The Golden Pig

by Jonathan Penny Mark Penny

  “Neither do I,” Hymie assured him.

  “So when you said…”

  “I lied,” said Hymie. “But how hard can it be, Mike? We can’t go above 40 mph anyway.”

  “On your head be it, H.”

  “You’ll be fine. I have faith in you,” said the senior partner.

  Mike drove. He crunched through the gears all down the driveway until they got out onto the open road and then he gradually adjusted to this new motoring experience. The roads were mainly empty and the weather was glorious.

  “Don’t forget, keep to forty, Mike.”

  “This pile of junk won’t do above thirty.”

  Hymie switched on the radio. Pavarotti was just reaching high C. “Nessun flamin’ Dorma! I don’t believe it,” cried Hymie, turning it off again.

  “Rain’s forecast for later,” said Mike. “You wouldn’t think it to look at that sunshine.”

  “It’s always the way, sunshine one minute, rain the next. It’s a bit like that old case of mine; the Golden Pig. One minute I had a gorgeous blonde client and a thousand quid in my pocket, the next everyone was dropping dead like flies all around me and the police were trying to put the blame on me. You know, Mike, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Golden Pig lately.”

  “I thought you’d dropped the case since Lucy Scarlatti died.”

  “Well, yes…and no. I mean, it just seems completely wrong that her sister can get away with murder and theft. I’m sure she’s got the pig.”

  “I’d steer clear if I were you, H. There’s no percentage in it. If you find the thing, it won’t bring your client back and Steffie’s hardly gonna give it back.”

  “Did I tell you about the insurance reward, Mike?”

  “What makes you think there is?”

  “Stands to reason. Someone must own the statuette and you wouldn’t own something that valuable without either insuring it for megabucks or offering a substantial reward for its return.” He could be remarkably sensible when he tried.

  “You may be right, H.” agreed Mike.

  “I’m sure of it. If we can find Steffie Scarlatti, the pig won’t be far behind.”

  “Just be careful eh, Hymie, she leaves a trail of death in her wake, that one.”

  “Oh, I’ll be careful alright, Mike. Now then, according to these directions it’s left just here,” said Hymie, pointing.

  Mike turned left. The road was a steep one. It seemed to fall away on an incline of one in ten. At first it was rather fun to be plunging downhill at forty miles per hour, but when they hit fifty, sixty and seventy and Mike’s foot hammered the brake pedal to no avail, they changed their tune.

  “Aaaaaaarrghhhhh! Try the handbrake!” shouted Hymie.

  “What do you think this is?!” cried Mike, handing him a piece of rusty metal.

  The countryside sped past in a blur of green fields, blue skies and brown trousers. Time seemed momentarily to stand still, before speeding up exponentially.

  “KERRRASSHHH!”

  After the dust had settled, they found themselves listing to starboard at an angle of 45 degrees, the mangled transporter wedged firmly in a ditch. Hymie was troubled by a persistent ringing in his ears.

  “Mike? Can you hear that noise? Mike!?”

  “Uuurrggh! It’s your mobile, you wally!” And so it proved.

  “Hi there, Jim Diamond of The Investigator magazine here. Is that Hymie Goldman?”

  “Hi Jim, it’s a bad time, I’m afraid, I’ve just been involved in an accident.”

  “Hymie, I can’t hear Lightning! It’s all gone eerily quiet,” said Mike anxiously.

  “Sorry to hear that, Hymie. I just wanted to tell you you’ve been nominated for an award in The Investigator’s Annual Awards ceremony.”

  “An award? Thanks, but what’s it for?” queried Hymie, somewhat distractedly.

  “Best use of technology, for your website of course.”

  “Hold on a minute, Jim, have you been speaking to a lady called Sarah Chandar?”

  “Yes, of course; she nominated you. But I did have a look myself, it’s a great site. The interactive clue identification game is a real winner.”

  Mike passed his finger in melodramatic fashion across his neck as though cutting his own throat, to get Hymie to end the call. Miraculously he took the hint.

  “Thanks again, Jim. No offence but I have to dash, I’ve got a missing racehorse to find. I don’t have access to the web just now anyway.” He pressed the cancel button on his mobile and left Diamond puzzling over how a nominee for best use of technology couldn’t access his own website.

  “Sorry, Mike, you’re right, we need to stick to the job in hand. You know, we’re lucky to be alive after that crash. What happened?”

  “Well, I put my foot to the floor and there weren’t any flaming brakes, you plonker! Did you think I forgot to try them?”

  “No, I mean, why weren’t there any brakes?”

