The Golden Pig

by Jonathan Penny Mark Penny

  “I will give you twenty-four hours Lau. Kill Goldman or give me my money back and I will make my own arrangements. Of course, if you fail, your reputation will suffer.”

  “I think not Madam. Perhaps before Cheltenham, but now you have taken direct action, my reputation is safe enough. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer your money back? In the scheme of things Goldman’s life is such a small matter.”

  “Small matter?! The man is a curse. He must die, don’t you understand?! Were it not for his incompetence, Tiddles would still be alive today. I cannot rest easy in my own mind until the world is rid of him!” She had clearly lost the plot where Goldman was concerned.

  Scarlatti would see to it, thought Lau. It just seemed a little pointless, not to mention beneath him; having a hopeless idiot put to death just to placate a vindictive old woman.

  “When do I get the money for the drugs contract, Lau?” Mrs Timmins was nothing if not greedy.

  “I will send it over by courier tomorrow,” he said. “On reflection, I will send you the cash. It cuts down on the laundering you know,” he continued, fingering his moustache. He smiled the smile of the dyspeptic. He was imagining the look on her face when she found Steffanie Scarlatti on her doorstep.

  “Be sure you do. I expect he will also be able to give me an update on Goldman.”

  “Certainly Madam. Goodbye,” said Lau, with a tight-lipped smile.

  As he sat in his pink velour armchair later that evening, enjoying his cocoa over an excellent new game-show, “Loadsa-Loot”, he was disturbed by a sharp rapping on the window. What made it stranger still was the fact that he lived on the fourth floor.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, not unnaturally enough.

  He was answered by nothing but silence.

  Perhaps it was a pigeon flying into the window? No, pigeons didn’t knock. He lifted the sash window and peered out into the deepening gloom. The traffic’s hum floated into the room. Outside it was beginning to drizzle and clouds were gathering over the darkening streets.

  ‘London’ he thought. ‘Who needs it?!’

  A pigeon which had been roosting on the grimy ledge of a neighbouring building struck its wings in flight, shattering his drifting calm and causing him to straighten up abruptly.

  His movement was held in check as the feline fingers of a black gloved hand closed tightly upon his throat and pulled his head down to the sill. In a flash of animal grace she was upon him, springing through the casement into the room and kicking Lau to the ground with a practiced swipe of her right boot.

  He lurched across the room, still gasping for air from his recent partial asphyxiation, barely managing to compose himself in time to meet her next assault. She slid her hunting knife from its scabbard on her belt and lunged at his chest in a vicious swipe, her bloodcurdling scream of rage simultaneously ripping through the evening calm.

  He desperately prepared himself to defend and counter-attack. With the poise and grace earned in a lifetime’s martial arts practice, Lau sidestepped the wild assault and followed through with a power-punch to the ribs. She was fast, but not that fast. He caught her on the third rib and she careened into the corner of the hardwood dining table, inflicting both damage and injury to herself as she fell.

  Lau unsheathed a five hundred year old ceremonial samurai sword from pride of place on the wall above the mantelpiece and leapt forward with cat-like tread to finish the job.

  “This is to avenge Chiu Mann” he cried, as he raised the sword’s finely honed blade above his head to deliver the coup de grace.

  Like Chiu Mann he had written off his assailant too quickly. She rolled sideways out of the path of a bloody demise and pulled a small Derringer pistol from the back of her left boot.

  “It’s time for you to pay, Lau. Pay with your life, of course,” she sneered.

  It was her turn to underestimate her adversary; to understand at last that he was not called Master Lau for nothing.

  He appeared to twist a small packet of crystals concealed in his sleeve and then he simply disappeared into a purple haze. The smoke billowed out of his robe, filling the room in an all-pervading mist at frenetic speed.

  Steffanie Scarlatti was not about to be denied her triumph, nor her revenge so easily. Raising the pistol to shoulder height, she blasted away at the space where Lau’s last seen corporeal form had been until she had completely discharged the weapon.

  The mist cleared. Lau’s cape appeared to be suspended in mid air before her, torn in several places by bullet holes, singed by the passage of gunpowder and wet with something which looked like blood. The cloak fell to the ground and Lau re-appeared in a new silk-trimmed gown, seemingly uninjured. He lifted his wooden walking stick and smacked it hard across Scarlatti’s head.

  OOF! AARGH! she spluttered.

