“So, I think I know what we need to do to catch that bleeding big cat,” I said to my captive audience.

They reacted with effusive indifference. Even Jacob’s enthusiasm, which had so far remained stoically intact, seemed to be wearing thin.

“We are going to capture the tiger, people,” I began, trying to instil some sort of sense of occasion.

Jacob stood up, negotiating his way past Erin and Lori, and started rummaging in some drawers.

“We’re going to trap it in the caretaker’s cupboard,” I continued, unperturbed. “And-”

“Why?” snapped Erin.

“Well, partly because it seemed, geographically speaking, to be in a good position to pull something like this off and partly because I think it’s time we got young Raymond back in the game.”

“Young Raymond?” Erin whined.

“Sarcasm, my dear. Ask me when this is all over and I’ll explain it to you,” I grimaced at her and she huffed back. “Jacob, my good man, can I ask what you’re up to over there?”

“Erm, yes,” he replied. “I just assumed whatever crackpot idea you were going to suggest was going to involve someone leaving this reasonably safe room and so I thought we could maybe use these instead of the Tannoy.”

He placed two walkie-talkies on the desk in front of the monitors.

“Radios the security guards use,” he nodded. “Could be useful.”

“I should say so,” I laughed. “So now all we need to do is go down to the food hall and grab as much raw meat as we can get our hands on. Lori, I think you should stay here and Jacob, you keep one eye on her and the other on those monitors. Erin, you’re with me.”

“I most certainly am not,” she barked.

“You can carry the walkie talkie.”

She grabbed it from the desk and stomped towards the door.

I flashed Lori and Jacob a smile and went after her. The radio almost instantly burped static at us then Jacob’s voice came through. As we moved quickly away from the office the sound of his real voice receded into the distance as his broadcast self remained.

“I can’t see it at the moment so keep your eyes open,” he said. “But it’s not in the corridor to the lift. What?”

Static bubbled from the radio.

“Lori says she can’t see it in the food hall yet either, we’ll keep you posted once we locate it.”

“Over and out!” Erin shouted into the receiver as she stomped into the open doors of the lift and pressed one of the buttons. The doors started to close and I put my hand between them. The doors beeped and re-opened, I stepped into the lift and Erin stabbed at the ‘G’ button.

“So, Mr Detective,” Erin began once the lift doors closed again. “Whodunnit? You seem to be doing a lot more sleeping than detecting. Well, that and running away.”

“Apparently you did it because you asked me who did it rather than what they did.”

“I’m not an idiot,” she said. “You want to catch the tiger so you must be investigating who stole it or something like that.”

“Close enough,” I replied. “There’s a bit more to it than that but yes, in a nutshell that’ll be about the size of it. And as for whodunnit…”

“Yes?” her eyes lit up at the thought of the gossip.

“It could be any one of you.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Well, let’s take you, for example.”

Erin huffed and pursed her lips.

“I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I’ve witnessed enough to assume that you could conceivably be the brains behind the operation. You are conniving, manipulative, bossy and you love to be in charge but above all that you are intelligent. I think it’s entirely possible you orchestrated the whole affair, that you are this elusive Ms Pingoveno.”

“Erm. Thanks, I think,” Erin stepped out of the lift onto the ground floor. She raised the walkie talkie to her face. “Are we safe down here?”

“Still no sign of it,” Lori’s voice spat nervously. “Be careful.”

“Of course the same could be said of Lori. And she is, arguably, even more intelligent.”

“What?”

“Of course if it was either of you I would assume you had an accomplice. Not being sexist, you understand. Just the evidence as it presents itself. If Lori wasn’t just blundering around looking for her laptop and she was up to something then she certainly didn’t know how to handle the tiger, did she?”

“No, I suppose not,” Erin’s brow creased, the wrinkles drawing together to form a furrow. “Trolleys. Grab one and we’ll fill it. Have you got a pound?”

“Eh? Oh, I see,” my hand went into my pocket looking for a pound coin to put in the slot and release the trolley from its chain gang brothers. “Here you go.”

“I don’t think it’s Lori,” Erin wrestled a trolley free and started pushing it in what I presumed was the right direction. There was a whine of white noise from the walkie talkie and we both jumped.

“Sorry,” Lori’s voice was faint. “I dropped it.”

We reached the butcher’s section of the food hall and proceeded to fill the trolley with meat. Lots of meat. Chickens, ducks, mince, pork chops, beef joints and then, to top it all off, the head of a pig staring blankly as our trolley’s figurehead. It seemed strangely ominous.

“What if the tiger smells the meat and comes after us?” Erin wrestled the trolley into the lift and pressed the button to get us moving again.

“Best we don’t think about it,” I stepped inside and the doors slid shut. “And anyway, we haven’t covered Ray or Jacob yet. Both of them could be our man.”

“Ray’s the type if you ask me. Not even supposed to be here. I’m the one who decides what shifts to put him on and I can promise you he is not supposed to be here. But Jacob? No.”

“Jacob? Afraid so. Found this in his car,” I briefly brandished the claw in front of an aghast Erin.

“His car? He doesn’t-”

The radio spluttered once more into life. They’d caught sight of it. On the second floor. Where we were headed. This was really not good.

“And don’t even get me started on where the fuck Ray fits into all this. Especially the fact that-”

I was interrupted by the doors of the lift sliding open. We stared out. Nothing stared back. Yet.

I dragged the trolley pig-first into the corridor as Erin spoke to Jacob on the walkie talkie. It was around on the second floor. They didn’t know where.

“Listen, Erin,” I said as I took the radio from her. “Go back up and join them. I’ll find Ray and we’ll do this together.”

“Okay,” she said. Her face was pale and her makeup had begun seriously to falter. “Good luck.”

