by Bob Burke
As I tried to work out how exactly I was going to resolve this particular dilemma, I heard a noise behind me. I’d like to say I spun snappily around, fists ready for another fight, but I’d be lying. If I had to spin around it would probably have taken me the rest of the morning to do so.
‘Hey Mr Pig,’ said a boy’s voice. ‘Why are you covered in beans?’
I eventually managed to look around very slowly and very carefully. A boy of about nine, keeping a very safe distance away, was looking at me with interest. Presumably he didn’t get to see a pig in a suit covered with garbage every day. He was dressed in faded jeans, sneakers and a white T-shirt with Hubbard’s Cubbard (Grimmtown’s latest music phenomenon) emblazoned loudly across the front.
‘I fell,’ I said, keeping it simple.
‘So how did you get that black eye?’ he asked. Great: a small nosey boy.
‘Fell against those boxes there.’ I pointed to the pile of flat cardboard that had been boxes before I fell on them.
‘And the cut lip?’ A small, nosey, perceptive boy.
‘Banged off the wall.’
And how did your clothes get torn?’ Now he was becoming irritating on top of being small, nosey and perceptive.
‘Look,’ I said in exasperation. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school or out begging or something?’
‘Nah,’ he replied. ‘I don’t go to school on Saturdays.’
In my defence, I can only say that my deductive powers were still impaired as a result of the previous night’s incident, otherwise, of course, I’d have worked that out in a matter of seconds. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
He finally decided I was fairly harmless–or at least wasn’t in a position to do him any real harm–and asked if I needed help. As his chances of carrying me were about the same as Dumbo falling out of the sky on us, I asked him to find a payphone and call Gloria.
‘Tell her Harry needs a cab,’ I groaned, throwing some coins and my business card at him. ‘There should be a phone box out on the street somewhere.’
He looked at the card with great interest. ‘Wow, a detective. How cool is that?’
At the moment, not very,’ I replied. ‘Just make the call and I’ll make it worth your while.’
‘You mean I can work for you; be your informant or something?’
‘No. I mean I’ll give you ten bucks.’
His face dropped. ‘But I hear all kinds of cool stuff. I could be really useful, specially with my contacts.’
‘Look kid,’ I said with as much patience as I could muster (which wasn’t really a lot). ‘If I need to know who stole the Queen of Heart’s tarts I’ll contact you, OK. Now can you just make the call? Please.’
He trudged down the alleyway to the street and I tried to clean up my clothes. Apart from used magic beans there were a number of wet newspapers, a variety of vegetables, an old bedspring and spaghetti on various parts of my person. I wasn’t sure if I was removing them or smearing them in. When I was finished I certainly didn’t smell any better and my suit would never be worn again thanks to the many nonremovable stains it now sported. Moving very carefully and very painfully I made my way back towards the street, one aching step at a time.
To my surprise, the kid had made the call and a cab was waiting at the kerb for me. When the driver saw my condition (or smelled my condition, to be more accurate), he was understandably reluctant to let me into his cab. After looking in the back of it I didn’t see how I could have made conditions there any worse as the back seat and floor were covered with candy wrappers, old newspapers, apple cores, melted chocolate and various strange and unsavoury-looking stains. If I hadn’t known better I’d have assumed the cab had spent the night in the same pile of garbage as I had. When I pointed this out to the driver–and waved a twenty under his nose–he not-so-graciously consented to take me back to the office. As I was getting into the cab I reached into my pocket, drew out a ten-dollar note and handed it to the kid.
‘Here kid,’ I said. ‘Thanks for your help. By the way, what’s your name?’
‘Jack,’ he replied, examining the note for authenticity. ‘Jack Horner.’
‘Well, Jack Horner, maybe I’ll see you around.’
‘Count on it Mister.’ He turned and walked back down the alleyway.