  “Never forget I am your Master. It shall always be so while you owe me a debt of honour.”

  “I owe you nothing Lau, nothing. You cannot steal my freedom with your cheap tricks and your old words.”

  “You are bound to me like a slave to its master. Until you have completed our bargain you belong to me; body and soul. You will never be free until you have fulfilled your promise,” he insisted.

  She hated to admit it to herself but she was scared of him. He didn’t play by her rules, or any rules that she could fathom and that made him unpredictable and dangerous.

  “You have sworn to kill Edna Timmins and Hymie Goldman, as the price of your freedom. Make no mistake, I gave you your freedom and I can as easily take it away again, but I am a reasonable man. Goldman means nothing to me. By my faith the idiot is sacred so I shall reprieve him. However, in lieu of sparing you this chore I ask only that you take this briefcase to MrsTimmins, kill her and return the case to me.”

  “Why take the case at all, simply to return it?” she asked.

  “If you fail to arrive with the case, you will never meet MrsTimmins,” he said cryptically.

  “I see.” She could see that the contents of the case were worth something.

  In fact, it was packed with explosives timed to explode at precisely the time of her arrival chez Timmins.

  “Goodbye Scarlatti and good luck with your mission,” he said.

  “We make our own luck, Lau.”

  “Not always.”

  Outside in the doorway of a shop stood a man in a trench-coat, muffled against the cold and rain. He had been waiting for several hours already, but seemed unmoved by the weather and the monotony of his assignment.

  Scarlatti appeared at the ground floor entrance to the building facing his vantage point and he cautiously prepared to follow her. She seemed to pause at the sight of the torrential downpour and re-entered the building.

  Mike crossed the street and carefully followed her at a distance as she crossed the foyer. He watched her enter the lift and clocked the indicator as it moved to the first floor before stopping, then he raced up the building’s back stairs to the first floor, just in time to see Scarlatti’s back disappearing into one of the apartments. He knocked on the door.

  She eyed it suspiciously. Who could know she was here? Was she being paranoid? Better safe than sorry.

  “Come in,” she said.

  The door flew open to reveal Murphy, blotting out the light from the corridor.

  “Hello Steffie.”

  “Murphy? What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come about the golden pig.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you delusional or something?” Who did he think he was, this doorman?

  As she looked at him it crossed her mind that it would be difficult to miss him from where she was standing. It would be difficult to miss a target that big, period.

  As if to answer the expression in her eyes he removed his old service revolver from his trench-coat pocket and pointed it at her.

  “Don’t start any funny business, Steffie, I just want the pig.”

  Did she play dumb, or come clean? If she came clean
it would probably mean killing him, but he’d started it. There was nothing childish about her; at least not on the glossy, hard-boiled surface.

  She opened the top drawer of a filing cabinet, removed a tatty plastic bag from the back and took out the golden statuette he had heard so much about.

  “Is this what you wanted?” she asked him.

  “Yes, although I hadn’t expected it to be so small.”

  “Small is beautiful Murphy, although I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Of course, the rule only holds good for objets d’art.” She smiled at him.

  He could feel all his distrust and contempt for her melting away, yet he knew deep down inside that to let down his guard could prove fatal. There were many men who could testify to that.

  “Put it back in the bag and give it to me,” he told her.

  “I’m intrigued to know on what basis you stake your claim, Murphy. Is it just by force of arms?”

  “If it’s any of your business, I’m a partner in JP Confidential and this statuette belongs to one of our clients.”

  She laughed hysterically.

  “You and Goldman? That’s a hoot. You call yourselves a private investigations bureau?!”

  It wasn’t the reaction he had been expecting, but it made it easier to keep his hatred alive. Yet it also made him angry that what had begun as a source of pride should have degenerated into something farcical. He was a partner, and he was here because he knew Hymie would stand no chance; she had fooled him into thinking she was a seventeen year old trainee for six months, next time it could prove fatal for the poor sap.

  “Just do as I say,” he barked.

  “Or what, you’re going to shoot me? I can’t see it, Murphy; you may be a dab hand at beating up tough nuts outside a club, but you won’t kill somebody in cold blood.” Her gambling instincts came to the fore.

  “Try me,” he said, coldly.

  He wouldn’t kill her, he knew that; but he was certainly willing to shoot her, if it meant he could get out of there alive.

  “Pass me the bag, now!” he cried.