I grabbed the handle of the trolley and began wheeling it slowly down towards the dead end that housed the caretaker’s office. The steps echoed and I could feel my heart beating heavy in my chest. I tried not to think about it but there wasn’t really any way I was going to be able to get it out of my head.

The door was in sight. I could do this, I thought, looking over my shoulder to make sure there was nothing there. There wasn’t, but I was sure I’d heard something. I stood still and listened.

Nothing. Just the sound of water dripping somewhere far away and something else. What was it? I couldn’t quite work it out. The noise was familiar but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

I held my breath and listened harder. A burst of white noise cracked the silence, blaring out from the walkie talkie.

“Clint!” it was Jacob, there was panic in his voice.

There was that noise again. What was that-

~*~

“Right, people,” I said as I strode into the security office and slammed the door behind me.  “Have we got a key?  Can we lock that?”

“Erm, probably not,” said Jacob, pointing at the monitor.

“Oh never mind Ray, he’s off on his own mission.  Reckon he’ll probably hole up in his office til this is all over.”

“Not him, it’s Lori.”

I glanced around and found that Jacob was right.  Lori had gone, it was just me and him and Erin left in the office.

“Where’s she gone?”

“Look,” said Jacob, pointing at the monitors.  There was Lori, back to the wall tottering on her heels towards a corner and on the adjacent monitor was the tiger.  Waiting.

“These two corridors, they aren’t actually joined, are they?”

Jacob nodded.

“But before…”

Jacob’s eye’s flicked towards Erin.

“Mistakes were made,” he said.  “She’s in trouble Clint, but really, you should lock the door.”

Jacob held up the key.

I shook my head.

“Brilliant. How do I get to her?”

“Left out the door, second left, then first right.”

“Left.  Second Left.  Right.  Lock the door after me.”

“Hang on a minute,” Jacob began.

But I didn’t wait for the rest, I just started running.  The sort of running you do when you’re a kid and you are going to miss the ice cream van if you don’t absolutely floor it right then and there.  Left out the door, slamming it behind me and up to full speed hurtling down the corridor, hoping the shoes I was wearing had sufficient grips on the bottom to…

Stop.

Flat palms slammed into the wall, took the second left and I was already shouting her name as I started to pick up speed again and nearly missed the final…

Right.

Banged into the wall and stared down the corridor.  And she wasn’t there.

Left, second left, right?  Was that right?

I jogged forward.  Which way was she walking on the monitor?  And where was the camera?  I shouted her name again, looking up and down, listening for a response but there was none.  I imagined that I would be able to hear something if the tiger was eating her and

~*~

here for me?”

My left leg kicked out and my eyes juddered open to see an upside down version of Lori’s pale visage.  I blinked and she came into focus.  She was bleeding from her forehead but she was alive.

I rolled left then sat up, narrowly missing head-butting Lori in the process.  A couple of seconds passed and then she reacted, flinching away from where I’d been.

“What happened?”

“What?” she said, her hand darting up and swatting some imaginary fly.

I stood up and moved quickly towards her.  She was just standing there swaying as blood trickled from a deep gash on her forehead.

“Are you alright?” I reached out to turn her towards me, my hand touching her upper arm.

She let out a scream worthy of a 1930’s horror movie and I recoiled, trying to see what the damage was.

“It’s okay,” I said softly.  “Do you know what happened?”

She nodded then jumped again as first Jacob and then Erin came around the corner and into view.

“We couldn’t just leave you to do this on your own,” Jacob slowed to a jog, stopping in front of me.

“I- it… Lori,” Erin panted and pointed at something then doubled over, her hands on her knees and wheezed heavily.

Jacob and I both looked in the direction Erin had pointed.  There was a door with a plaque on it.

‘Store Room’ it proclaimed.

“The store room?” Jacob and I very nearly chorused.  It was like trying to get a message from Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

Erin didn’t look up, just raised her right hand and wafted it away from her then pointed to the door again.

Jacob walked forward and tentatively unlocked then opened the door.  He poked his head into the darkness it contained then reached inside and whipped out a foldable chair.  He immediately unfolded it and took it to Erin who had finally manage to drag herself into an upright position.

“Not for me, you idiot.  For Lori.”

Not without some degree of trepidation Jacob and I tilted Lori backwards onto the chair.  She may have been an expert at moving around in heels that high but, frankly, I was not and the last thing we needed right now was to injure her further.  Erin stalked into the store room shaking her head at our antics and somehow found a blanket to wrap Lori in.

“We saw it on the monitor,” said Jacob.  “It whacked her.  The tiger ran past and hit her with its paw.”

Lori was sobbing, hiding her head in the blanket as Erin fussed around her.

“How come she’s not, well, you know… in shreds?” I asked, trying to put it together in my head.  “Are you alright, Lori?”

Lori looked up from her crying and sniffed.

“I need the loo,” she managed through the snot.  Jacob’s handkerchief now looked like it had been tie-dyed with mascara and fake tan but Erin handed it over and Lori promptly cleared her sinuses into it.  I wouldn’t have touched the thing.  “And then I was going to get my bag and get out of here.”

“What did you want your bag for?” I asked, trying to sound a bit more concerned and not stare at the snot-rag.

“It’s got my laptop in.  My dissertation.  The rest of my life.  I can’t die in here,” she was starting to lose it, starting to rant.  Maybe she was going into shock or something.  “And your damn stupid idea of catching the tiger, that was it.  I just thought, I don’t know, I only work in this shit hole to pay for going to university and the thought of losing it all, the thought of dying a make up girl.  I…  I…”

“I understand,” I said.

Erin coughed and stopped fussing.

We all stared at each other.

