‘Cool!’ said Michael. ‘Can we get a pickled shark, Mum?’
Cool?! Atticus was appalled. It wasn’t cool at all. A goldfish was one thing but a pickled shark?
‘I don’t think we could afford it, darling,’ Mrs Cheddar said. ‘They’re really expensive. And it wouldn’t fit in the living room.’
Inspector Cheddar was still stirring the cabbage. ‘How much do you think you’d get for a pickled cat?’ he asked over his shoulder.
Atticus’s chewed ear drooped.
‘Dad!’ Callie protested. ‘Don’t say things like that. You’re hurting Atticus’s feelings.’
‘All right, a pickled pig, then,’ Inspector Cheddar said. He turned round and pointed at Pork. ‘That pet one you’ve got is fat enough. He should fetch a bit. Why don’t you pickle him?’
Pork curled his lip. He made a horrible squealing noise.
Uh-oh, thought Atticus.
Pork lowered his head and charged.
‘Watch out, Dad!’ Michael cried.
Inspector Cheddar’s face registered shock, then terror. He tried to step to one side but Pork was too quick for him. The pig’s snout caught the Inspector in the ribs and sent him sailing through the air into the vat of pickled cabbage.
Half an hour later, Inspector Cheddar sat on a plastic sheet in the back of the limo wrapped in a blanket, sneezing. He looked very different from how he had when they first arrived. His police uniform, which had been navy blue with shiny silver buttons, was now a bright white with black buttons. His face was red from being soaked in hot vinegar and his hair had turned a vivid shade of green.
Mrs Cheddar sat next to him. The children sat opposite with Atticus.
The driver closed the limo door with a bang. ‘Can’t take some people anywhere!’ he grumbled as he straightened his hat and got into the driver’s seat.
Inspector Cheddar glared at Atticus. ‘This is all your fault,’ he said. ‘If you hadn’t won that pickle-painting competition this would never have happened.’
Atticus felt peeved. It was silly of Inspector Cheddar to blame him. You might as well say it was Mr Tucker’s fault for giving them a jar of Butteredsconi’s Italian Truffle Pickle; or Mrs Cheddar’s fault for suggesting they go in for the pickle-painting competition; or the weather’s fault for raining so that they hadn’t been able to go out. Anyway, no one else had got themselves knocked into a giant vat of pickled cabbage by an angry pig. Inspector Cheddar shouldn’t have said all those rude things about Ricardo Butteredsconi and Pork.
‘It’s not Atticus’s fault, Dad,’ Michael said, tickling Atticus under the chin. ‘That pig just didn’t like you.’
Atticus meowed his agreement.
‘I wonder why it took against you so,’ Mrs Cheddar said in a worried voice. ‘It seemed quite determined to drown you!’
‘I don’t think it liked Dad saying it should be pickled,’ Callie said wisely.
Atticus purred to show her she was right.
‘It’s lucky that the kids and me were able to pull you out with the stirrer,’ Mrs Cheddar said. ‘Or you might have been pickled for good.’
Michael giggled. ‘Like one of Mr Butteredsconi’s pickled animals,’ he said.
Callie sniggered too. ‘He might have put you in his art collection at the fort.’
‘Ha ha,’ Inspector Cheddar said sarcastically. ‘Very funny.’
The driver started the ignition and released the brake.
‘Goodbye, my friends!’ Ricardo Butteredsconi was standing outside the factory with Pork at his heels. ‘Good luck with the painting, Atticus! I shall watch your progress with interest.’ He waved goodbye.
Atticus waved back without enthusiasm. He breathed a sigh of relief as the limo drove out of the factory gates. He closed his stinging eyes and tried to doze off but for some reason he couldn’t sleep. He tried counting sardines but all he could see in his mind were lots of dead pickled animals staring out at him from enormous glass jars. One of them looked familiar. He moved closer to it. It was a human face. He started. The face in the jar belonged to Inspector Cheddar …
Atticus woke with a jerk. His breath came in short pants.
‘Are you all right, Atticus?’ Callie asked.
Atticus purred weakly. He must have been having a nightmare. He cuddled into Callie and Michael: he couldn’t wait to get home. He hoped he’d never have to see a pickled animal in real life, or visit Sconi Point again.
