"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 b.u.t.tons 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 b.u.t.tons 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 b.u.g.g.e.r 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.
"b.a.l.l.s," 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 f.u.c.king 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 b.u.g.g.e.r 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."
"b.l.o.o.d.y right I do."
Chapter 6.
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 bas.e.m.e.nt.
"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 s.p.a.ce, at first not quite sure if I would even fit in there with him and then turned around and reversed into the s.p.a.ce.
"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 b.u.mped into his Santa-gut as he reached even further forward, avoiding the headlock and instead pressing the "B2" b.u.t.ton 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 s.p.a.ce 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 part.i.tion 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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."