“The problem is,” I broke the silence first.  “That all the doors are locked.  We’re locked in.”

Lori nodded, a calmness descending upon her.

“That’s the reason I said we needed to trap the thing,” I moved a little closer to her.  “So we can stop anything like this happening.”

Lori’s eyes had been staring at some imagined spot in the middle distance but suddenly snapped into focus on me.

“It ran at me,” she whispered.  “Ran past me.  And as it ran it hit me with its paw or its shoulder or, I dunno.”

Her hand reached up and touched the gash on her head.

“Knocked her into the wall,” said Jacob.

“It hurts,” said Lori.  “I think… my arm hurts and my ribs might be broken because they really hurt.”

“Erin, can you see what you can do?  Painkillers, bandages, anything can find that might work.”

There was a noise somewhere down the corridor.

“Jacob, Erin, get Lori in the cupboard now.”

“Err, what do you mean Mr Barnum?” Jacob began fumbling with Lori, trying to encourage her to her feet without actually touching her and possibly toppling her forward.

There was a deep, low-pitched noise, barely audible but emanating from somewhere close by.

“Come on darling,” Erin managed where Jacob failed, shoving the blanket into his arms as she and Lori shuffled into the store cupboard.  The lights inside blinked on.

I stood by the door looking up and down the corridor, trying to see where the noise might be coming from.  Jacob grabbed the chair and snapped it loudly closed.  I imagined a glimpse of movement somewhere to the right and stared as Jacob brushed past.

“Jacob, for God’s sake, try to keep quiet.  It might hear you.”

There was a clink as something metallic hit the concrete floor.  Jacob turned and somehow managed to kick the something, sending it sliding a few metres down the corridor.

The key.

My eyes flashed up and down once more.  I couldn’t quite see but I could hear, the deep thrum of the noise turning into a fully fledged growl.  We needed to be able to lock the door.  I darted forward and grabbed the key from the floor, turning around to lift it and show it to Jacob.

He’d turned to face me, presumably to see what I was doing, and I held up the key. He grinned for a second and then his face fell in slow motion, the colour draining from it and he started to shout, dropping the blanket and the chair as my name came slowly out of his mouth.

I turned around to see

~*~

My eyes snapped open and I sat up sharply, smacking my head on the underside of a counter and sending several sample bottles rolling off to break on the floor. I hopped to my feet to avoid the stink getting on me and instantly regretted it. Panic hit me as if it had been fired, point-blank from a custom built panic gun.

My head whipped from side to side, scanning the perfumery, the lingerie, the ladieswear but there was no obvious tiger. There had been a tiger. Had there been a tiger?

Yes, there had. Otherwise the others would still be here. I bit the inside of my cheek hard. It hurt. A lot. So I was awake at least. The memory of the tiger felt real enough. I took the claw out of my pocket. The tiger’s claw. It looked like how I would imagine a tiger’s claw to look.

Although that didn’t prove much because when I first saw it I was convinced it looked like how a dinosaur’s claw would look, but still…

This was it. The task at hand. The cat.

The bloody ‘cat’.

And how to catch it, I suppose.

“Hello?” I shouted to no-one in particular.

I looked around again, half expecting the tiger to answer or at least jump out but instead there was a slightly more familiar although no less unexpected sound.

Bing bong.

The doorbell noise over the store’s tannoy system that signified someone was about to start telling you the special offers for the day. Except it didn’t. Not this time.

“Clint,” Jacob’s voice crackling out of a multitude of speakers. “We can see you on the security cameras.”

“Excellent,” I said, spotting one and turning to wave. “Can you hear me? Where the hell did the tiger go?”

Bing bong went the chime again.

“We can’t hear you but we can see you. We tried to get outside but we can’t something’s happened with the doors. They’re all locked. Even the fire doors.”

So Agatha had locked the place down. I took my phone out of my pocket. Still no signal.

Bing bong.

“And the land lines are down too,” this time it was Erin’s voice emanating from the aging address system. “This better not be your doing, Detective, because if it is -”

The system cut off.

I stepped as far towards the camera as I could and began to slowly mouth the words:

WHERE IS THE TIGER?

Adding a little mime of a tiger at the end.

Bing bong.

“Ground floor,” it was Jacob again. “We think.”

They think. Bloody brilliant leaving me there while they save their skins.

Bing bong.

“We’re in the security office,” his voice crackled out. “Ray’s coming to get you.”

The double doors burst open and I flinched for a moment then pretended that I hadn’t and ran one of my raised hands through my hair. Ray hobbled in, his hand dipping quickly into his pocket.

“Come on,” he snapped, waving to me. “Now.”

I sprinted to his side then skittered behind him, following along the corridors and up the stairs to the security office. Meant for two people, maybe three, it was probably around the size of a shed but in the corner was an unvarnished desk with four monitors and some sort of controller mounted on it. All of them were black and white and currently none of them showed a tiger.

Not that it was particularly easy to see them. With Jacob and Erin sitting on the only two seats and Lori perched on the edge of the desk as I squeezed into the room it was practically full.

“We need to catch it,” I got straight to the point, I didn’t see I had any choice in the matter really. It wasn’t just about the job. Well, okay, it was mostly about the job. But there was also the life and death aspect. That certainly had some impact on the proceedings.

“You’re bloody mad!” Ray’s voice from the corridor was high pitched and cracked as he spoke. “There’s no way – it’s… a bloody tiger.”

“We need to catch it. If not, then what? It gets out? We’ve got it contained.”

Ray let out an even higher pitched laugh. “There’s no way. I’m… No. I’m not having any part of this. You’re insane, Barnum. You can’t go chasing after bloody tigers.”

“Fine,” I said. “Bugger off then.”

