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

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      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 was 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. СКАЧАТЬ