  “No idea. Look, let’s get out of here before the petrol tank goes up and while we’re at it, let’s see if we still have a champion racehorse in the back of the transporter eh, H?”

  They struggled to free themselves from their seatbelts. Hanging in mid-air didn’t help. Mike managed to turn himself around to face the door, then kicked out at the battered panel until it finally burst open. He forced himself through the gap, jumped down and staggered around to the front of the vehicle to help free his partner through the broken windscreen. Their appearance had suffered, but they were relieved to find that their injuries were only superficial.

  “Have a look in the horsebox will you,” asked Hymie, after they had recovered slightly.

  “Couldn’t you? You’re the senior partner after all. I seem to get all the cruddy jobs,” lamented Mike.

  “I don’t like to. I’m a bit squeamish,” confessed Hymie, lamely.

  “Oh and I love looking at squished racehorses, I suppose?”

  “Go on, Mike, I’ll do it next time,” he cajoled.

  “If Lighning’s dead or missing, mate, there won’t be a next time,” said Mike. “The word will go around like a flash.”

  “Well, all the more reason to go now.” Hymie, although gutless, was persistent.

  Mike should have known he wouldn’t get any sense out of Goldman. Slowly the big man walked over to the horse-box and peered inside. It was empty. “No sign of a horse, H!”

  “You’re kidding,” said Hymie, with relief.

  “Take a look for yourself. There’s a pile of man...”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive,” confirmed Mike.

  “So, let’s get this straight. We’ve lost the horse. We’ve wrecked the transporter and we’re stranded in the middle of nowhere. I can feel a new identity coming on!” said Hymie.

  “I thought you were used to tough scrapes, Hymie. Yes, we’ve seemingly lost the horse, but it was hardly our fault. That horse-transporter was a complete deathtrap. Someone must have cut the brakes.”

  “I’m sorry, Mike. I’m just a bit upset. I know you think I’ve got no nerves, but I have. It’s all starting to get on top of me. You’re probably right about the brakes.”

  “I’m sure of it,” said Mike. “No-one said this job was going to be a walk in the park. Some serious villains are planning to stop Lightning from racing and they’re not about to let us get in their way. So let’s show them we mean business. First of all, we’ve got to find Lightning before someone else does.”

  “You never said a truer word, Mike,” said Hymie, the light of battle gradually returning to his eyes. “So, what’s your plan?”

  “Plan? Ah, well…we could walk around the area calling out his name?” said Mike.

  “A bit lame, isn’t it.”

  “…or we could phone the police, to see if anyone had returned a racehorse to lost property?”

  “Lamer still,” added Hymie. “Well, I’m all for shouting out his name.”

  “And the police?” asked Mike.

&nbs
p; “The trouble is, we don’t own the horse so we’d have a job to explain what we were doing looking for it, and if we told them, the first thing they’d do would be to call lady Hunting-Baddeley, and then we’d be sunk; we could wave goodbye to our fee for starters. If we can find Lightning we may be able to retrieve the situation. Besides, how would you describe the horse? Big, with brown eyes?”

  “Does he have brown eyes?” asked Mike.

  “Call yourself a detective?”

  “Not often,” he conceded.

  “I’m not surprised,” said Hymie, “but the fact remains that it’s a rotten idea. Got any other winners?”

  “We could hire some real detectives to find him?” said Mike, provocatively.

  “Real detectives?! Listen, Mike, we’re real detectives! Anyway, can you imagine explaining to them why we need their services? We’d be a laughing stock. We have to find the horse ourselves.”

  “Lightning, Lightning! Here boy!” shouted Mike.

  “I admire your willingness to make a complete fool of yourself in a crisis,” said Hymie, “but this is a racehorse we’re looking for. He could be halfway across the country by now. We’ll never find him on foot.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong mate,” said Mike. “Don’t you know anything about horse psychology? Given the choice between running half way across the country and having a good nosh-up, he’ll take the nosh-up every time.”

  “Thank you, James Herriot. That’s your expert opinion is it?”

  “Gotta be worth a try,” continued Mike.

  They ambled along the lane, Mike checking the left-hand side of the road and Hymie the right. “Lightning! Lightning!” they chorused, like a couple of drunks looking for their car keys. They wandered the length and breadth of the area until they arrived at the nearby village of Southam, where they accosted a succession of passers-by with one recurrent question:

  “Excuse me sir/madam/sonny, have you seen my racehorse?”

  “No, what’s he look like?” seemed to be the perennial response.