The click-drag noise of Ray’s exit wasn’t wasted on the others and Jacob pushed past, leaning out of the office to shout after him but he didn’t stop for a second.

Erin and Lori looked scared and just sat and stared at Jacob shouting. As Ray turned the corner out of sight he appeared on one of the monitors in front of us.

It was time to take control. I hadn’t just been given a lost kitten case at the agency I’d been given a big time fucking dangerous job which meant they must have some sort of confidence in me.

“Erin. I need your help,” I said, definitely not thinking about going to sleep. “I need you to watch those screens. Watch Ray, see where he goes, make sure he’s alright and let me know whatever happens.”

Erin was about to speak but was interrupted by the sound of a mobile phone ringing. The half-formed words turned to a look of surprise as she reached into one of her pockets and plucked out a phone. She pressed something on it and then her face snapped into disappointment. She stared at it for a second then put it back in her pocket and turned back to the screens.

“What are we going to do Mr Barnum?” Jacob asked as he sat down.

“I need to go to the toilet,” said Lori. I turned, about to snap at her but thought better of it. “So go, Lori. Just go. Jacob,” I continued, grabbing his shoulder as much to steady myself from the onslaught of the narcolepsy as to empower him. “We are going to catch ourselves a bloody big tiger.”

Lori shook her head and looked away from me to the monitors.

“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” I laughed.

“The tiger!” Lori screamed for the second time this evening. I was quite proud of the fact that this time I didn’t pass out. “I don’t think he’s realised.”

She pointed at the screens. On one of the monitors we could see Ray talking on his mobile phone and walking to a corner. That in itself wasn’t particularly worrying but when you took into account monitor number two which featured a tiger approaching the same corner, the matter shifted seriousness somewhat.

“Which way?” I said.

Erin pointed. I ran. I sprinted. Down the corridor, around the first corner, picking up speed I hurled myself down the next corridor screaming Ray’s name at the top of my lungs, shouting for him to stop.

And it worked. As he loomed into view he was stationary. Safe and stationary.

Bing bong.

“Err, Clint,” Jacob’s voice on the Tannoy. “Lori had it wrong. Tiger’s in a different part of the building…”

I panted for a second.

Bing bong.

“Is it on?” Lori’s voice echoed all around us. “Sorry Clint.”

I waved my hand in the air like it was nothing.

“Ray,” I said, an idea popping into my head. “Can I borrow your mobile for a second?”

“Haven’t got one. Now piss off and leave me alone.”

He stomped safely around the tigerless corner. I took my own phone out and pushed the redial button. Somehow there was a signal here and somehow Ray knew that.

Agatha picked up instantly.

“Everything okay?” she said.

“Course. Listen I need you to do something for me. There’s a caretaker here called Ray. Can you find out who the last person was he phoned. On his mobile. Is that the sort of thing you do?”

“Exactly the sort of thing. Is that it?”

“Well, yeah. For now. Signal’s crap here so just see what you can do.”

And she hung up.

~*~

The stairs were a bit of a mistake if I’m honest.  They went around the elevator shaft so there were three flights of stairs and a landing for every floor.  And since there were two basements, a ground floor and three shopping floors to climb by the time I got to the top I was doubled over panting, my jacket over my arm and regretting taking a stand against the death-caged sardines.

Incredibly, the lift still hadn’t arrived.  Clearly without gravity on its side the antique mechanism was struggling.  I leaned against the wall, the sweat from my shirt simultaneously sticking to my back and the cold of the wall and sending a welcome chill across it.

I closed my eyes and the sleep came, just for a second. My jacket fell from my grip and the claw too, dropping down onto the grey concrete.  The noise was enough to snap me back and I stared at it for a second, trying to figure out how it fitted in.  If it fitted in.

The door of the lift rattled open echoing around the tunnel.  I yawned as I scooped up the claw and put the jacket back on.  It was time to get down to business.

Ray and Erin maintained the silence of two people who’d had a row, an atmosphere hanging cloyingly around them as we made our way back to the shop floor.  I tried to lead the way, staying ahead the whole time and only needing the odd navigational correction until we walked through the double doors to see Jacob standing next to a young girl.

She was dressed in the same white make-up girl uniform as Erin but there the comparison ended.  Lori was a pale girl in her early twenties and she was striking if for no other reason than in the heels she wore she must have been over six feet tall.  She and Jacob both smiled as we returned.

“This is Lori,” said Jacob.  I smiled back at them both.  “He’s the private detective I was telling you about.”

Lori seemed to have a nervousness about her and I wasn’t sure whether it was the situation she found herself in or whether she was just like that naturally.

Erin and Ray were still a few steps behind, I waited for them to catch up, hearing the now familiar dragging of Ray’s gait and waiting until it stopped to strike.

“Tell me about Lucky, Erin,” I said, spinning around.

It had just the effect I expected, sending Erin into floods of tears.  Jacob stood up, walking over the her and handing back his threadbare handkerchief.

“In your own time,” I added.  “I should probably say I do know that Lucky is not tied up in this whole messy business.”

“Messy business?”  Erin was still fighting back the tears.  This may take a bit longer than I’d hoped.

“And Jacob,” I continued.  “What can you tell me about your interest in taxidermy?”

Erin turned to face Jacob, recoiling as she did so.  “Oh no, not you,” she said.  But it wasn’t anger in her voice, it was disappointment.

“Erin?” I said, turning away from Jacob.  “Something you want to tell me?”

“It wasn’t him,” Erin began to compose herself.  Thankfully.  “If you must know, I went away on holiday and a friend of mine, a very close friend of mine was looking after my house.  Looking after Lucky.”

I nodded and motioned with my hand that she continue.

