The Third Pig Detective Agency: The Complete Casebook. Bob Burke

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 the 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 this 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 СКАЧАТЬ