Ricardo Butteredsconi waited until the limousine was out of sight. Then he turned to Pork and spoke softly. ‘For a moment there, Pork, when that idiot policeman fell in the cabbage vat I thought my dream would finally be realised.’ His piggy eyes gleamed. ‘A pickled human, Pork! Imagine it! The perfect work of art! How wonderful it would look at Fort Sconi! The centrepiece of my collection.’ He sighed. ‘Ah well, it was not to be this time. Perhaps one day …’
Pork snuffled at him, looking for truffles. Ricardo Butteredsconi gave him one.
‘Enough of my imaginings,’ he said firmly. ‘If I cannot have a pickled human, I will have other great works of art to add to my collection. Come, my pet. Let us return to Fort Sconi. I have a luncheon engagement with some unexpected guests which I think may prove to be very interesting.’
Guests? Pork pricked up his ears. His master never had guests at Fort Sconi, just lunch. He hoped he wouldn’t have to share his trough.
The two of them lumbered off and disappeared inside the corrugated doors.
Inside Fort Sconi Ginger Biscuit relaxed on a silk sofa, nibbling pickled rats’ tails. Beside him, on a pile of velvet cushions, Pork gobbled pasta out of a golden bowl. Balanced on top of one of Pork’s ears was Pam, the parrot. The pig was a messy eater. Food covered his snout. Every now and then, when Pork stopped for breath, Pam would lean down and pick his snout clean, then wipe her beak along the bristles that stuck up from the nape of the pig’s neck. The two of them seemed to have hit it off.
Ginger Biscuit let out a sigh of contentment. What a stroke of luck that Ricardo Butteredsconi had paid for the megalodon to be caught so that he could pickle it and add it to his art collection! And that he had invited them to stay at Fort Sconi!
‘This is the life, Pork,’ he commented to the pig. ‘Can I call you Pork?’ he added in a friendly way, arching his back and stretching, before helping himself to some more pickled rat.
Pork grunted.
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Ginger Biscuit said. Pork was a pig of few words. He was too busy eating most of the time to chat. Ginger Biscuit couldn’t blame him. The food at the fort – prepared by their podgy host – was mouthwateringly delicious, especially the rat. Biscuit loved rat (except the wobbly green stomach, which he spat out). Now pickled rats’ tails with truffle was officially Ginger Biscuit’s favourite food.
Ginger Biscuit finished the last one and looked around the room approvingly. ‘You really fell on your trotters here, Pork,’ he commented.
It might not look much from the outside, but Fort Sconi was one of the most lavishly decorated buildings Ginger Biscuit had ever stepped inside. The walls were adorned with beautiful paintings. The shagpile carpet came up to his knees. There was a cinema for Ginger Biscuit to watch movies in and a gym for him to do his weightlifting exercises. There were bedrooms galore and bathrooms galorer. There was a library, a study, a relaxation room, a spa, a TV room, a games room, a dining room, a sitting room, a standing room, a lying-down room and a pig room. And he’d only seen part of it! According to Zenia, there was a lot more of Fort Sconi beneath the sea.
‘How are you doing with that poo bucket, Jim?’ Pam called.
The plush velvet sofa (perfect for sharpening claws) and quite a lot of other exquisite furniture had been carefully arranged around an enormous fireplace full of crackling logs. A decent distance away from the fireplace, a large pile of straw had been provided (for Pork), together with a gold poo bucket (for Pam).
‘Fine thank you, darling.’ Jimmy Magpie perched on a mahoga
ny table. He pecked at a peach from an overflowing bowl of pickled fruit.
‘Doesn’t look to me like you’re doing any work, Jim,’ Pam put her head on one side and eyed him. ‘Looks like those two mangy mates of yours are doing it all.’
‘Chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka!’ Thug and Slasher were somewhere inside the poo bucket, chattering to each other about how miserable they were and how much they hated pickles. Apparently, even Thumpers’ Scrubbit couldn’t shift Pam’s poo when it contained the remains of one of Pork’s meals.
‘It’s called management, Pamela, my love,’ Jimmy said patiently. ‘They do the work, I make sure they’re doing it right.’