“Lucky went missing and, well, she claimed that he’d been run over,” Erin was fighting back the tears again.  Jacob reached out to touch her shoulder but she moved from him.  “She claimed that one of the builders who had been working on the house next door had found him.  She claimed that, in all innocence, he had scooped up my poor, dear little pussy cat and then he had stuffed him and mounted him.”

“I’m sorry,” I tried to give her what I thought was a sympathetic smile.

“To add insult to… to… murder… the sick bastard had mounted Lucky in a remote control car!”

My sympathetic smile was in danger of metamorphosising into a grin.

“And if that wasn’t bad enough she started dating the builder.  And then… then they were married in the Seychelles two months ago.”

Lori, who’d clearly heard this story before, had gone off to fetch a chair which she duly deposited under Erin just as the story ended.  Erin was lost in the grief for her lost pet but this was great news.  That was months ago, at least, so Agatha had been right, it wasn’t Erin’s cat we were looking for.

“Excellent,” I grinned and clapped my hands together.  Everyone turned and looked at me, their faces a picture of concern for their colleague.  “I mean, not excellent, obviously but we’re making progress, are we not?”

“Are we?” said Jacob.

“We are, sir,” I said and beckoned Jacob to come to me.  “You haven’t been entirely honest with me, have you, Jacob?”

The colour drained from Jacob’s face as he stood up and stepped towards me.

“No, sir,” he said.  “I haven’t.  There’s something I should tell you.”

“About this?” I whipped the claw out of my pocket with a flourish.

Everyone stared.  This was great.

“Can anyone tell me what this is?” I asked, waving the claw aloft.

“Did you find that in the car?” asked Ray.

I nodded and grinned back.

“The car?” said Jacob.  “Which car?”

“Is that some sort of claw?” said Erin, squinting through tears and vague confusion.

“It would appear so.  But the claw of what?”

“A Tiger!” Lori screamed.  A bit of an overreaction I thought.

“Could be, I suppose,” I brought the claw closer to get another look.  “Why do you say that?”

“No,” Lori hissed quietly and began moving backwards.  “Over there, behind you, there’s a tiger.”

Not really sure how to respond to a statement like that I turned around to see an enormous tiger stalking through the lingerie section of the shop.  Now, I don’t know if you’ve even seen a tiger up close but, at maybe three feet high and, I don’t know, maybe ten feet long it

~*~

The wide expansive corridors had begun to smell damp and were narrowing claustrophobically as I followed Ray towards the staff car park.  I’d been fortunate in that, unlike the public who were forced to park half a mile away and walk to the shop, the staff had the privilege of parking in the lower basement.

“But only if you get here early otherwise you’re proper stuffed,” Ray had been keen to point out.

“Number of times I’ve arrived for work then had to turn around and drive away,” Ray’s leg tap-tapped along at a reasonable pace and I’d noticed that it acted like a metronome.  Whenever he spoke the rhythm of his words followed the beat perfectly and was encouraging the sleep in me so I was glad when he finally lapsed into silence and just walked.

Reaching the end of the corridor we stood in front of a service elevator.  Ray leaned forward and slid the outer cage door, the diagonal bars folding flat, and carefully stepped inside.  I waited for a moment as he adjusted himself into the tiny space, at first not quite sure if I would even fit in there with him and then turned around and reversed into the space.

“If you don’t shut the door then it won’t move,” Ray grunted, the force of his words blowing the hair on the back of my head.

I slid the cage door shut.  This didn’t feel right, I didn’t trust any of these people and I was letting one of them take me down to a deserted car park in a building the police couldn’t get into even if we could call them.

Ray contorted his body, freeing his arm and putting it over my shoulder, readying himself to put me in a headlock.  I moved backwards to avoid it and bumped into his Santa-gut as he reached even further forward, avoiding the headlock and instead pressing the ‘B2’ button on the panel to my right.  He retracted his arm, folding it down by his side once more.

“You’re not my type,” he said then grimaced a smile at me.  I raised my eyebrows and smiled back then the lift lurched into life and began to drop.

And when I say drop I do mean drop.  My arms shot out to brace myself on its sides as a feeling rose in my stomach.  A familiar feeling, but one I would usually only expect to feel if was on a roller coaster and certainly not in a plummeting metal cage.

I stared about me and tried not to think about it but everything about this contraption seemed designed to intimidate, from the cage door to the low ceiling to the metal sign screwed to the wall warning that no more than seven persons should be allowed in at one time.  Since it was extremely unlikely that you could fit three people in this space without them becoming intimately acquainted with certain areas of one another’s anatomy, presumably the only way to fit seven in would be if they were dwarves and the lift was fitted with some sort seven-tier bunk bed affair.

With a snap the lift reached the bottom of the shaft, Ray and I were both lifted a few inches into the air and the lights of the lift went out.  For a moment I thought it was the narcolepsy and then the light blinked back on and we dropped down and I shakily reached forward and slid the reluctant cage door open, stepping out into an unlit corridor.

“It always does that,” said Ray, walking out and flicking a collection of light switches on the wall next to the lift.

As the lights came on I could see that we were inside the car park itself and that it was practically empty.  I suppose it was to be expected but for some reason I’d thought there would be a collection of cars in there.  Instead there were just one or two around the edges and one blue van sitting alone in the very centre.  I looked at Ray, he nodded and started walking towards it.

The van itself was nothing out of the ordinary, exactly what you would expect of a security guard I suppose.  Over ten years old, bits of rust here and there and once Ray opened it up the inside was much the same.  It was clean.  Very clean. But scruffy  from a decade of heavy use and Jacob seemed to have an obsession with air fresheners, with ten or more hanging from the partition that separated the cabin of the van from the back.

“So what made you think there might be something here?” I shouted out to Ray as I took a bunch of papers from the compartment in the door.