The cab pulled away and made its way back to my office. I wasn’t in the mood for chat so after the cab driver had covered the usual in-taxi topics (weather, sport, vacations, weather again and traffic) without a hint of a response from me, he wisely chose to drive the rest of the journey in silence. At least I gave him a tip when we got to the office: I told him where he could find a good car cleaning service. He didn’t seem too impressed as he drove off.
As I entered my office, Gloria tried (none too successfully) not to laugh.
‘I shouldn’t ask,’ she giggled, ‘but what happened to you? You look like you slept in garbage.’
I was about to point out how accurate she was and then decided not to give her the satisfaction. I have my pride, you know. With what was left of my dignity I slimed my way into my office. Within a matter of minutes I was clean, well, cleaner at any rate, sartorially more elegant and, more importantly, smelling a lot less like rotten vegetables. That kind of thing can have a negative effect on clients and this was a client I didn’t want to affect negatively, especially on my first day. I opened the top drawer of my desk and took out a spare phone. I had a running supply of spares; cell phones tended to have a limited life expectancy in my pockets. In fact, I suspected that the phone company had a special factory just making phones for me, such was the rate I went through them.
Gloria was still smirking when I came back out.
‘That’s a bit better, but not much,’ she said. If anything, her smirk had gotten wider.
‘Thanks for the beauty tips,’ I replied. ‘Maybe you should take it up professionally. You’re obviously wasted in this job.’
‘Now, now, I’m only trying to help.’
‘Well, try harder.’ I headed for the door and walked down to where my car was parked. Sliding into the driver’s seat I gave myself a last once-over in the mirror.
‘Presentable,’ I murmured. ‘Not at my best, but I should pass muster. At least they won’t know that I spent the night sleeping in an alleyway.’
I started the car and drove uptown to see how the other half lived. Nestling in the foothills on the north side of town, Frog Prince Heights–possibly Grimmtown’s most exclusive residential area–was home to the richest, most famous and probably most downright crooked of our citizens. Most of the very large and tasteless mansions had their own security service and enough electronic surveillance to make even the most paranoid of residents comfortable in their beds at night. As was the case with all residential areas of this type, the higher up the hills you went, the bigger the estates got. To my total lack of surprise, my client’s home (if a word like home could do justice to the palace I drove up to) was right at the top of the hill overlooking the entire town.
‘Master of all he surveys, no doubt,’ I said, as I pulled up at the very large, very imposing and very closed gates that were embedded in even larger and more imposing walls. Just to the left of the gates was a small speaker underneath which was a bright red button. Pressing the button, I waited for a response. As I sat there, I imagined that very hidden, very small, very expensive and very-high-resolution cameras were even now trained on me, watching my every move. I didn’t have to wait too long.
‘Yes,’ crackled a voice from the speaker.
‘Harry Pigg. I have an appointment.’
‘Just one moment.’
A please would have been nice, but I imagined detectives were as high in the food chain of visitors to the mansion as the mailman and the garbage collector so I figured manners weren’t part of standard operating procedure.
The gates swung open very quietly and very quickly. I was a bit disappointed; I had imagined they’d be more imposing and ominous with lots
of creaking and rattling.
The intercom crackled again. ‘Drive through,’ said the voice. ‘Follow the road around to the side. You’ll be met there.’
I followed the driveway up to the house, past lawns that looked as though they were manicured with nail scissors rather than mown. The house itself was a monument to bad taste or blind architects. Someone had clearly tried to incorporate my client’s eastern origins into a gothic pile. It was as if a giant (and we have plenty in the locality) had dropped the Taj Mahal on Dracula’s Castle and then cemented bits of Barad-dûr on afterwards for effect. Minarets jostled for space with pagodas, battlements and some downright ugly and bored-looking gargoyles. It hurt my eyes just to look at it, and I was wearing shades.