  They passed pretty stone cottages, a pub; which took some doing, and a small ruined-castle, before finally arriving at the red telephone-box outside the church of St. Swithin’s. They had all but given up the search and started thinking wistfully about the pub when a large chestnut gelding appeared, as if by magic, from the front garden of a nearby cottage.

  “Lightning. Here, boy!” said Mike, calmly.

  A little girl with pigtails appeared from the far side of the horse as it stooped down to nibble on a geranium. “Do you like my horse, mister?”

  “He’s a very fine horse, young lady, how clever of you to find him,” said Hymie.

  “’Ere, H., you sure it’s him?” queried Mike, cautiously.

  “Of course, I’m sure,” he hissed. Hymie and Mike led the racehorse back down the lane with the little girl calling after them, “Come back Sugar-lump, you’re a bad horsey, leaving me on my own. Come back and play!”

  Relief surged over them. They could hold their heads up high again. Yes, they may have lost a horse-transporter, due to the sabotage of some would-be horsenappers, but they had saved Summer Lightning. He would race at Chelters, come what may.

  Part Thirty

  All great detectives had to brief their staff, and Inspector Ray Decca was no exception. “I’ll keep it short ladies and gents…”

  It would certainly be that; he had practically nothing new to say.

  “As the Bard said, an honest tale speeds best, being plainly told”.

  A chorus of disapproval swept through the briefing room.

  “Have you noticed, he always quotes Shakespeare when he’s got nothing to go on,” observed Sergeant Shorthouse. “It’s a diversionary tactic.”

  “That’ll do. Right, cast your minds back to last Tuesday, March 3. It’s four fifteen in the afternoon. A prison van containing Steffanie Scarlatti is on its way to Holloway. En route it gets hijacked. It was a professional job, smoke grenades, metal-cutters; the works. They didn’t know what hit them. Ask Reidy. She was sprung from the van and disappeared in this area, here on the map in quadrangle A.”

  He pointed with an old PT drill stick at an enlarged street map he’d blu-tacked to the wall, to emphasize the point.

  “We divided the area into six zones, denoted on the map by letters Alpha through Foxtrot.”

  “Any particular reason, Chief?”

  “I’m coming to that Terse. We had forensics all over the crime scene, we conducted a thorough door to door search of the area, we brought in every grass and petty thief for miles around and gave them the third degree, but no-one was talking. They were all scared. We have about as much to go on as a holidaymaker on a French campsite.”

  “Nicely put, Chief. Except, where’s Moffat Road?” asked Sergeant Terse.

  “Moffat Road? Why this strange babbling about Moffat Road, Terse?”

  “It’s on your map, Chief, as bold as brass, but I’ve never seen it and I grew up around there,” said the methodical sergeant.

  The great man screwed up his eyes and scratched his head. Where was Moffat Road? It wasn’t anywhere he knew. Suddenly the explanation dawned on him.

  “Ahem, well spotted Terse. I was waiting to see who’d spot it first. This, of course, is a street plan of Dumfries, left over from that strategic policing lecture Jock McTavish gave last week. The moral is…always expect the unexpected,” said Decca.

  Okay, we haven’t found Steffanie Scarlatti yet,” he resumed, “but we’re going to. I can’t believe she would leave her home territory in a hurry so we’re going to keep on doing what we’ve been doing and wait for her to make a mistake. Does anybody have any suggestions? Henderson?”

  “We could follow-up the nightclub connection, sir. Scarlatti is known to be an active clubber.”

  “Good. Of course, we’ve checked out the club where she used to gamble; the Rainbow Rooms, but as you say, she was a keen club-goer and there must be hundreds…maybe thousands of private members clubs around. Terse, you and Henderson get on to the cab firms in the area; see if any of them remember dropping off a woman of her description at a club in the last week or two. Circulate the foto-fit. She’s an attractive woman, surely someone must remember her.”

  “Eye-eye, Chief, are you an admirer?” asked Sergeant Terse with a grin.

  “Certainly not, Terse.”

  “We also know the Rainbow Rooms are a front for the Triads, sir, perhaps she has links with them?”

  “Yes, Jervis, good point. We don’t know too much about her involvement with the Triads, but it’s certainly an area to explore. Perhaps she knew something they wanted to keep under wraps and sprang her to silence her, or perhaps she’s working for them. There are numerous possibilities.”

  “If you’re right, chief, I don’t envy those Chinks!” said PC Jervis.

  “Too true. Reidy’s still in intensive care. Don’t be fooled by her glamour model looks, she’s poison. If you do come up against her, don’t take any chances; let her have it with your truncheon.”

  “You do fancy her, Chief!”