The Third Pig Detective Agency: The Complete Casebook. Bob Burke
over while nibbling the end of my pen. Crosswords really weren’t my strong suit.
As my creative juices attempted to flow I became aware of voices in the outer office. Voices meant more than one person, so Gloria either had a debt-collector or a potential customer on her hands – and there was no one in town more adept at evading debt-collectors than me. Once I heard her say, ‘Mr Pigg is quite busy at present, but I’ll see if he can squeeze you in’, it meant an obviously discerning client wished to utilise my services. I swung my trotters off the desk, smoothed down my jacket as best I could and tried to look busy while squashing the newspaper into the wastebasket with my left trotter.
The intercom buzzed.
‘Mr Pigg,’ crackled Gloria’s deep, husky voice. ‘There is a gentleman here to see you. Should I get him to make an appointment?’
As my diary was conspicuously blank for the foreseeable future I figured that my need for hard cash far outweighed any need to impress a potential punter. I pressed the intercom button.
‘I can see the gentleman now, Gloria,’ I said. ‘Please send him in.’ I stood up to meet my potential cash cow.
Through the opaque glass in the connecting door, I could see a large shape making its way through reception and towards my office. The door slowly opened and an oriental gentleman the size and shape of a zeppelin entered. He was wearing a silk suit, the amount of cloth of which would have made easily the most expensive marquee tent in history, and he was weighed down with enough gold to pay off all of my debts for the next twenty years. His shiny black hair was pulled back from his forehead and tied in a long plait that stretched all the way down his back to a voluminous rear end. The guy exuded wealth – and I hadn’t failed to notice it. If this were a cartoon, dollar signs would be going ‘ka-ching’ in my eyes.
It was time to be ultra-smooth, ultra-polite and ultra-I’m-the-best-detective-you’re-ever-likely-to-meet-and-you-will-be-eternally-grateful-for-employing-me.
I extended my trotter, ‘Mr?’
‘Aladdin,’ he replied, grasping my trotter in a grip like a clam’s. ‘Just call me Mr Aladdin.’
Although I didn’t recognise him, of course I had heard of Aladdin. Everyone in Grimmtown had. He was probably the most famous and most reclusive of our many eccentric citizens – and quite possibly the richest. Rumour had it he owned half of the town but very few people had seen him in recent years, as he preferred to live behind closed doors in a huge mansion in the hills.
His story was the stuff dreams (at least other people’s dreams) were made of. He had started off working in a local laundry. After a few years he bought out the owner although no one knew, despite much speculation and rumour, where the money had come from. Over the years his business had expanded (as had he) and he had begun to diversify. Apart from the chain of laundries he had built up, he owned bars, restaurants, department stores, gas stations and most local politicians. The key word in the above description is, of course, ‘richest’. If Mr ‘Just call me’ Aladdin wanted to employ my services, it would be most churlish of me to turn him down – especially if he was prepared to throw large wads of cash in my direction.
Ka-ching! Ka-ching!
I took a deep breath and prepared to tell my new best friend how wonderful I was and how he had showed exceptional judgement in availing himself of my services.
‘Mr Aladdin, how may I be of service?’
That’s me: cool and straight to the point. Inside, my mind was screaming, ‘Show me the money’, and I was trying not to dance on the table with joy.
Mr Aladdin looked carefully at me, raised his left hand and snapped his fingers.
‘Gruff,’ he said. ‘My bag, please.’
Someone, hidden up to now by his employer’s large mass, walked out from behind him carrying a large leather, and undoubtedly very expensive, briefcase. My heart sank. Things had just started taking a turn for the worse. It always happens to me. Just when I think things can’t get any better, they inevitably don’t and take another downward slide into even more unpleasantness. Aladdin’s employee was a sturdy white goat. Not just any goat however, this was a Gruff. And, unless I was very much mistaken, he was the eldest Gruff.
The Gruffs were three brothers who had come to town a few years ago. After sorting out a little (well big, actually) troll problem we were having at a local bridge (a trollbridge, if you will), they had decided to stay and give the town the benefit of their ‘unique’ skill set – which usually involved threats, intimidation and the carrying of blunt instruments. Starting out as bouncers at ‘Cinders’, one of Grimmtown’s least reputable clubs, they had subsequently branched out into more profitable (and much less legal) operations. Whether it was smuggling live gingerbread men across the border or evicting the old lady in the shoe for not paying the rent, the three billy goats Gruff were usually involved in some capacity.
Eventually the eldest brother had distanced himself from the day-to-day operations of the family business. I’d heard he’d gone into consultancy of a sort usually described as ‘security’, but not much had been seen of him recently. Now I knew why. If he was employed by this particular client, I suspected he worked for him to the exclusion of any others. Mr Aladdin was that kind of employer; apart from total commitment, it was rumoured he also demanded total secrecy from his staff. If Gruff was involved, it stood to reason that there were some less than legal factors of which I was yet to be made aware.
Wonderful!
Gruff handed the briefcase to his boss and looked me up and down.
‘I don’t like you,’ he sneered.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘You don’t like most people.’
‘But I especially don’t like pigs.’
‘Well then, perhaps you’d be more comfortable somewhere else – an empty shoe, a prison cell, maybe propping up a bridge somewhere?’
Snarling, he made to move towards me but his employer restrained him with a large and heavily bejewelled hand. With that amount of rings on his fingers it was a wonder he actually had the strength to lift it.
‘Gentlemen, please. Enough of this petty squabbling! Gruff, keep an eye on the door, will you? There’s a good goat.’
Reluctantly the goat backed towards the door, never taking his eyes off me. I met his gaze all the way. No goat was going to outstare me.
Happy that his employee was a safe (or at least a less-threatening) distance away, Aladdin turned towards me.
‘Might we continue?’ he said.
‘Of course,’ I replied, returning to my chair while, at the same time, ensuring that a large and heavy desk was strategically placed between a highly unstable goat and me. Picking up a letter opener in as non-intimidating a fashion as possible, I began to clean my front trotters and looked expectantly at Aladdin.
‘Mr Pigg,’ he began. ‘You have a reputation as a man – I apologise, of course I mean pig – who not only gets results but knows when to be discreet.’
I nodded politely at the compliment.
‘In my experience, an indiscreet detective doesn’t stay in business too long,’ I pointed out.
‘Nevertheless,’ he continued, ‘in this particular instance, discretion is of paramount importance. I must insist that you do not discuss what I am about to reveal with anyone other than my associate Mr Gruff, and me.’
I nodded, wondering what was going to come next.
Opening the briefcase, Aladdin took out a large sheet of paper. ‘I have recently mislaid an item of immense personal value and I wish you to locate it for me.’
He handed the sheet of paper to me. I looked at it with interest. It was a photograph of a very old and very battered lamp.
‘It’s a lamp,’ I said, stating the blindingly