on the floor with a satisfying
thwap
.  “Can you push this for a second, Ray?”

He nodded, taking the trolley.  I let a pre-plucked duck fall to the floor, wiped my hands on my jacket then pressed the button to talk to our eyes in the sky.

“Everything okay up there?” I said, then when there was no immediate reply I added, “erm, over.”

“Fine.”  It was Erin.  “Except we just lost sight of it.  Might be near the stairs.  Over.”

“Ten four to that,” Jacob and Ray stopped what they were doing to look at me.  “Over and out.”

We stared at each other for a second and I began to question the sanity of what we were doing.  Was the job really worth this?

A shrill ringing echoed around the corridor causing Jacob, Ray and I to simultaneously jump two inches into the air.  I reached into my pocket and plucked out my phone.  It was Agatha.

“Hello,” I said.  As Agatha began to speak I could see the two of them straining to make out what she was saying.

“Really?” I continued, moving away a little to ensure they couldn’t make any of it out.  “That’s brilliant.  Listen, I’ve got to go.”

I hung up and smiled.  “Gentlemen,” I said.  “Let’s get this place decorated.”

Ray began pushing the trolley along faster, picking up speed with each step and Jacob and I were hurling raw meat left and right.  Most of it was hitting the floor but, as Ray picked up speed, more of it started hitting the walls, the lighter pieces sticking where they landed, the heavier ones bouncing off and
flumping
to the ground.  And Ray just kept picking up speed until he reached a point where we had to jog to keep up and the meat was flying left and right and there was blood splatter on our faces as we careered forward on this weird kind of reverse trolley-dash in an abattoir.

And as we were running along hurling meat I started to see what we were doing, mentally taking a step back, and I began to giggle.  It was throwing the sausages that set me off.  Of course, once I started, I set the two of them off as well until the three of us eventually skidded to a halt, howling with laughter, a trail of meat scattered behind us, and chunks of the stuff on our clothes.

The walkie talkie chose that moment to interject, spraying its static then countering with Erin saying four words.

“It’s on its way.”

The mood switched and the three of us ran back the way we had just come, carefully stepping around the meat explosion, until we reached the elevator.

“Come on, Jacob,” I said, stepping inside the lift.

“What about Ray?” he asked.

“I know what I have to do,” Ray said and as he walked past I handed him the walkie talkie.

“Glad to see you two are still in one piece,” back in the security office Erin touched Jacob’s sleeve, probably picking off some of the stray meat products.

“So what happens now?” asked Lori, not looking a great deal better than the last time I’d seen her.

“Now we watch on these monitors as the tiger follows the trail of meat to the caretaker’s office and, once it goes inside, Ray will step out of the room next door and lock the bastard in.”

“Excellent,” said Erin.  “Can we see what’s going on?  I couldn’t find any cameras on the office.”

“Ah,” said Jacob sheepishly.  “There is a camera on our office.  I just don’t like people watching me so I… Well… I turned it off.”

Erin took half a step away from him.

“Hang on,” he continued.  “I’ll just… ”

And he leaned behind the panel of monitors and started plugging and unplugging wires, causing monitors to come on and go off.  Soon all we could see on every screen was the disembodied pig’s head staring right at us.

“There we go,” he smiled with pride then his hand went up to cover his mouth as, amazingly, the tiger came into the frame.

A silence fell as we all stood, staring, willing the tiger to go into the office.  It moved slowly, the enormous muscles shifting effortlessly to move its bulk towards the one thing it had its eye on.

Our figurehead – Mrs Pig.

It bounded forward, knocking the bait into the office then following itself.  The four of us were all grinning now, the plan was so close to working.  So very close.

All Ray needed to do was close the door.

The seconds ticked by and nothing moved.  Not the tiger, not Ray.  Everything just seemed frozen, like the feed was broken.

“Why isn’t Ray locking it in?” said Lori, eventually.

I just shook my head.  My eyes were dry from lack of blinking and stayed fixed on the screen as the tiger walked out of the office with the pig’s head in its mouth.

We’d had our chance and Ray had blown it.

“I really need a wee now,” said Lori.

~*~

I
threw open the door of the security office completely intent on going down and confronting Ray, but Lori was insistent.  Someone had to take her to the toilet, otherwise she was going to end up soiling herself.  I stalked forward as Erin and Jacob hissed reassurances of our safety on the walkie talkie.