Zorilla At Large! (3 page)

“Yes, they do look sweet,” Jeff Newton roused Harry Henry from his contemplations. “But don't get too close or she'll have your arm off.”

Harry Henry blinked. “Really?”

Jeff laughed. “No, not really. But she can give you a nasty nip - and there is her derriere to take into account.”

“Her d - ?”

“The business end.” He mimed, complete with sound effects, an explosion.

“Oh,” said Harry Henry. He edged away from the cage.

“Bloody hell,” said Jeff. “I've just been talking to two of your lot in my office. You might know them. Young chap and a greasy fellow with a porn star moustache.”

“Um...” Harry Henry was noncommittal.

“Anyone would think you lot had never had to catch a wild animal before.”

“We haven't.”

“Good. You should leave it to the experts. Now, you've got the easy job. When the Mayor arrives, leave the talking to me. I'll tell him you don't speak any English. It'll just be handshake, handshake, and cheese for the camera. Let's get it done. Nice bit of publicity before word gets out about poor Doctor Kabungo.”

“Um...”

“But you'll have to come over here. Stand a bit closer to the beast or you won't be in the photo.”

“Um...”

“Oh, come on; you're not scared of it, are you? It won't hurt you. Come on!”

“It's not that,” said Harry Henry, fumbling in his jacket pockets for a pack of tissues. “I'm allergic, you see. To dander and what-have-you.”

“Well, this'll only take five minutes. The Mayor will have a ten-course lunch to get to, I expect. Ah, here they are now. Brace yourself.”

***

“To sum up: no one has seen anything.” Brough's voice echoed in the Railway Hotel's dingy function room. He sounded pissed off but then he'd been irritable since he came back. Miller noticed he wasn't wearing socks, which was most unlike him. Perhaps they don't have socks in Los Angeles.

“People don't want trouble,” said Miller. “You don't want it broadcast that you're booked in at the Railway Hotel. Discretion is the better part of wossname. You keep your head down.”

“You paint a vivid picture, Miller.” Brough draped himself across a chair in melodramatic fashion. “What a waste of time!”

“Perhaps the CCTV footage will show something,” Miller tried to sound optimistic. “Usually does.”

Brough emitted a groan.

“I know it's not the kind of film you're used to,” she continued, “but honestly, David, while you're still on the job, try to focus.”

He glared at her.

“And while we're ‘on the job' as you so prosaically put it, you don't get to call me David.”

Miller gave up. She went to chase up Barry Morgan for the CCTV footage, leaving Brough to check his phone. But Hollywood star Oscar Buzz had sent no messages.

Time difference, I expect, Brough told himself. In Australia it's already tomorrow.

***

“Well, it won't be here, will it?” said Pattimore at the kerb. Heavy traffic trundled past, its flow around the roundabout interrupted every few yards by sets of traffic lights. “It'd never get across this road.”

“Don't underestimate the furry fuckers,” said Stevens, jabbing at the button repeatedly. The little man above it remained a resolute red. “Call of the wild, isn't it? Creature like that operates on instinct. All they think about is filling their bellies and emptying their ball sacks. Propagating the species. Feeding and fucking.”

“Reminds me of somebody,” said Pattimore archly.

“Too fucking right,” said Stevens. “And that little fucker must be hungry, so he'll have followed his conk here.”

He gestured to a small gathering of fast food outlets standing before Dedley's multiplex cinema. “Stands to reason. There's always food and shit all over the place. Discarded chicken bones and what-have-you. The rats have a field day.”

“It's not a rat, it's a weasel.”

“Potato, po-tah-to. Same difference.”

The little red man was replaced by a little green one accompanied by insistent beeping. Stevens jogged across the road. Shaking his head, Pattimore followed.

“So, we check all the bushes, do we? Or are you going to lie on the path and pretend to be a chicken drumstick?”

“Fuck that,” said Stevens. He jerked his head towards the nearest establishment. “Let's try in here.”

Pattimore peered through the restaurant's tinted windows. It was already bustling with an early lunchtime crowd. “To see if anyone's seen anything.”

Stevens pulled a face. “You can if you want. I'm after the peri-peri wings.”

