Potkin and Stubbs Read online

  Ignoring him, Lil took a bite out of her pastry and chewed on it thoughtfully. ‘Is that why you quit the police force?’

  Mandrel frowned. ‘It felt more like they quit me. I’ve been working for myself for a while now and, let me tell you, I don’t pay well. But I’m not giving up. LeTeef escaped justice once – he won’t a second time.’

  Nedly flicked at the file with a ghostly finger and the paper inside rustled invitingly.

  Mandrel gave an unconscious shudder and continued speaking. Nedly was glaring at the file, the cover gaped a few times like fish gills gasping for air, but Mandrel didn’t notice; he was too wrapped up in his story.

  ‘I hadn’t had a whiff of a clue to LeTeef’s whereabouts until these fires started.’

  Lil raised an eyebrow. ‘The nurse and the security guard?’

  ‘They’re just the latest, the ones that ended in death made the papers but there have been more than thirteen mysterious fires in Peligan over the last year, and they have all targeted former members of the Lucan Road Mob. Of course most of them have different identities now, but I know that crowd, so I’ve been following it, joining the dots. Whoever the Firebug is, he’s going to lead me straight to LeTeef.’

  For the first time Lil saw something of the old Scourge of the Underworld in the grizzled detective. She reached across the table and took his hand. It was the prosthetic one but that didn’t matter. ‘I’ll help you find him,’ she said.

  The detective’s eyes started to fill up and he looked away and cleared his throat. He gave her a look that said he would have squeezed hers back if he had that kind of mechanism available to him.

  Out of the corner of her eye Lil saw the cover of the file swing spookily open like a trap door. She slapped her hand down on top of it, shutting the file with a bang, and making Mandrel jump.

  ‘But first, we need to solve the Ned Stubbs case,’ she said quickly, and then slapped the table again for emphasis.

  Mandrel sighed and blew out his cheeks. ‘I told you already. That case went cold.’

  Lil gave him a stern look. ‘You let it go cold. Show me the case notes.’

  Reluctantly Mandrel reached inside the folder and pulled out a single sheet of paper. ‘Knock yourself out.’ He handed it over.

  Lil read it through; it didn’t take long. ‘This is it?’ She flattened it out on the table so Nedly could see.

  Case File #112

  Ned Stubbs

  Status: Missing.

  Address: Hawks Memorial Orphanage, Bun Hill, Peligan City West

  Family: None. Guardian is Mr E. Kolchak. Address as above.

  Other information:

  The rest was blank.

  ‘This is it?’ Nedly echoed Lil. ‘We sat through that whole story for this?’ He flopped face-down into the plate of pastry crumbs.

  ‘Don’t you have anything?’ Lil asked. ‘Any leads at all?’

  ‘There were no leads. The boy just disappeared. I hate to break it to you, kid, but in Peligan City stuff like that happens all the time.’

  ‘Not on my watch.’ Lil gulped back the rest of her ginger beer and then banged the bottle back down on the table. ‘Someone killed Ned Stubbs and you’re just going to have to take my word for that until I can prove it to you,’ she added darkly.

  The detective gave her a strange look: irritation traced with nostalgia. ‘You’re not going to give up, are you?’

  She folded her arms and looked him hard in the eye. ‘Never.’

  ‘You know, you’re a lot like her – your mum, I mean.’

  Lil’s cheeks turned pink as she untucked her hair and flattened it. ‘I know. It’s the ears.’

  Mandrel snorted, lips curled in a rusty smile. ‘That’s not what I meant, but yeah – you’ve got her ears too.’ He rootled around in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled five-pound note and some coins and laid them on the table. He picked up the discarded Herald that Lil had been reading earlier, ran an eye over the cover story and then rolled it up and stuffed it in his pocket. ‘Anyways, why all the interest? Who’s Ned Stubbs to you?’

  ‘He’s my friend.’

  ‘Was your friend.’ Mandrel got to his feet, perched his hat back on the top of his head, and swung the cafe door open to the rain-splattered world beyond. ‘You said he was dead, remember?’

