The Third Pig Detective Agency: The Complete Casebook. Bob Burke
either of the ogres (which would be rather foolish) or me or even try to make a break for it, the only break you will experience will be a random assortment of your limbs. Understood?’
Benny nodded ever so slightly. I looked at Lewis and he dropped the goblin with such force that he lay on the ground groaning pitifully. I nudged him with my shoe.
‘C’mon Benny, up you get. If you need some help you only have to ask. Either Mr Lewis or Mr Carroll will be only too delighted to assist you.’
This suggestion seemed to give Benny some incentive as he struggled to his feet slowly and, I have to add, with a lot less style than I had shown previously. Maybe he just didn’t have as much practice at getting up as me.
‘OK, Benny, your starter for ten: where’s the lamp?’
Benny looked up at me with an expression that would have made his mother clutch him to her chest and console him with lots of ‘there, theres’. Fortunately for both of us I wasn’t his mother so he didn’t get the sympathy vote from me. He also spared me the ‘what lamp?’ routine, presumably as even he could figure out exactly how much I already knew and that I wasn’t prepared to tolerate being messed around any more – or maybe it was just the large and very obvious presence of my two companions. Despite this, however, his reply was only marginally more helpful (which wasn’t saying a lot).
‘I don’t have it,’ he gasped.
‘Not a good answer, Benny,’ I said. ‘I’d have thought that by now you’d realise there is no point in playing dumb – or, in your case, even more dumb than usual – with us. We’re really not in the mood.’
‘No, really, I don’t have it. Honest.’ From the fearful look on his face I suspected that he was finally telling the truth. Now all I had to do was find out what he had done with the lamp, get it back to Aladdin, pocket a large pay packet and wallow in the satisfaction of a job well done. Smiling with anticipation, I asked the obvious question again and received a not-so-obvious answer that wiped the smirk off my face and plummeted me even deeper into the murk that was Grimmtown’s underworld.
‘One last time, where’s the lamp, Benny?’
‘Edna has it,’ he answered.
I looked at him, dumbfounded. ‘Edna?’ I repeated.
He nodded his head gingerly. ‘Edna,’ he said with more conviction.
‘Edna, as in Edna?’
He nodded again. ‘Yep, that’s her.’
‘Please tell me you’re joking and this is just another idiotic attempt to throw me off the track,’ I begged, but I knew Benny was telling the truth, I just didn’t want to believe it. I just wanted him to suddenly spring to his feet and yell, ‘Gotcha! I had it in me rucksack all the time.’ I knew this wouldn’t happen. Quite apart from the fact that he could barely stand anyway, his entire demeanour suggested he was being truthful – and without being coerced any further, either.
If Edna was involved, I needed to tread very carefully indeed. In actual fact I needed to run very quickly in the opposite direction if I wished to retain the use of all my limbs. This was more like a Harry Pigg case: lots of different people vying to be the next to hurt me in new and interesting ways while I manfully (or pigfully) tried to represent my client to the best of my ability (and he was one of those people threatening to hurt me). I figured I’d get whatever information Benny hadn’t yet imparted and then decide whether it would be more advisable to get the next bus out of town or stay and get beaten up at least one more time.
‘OK Benny, let’s take it from the top – and don’t leave anything out.’
‘Emerald Isle of Adventure? Are you serious?’
Benny nodded glumly. ‘Emerald Isle of Adventure,’ he repeated. Repetition tended to happen a lot when you talked to Benny. It helped him focus.
‘You really were going to call the theme park that?’ This beggared belief. I knew Benny was as dumb as a bucket of shrimp, I just didn’t realise the extent of his stupidity. This master plan of his plumbed new depths of imbecility.
Benny and his ‘Brains’ Trust’ of gnomish friends had decided that, with the proliferation of successful and highly profitable theme parks based on our illustrious history that had sprung up all around Grimmtown, it might be a rather splendid idea to develop one based around Ireland and its past, him and his buddies being leprechaun impersonators and all. ‘A sure fire hit’ was how he’d described it. So far I had been regaled with how it would include Finn McCool’s Rollercoaster of Terror, the Lucky Leprechaun Log Flume and the Find the Crock o’ Gold Hall of Mirrors. When you eventually grew tired of all the excitement you could then relax in Mother Ireland’s Bacon and Cabbage Emporium with a nice Guinness.
Now I like my thrills as much as the next man – except in this case seeing as the next man was Benny – but I just didn’t think this particular wonderland had the necessary pizzazz. In fact, if it managed to draw more than twenty gullible tourists on the day it opened (if it ever did), I’d eat my own head.
To cut a long, very rambling and disjointed story short (and to spare you many tedious digressions, pauses and nonsensical musings, because I know even your patience would wear very thin), Benny had put an ad in the local press describing the concept and seeking investors for this sure-fire hit. To his – and no one else’s – surprise, the take-up on the proposal was less than stellar but, just as he was about to abandon his plan, he received an email (and yes the address was [email protected]) promising him a very large investment in the scheme in return for a very small favour. This favour (and I’m sure you can see what’s coming, even if Benny couldn’t) involved Benny and the boys using their burrowing skills to recover an artifact that had allegedly been stolen from this mysterious benefactor many years previously. The story was embellished by references to family heirlooms, dastardly thieves, a poor granny pining for her long-lost lamp and, of course, the dangling of the incentive of part of the investment up front with the rest to follow upon successful delivery of the lamp. Benny had swallowed it hook, line, sinker, fishing rod and angler.
The down payment had arrived and Benny had acquired the lamp – which considering his track record had to qualify as a spectacular success. All he then had to do was deliver it and the Emerald Isle of Adventure would be a reality. As you can imagine, the delivery hadn’t gone according to plan – hardly surprising when you consider who the delivery boys were.
Benny and his band of idiots had begun making their way to the drop-off point. If the sight of a band of gnomes trying to look furtive while walking through the busiest part of town dressed in lurid green outfits didn’t grab attention, the same group babbling on loudly about how they were going to spend their newly-acquired fortune surely would. Unfortunately for them, it grabbed the attention of two of Edna’s henchmen.
Now I need to digress slightly here, as I’m sure you’re asking, ‘Who is Edna?’ and ‘Why does she want to divest those poor unfortunate gnomes of their one chance of a happy ending?’ The answer to the second question is easy once you understand the first. Edna is one of a group of four witches who basically run all of Grimmtown’s organised crime – a kind of Mezzo-sopranos or Contraltos, if you will. They’ve unofficially divided the town up into four districts and Edna runs the West Side – hence her title: the Wicked Witch of the West Side. Their control of all criminal activity is total. Nothing illegal moves without them knowing about it or profiting from it to some extent. They are a family I had kept well clear of over the years and I had no wish to alter that status any time soon. If, however, Edna did have the lamp, then that was a wish that was evidently about to come true, despite my best efforts to the contrary.
‘So,’ I said to Benny, ‘to summarise