by Bob Burke
‘Now I know that, as a rule, when goblins get together, rather than the total being greater than the sum of the parts, the collective IQ tends drop to well below that of the dumbest member–a kind of anti-synergy. I suspect, therefore, that you were the mere executors of this cunning plan that, in all likelihood, was probably written out in very small words and very short sentences so you and your cronies could follow it without screwing up–which you failed miserably to do. So here’s what I’m going to do.’ I looked Benny straight in the eye to let him know that I still meant business. ‘I’m going to instruct Mr Lewis here to let you go. When he does so you will make no attempt to do anything other than answer whatever questions I may put to you. Should you attempt to assault either of the ogres (which would be rather foolish) or me or even try to make a break for it, the only break you will experience will be a random assortment of your limbs. Understood?’
Benny nodded ever so slightly. I looked at Lewis and he dropped the goblin with such force that he lay on the ground groaning pitifully. I nudged him with my shoe.
‘C’mon Benny, up you get. If you need some help you only have to ask. Either Mr Lewis or Mr Carroll will be only too delighted to assist you.’
This suggestion seemed to give Benny some incentive as he struggled to his feet slowly and, I have to add, with a lot less style than I had shown previously. Maybe he just didn’t have as much practice at getting up as me.
‘OK, Benny, your starter for ten: where’s the lamp?’
Benny looked up at me with an expression that would have made his mother clutch him to her chest and console him with lots of ‘there, theres’. Fortunately for both of us I wasn’t his mother so he didn’t get the sympathy vote from me. He also spared me the ‘what lamp?’ routine, presumably as even he could figure out exactly how much I already knew and that I wasn’t prepared to tolerate being messed around any more–or maybe it was just the large and very obvious presence of my two companions. Despite this, however, his reply was only marginally more helpful (which wasn’t saying a lot).
‘I don’t have it,’ he gasped.
‘Not a good answer, Benny,’ I said. ‘I’d have thought that by now you’d realise there is no point in playing dumb–or, in your case, even more dumb than usual–with us. We’re really not in the mood.’
‘No, really, I don’t have it. Honest.’ From the fearful look on his face I suspected that he was finally telling the truth. Now all I had to do was find out what he had done with the lamp, get it back to Aladdin, pocket a large pay packet and wallow in the satisfaction of a job well done. Smiling with anticipation, I asked the obvious question again and received a not-so-obvious answer that wiped the smirk off my face and plummeted me even deeper into the murk that was Grimmtown’s underworld.
‘One last time, where’s the lamp, Benny?’
‘Edna has it,’ he answered.
I looked at him, dumbfounded. ‘Edna?’ I repeated.
He nodded his head gingerly. ‘Edna,’ he said with more conviction.
‘Edna, as in Edna?’
He nodded again. ‘Yep, that’s her.’
‘Please tell me you’re joking and this is just another idiotic attempt to throw me off the track,’ I begged, but I knew Benny was telling the truth, I just didn’t want to believe it. I just wanted him to suddenly spring to his feet and yell, ‘Gotcha! I had it in me rucksack all the time.’ I knew this wouldn’t happen. Quite apart from the fact that he could barely stand anyway, his entire demeanour suggested he was being truthful–and without being coerced any further, either.
If Edna was involved, I needed to tread very carefully indeed. In actual fact I needed to run very quickly in the opposite direction if I wished to retain the use of all my limbs. This was more like a Harry Pigg case: lots of different people vying to be the next to hurt me in new and interesting ways while I manfully (or pigfully) tried to represent my client to the best of my ability (and he was one of those people threatening to hurt me). I figured I’d get whatever information Benny hadn’t yet imparted and then decide whether it would be more advisable to get the next bus out of town or stay and get beaten up at least one more time.
‘OK Benny, let’s take it from the top–and don’t leave anything out.’
7
In the White Room
‘Emerald Isle of Adventure? Are you serious?’ Benny nodded glumly. ‘Emerald Isle of Adventure,’ he repeated. Repetition tended to happen a lot when you talked to Benny. It helped him focus.