“Following your belly,” said Pattimore. Oh well, he consoled himself as he traipsed after the detective inspector over the threshold of
Sam ‘n' Ella's Chicken Shack
, at least he's not looking for a fuck.

***

Harry Henry was sweating. He was not used to being undercover and even though this particular cover demanded no more of him than smiles and nods and handshakes, he could not rid himself of the terrible sensation of foreboding. It could all go belly-up at any second.

Flashes from the cameras blinded him. The Mayor of Dedley was no more than a fuzzy silhouette at the end of Harry's fingers. Voices were haranguing him to ‘look this way' and to lift up his chin; Harry was careful not to respond to them, remembering that his cover was not supposed to understand English.

That Jeff bloke was there, spouting about the valuable gift - the ‘zorilla' - and the partnership it symbolised between two nations. Some rubbish about the stripes along its back: the white helping the black to stand out, and vice versa. Borderline racist, thought Harry Henry and then remembered not to react.

His nose began to itch. The animal was still covered and Harry had been careful to position the Mayor between himself and the cage. But still his nose was itching.

Harry's breath caught in the back of his throat. His eyes screwed tightly shut. Mouth open and gasping, Harry threw back his head.

And sneezed.

His spectacles flew off and hit the Mayor on the nose. The sneezes kept coming. Loud, wet sneezes that sounded like a man falling down a well and felt like the splash he made when he hit the bottom. Harry couldn't stop. He stumbled blindly around, sneezing and blinking at the camera flashes. The Mayor backed away. He knocked the covered cage from the table.

A couple of councillors bravely put themselves between His Worship and the relentless sneezing. Was it some kind of terrorist attack, they wondered? Some kind of germ warfare?

Harry Henry staggered around. Someone said something to him in Swahili but it might as well have been Martian. Someone else swore at him in good old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon but Harry was too preoccupied with his nasal expulsions to respond.

His fingers closed around the handle of a water jug. He picked it up and drenched his head. Breathless, he collapsed onto the table top.

“My dear fellow,” it was Jeff Newton, “Are you quite all right?”

“Fur...” Harry Henry managed to say between pants. He gestured frantically at his lapels. “The Mayor... he had ermine on his jacket.”

“Christ alive,” Jeff Newton muttered. He surveyed the aftermath of the chaos. The Mayor had already been bundled out. The press were still snapping pictures.

His heart sank when his gaze fell on something on the floor. The cage. The cage was empty.

There was now a second zorilla at large.

Chapter Three

Chief Inspector Wheeler called Brough, who put the call on loudspeaker for Miller's benefit. They were still at the Railway Hotel, alone in the banqueting hall - a grimmer venue Brough could not envisage although Miller thought a few balloons and floral displays would make it just the ticket for a wedding reception.

“Preliminary results am in,” Wheeler's voice blared. “Doctor Kabungo died as a result of blood loss from injuries sustained to his throat. Three slashes did for him, severing his oesophagus and his jugular.”

“Any idea what he was slashed with, Chief?”

“Good question, Miller. The forensic pathologist is thinking along the lines of an animal attack. Claws.”

Brough wrinkled his nose, then realised Wheeler couldn't see that reaction so he said he thought that was unlikely.

“Oh, you are there!” said Wheeler. “Thought you were away with the fairies. Well, I think so and all. I think it's more likely blades of some kind. I've got a bet on with the Superintendent. Now, what have you uncovered at the Railway Hotel?”

“Not much,” said Miller. Brough kicked her under the table. “Ow! I mean, so far our diligent efforts have not resulted in any promising leads.”

“If it had been an animal, there'd be more clues,” added Brough. “The very lack of evidence suggests an all-too-human perpetrator.”

“Woo-hoo!”

“Chief?”

“Just mentally spending my winnings. Fucking yes!”

“Chief,” Miller dared to interrupt the Chief Inspector's premature celebrations. “Do you think - do they say? - it's three blades and one slash or one blade slashing three times?”

“Another good question. Fuck me, Miller; have you been on the energy drinks or what? They reckon it's three all at the same time, given the angle of the slashes and all the rest of it. And now all this talk of slashing is making me need one myself. I'm off before I piss myself. Ta-ra.”

