Free The Defective Detective : Cat Chaser by Adam Maxwell Page B

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.”
 
    ~*~

Chapter 2
     

      “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