‘You really were going to call the theme park that?’ This beggared belief. I knew Benny was as dumb as a bucket of shrimp, I just didn’t realise the extent of his stupidity. This master plan of his plumbed new depths of imbecility.
Benny and his ‘Brains’ Trust’ of gnomish friends had decided that, with the proliferation of successful and highly profitable theme parks based on our illustrious history that had sprung up all around Grimmtown, it might be a rather splendid idea to develop one based around Ireland and its past, him and his buddies being leprechaun impersonators and all. ‘A sure fire hit’ was how he’d described it. So far I had been regaled with how it would include Finn McCool’s Rollercoaster of Terror, the Lucky Leprechaun Log Flume and the Find the Crock o’ Gold Hall of Mirrors. When you eventually grew tired of all the excitement you could then relax in Mother Ireland’s Bacon and Cabbage Emporium with a nice Guinness.
Now I like my thrills as much as the next man–except in this case seeing as the next man was Benny–but I just didn’t think this particular wonderland had the necessary pizzazz. In fact, if it managed to draw more than twenty gullible tourists on the day it opened (if it ever did), I’d eat my own head.
To cut a long, very rambling and disjointed story short (and to spare you many tedious digressions, pauses and nonsensical musings, because I know even your patience would wear very thin), Benny had put an ad in the local press describing the concept and seeking investors for this surefire hit. To his–and no one else’s–surprise, the take-up on the proposal was less than stellar but, just as he was about to abandon his plan, he received an email (and yes the address was [email protected]) promising him a very large investment in the scheme in return for a very small favour. This favour (and I’m sure you can see what’s coming, even if Benny couldn’t) involved Benny and the boys using their burrowing skills to recover an artifact that had allegedly been stolen from this mysterious benefactor many years previously. The story was embellished by references to family heirlooms, dastardly thieves, a poor granny pining for her long lost lamp and, of course, the dangling of the incentive of part of the investment up front with the rest to follow upon successful delivery of the lamp. Benny had swallowed it hook, line, sinker, fishing rod and angler.
The down payment had arrived and Benny had acquired the lamp–which considering his track record had to qualify as a spectacular success. All he then had to do was deliver it and the Emerald Isle of Adventure would be a reality. As you can imagine, the delivery hadn’t gone according to plan–hardly surprising when you consider who the delivery boys were.
Benny and his band of idiots had begun making their way to the drop-off point. If the sight of a band of gnomes trying to look furtive while walking through the busiest part of town dressed in lurid green outfits didn’t grab attention, the same group babbling on loudly about how they were going to spend their newly-acquired fortune surely would. Unfortunately for them, it grabbed the attention of two of Edna’s henchmen.
Now I need to digress slightly here, as I’m sure you’re asking, ‘Who is Edna?’ and ‘Why does she want to divest those poor unfortunate gnomes of their one chance of a happy ending?’ The answer to the second question is easy once you understand the first. Edna is one of a group of four witches who basically run all of Grimmtown’s organised crime–a kind of Mezzo-sopranos or Contraltos, if you will. They’ve unofficially divided the town up into four districts and Edna runs the West Side–hence her title: the Wicked Witch of th
e West Side. Their control of all criminal activity is total. Nothing illegal moves without them knowing about it or profiting from it to some extent. They are a family I had kept well clear of over the years and I had no wish to alter that status any time soon. If, however, Edna did have the lamp, then that was a wish that was evidently about to come true, despite my best efforts to the contrary.
‘So,’ I said to Benny, ‘to summarise the plan: there you were, a band of gnomes heading to a drop-off point in the middle of town, babbling on heedlessly about how you were going to be fabulously rich once you passed the lamp over to your mysterious benefactor, a lamp, incidentally, which one of you was actually carrying in a bright red shopping bag. Where in this cunning strategy do you think the obvious flaw was?’