‘It’s called being lazy more like, if I know you, Jim,’ Pam retorted. She turned her attention back to Pork. ‘Do you want to have a burping competition?’ she suggested. ‘When you’ve finished stuffing your face?’
The pig grunted.
Ginger Biscuit decided to move. Pork and Pam had already had one burping competition since their arrival at Fort Sconi and it hadn’t been very pleasant; Ginger Biscuit had been knocked off the sofa by a blast of semi-digested spaghetti.
He padded over to Jimmy. ‘Having fun?’ he asked.
Jimmy shrugged. ‘The grub’s not bad,’ he admitted, taking another peck at the peach. He looked around the room, his eyes glittering. ‘And there’s lots of shiny things to look at.’
‘Chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka!’ From inside the bucket came a burst of excited chattering. The magpies loved shiny things.
‘You three wouldn’t be thinking of stealing anything, would you, Jimmy?’ Ginger Biscuit asked lightly. He popped out his claws. POP! POP! POP! POP! ‘Only, Zenia wouldn’t like that. Not the way she and Butteredsconi are getting on so well together, what with their shared love of everything pickled.’
Jimmy regarded him bleakly.
‘They’re both weirdos!’ Thug’s voice echoed up from the poo bucket.
Ginger Biscuit aimed an orange at him.
‘Ouch!’ A puff of bright smoke rose from the bucket as the fruit reacted with the Scrubbit.
‘Keep your fur on, Biscuit,’ Jimmy said sourly. ‘We’re not going to steal anything.’
‘Good. Because if you did,’ Ginger Biscuit went on, ‘Zenia would see to it that Butteredsconi had you pickled, like he did the megalodon.’
Squeak … squeak … squeak … squeak.
‘There’s Zenia now,’ Ginger Biscuit said. The squeaking came from Zenia Klob’s wheelie trolley, where she kept her disguises.
The door flew open. Zenia Klob marched in wearing a pair of hobnail boots. The strange look was back on her face. She was smiling. Not just smiling this time: actually grinning from hairpin to hairpin.
‘Vot a charmer your master is!’ She clomped over to Pork and gave him a thump on the rump. ‘Vot taste in food! Do you know vot ve had for lunch today?’ She produced a menu and threw it on the table.
Zenia Klob let out a contented belch. ‘He’s a villain after my own heart!’
Ginger Biscuit pricked up his ears.
The magpies exchanged glances. ‘Did she say villain?’ Thug whispered.
‘Molte grazie, Signora Klob,’ Ricardo Butteredsconi lumbered into the room.
The magpies looked him up and down and (mostly) sideways with renewed interest.
‘It’s Ms, not Signora,’ Zenia corrected him. Normally when people called her anything but Ms, Zenia zapped them with a hairpin. But this time, to Ginger Biscuit’s surprise, she giggled girlishly.
‘So, Ms Klob,’ Ricardo Butteredsconi bowed. ‘As we discussed over luncheon, I wish you to steal some of the world’s most valuable art for me to add to my collection.’ He paused. ‘Ten million euros, Ms Klob, if you and your gang will assist me.’
Ten million euros! To steal a bit of art? Ginger Biscuit’s eyes shone. He could bathe in pickled rats’ tails. He could buy all the truffles in Italy and scoff the lot before Pork did. He and Zenia could do up Gulag Cottage (Zenia’s place in Siberia) to look like Fort Sconi. He could get a shagpile carpet that came up to his ears. Best of all, he could travel to Littleton-on-Sea in Ricardo Butteredsconi’s chauffeur-driven limo and run over Atticus Claw: vroom, squish, squash; backwards and forwards until the cat was flat. Biscuit hadn’t felt so cheerful for months. He might even take the magpies with him, he thought generously, to share the moment.
Zenia glanced at Biscuit. He twitched his tail in agreement. ‘Very vell, Mr Butteredsconi, it’s a deal.’
The two villains shook hands.
‘Art?’ Thug’s face was a picture of disgust. ‘What’s the point in stealing that? It’s not glittery.’
‘Nah,’ Slasher sneered. ‘Not interested.’
‘Not even if we let you go?’ Ginger Biscuit said softly.
‘Let us go?’ the two magpies repeated in disbelief.