I drove around the side of this tasteless monstrosity to be greeted by another one. Waiting for me at what I presumed was the tradesman’s entrance was an ogre, proudly displaying his ‘Ogre Security–Not On Our Watch’ badge. He was an imposing figure–all muscle and boils. Slowly he checked my ID before letting me out of the car. I could see his lips move as he read the details. The fact that he could actually read impressed me no end–most ogres I knew preferred to eat books rather than read them. Good roughage, apparently.
‘So you weren’t watching the other night, then?’ I asked.
‘Huh?’ he replied.
I pointed to his badge.
‘The other night?’ I repeated. ‘On your watch? Did you guys take the night off when the lamp was stolen?’
‘What lamp?’
‘Your boss’s lamp. The one that…’ Seeing the blank look on his face it was obvious that Ogre Security provided the muscle to keep the grounds free of intruders but didn’t have too much input to the more sophisticated security inside the house. ‘Never mind. Can I go in now?’
He even held the door open for me as I entered the house. A polite security guard, whatever next?
Inside, my good friend Gruff was waiting for me and, by the look on his face, wasn’t relishing the job.
‘Ah Mr Gruff, so good of you to meet me. I recognised your foul stench as soon as I came aboard. Showers broken, eh?’
He looked at me and I could tell he was struggling to come back with a witty reply, or indeed any reply. I smiled at his discomfort.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘If you practise hard in front of a mirror maybe you’ll learn to string more than two words together for the next time we meet. Wouldn’t that be nice?’
He glowered as he led me through the house. It was just as tasteless on the inside as on the out. Furniture of various styles, shapes and sizes jostled for position with figurines, sculptures, assorted suits of exotic armour and a variety of plants. It looked like a storage depot for an antiques store run by a florist rather than a place someone actually lived in.
I was led through so many passages and rooms that I soon lost my way and had to depend on my guide to stop me from getting lost.
Eventually we arrived at a steel door that dominated the end of yet another long corridor. It was the kind of door that was more suited to the front of a large castle to keep invading hordes at bay rather than guarding a rich man’s trinkets.
‘The study,’ said Gruff. ‘I’ll let you in once I’ve switched off the security system.’
He pressed some numbers on a keypad beside the door. There was a grinding noise and some sequential clunking as locks were deactivated. The door slowly slid into the wall. Lights in the room flickered on as we entered. If the rest of the house had been a monument to clutter, this room was a testament to minimalism. Apart from a large cylindrical black pedestal in the middle of the room, it was completely empty. There were no windows and the only door was the one we had just come through.
I walked towards the pedestal to have a look. It was a column of black marble that came up roughly to my chest. On top was a smaller display stand covered in black velvet, upon which, presumably, the lamp had stood. On closer inspection I could still see the imprint of the lamp’s base in the cloth.
‘So this is where the lamp was kept,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said a familiar voice behind me. ‘Hi-tech security and surveillance systems and still it disappeared.’
Aladdin strode into the room and shook my trotter. ‘Glad you could make it.’
‘My pleasure. Exactly how hi-tech was the security here?’ I asked.
‘If you care to step back to the door, we can show you.’
We all walked back to the entrance and Aladdin turned to the goat.
‘Mr Gruff, if you would be so kind.’
Gruff punched some more numbers on the keypad and the lights in the room dimmed again.
‘Firstly,’ began my employer/landlord, ‘the floor is basically one giant pressure pad. Once the security system is switched on anything heavier than a spider running across the room will trigger the alarm. Observe.’ Taking a very clean, very expensive and very unused silk handkerchief from his jacket pocket he lobbed it gently into the room. It floated slowly downwards and had hardly touched the floor when strident alarms rang all over the house.
‘In addition,’ he continued, as Gruff frantically pressed buttons to silence the ringing, ‘there is a laser grid in the room which will detect anyone that might, for example, try to suspend themselves from the ceiling and lower themselves down to the pedestal.’
Another flourish of the arm, some more button-punching from Gruff and suddenly a bright red criss-cross of beams filled the room. It looked like a 3-D map of New York. A network of lasers covered every part of the space, wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Anything that might possibly get into the room certainly wouldn’t get very far without breaking one of the beams. I didn’t need the alarm to be triggered again to tell me that.