Benny dropped his head in a semblance of shame and chose not to answer.
‘So. On your way to the drop-off point–ah, where was this place, anyway?’ I asked.
‘Litter bin on the south corner of Wilde Park,’ mumbled Benny.
‘Of course it was. Instead of somewhere quiet and secluded, you picked one of the busiest intersections in the city. Could you have been any more obvious?’ I laughed. Benny’s story was becoming more nonsensical by the minute.
‘So, as I say, you were on your way to the drop-off point when someone from Edna’s gang grabbed the bag. Now, what I can’t figure out is this: you guys are thick but can certainly pack a punch.’ I rubbed my stomach at the memory of just how packed the punch was. ‘How come they got the lamp so easily?’
Benny mumbled again.
‘Speak up, Benny,’ I asked. ‘I can’t make out a word you’re saying.’
‘Otto took it,’ said Benny, a little more articulate this time. ‘He just flew down out of nowhere, grabbed the bag in his claws and scrammed again.’
Otto the Owl was one of Edna’s henchbirds and I suppose that a bright red bag wasn’t too hard to miss if you had spent your formative years flying around a forest hunting tiny rodents in total darkness.
To put it mildly, this new development presented me with a problem: my client’s lamp was now in the possession of one of Grimmtown’s most ruthless criminal families; a family who would have no compunction about rearranging my anatomy should I even hint that it might be a good idea for them to return it. My client would also, in all likelihood, rearrange my anatomy if I failed to return his lamp–and probably evict me to boot. Either way it seemed that anatomy rearranging was about to become my newest pastime and one I didn’t particularly feel like taking up, especially as we were talking about my anatomy and its capacity to be rearranged. In the faint hope that I might get something else out of him, I turned back to Benny.
‘Apart from emails,’ I asked, ‘I don’t suppose you ever got to meet this investor of yours?’
‘Not as such, no,’ Benny said. ‘But I came close one night or, at least, I think I did.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, the night we were due to receive our down payment my instructions were to go into the men’s rest room in the Blarney Tone, make sure I was alone, send a text message to a particular number that I was ready, and wait for further instructions. When I got in there, I waited until it was empty, did as I was asked and stood there. Suddenly there was a loud bang, everything went white and next thing I knew I was in a room with funny walls, lots of rugs and carpets and stuff like that. I couldn’t see anyone in the room but a voice told me to pick up a bag that was on a table beside me. As soon as I did, I was suddenly back in the rest room again with my down payment.’ He looked at me. ‘I know how it sounds, but it’s the truth, Mr Pigg. Honest.’
I was just about to tell him how ludicrous his story was and did he really expect me to swallow something so ridiculous when there was a loud bang, everything went white and I was suddenly in a room with funny walls, lots of rugs and carpets and stuff like that.
As you can imagine, it took a few seconds to get my bearings seeing as I had suddenly been transported from Point A to Point B without any knowledge of where Point B actually was, how far it was from Point A, or exactly how precarious my situation now was as a result. At first glance, fortunately, precarious didn’t seem to figure high on the agenda. I was in a long oval-shaped room with no windows or obvious doors. Bright white walls curved inwards from an equally white floor to an oval ceiling. Lamps ran along the walls illuminating the room with a soothing white light. It was, in fact, a very white room.
The only sop to an alternative colour scheme were the very expensive-looking rugs (expensive to my unsophisticated eyes at any rate) that were casually flung on the floor in a feng-shui kind of way and the colourful tapestries that hung from the walls. The décor suggested the Orient, which, considering my current assignment, hardly seemed like a coincidence. Whoever had summoned me here was clearly connected to Aladdin in some way–if only by culture. My suspicion, however, based on Benny’s tale was that I was in the presence of his mysterious stranger, although the room was currently devoid of any presence other than me. As most of the people I’d encountered in this case so far seemed intent on doing me harm, this was a small mercy for which I was incredibly thankful.
