I woke to what was becoming a much more familiar sight; the wall with the Employee of the Month certificate on it and the still disconcerting knock-hiss noise coming up behind me. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and turned around to see Ray the caretaker looming with a mug in his hands.
“Hope you like your coffee black,” he said, putting the cup on the desk in front of me. “Milk was off.”
“Thanks, black’s fine. You carry me back here?” I asked.
“Jacob. Then Erin started bossing him around so he asked me to keep an eye on you. What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Got angry. Fell asleep,” I lifted the cup to my lips but realised it was too hot before the liquid touched my mouth. “It happens.”
Ray nodded and flopped into a chair, “So what was all the shouting about then?”
“That?” I blew on the coffee. “Was me shouting about the fact that Erin’s dead cat is the end of my brief career as a private eye.”
I gave up blowing on the coffee and sighed on it instead.
“How do you figure that out, then?” Ray scratched at his pirate leg and I tried not to look. Thankfully my mobile phone chose that moment to burst into life, I stood up and answered it, looking at the wall instead.
“Clint?”
It was Agatha.
“You phoned me. Of course it’s Clint. What do you want?”
Agatha began to speak but it was a lost cause, between the dropouts and static the only thing I seemed to be able to make out was some sort of Morse code beeping repeating over and over in the background.
“It’s over,” I shouted into the phone. “It was Erin’s cat. It’s dead.”
The beeps again and then, clear as a bell she said something that nearly caused me to drop my phone in the coffee.
“NOT ERIN’S CAT YOU PRAT!”
“Not Erin’s cat?”
“Not Erin’s cat.”
“I think I love you, Agatha,” I turned back around to face Ray.
Agatha seemed happy to respond in Morse code.
“It’s not Erin’s cat, Ray.”
“So I hear but…” managed Ray before the mobile gave one last burst of coherence.
“Back on the case?”
“Yes. And thank you,” I hung up, grinning.
This was brilliant. Better than brilliant, it meant that the whole thing still had the potential of actually being a proper case which meant that I might get to be a proper detective.
“You know what this means,” I said.
“I’d hazard a guess it was something to do with Erin’s cat,” Ray replied.
“It means that I should start looking for clues. More clues, more information. That’s what’s required here Ray.”
A smirk was creeping onto Ray’s face, pushing its way through his pock-marked dimples and widening as I spoke.
“For example,” I said, pointing my index finger right at him. “Do you know anything about a woman who goes by the name of Pingoveno?”
The smirk froze as a confused frown began to invade from above.
“Mmm?” I probed masterfully.
He shrugged slightly as the smirk started to fight back.
I nodded.
“Course you don’t,” I smiled and patted the seated caretaker on the shoulder. “Or what about – erm – “
My mobile started making an unfamiliar noise, I took it out of my pocket and found it was trying to communicate with me non-verbally. Through the medium of words. I pressed the appropriate combination of buttons and the phone beeped back, seemingly unwilling to grant me access.
“Hang on a second, sorry,” I said as Agatha’s name flashed up on the screen.
A message, no less. I pressed the buttons again, trying to unlock the keypad and grant me access to whatever nugget Agatha had managed to get through to me.
‘Delete Message Y/N’
No, of course not. Careful now, this was a difficult operation and the phone clearly had a hair trigger. One wrong move and whatever pearl I was diving for would be lost. I pressed the key I imagined represented the negative and was presented with and error message. Apparently in Chinese.
“I hate those things,” Ray tapped his pocket. “My brother bought me one and I can’t even get the bugger to turn on.”
And then there it was:
‘Clint, this taxidermy business is more serious than you think. I need you to be very, very careful indeed. Don’t forget there is alive’
And then it descended into Chinese.
“Balls,” I said.
“Problem?” asked Ray.
“Phone thinks I’m Chinese.”
“A common predicament, I’m sure.”
I reached towards the dusty phone that sat on the desk then stopped. I could do this. Agatha’s message didn’t change anything. I was careful. I was a fucking ninja.
“And,” I turned away from the phone to address Ray. “What do you know about taxidermy?”
“Ah, now there I can help you.”
“You can?”
“Oh yes,” Ray scratched idly at his knee above where I imagined his wooden leg was strapped on. “Jacob is quite the aficionado.”
“Jacob?”
“Security Jacob, yeah. He’s been an amateur whatdoyoucallit for years. Sometimes brings stuff in to show me.”
“Stuff?”
“Yeah, you know. Squirrels in hats, playing cards around a poker table, looking like people,” he laughed. “It was funny for a bit but I sort of got bored of it and, well, I just humour him, you know?”
I nodded.
“I mean I’m sure it was all road kill and the like. Rats, mice… Squirrels like I said. This one time he did a squirrel like that cat, what was he called? Garfield. He stuffed the bugger and put suckers on its hands, stuck it to his car window.”
Apparently this was one of the funniest things Ray had ever heard. I probably would have laughed but this was good stuff, it felt like the sort of thing I should be finding out.
“And no-one minded?”
“Of course people minded. Nearly got him sacked. Bet he’s got something worth looking at in the back of his car,” Ray waved at the wall to his left.
I looked over to see the board with the hooks and keys.
“It’s the one top right there if you want to have a look. His car keys.”
“Bloody right I do.”
~*~
