The Defective Detective : Cat Chaser

For Eve

 A
ctually, hang on a minute, I’m getting ahead of myself here aren’t I?  Sorry.  That  happens sometimes.  I suppose that seemed to be the most important bit.  In the storeroom but in actual fact it probably isn’t going to make a great deal of sense until I tell you about what happened before.
  Sorry.  It’s just that I think you need to understand how these things come together.  I didn’t just wake up in a storeroom full of people like that.  Stuff happened first.  I should tell you about it, I think.
  Well, it was my first day, my first proper case.  Mr Forsyth, the head of the agency, had called me to his office to brief me personally.  Apparently that never usually happens so as you can imagine I was absolutely crapping myself.  And that just exacerbates the narcolepsy.
  I mean, I knew that he knew about it but I didn’t want it to screw up the chances of me keeping this job.  Not on the first day.  Not in the first briefing. 
  Fortunately for me Forsyth was a talker.  He loved the sound of his own voice and didn’t pay a great deal of attention to anything else that was going on around him.  There was, of course, another side to this.  I wasn’t entirely convinced that he hadn’t simply employed me as a comic aside.  In which case he was just waiting for me to fall asleep.
  And, again, that just made it worse.
  “So,” Forsyth had been in monologue mode for a minute or so but he seemed to be coming to a point of sorts.  “Your first case, my boy.”
  “Yes?” I said.  I couldn’t help feeling a bit of excitement underneath everything else.  I mean, I was going to get to be a private detective.  “I’m really looking forward to it.”
  He laughed and patted me on the shoulder then turned to face a painting of someone fat and monocled on the wall behind him.
  “You will begin by

~*~

 gone missing. This is your number one priority. Lava Corp are absolutely rabid to get their property back as you can imagine.”
  My head snapped upright and I inhaled sharply.
  “Are you getting all of this?” said Forsyth, turning to face me once more.
  “Er,” I said.  “So far so good.  Number one priority.”
  “Yes.  Indeed.  We’re going to lock the shutters of the shop.  That way there’ll be no escape for your prize.”
  “My prize?”
  “
The
 prize.  Fancy a brandy?”
  “Er, no.  Thank you but no, I’d better not,” I said, the wave coming back.  I had to get the prize.  What prize?  Oh shit.
  “Probably for the best.  Don’t want you drunk as well as falling asleep on the job do we?” he turned to a small table on the other side of the office.  “So, where was I?  Oh yes.  Vince from Lava Corp was fairly convinced he knows whoever has stolen their property personally.”
  “Yes?”
  “Well, stands to reason doesn’t it?” Forsyth snapped.  “Don’t interrupt again.”
  “Right.”
  “Okay.  Taxidermy

~*~

 quite the tricky character this Ms Pingoveno.  Never trust a woman who calls herself 
Ms
, eh Clint my boy?”
  I opened my eyes as wide as I could, trying to pin them to my skull.  Forsyth turned around.  He scowled at me and waved his brandy.
  “Have some balls man, don’t look so scared,” he said.
  I snapped my face back into what I would have described as a normal expression.  “Not scared, sir, I just had cramp or something in my cheek.”
  I repeated the facial tick, widening my eyes as far as I could, then squinting, widening and squinting.  He took a slug of his brandy and raised an eyebrow.
  “Hmm, right.  So you got a handle on this then have you?”
  “Yes,” I lied.
  “Good stuff.  Knew you would.  Should be easy enough.  The people we suspect of helping out Ms Pingoveno will all be in there.  Plus a couple of others no doubt but you’ll know who they are once you find out their names, won’t you?” he laughed.  I laughed.