As I stood there I became aware of a faint whirring behind me. I turned around–ever so slowly–to see if some strange mechanical torture device was about to dismember me. To my relief, I found myself gazing at a not-so-sinister, large and very hi-tech-looking computer. There were so many wires, cables and other devices hanging from it, it looked like it was in an intensive care unit. With all the printers, modems, scanners, microphones and assorted paraphernalia–that even I couldn’t figure out the use of–there seemed to be enough hardware to run a small country and still have enough processing power for a quick game of Half-Life while affairs of state were being mulled over.
It also occurred to me that the computer might shed some light on the identity of the thief and maybe even some clue as to their motive. As I surreptitiously reached for the keyboard a voice erupted from the walls around the room.
‘Naughty, naughty, Mr Pigg,’ it boomed. ‘Please step away from my machine.’
I raised my trotters over my head and took three steps back from the hardware. Looking around, I tried to see where the voice was coming from. Best I could figure was that there were speakers hidden behind the wall hangings and, from the quality of the sound, they were clearly very expensive.
‘Please forgive both my brusque manner and the somewhat unorthodox kidnapping,’ the voice continued. ‘I hadn’t meant for us to meet in quite these circumstances. In fact, I hadn’t intended for us to meet at all but I suspect that my original choice of miners left much to be desired when it came to not leaving obvious, or indeed any, clues behind. Clearly I should have been more discriminating in my selection.’
‘If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys,’ I said. I enjoy a cliché every now and again and it was the only thing I could come up with while I tried to figure out what to do next. I’m not always witty and quick with the rapier-like repartee–hard, as I’m sure it is, for you to believe.
‘Indeed,’ said the voice. ‘And while you’re trying, no doubt, to figure out where you are, who I am and what you should do next, allow me to recommend that you make yourself comfortable while I make some suggestions.’
I slowly sank onto a very ornate and very comfortable ottoman and waited.
As you have probably already deduced, the gnomes were clearly not a good investment. In less than twenty-four hours they stole the lamp but left clues so blatant that a corpse could have followed them. They then managed, with an incredible lack of subtlety, to make Grimmtown’s organised crime fraternity aware that they had an object of immense value and then, while bringing it to me, succeeded in handing it over to one of our more illustrious criminal masterminds in the process. Do I summarise the situation accurately?’
I nodded weakly as I could see where this was going and I didn’t need a map to give me directions.
‘I think I now need to ut
ilise the resources of a more accomplished craftsman to reacquire the lamp and you will probably not be surprised when I tell you that I have chosen you, Mr Pigg.’
I opened my mouth to object with whatever reasons I could think of but before I could even come up with ‘Scintillating Excuse Number One to Avoid Locating a Stolen Lamp’, I was interrupted.
‘I will, of course, not tolerate any refusal on your part,’ said the voice with an uncanny sense of anticipation. ‘My need for this lamp is far greater than your need to refuse and I can change you into anything I choose should you prove to be difficult.’
Now I was getting paranoid. There was a definite trend here and it wasn’t one I was particularly enamoured with. Why was everyone suddenly so intent on hiring me and, when I expressed any kind of reluctance, quite prepared to use very effective threats of bodily harm to compel me to agree to work for them? Was I really that good, or was I just that unlucky? Was it possible for anyone to be that unlucky? Maybe I just had that kind of face.
Whatever the reason, it now looked like I had two clients, both of whom wanted the same thing and one of them was now telling me I had to steal back an already stolen lamp from one of our most ruthless criminals or face an unpleasant, but as yet undefined, alternative. With my imagination, however, I could think of quite a few ‘alternatives’, none of which were remotely attractive and none of which I particularly wanted to face. It looked like I was about to add breaking and entering to my already extensive set of skills.
‘OK,’ I said, resigning myself to the inevitable. ‘What do I have to do?’
The whirring sound increased in volume and a large amount of paper was ejected from one of the printers at the high-tech end of the room. From what I could see, it was building plans of some kind.