‘Cameras?’ I enquired.
‘On the wall,’ came the reply and he pointed to a lens that tracked back and forth across the room. ‘It scans the room constantly and the output is monitored from our security centre, which you may visit shortly. The entire system is controlled via this keypad here.’ He pointed to the unit on the wall. ‘It is activated every night at ten and disabled again at seven each morning. All access is monitored and recorded. On the night of the…ah…disappearance none of the systems were deactivated, the cameras showed nothing else in the room and the lasers weren’t triggered. It is most intriguing.’
Intriguing wasn’t the word I’d have used; downright baffling was the phrase that came into my head, but I suspected Aladdin was trying to maintain an outward demeanour of cool in keeping with his image.
‘Has the camera footage been examined?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Aladdin. ‘But it didn’t show anything. On one sweep the lamp was there, on the next it was gone.’
‘Well, just to be on the safe side, I’d like to have a look. Maybe something was missed.’
From the snort of indignation behind me, I assumed Gruff didn’t agree with my supposition. Good.
Aladdin led me to the security centre. The footage from the previous night was loaded by the guard on duty and the tape forwarded to when the lamp vanished. The camera scanned the room from left to right and the lamp was clearly on its pedestal. When it tracked back on its next sweep the lamp was just as clearly gone, as Aladdin had claimed.
‘See,’ said Gruff in a very superior tone, as if challenging me to find something he’d missed. ‘Now you see it; now you don’t. Any ideas?’
Not being one to refuse a challenge, I asked for the footage to be replayed and studied the screen carefully, trying to spot anything out of place. On the fifth or sixth repeat, I saw it.
‘Stop,’ I exclaimed and the security guard immediately paused the tape. ‘Look there, right at the base of the smaller pedestal. See?’ I pointed to a tiny flash of light that sparkled briefly and disappeared almost immediately afterwards. ‘Any chance of getting that enhanced?’
The guard worked his voodoo and magnified the picture.
‘What is it, Mr Pigg?’ Aladdin’s face wa
s so close to the screen, he blocked everyone else’s view. ‘I can’t seem to make it out.’
I moved him gently aside and examined the camera footage carefully.
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a micro camera, the kind they use in hospitals to have a poke around people’s insides,’ I said when I had the opportunity for a closer look.
‘But what the hell is it doing inside the display stand? It’s solid marble.’
I was obviously putting two and two together and getting four slightly faster than the others–although in Gruff’s case I suspected that he was only able to get to three with great difficulty and the help of crayons. It seemed to me that if the thieves couldn’t drop into the room or walk across it without setting off any alarms, there was only one other method of entry for any creative burglar–a method that demanded incredible technique and no small amount of nerve.
I looked at Aladdin. ‘I think I need to have a closer look at the room,’ I said.
‘But of course,’ replied Aladdin and we walked back to the study.
As Gruff deactivated the alarm system again I noticed something else.
‘Hold it,’ I said. ‘Turn it on again.’
As the red beams criss-crossed the room again, I pointed to the pedestal. ‘Notice how the beams don’t actually cross the area where the lamp was? If the lamp was taken, it wouldn’t set off the alarm.’
‘That’s a crock,’ sneered Gruff. ‘No one can actually get to the lamp without breaking a beam or standing on the floor. How do you think they entered the room–they teleported in?’
‘Maybe they didn’t,’ I said. ‘Disable the lasers again so I can have another look.’
Once the alarm was off I walked towards the pedestal. A glass dome that didn’t look as if it had ever been touched, let alone lifted, covered the top of the pedestal and was firmly clamped to the base. I was obviously in top detecting mode today as, when I looked at the surface of the pedestal through the glass, I could see what looked like a few tiny grains of salt–almost invisible to the human eye; but then again, I’m not human.