~*~

  sleeping on the job?” Forsyth gave my chair a kick and I jerked back into consciousness.
  “No sir, I wouldn’t,” years of coping mechanisms springing into action.
  Forsyth grinned.  “Pulling my leg were you?  Haha!  Jolly good.  Like it.”
  I nodded.
  “Any questions?” he said.
  “One or two,” this was my chance to try to make sense of this mess.  “Taxidermy?”
  “Racket. Yes. She’s running it, we can practically prove it.”
  “Here? In Kilchester?”
  “Yes I know, I thought that was a bit odd too but apparently they piece them together and send them to the Far East.  Like a Baboon with a poodle’s head, that sort of thing.”
  “Right,” I said.  “And people collect that sort of thing do they?”
  “Apparently so.  Takes all sorts, eh?  Okay, enough chit chat,” Forsyth rose to his feet and picked up a file that had been lying on his desk.  A case file.  
This
 case file.  “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

~*~

  “O
f course,” said Forsyth as we walked down a long corridor, light streaming in from a spectacular atrium high above us.  “Detection isn’t all we do.”
  The whole thing was slightly overwhelming.  I mean, you know when you get a new job and you have that feeling like one day soon they’re going to realise that you don’t actually know what you’re doing and sack you?  Well, imagine that only instead of it being just a feeling it is, in fact, a very real and tangible possibility.
  “In fact,” he continued.  “We have three divisions in total.”
  I think the problem is twofold.
  “Detection.  Separation.  And assignation.”
  Firstly that I hadn’t managed to keep a real life job.  Ever.
  Forsyth laughed.  I wasn’t sure why.  But I laughed as well.
  And secondly because this wasn’t a job I was convinced I had the chops for.
  “Right my boy,” said Forsyth gesturing to an imposing looking door with a brass plaque attached.  On the plaque was just one letter. It had a ‘Z’ on it.  “In here.”
  I pushed open the door and walked into a vast room filled with desks. Under each desk was a computer, on top of each desk was a bank of six monitors and sat at each desk was a woman who was firmly out of my league.
  “Clint.  I’d like you to meet the Z-Girls,” Forsyth laughed his laugh again and leaned in close to me, close enough for me to smell the brandy and cigars on his breath.  “I don’t just employ them for their brains.”
  “Mr Forsyth,” said a voice and I turned around to see the one woman who was the most out of my league of all walking towards us.
  “Agatha. This is-”
  “Mr Clint Barnum.  Yes.  I know.”
  “The defective detective!  Of course you do,” he said, handed the case file to her and began to move towards the door.  “I’ll leave him in your capable hands then.  Oh, good luck Clint.  I know you’ll do well.  And if you don’t, you’re sacked.”
  And with that he slammed the door of the office.
  “Z-Girls?” I said.
  “The defective detective?” she replied.
  “Yeah, he just started calling me that,” I said, glancing down at my shoes.
  “We call him the A-Hole,” she smiled and for the first time since arriving at the Agency’s offices I laughed without having to force myself.
  “Do you think he means it?” I said.
  “What?” said Agatha, flipping open the file she’d been given and glancing inside.
  “Well, about being sacked if I don’t… you know.”
  She began walking so I began following. 
  “Oh, he means it,” she went on.  “Can’t tell you the number of people who’ve had one case only, failed and then… ”
  “Ah.  Right.”
  “But don’t worry.”
  “No?”
  “No,” she said as we reached a larger desk with two chairs.  She gestured for me to sit in one.  “They’ve tended to be employees recommended by someone else.  He doesn’t employ anyone personally who fails.  He has quite the eye for it.  You’re the first in… ”
  “Shit, so no pressure then?” I said.
  Agatha looked up from the file in front of her and flashed me her bright blue eyes then followed with a smile.  I looked down at the case file.  If I could just get a look inside I could find out what I was supposed to be doing.  Of course I couldn’t let this beautiful, intelligent woman know that I’d totally failed to pick up on what Forsyth had told me.  That would be insanity.  She may be out of my league but you always have your pride, don’t you?
  “So what do you do in here exactly,” I said and waved my hand in the opposite direction of the file.
  Right on cue Agatha looked the other way and I craned across to read upside down.  All I managed to see was the address of a department store in the centre of Kilchester.  Agatha turned back around to see me leaning over the desk towards her, her eyebrows raised for a second, trying to work out what I was doing but she continued unperturbed.
  “We are the brains of this organisation,” she said then leaning in even closer to me and lowering her voice to a husky whisper she added.  “As well as the looks.”
  I didn’t feel it happening but with the sacking business and not knowing what I was supposed to be investigating it didn’t take much to push me over the edge.  She picked up her glasses from the desk and put the arm between her teeth, her dark, brown hair fell forward a little and