“Dunno,” he walked in front of the car so I could see him from where I sat in the driver’s seat.  “You said about taxidermy so…”

There was nothing of any interest in the papers, just junk.  I leaned over and opened the glove compartment but all it contained, strangely, was a pair of gloves.  I took them out and mused briefly on the fact that Jacob may be the only person I’d ever met who actually used his glove compartment for gloves.  If you could call them gloves, they were more gauntlets of protective type workmen might wear.  I threw them back, got out of the car and wandered around the back.

“So have you worked here long?” I said, opening the doors at the back of the van to reveal… not much.

“Six years, maybe seven,” I heard Ray clack-clacking around the van as I climbed inside.  “But it doesn’t pay well.”

“No?”  I hunched over so I could walk around inside the van, again getting paranoid that he might just lock me in here I decided to make this a very quick check.

“No,” he replied.  “It’s difficult to make ends meet so I do a bit of moonlighting.”

And then I saw it.  It stood out because you didn’t usually expect to see a fossil amongst the newspapers and cardboard boxes.  At least, that’s what it looked like.

“Moonlighting?” I asked, not really listening as I reached forward and picked up the strange object.

“Yeah.  Just as a cleaner, same as here.”

“Mmmm,” once the object was in my hand it was clear that I had been wrong, this wasn’t a fossil.  It was a claw.  A bloody enormous claw that was maybe three inches long from the horrendously sharp tip to the part where it had become detached.  I shoved it in my pocket and scrambled out of the van in time to see Erin bearing down on Ray.

“I knew it!” Erin’s nasal voice echoed irritatingly around the empty car park.

“Hey, hang on a minute,” said Ray.  “What are you doing down here?”

“Came to get you two, something weird’s going on but that’s beside the point, did I hear correctly?  Did Ray say that he was working two jobs?”

Ray inhaled to answer but apparently wasn’t going to be given the chance as Erin just kept stamping towards him.

“You know what that means, don’t you Ray?  It means that when I tell the management you will finally be sacked you lazy little man.”

I slammed the doors of the van.

“You were mistaken,” I said.  “He said no such thing, did you Ray?”

“Well…” he replied.

“We were talking about someone else.  Now please, Erin, why don’t you take the elevator with Ray?  I’ll take the stairs and see you up there.”

Erin huffed then turned around and stomped towards the metal cage.  There was no way I was going back inside that to play sardines with the two of them.

“Come on,” I said to Ray.

“Thanks,” he put his hand out and shook mine.  “You didn’t have to do that.  Thanks.”

I shrugged, “Come on.  I need to talk to Jacob.”

~*~

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.”

~*~

It’s strange, I suppose, walking through the unfamiliar insides of a building as everyday as this one.  The stark concrete floors painted the same dull grey as the walls, the once large areas now partitioned into room after storeroom, cupboard after cupboard and office after office.

We walked in silence except for when Jacob would occasionally let out a warbling birdsong whistle.  The place was a maze and we turned corner after corner until we reached a corridor which was shrouded in darkness.

Jacob held up his hand and put his index finger over his lips.

I stared into the darkness but at night and with no windows the corridor gave nothing away.  And then the noise started.

A knock that echoed out, surrounding us then a soft, dragged hiss.

Knock.  Hiss.

Knock-hiss.

Knock-hissssssss.

“Jesus, Ray, is that you?” barked Jacob into the murk.

“Course it’s bloody me,” a voice came back out of the darkness shortly followed by a face and then a whole body.  “Who the hell else would it be at this time of night?”

Ray looked like an alcoholic Santa in the off-season.  His skin was pale from the lack of sun, he’d shaved his beard, but a course, white stubble hung from his chin.  The big tummy was there but it seemed a lot less jolly than the Santa we all knew and loved.

“Well, there’s just been, you know,” said Jacob.  “What the hell was that noise?”

Ray pointed down towards the ground and it became immediately apparent.  The hiss had been his left foot, the tartan slipper he wore on it dragged along the ground whilst his right leg, a wooden pirate-prosthesis tapped its peggy way alongside.

Jacob looked confused.

Ray kept walking, raising his eyebrows in acknowledgement of me then walking on past.

“I smashed the foot on my proper leg this morning so I’m stuck with the peg ‘til it’s fixed.”

“How did it, you know,” I said, pointing to his prosthesis.  “How did you lose it originally?”

“Lion chewed it off on safari,” he stared at me, frowning.

“Really?” I said, completely unable to hide the awe in my voice.

“Course not you bloody idiot, it was an industrial accident.”

And with a knock and a hiss Ray scraped off on his way.

“You had to ask?” Jacob whispered to me then waved us on to a pair of double doors which we opened together and led us onto the real shop floor.

“Need to talk to you if you don’t mind, Miss Erin.”

Erin was a formidable woman, somehow seeming to tower over Jacob in spite of the fact she couldn’t have been more than five foot three.  She was the epitome of a makeup counter girl with her orange face, lashes like Amazonian spiders and what appeared to be perfectly manicured two-inch talons on the ends of her fingers.

“Talk?” Erin spat the words at Jacob, accompanying them with some actual spit for good measure.

“This is Mr Barnum, he’s a Private Investigator.”

“Please,” I said.  “Call me Clint.”

“I will not speak to this, this…” she turned the corners of her mouth down causing her garish red lipstick to crack.  “…this dick.  I will not speak to him under any circumstance.”

“What can you tell me about woman named Pingoveno?” I said and moved a little closer to Erin.  I was hit by a wall of perfume and suppressed a cough.  “And what can you tell me about Lucky?”

