The Ho Ho Ho Mystery. Bob Burke

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СКАЧАТЬ down a canal by a gondolier singing ‘O Sole Mio’ at the top of his voice. No, Basili needed new threads and fast, otherwise he’d be indefinitely confined to desk work.

      A thought struck me – desk work, now that’s not a bad idea at all. It would certainly keep him out of the public eye and he could wear whatever selection of brightly coloured silks he possessed – and I probably wouldn’t ever need to pay for lighting in my office again.

      At the same time another more predatory thought (I have lots of those too) pointed out that if he did have as much money as he’d claimed then I needed to keep him sweet so I could use some of it to invest in the Third Pig Detective Agency like he’d promised. And don’t get too upset by my seemingly mercenary attitude. The genie owed me. After all, it was me who had risked my precious hide by rescuing him from a very miffed Aladdin (and an even more miffed Edna) and making sure he wouldn’t get caught up in that three wishes lark ever again. The least he could do in recompense was sub me some cash to buy some cool stuff.

      I began clocking up my shopping list, all that kit I’d had to do without over the years: bugging devices, proper cameras, cool hi-tech surveillance equipment. With all that gear I could really outdo Red Riding Hood and consolidate my position as the foremost detective in town. All it was going to take was a bit of imagination and some shrewd investment at Gumshoes’R’Us and I was on my way.

      ‘OK Basili, let’s do it. Two hours from now you’ll be stunningly sartorially elegant or my name’s not Harry Pigg.’

      Two hours from now the bottom had fallen out of my day.

      ‘I’m sorry, sir, but that card is also being refused.’ Danny Emperor, proprietor of Emperor’s New Clothes Men’s Emporium had run three of Basili’s credit cards through the machine and all had been refused.

      ‘Are you sure?’ I asked, getting just a tad concerned. ‘Can you try it one more time?’

      Danny swiped the card once more and, once more, there was a high-pitched and (I thought) gleeful beeping as the system failed to validate it. I turned to the genie, who was becoming more dejected by the minute. He cut a forlorn – if somewhat conspicuous – figure, standing luminously among the racks of dark suits like a lighthouse in the middle of a bog. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked him. ‘Are you sure you were telling me the truth about all this money of yours?’

      ‘Oh yes, Mr Harry,’ he said glumly. ‘As I told you, I had played the markets for many years while I was in the lamp. The return was, how shall I say, significant.’

      ‘You could have fooled me,’ I muttered to myself as Danny cut another of Basili’s credit cards in two. As my dreams of a high-tech detective agency began to fade back into obscurity, a thought struck me. Reaching for my cellphone, I made a quick call to my lawyer, Sol Grundy (a man I keep very, very busy most of the time), and explained the situation to him. He told me he’d see what he could do and get back to me asap. If anyone could find out what was going on, he was the man. In the meantime all we could do was wait (and hope), surrounded by all the extra-large suits we were trying to buy.

      Fortunately my lawyer works fast. Barely ten minutes had passed before he rang back.

      ‘Sol,’ I said, ‘what’s the story?’

      ‘Not good, Harry.’ Sol replied. ‘Looks like your buddy has some problems. From what I’ve been able to find out, it looks as though Aladdin has had all his assets frozen, claiming that as they were acquired while your man was in his employ then, legally, they’re Aladdin’s. As of now, Basili has nothing. I know it sounds a bit high-handed and I’m not sure as to the legality of Aladdin’s actions, but it’s a grey area, so the courts will have to decide.’

      ‘See what you can do, OK?’ Aladdin was probably doing this out of sheer spite because we’d gotten one up on him. ‘But watch out: that Aladdin is a slick operator.’

      ‘Yes Harry, I’m aware of that. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.’ Which was true, yesterday was Thursday. ‘Oh, by the way, he’s repossessed the lamp too.’

      ‘He’s more than welcome to it. It’s worthless now.’ Even the genie couldn’t use it as a home now that he had no magic. He’d already bruised his big toe trying to get back into it through the spout. It was most definitely an ex-magic lamp. Then another awful thought struck me – it was clearly my day for them: if the genie couldn’t get back into the lamp and had no money, then where was he going to live?

      This was a question with only one possible answer: it looked like, for the foreseeable future, I was going to have a large, farting, silk-clad genie sleeping on my couch.

       3 Wondering in a Winter Wonderland

      The Claus house was so sweet and twee it made those candy cottages that dotted the Enchanted Forest look like outhouses. I could feel my teeth starting to decay and my arteries hardening just by looking at it. I’d probably die of a sugar overdose once I crossed the threshold. No matter what angle you looked at it from, it screamed Christmas in much the same way as Aladdin’s mansion had screamed bad taste.

      The house itself was a long, low log cabin – at least I think so. It was impossible to make out for sure, covered as it was from floor to roof in brightly coloured Christmas lights, which explained the bright glow in the sky we’d noticed as we drove over. These weren’t just your usual strands of lights draped along the roof; oh no, there were rock bands that didn’t have light shows as extravagant as what we were witnessing here. Rumour had it that Hubbard’s Cubbard’s lighting tech had spent six weeks studying these illuminations so he could get some good ideas for their next world tour. I couldn’t say I blamed him; at any moment I expected a plane to land in the front garden, having mistaken the house for the approach to Grimmtown Airport. Even sunglasses wouldn’t have been of any use here.

      I could have sworn I even saw some people stretched out in the garden getting themselves a nice tan, but I couldn’t be sure such was the assault on my eyes.

      Seasonal ornaments covered the lawns. Reindeer jostled with Christmas gnomes; trees and snowmen seemed to be fighting for space with models of sleighs and Santas. It looked like a Christmas civil war had broken out and I had no idea who was actually winning. Even the corner of the swimming pool that I could see around the back of the house looked to have been covered with some sort of plastic ice on which mechanical rabbits, reindeer and snowmen skated happily away.

      Snow covered the entire scene, giving it a little extra seasonal ambience – as if it really needed it. As we hadn’t seen snow in Grimmtown for over five years, I used my powers of deduction to work out that it too, like everything else, was clearly fake.

      Gingerly stepping around sunbathers and giant ornaments, I made my way to the door, pausing only to flick my fingers against a giant stalactite that hung from the eaves in front of me. Plastic too! I hammered on the reindeer-head door knocker, which lit up when I grabbed it and began singing ‘Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer’. It had gotten as far as ‘Then one foggy Christmas Eve’ before, to our relief, the door finally opened and Mrs Claus’s familiar imposing figure peeked out. Just in case she wanted to exercise her forearm again I took a careful step back, but this time she seemed happier to see me – thankfully.

      ‘Mr Pigg.’ Then she saw Basili standing behind me. ‘And your comedic sidekick, how nice.’ There was an indignant snort from just over my left shoulder. ‘It’s good of you to come so soon. Please, come in.’ She held the door open so we could enter.

      Inside СКАЧАТЬ