  She started folding up the bag, but just as she seemed about to pass it over, she threw it at his head and dived for cover behind the settee.

  He knew he may not get another chance.

  BLAM! BLAM! CLICK

  She screamed in pain as she hit the carpet and clutched at her left shoulder, which seemed to be on fire; a searing pain was throbbing all down her left arm. The slimeball had shot her. She removed her Derringer from its holster and trained it at chest height at the space above the settee, waiting to blow him away. Mike meanwhile was struggling with concussion. The golden pig had caught the side of his head and he was feeling decidedly groggy. He knew he had to get out of there, knew that the odds were turning against him and wondered if his gun was empty or if it was just the third chamber.

  Lifting the pig in the plastic bag Murphy retreated down the corridor. He knew he wouldn’t have time for the lift so started to run to the staircase. The realization suddenly dawned on Steffanie Scarlatti that she was no longer the quarry but the hunter and she reached the corridor just as Murphy was entering the stairwell. She ran after him, pulled open the door to the stairwell and fired down the staircase at him.

  BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  The bullets ricocheted off the staircase and their thunderous clamour echoed through the chamber.

  “AARGH!”

  He was hit. A momentary pause and then he kept moving. His only chance lay in flight. When she reached the bottom of the stairwell, he was gone, although an occasional trail of bloodspots marked his passing.

  ‘An injured animal is a dangerous one’ she thought.

  She should know. She returned to her apartment and removed her jacket to examine the wound. She had been lucky, she supposed; it was no more than a flesh wound. No bones seemed to be broken, and although it hurt like hell, it wasn’t going to hold her back for long. She’d need a good plastic surgeon of course, or she wouldn’t be wearing any more topless dresses at Cannes.

  Murphy would keep. Yes, he had the golden pig, but he was injured, maybe even dying. If she kept her appointment with Edna Timmins, it would give him time to check into a hospital or bleed to death. Either way, he would soon be dead and the pig would be back where it belonged.

  She dressed her wound with difficulty, but needed to staunch the blood and maintain the image of composure and professionalism for the old bat. Once Timmins was dead she could see to Murphy and disappear somewhere warm with the golden pig and the contents of Lau’s briefcase.

  It was time to check out of this open prison.

  Part Thirty-Seven

  Hymie was becoming a connoisseur of hospitals, NHS ones at least. Like a trainspotter collecting numbers he had started to keep a tally of which hospitals he had visited, perhaps with a view to one day publishing the definitive consumer guide. Not that anyone would want to read it, of course; it was all most people could do to avoid the flippin’ places.

  He lay comatose in yet another hospital bed, in Edgware General.

  A nurse paused outside the curtain wall, looked inside briefly at the battered man of fortune, and resumed her journey.

  “What’s the matter with him Doctor?”

  “Nervous exhaustion, lack of sleep, too much fast food, caffeine and sugar in his diet…I could go on, but it would only bore you. Why don’t I buy you lunch instead? Or better still, dinner?”

  “You’ll be lucky to get out of here for long enough to eat dinner, Simon,” said the nurse, matily.

  “Too true,” he said, forlornly.

  “They seemed to think he might have been taking drugs when they brought him in, had he?” asked the nurse.

  “No. Well, not in the last forty eight hours anyway,” confirmed Simon.

  In the alternative reality in Hymie’s head a message was coming through from the Great Beyond.

  “Hymie!”

  No response.

  “HYMIE!!” A voice like thunder.

  The voice grew and grew until it filled his head, like the continuous deafening peal of ancient church bells.

  “Yes, God. How can I help you?”

  He was floating on the ceiling of the ward, looking down at himself in bed. His bruised and battered body looked old and tired, but somehow smaller than it seemed from the inside. His mind, his spirit, his soul were all alive and kicking, but that poor old body needed a rest.

  “Just a social visit. You’ve been overdoing it, that’s all.”

  “Can I have it in writing?”

  “What do you think? I just thought I’d come and tell you that the end is nearly in sight.”

  “I’m not going to die am I?”

  “No, not just yet. Well, you’ve got a business to run haven’t you?”

  “That’s right, I have. I’ve got a business partner now as well, you know.”

  “Yes, a good man. Murphy isn’t it?” asked God.

  “You know very well it is.”

  “I suppose I do,” agreed God, modestly.

  “Have I still got to fight the champion of evil?”