Erin stopped talking and stared at me, her left eyelid twitched, sending shudders through her spiderous eyelashes.  I stared at her, waiting for something more.  Right now this was all I had; one woman’s name, a vague idea of something that had to be retrieved and a taxidermy racket.

Jacob coughed apologetically and reached into his pocket, taking out a clean, white handkerchief and passing it to Erin who took it and appeared to shatter on contact, reduced to a crying, howling mess in Jacob’s arms.  I couldn’t go on like this.

Fishing my phone out of my pocket I dialled Agatha.  It rang twice then she picked up.

“Clint,” she said.  “H-w i- – go-ng up there?”

“Agatha?” I said.  “Can you hear me?”

There was silence on the line, I took the phone away from my ear.  The call was over.  No damn signal.

“Can’t get a signal in here,” said Jacob.  “Walls too thick.”

Right, so this blubbering mess was all I had to work with then.  Okay, on with the show.

“Erin is it?” I said.  “Can you please stop crying and talk to me?  What are you upset about?”

“It’s…” she managed before breaking down again.  Jacob mopped her eyes and her mascara began to trickle into the wrinkles she had so valiantly tried to conceal.  “I know about the taxidermy if that’s what you’re asking.”

Bloody hell, that was easy, I was getting good at this detective lark.

“Yes,” I said and put my hand on her shoulder taking the handkerchief from Jacob and dabbing her eyes, the handkerchief now looking like some sort of panda-Jesus’ Turin shroud.  “That’s exactly what I was asking about.  And what about Lucky?”

I was onto something here.

“He was,” she took a deep breath, took the handkerchief from me and blew her nose.  She tried to hand it back but I shook my head and smiled.  “But he’s… he’s gone.”

“Gone?” I said.  My mobile started to ring in my pocket.  “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

I took the mobile out.  Agatha’s name was displayed on the screen.

“My little ginger puss. Dead. Stuffed,” she began wailing again.

The phone kept ringing.

“Shh.  Please, can you just hang on for one second?”

I answered the phone.

“Clint? Can you hear me?” said Agatha.

“Yes, listen, quick while I’ve got a signal.  Am I looking for a cat?”

“Clint, Forsyth has been down looking for an update.  It’s imperative you retrieve the animal alive or -”

“Forsyth?  Shit.  Really?  Agatha?” I tried walking away from Erin and Jacob, quickly jogging towards the windows.  “Are you still there?  Am I looking for a bloody cat?”

“C-t – anything you need?”

“Yes, Agatha.  Can you please just tell me if I’m looking for a ginger cat?”

“Y- than we thought – black – orange – cat. Clint?”

“You’re breaking up,” I said, stabbed the disconnect key and hung up on her.

“Stop your bloody snivelling woman!” I shouted from across the floor and began striding towards them.  “Are you telling me that you had a black and orange cat?”

She nodded.

“And am I to understand that he has popped his clogs?”

She nodded again.

“Shit!” I screamed.  “A dead lost cat.  Who the shitting hell sends a private investigator to find a lost cat?  Especially a bloody dead one. Is that what I’m worth?  A dead cat! A lost bastard dead bastard cat.”

“Sir?” said Jacob.

“‘Bring him back in one piece, Clint,” I shouted.  “Oh and if you don’t you’re sacked, Clint.  Arrrrrrrrrgh!”

I spun around to shout at the two of them again and

~*~

The sun hadn’t been set long and I could feel the chill of the autumn evening slowly crawling under my coat.  I was thankful to see the pedestrian traffic was starting to thin out in the area because it gave me a fighting chance of not being spotted entering the building.  As I rounded the corner its Art Deco façade, although blackened with pollution and age, was still an impressive sight.  Crowther’s Department Store was an institution in Kilchester, with staff and customers spanning four generations.  It was the sort of anachronism of a place that no-one could quite understand how it remained open.  And yet no-one could ever imagine it would ever close down.

I walked past the garish window displays touting the latest in gaudy couture and glanced around before trying to slip subtly down the alley that led to the back entrance of the store.  Unlike the gorgeous architecture which characterised the front of the building the back was a horrendous carbuncle that appeared to have been shit out and stuck on in the sixties.  At least it was quiet down here, the only company being some birds scavenging the bins.

The building itself took up three sides of what you might loosely call a courtyard.  To my left the building was dotted with tiny windows which were so small I couldn’t imagine they let in any light at all.  To my right the building’s only feature was a rusted fire escape that zig zagged from the roof down to street level and straight ahead the only points of note were a closed roller shutter door that would presumably let in delivery vehicles and a smaller, windowless, metal door.

Since it was the only person-sized door I thought it reasonable to assume it was the staff entrance.  I walked closer and saw that it was replete with card-swipe and keypad.  Wonderful.  The plan was going smoothly.  My hand went to my jacket pocket, fingers running along the edge of the card Agatha had given me.  This was it, the beginning of…  well, I didn’t know actually.  But it was definitely the beginning of something.

I gritted my teeth, took out the card and swiped it.  There was a beep and an orange light.  I didn’t bother bringing the piece of paper with the accompanying number, having decided to live life on the edge instead.

I pushed ‘1’.  The keypad beeped.  That was a good start.  No alarms, no security, no dogs.

I pushed ‘2’.  Another beep.  Thinking I could hear footsteps I looked around the courtyard again but no-one was there.

I pushed ‘3’.  Beep.  There really was no going back now.

I pushed ‘4’.  Beep.  I wondered why she had bothered to write the number down in retrospect.  Not exactly a difficult one to remember.

The orange light flicked green then turned red and sounded an electronic raspberry.  I exhaled and my breath hung in the air around me.  Were they definitely the instructions?  Agatha had said to swipe the card then type the number.  Or was it type the number then swipe the card?  I reached up and touched the tiny wound she’d inflicted on my forehead.