The line went dead.

“Perhaps...” Miller was thinking out loud, “perhaps there's something in the hotel with three blades... Something in the kitchen maybe...”

She looked at Brough, who was gazing blankly into space. She paid him back the kick under the table.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“We've got work to do. Stop daydreaming about your bloody billionaire boyfriend and concentrate!”

Brough's nose wrinkled at the accusation. “I wasn't, actually, Miller. I was just wondering, if you must know, why this place is called the Railway Hotel when Dedley doesn't even have a station?”

***

Stevens sat back and belched loud enough to draw the attention of the diners at the surrounding tables. Peri-peri sauce clung to his moustache. Pattimore was both embarrassed and disgusted. The salad he had plumped for remained largely untouched on the plate before him. He found himself missing the more genteel table manners of David Brough, who would never dream of eating a burger without a knife and fork.

“Good bit of chicken, that.” Stevens declared. “I feel like tossing the bones over my shoulder.”

“Please don't. We ought to be getting back to work.”

“Getting back? I've never stopped. All the while you've been sat moping there like a smacked arse, I've been watching the bushes out there.” Stevens nodded over Pattimore's shoulder to the artfully placed square of hedge through the window. “Come on. Bring some of that lettuce; you never know.”

Stevens wrapped his chicken bones in a napkin, left twenty quid on the table and, sucking his moustache, stalked toward the exit. It was left to Pattimore to bring the zoo-keeping equipment.

“Going fishing?” asked a waitress, holding the door open for him.

Pattimore smiled thinly. “Something like that.”

“Because if it's environmental health, we've sorted out that business with the-”

“It's not!” Pattimore interrupted; he didn't want to hear about any environmental health issues the restaurant may have had, sorted out or ongoing.

He found Stevens on all fours peering into the hedge, and holding out a chicken bone. He was making clicking noises with his tongue.

“Bloody hell,” gasped Pattimore. “Don't tell me you've found it!”

“Will you shut the fuck up?” Stevens hissed over his shoulder. “There's something in here. I'm trying to lure it out. Give us that lettuce in case it's vegetarian.”

“Animals aren't vegetarian,” said Pattimore. “They're herbivores. Or carnivores, if they eat other animals. Or omnivores, if they like a bit of both.”

“Well, in case this thing is bi, chuck us that salad. And get ready with that hoop.”

Pattimore prepared himself with the snare on a stick. He held his breath. Stevens peered into the bush. “Here, puss-puss,” he urged. Pattimore rolled his eyes.

“Fuck it!” Stevens cried as something bolted from under the bush. He fell over. Pattimore swatted at the thing with the stick but it darted between his legs and along the path. They lost sight of it when it reached the monument to Jim Fish, a local man who had gone to Hollywood in the 1920s and had directed such early classics as
The Abomination
, and
Bride of
the Abomination
. It was a peculiar piece of public art: strips of celluloid fashioned from bronze, atop a huge concrete pile of circular film cans. Pattimore supposed it made sense, to have it near the multiplex and supposed Brough would be able to tell him more about the artistic style and composition and symbolics and all that shit.

I must stop missing him, Pattimore scolded himself. I fucked it up between us and my punishment is to go without him.

“Did you see it?” Stevens scrambled to his feet. “Come on!” He tore along the path and rounded the Jim Fish monument. Pattimore chased his partner around the base. “Where the fuck is it?”

“Are you sure that was it? It wasn't a cat or something?”

“A cat? A fucking cat would never get across that road.”

“But a wild weasel would?”

“It was it! I'm fucking telling you.”

“Well, it's gone now, whatever it was.”

“Shit.”

Pattimore glanced around. Paths led off in all directions from the monument, slicing through a grassy area. Beyond was the car-park and the main entrance to the cinema. Behind were industrial units and the busy double-dual carriageway.

Where could it have gone?

“It's probably under one of the cars,” Stevens said with a sniff. “Plenty of wheels to hide behind. Go on; you start at one end and we'll meet in the middle. We'll rout the bastard out into the open.”