‘Maybe. If you help us do this job, that is.’ Ginger Biscuit whispered his plan to the magpies about squashing Atticus. ‘I’ll take you with me. Back to Littleton-on-Sea. It’s not far from here, Zenia said. We’ll run him over together and then you can have what’s left dry-cleaned to decorate your nest under the pier, except the chewed ear – I’ll keep that as a trophy.’
‘BUUURRRRRRPPPPPPPP!’ The noise came from the sofa. The burp was one of Pam’s. It was accompanied by a revolting smell.
‘What about her?’ Jimmy shuddered. ‘She’s not coming with us to Littleton-on-Sea. I’d rather stay here and let her pal up with Pork. At least that way she’s not bothering me.’
Ginger Biscuit winked. ‘Don’t worry about Pam, Jimmy. You and your boys help steal the art and I’ll pop Pam in Pork’s pasta. He’s so greedy he won’t even notice he’s eating his new best parrot pal. Deal?’
The magpies looked at one another with renewed hope. Maybe this time they really would get even with Atticus. And go home too. Without Pam. ‘Chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka,’ Thug and Slasher cawed quietly. They looked at their boss.
‘BUUURRRRRRPPPPPPP!’ Pam was definitely winning the burping competition.
It didn’t take Jimmy Magpie long to make a decision. ‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘Deal.’
At Scotland Yard, Atticus pawed over a file of recent newspaper clippings. The Commissioner was about to brief him and the Cheddars on the dramatic events of the previous few days.
The children had been given time off from school at the Commissioner’s request. He knew from previous experience how good at solving crime they were. Besides, from what he’d learned from his junior officers, they were already involved in this case in a way that he was about to reveal to them. It was quite extraordinary, thought the Commissioner, how Police Cat Sergeant Claw always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. He obviously had a nose for crime. The Commissioner had always believed he’d make a great police cat. What he hadn’t realised until just recently was that Atticus could paint as well!
If anyone could crack this case, the Commissioner decided, Claw could. And he had a good team to help him, except for Inspector Cheddar, of course. Cheddar’s family were jolly sensible, though, and Mrs Tucker – aka Agent Whelk – was there to lend a hand. The Tuckers had cut short their holiday at his request; Mrs Tucker was a former member of MI6, the Commissioner had decided to put her on the case as well.
‘It’s Klob and her gang, all right,’ the Commissioner began. ‘She’s hit two galleries in a week: the Guggenheim in New York and the Louvre in Paris. The operation was carried out in the same way: the guards were knocked out by a sleeping potion administered by a hairpin.’
‘But how did the villains get past the alarm?’ Mrs Tucker asked. ‘Surely it would be wired into the police station?’
The Commissioner looked grim. ‘It was. But something pecked at the wiring.’
The magpies! Atticus thought.
‘The whole system went down, including the infrared detection device. The first the police knew about it was when the public arrived the next day and the doors were still lo
cked.’
‘No forced entry, then?’ Mrs Cheddar asked.
‘No.’
‘Klob probably disguised herself as a janitor,’ Mrs Tucker said, ‘and tricked the guards.’
Atticus thought so too. The janitor disguise was one of Zenia’s favourites – it meant she got to push a squeaky cleaning trolley instead of her squeaky wheelie one for a change.
‘How did they get the paintings out?’ Callie asked shyly.
‘Good question, young lady,’ the Commissioner said. ‘They didn’t take the frames. They used something sharp to cut round them and lifted them out.’
‘Ginger Biscuit’s claws!’ Michael exclaimed.
‘I expect so,’ agreed the Commissioner. ‘We suspect Klob just rolled the paintings up, put them in her trolley, and off she went.’
Atticus felt gloomy. Biscuit’s claws would rip through canvas in an instant.
Mrs Tucker scratched her chin. ‘Snatching paintings doesn’t really sound like Klob,’ she said doubtfully. ‘She’s not interested in art.’
Atticus growled his agreement. Art didn’t fit the profile. All Jimmy Magpie and his gang were interested in were glittery things. And Klob liked jewels too. So did Biscuit. Atticus had never known the two of them steal paintings when he was burgling for Klob as a kitten.
Atticus Claw Learns to Draw Page 4