My eyes flicked around the courtyard and once more there was no-one watching.  This time, however, I was sure I could make out a security camera on the wall high above me.  Which was it?  Swipe then type?  Or type then swipe?  No, I was definitely right the first time, I swiped the card and this time instead of the orange light a green one flashed happily.  This was good.

Wasn’t it?

I typed 1, 2, 3 and then hesitated.  It wasn’t beeping this time.  There was a cancel button.  Maybe I should press it.  I pressed ‘4’ and waited for the click of the door opening.

The machine waited, flashed the green light at me some more and then abruptly changed red and blew another raspberry.

Right, this time I would reverse it.  Type then swipe.  It had to work.  Unless I had the number wrong.  What if I had been too hasty, what if it was 2134 or even 4321?  No.  Have confidence.  This time it will work.

I glanced up at what I imagined to be the security camera and pressed ‘1’.

The door in front of me made a satisfying clunk noise and opened wide.

Inside stood a security guard.

“What the bloody hell do you

~*~

My eyes woke up first.  Before my body.  It happened sometimes.

I wasn’t in a police car, so that was something at least.  I inhaled and there was a smell like musty furniture crossed with industrial cleaning agents.  It was unmistakably the smell of Crowther’s Department Store although the area I was staring at wasn’t one I’d ever seen before, the smell here having a lower concentration of mustiness to it.

I seemed to be in some sort of chair at a shabby old wooden desk.  Whoever had brought me here, presumably the security guard, had laid my head on the desk but my arms hung awkwardly under the desk.  I could see papers, out of focus and too close to read, then a baked bean tin being used as a pen holder.  On the wall in front of me was a calendar, one of those cheap and nasty ones that was just one picture with a tiny grid of numbers stuck to the bottom.

The picture was a montage, cheesily done by some amateur designer with lions, tigers and other big cats all staring down presumably aghast at the fact that, in their world at least, it was still May.

Some movement began to trickle back into me and I managed to tilt my head a fraction of an inch to see another anachronism.  A dusty frame with an ‘Employee of the Month’ certificate inside.  The date on the certificate was from five years ago and from another company whose name the dust obscured.  Something beginning with ‘Lav’.

“I know you’re awake,” said a voice.  “I can see your eyes are open.”

“Mmmmmph,” I said, the narcolepsy had started to subside, begrudgingly giving me back control of myself.

“What the devil were you doing at the back door?” he said.  He wasn’t angry, he sounded worried if anything.

I sat bolt upright, my subconscious handing back control and then panicked for a moment when, inexplicably, it had refused to allow me to move either of my arms.  A brief internal check revealed that lying on a desk with your arms hanging beneath you is likely to cut off the blood supply.  Not the end of the world.  I smiled at him.

“Usually the first thing people ask is why I fall asleep like that,” I said.  “Very tactful of you not to mention it.”

“My pleasure, that is, what…erm,” he was sitting at the other side of the room at another, smaller desk next to the door.  He was a big man, in his early fifties but I would have bet that what filled his uniform was mostly muscle and not fat.

“Name’s Clint Barnum, I would shake your hand but both my arms went to sleep and now the blood’s returned I’m starting to get a chronic case of pins and needles.”

“Jacob.  I’m the security guard.”

“Yes, I guessed that,” I said.  “The uniform’s a dead giveaway.  You often pick strange men out of the gutter and take them to… is this your office?”

“Yes.  Well, sort of.”

“And you’re in charge around here are you?”

“Yes.  What are you d-”

“Excellent.  Great.  Good man,” the pins and needles tingling in my arms had turned into a painful searing, creeping feeling under my flesh.  I let out a scream partly because it really hurt but mostly to keep the guard off-guard, if you’ll pardon the pun.

“So what are you doing here?” he said, standing up and moving between me and the room’s exit.  Clearly his concern was only going to stretch so far.

“Good question.  And one I intend to address, don’t you worry about that.  I walked over to the framed certificate and wiped the dust off it.  “Is this yours?”

“No,” he said.  “Now wait a-”

“Jacob, I’m a private investigator and I am here on a very important case,” it was the first time I’d gotten to say that and it felt really good.  He immediately sat back down in his seat.  I decided to counterpoint his downward motion with some upward movement of my own and stood up.  “Do you know of a Ms Pingoveno?”

“No,” he replied.

“Heard of her, worked for her, any mention by anyone you’ve ever met?”

“No, I swear, sir,” he said.

“And how about Vince?”

“Ah, now there I can help you.  There are two, no, three gentlemen by that name working here.  One of them lives down the street from me.  I get the bus in with him when we’re on the same shifts.”

“They work here?”

“Yes.”

I shook my head.  “Lava Corp?”

Jacob shook his head.

I tried to look thoughtful by scratching my chin then turned around to survey the rest of the office.  It was a cramped affair, the other walls I hadn’t been able to see housing newspaper clippings mostly of football teams I didn’t recognise and a small square board with hooks, the majority of which had keys hanging from them.  There was a single, shared telephone, two desks and that was it.  We weren’t going to make any more progress here.

“Right, Jacob,” I said, finally shaking his hand as the pins and needles subsided.  “I need an assistant this evening.  Do you think you are up to the task?”

“Yes, sir!” he said, practically saluting as he did so.

“What do you know of taxidermy, Jacob?”

“Not much, sir, but I think you’ll be wanting to speak to Miss Erin on that subject.”

“Do you now?” I said.

“Yes sir, if I was you I would ask her about Lucky.  Her cat.”

“Would you now?” I said.  At last, I was making some progress.  “Well, then lead the way.”

“Right you are sir.”

And off we went.

~*~

For your listening pleasure.