“It was probably a rat, you know. You said it yourself, there's shitloads of them around here. Because people keep leaving their chicken bones all over the place.”

“Let's apprehend the suspect first, shall we, before we rule it out of our enquiries.”

Pattimore was surprised. Stevens was actually right for once.

***

In one respect, Harry Henry was feeling better. The sneezing had stopped and his breathing was back to normal. On the other hand, he felt terrible. He felt responsible for the escape of the second zorilla. Jeff Newton had told him not to worry about it - which was kind of him, although Harry Henry detected more than a hint of ‘Get out of my sight' in the zoo official's tone. Newton had retired to his office, to coordinate the second search from there. All that remained for Harry was to gather his things and head back to Serious to face the music. That music, emanating from Chief Inspector Wheeler would be something akin to rugby songs delivered by an operatic soprano with bellyache and bloodlust. Harry Henry was not looking forward to it.

He changed out of his muumuu and back into his tweeds. He snatched up his holdall and headed for his Beetle.

Not a good day at the office. Well, that was the problem: if he'd been allowed to stay in the office, none of this would have happened. It was being out of the office and pretending to be someone else that had led to this debacle.

He fastened his safety belt and started the engine. Behind him, on the backseat, his holdall bulged and rippled.

Harry Henry headed back to Serious. He put a classical music station on the radio, hoping for something to soothe his ruffled feathers, or something rousing he could get his teeth into.

The
1812 Overture
was playing. Perfect. Harry beat the steering wheel with the heel of his hand in time with the melody, singing along. It cheered him up.

His eyes caught sight of something in the rear-view mirror. Two black beads were glinting over his shoulder.

“Flipping heck!” Harry swerved. A zorilla was perched on the headrest. It sprang over his shoulder and landed in his lap.

Angry motorists struck their horns with no respect for Tchaikovsky's metre. Harry Henry froze. He tried to keep the car in one lane as he searched for somewhere to pull over.

The zorilla padded around in a circle on the detective's lap. It settled down for a nap.

“Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!” Harry Henry wailed through gritted teeth. He pulled into a layby. A lorry blared past. The zorilla looked up, transfixing Harry. It got to its tiny feet and circled again - but not all the way around this time.

“Oh, no! Oh, no! Please don't!” Harry quailed.

But there was no reasoning with the zorilla. It lifted its tail.

Harry Henry screamed and flailed as the car filled with the worst stench he had ever encountered.

***

Jeff Newton was enjoying respite from the madness for five minutes in his office. Two creatures on the loose - and not to mention an important international visitor murdered. He consoled himself with the time-honoured notion that there, apparently, is no such thing as bad publicity. The events would certainly draw attention to the zoo; there was no doubt about that.

He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes.

He hoped those idiots who blundered around calling themselves Serious detectives would somehow bring about a satisfactory resolution, catch the killer, catch the zorillas, and then things could get back to something approximating normality.

He became aware that someone had entered the office. Lindsey, probably. Bringing the coffee he'd asked for. Silly girl had never grasped the basics of office etiquette, like knocking the bloody door.

And now she was hovering, instead of just putting the mug down and buggering off. All right, she was a volunteer and the zoo was grateful for all the volunteers and their efforts but honestly-

He straightened in the chair and opened his eyes. His mouth hung open, the castigation he'd intended to level at doe-eyed Lindsey died in his throat.

There was no one there. Furthermore, there was no mug of coffee on his desk.

Useless girl. What was she doing, harvesting the beans herself?

He got to his feet. It looked like he was going to have to make his own bloody coffee.

It was an outrage.

No, it's not, he scolded himself. It's been a tough couple of days. You're overwrought. It's not Lindsey's fault. Perhaps there's some decaff...

Before he could open the door, a shadow loomed over him as the figure that had been squatting out of his line of sight drew itself up to its full height. Jeff spun around. The furry figure towered over him.

“What the-”

Jeff never got to complete his question. The furry figure slashed at him with its front limb. Clutching at his throat, Jeff dropped to his knees, and then fell flat on his face. His lifeblood pumped from his severed vessels and pooled around his body.

The furry figure stepped over him and left.