  Chapter 11

  Liberating the Zodiac

  Once he was out on the street Abe Mandrel’s mood seemed to darken with the failing light. He turned his collar up, pulled the brim of his hat down and with no more than a mumbled ‘See you’, began doggedly sploshing through puddles that everyone else went out of their way to avoid.

  ‘Come on, Nedly. He’s not shaking us off that easily. Hey!’ Lil shouted, running after him. ‘Hey!’

  Nedly ran up behind Mandrel and tried to get his attention by laying a hand on his shoulder. Mandrel spun round and staggered. He searched the empty space that surrounded him. Rain pattered on his hat, and ran down his face.

  He looked at Lil. ‘Did you see that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something.’ Still looking around, he took off his hat, pulled a dirty-looking handkerchief out of his pocket in a shower of crumbs, and wiped his head with it. ‘I’ve had a weird cloud hanging over me ever since I got to the Nite Jar.’

  Nedly gave an apologetic shrug.

  ‘You’ll get used to it,’ Lil murmured and winked encouragingly at Nedly.

  They turned into the Paradise Street All-Night Bus Station and Mandrel joined one of the queues; there was no room left in the shelter so he stood awkwardly at the edge. A steady stream of rain fell from the guttering of the shelter and pooled on the crown of his trilby before trickling over the brim. He pulled out the copy of the Herald that he had taken from the Nite Jar and held it over his head like a roof. Lil stood patiently beside him, protected by the hood of her yellow mac, while Nedly hung back awkwardly at the edge of the queue like the party-goer no one wants to dance with. All around them people were shrugging their coats up and fastening the top buttons against the sudden cold as Nedly’s presence began to take its toll. A woman in a hat shuddered and her baby started to cry.

  ‘So, where are we going?’ Lil asked Abe.

  Mandrel gave her a heavy sigh and begrudgingly held the Herald open wider so it covered Lil too. ‘Don’t you have to be home for tea or something?’

  ‘Mum won’t be home yet; she’s working late. So there won’t be any tea,’ she added. ‘But I suppose if you don’t want to kick around with me I can just go home and sit in the dark on my own until she gets back.’

  Mandrel ground his teeth. ‘I don’t have time to babysit.’ Lil gave him a hurt look and the old detective softened slightly. ‘I’ve got business to attend to.’

  The 64A to Peligan industrial estate via the docks arrived and Abe tipped his hat back and pulled a few coins and some old fluff out of his pocket and paid his fare. Lil followed suit and nodded to Nedly to climb aboard.

  ‘What kind of business?’

  ‘I’ve got to pick up my car. I’m going to need it if we’re reopening the Stubbs case; the orphanage is on the outskirts of town.’

  Lil gave Nedly a triumphant thumbs-up, which was awkwardly returned by a man in overalls who thought she had aimed it at him.

  As they made their way down the narrow aisle Mandrel pulled out a small hipflask from his inside pocket and took a swig. He swung into a seat near the back and looked out of the window while Nedly took the seat behind and Lil piled in next to him. She tapped Mandrel on the shoulder.

  ‘Is your car at the garage?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Did you lend it to someone?’

  ‘Nope.’ He bent down to wave his hand over the heater panel under the seat. ‘The lousy thing isn’t even on!’ He kicked at it with a scuffed shoe. ‘What’s wrong with this bus – it’s freezing in here!’ As if to prove the point, tiny crystals of ice started to form on the misty window. ‘Nothing works in this to
wn!’

  Lil grinned at Nedly who was leaning forward, his elbows resting on the back of Mandrel’s seat. She waited a minute for the detective to stop huffing and puffing then tapped him on the shoulder again.

  ‘I’ll just tag along,’ Lil assured him. ‘You won’t even know I’m here.’

  Mandrel huddled down in his coat and rested his head on the window. He swore when the glass gave him freezer burn and Lil saw the lobes of his ears go scarlet, and then he buried his chin in the collar of his coat and pretended to be asleep.

  Lil watched the city lights get further and further away as they headed out of town towards the river.

  They disembarked at the docks. Mandrel waited for the bus to pull away again and the workers who were on shifts to disperse towards their various places of work, then he ambled off to the left. He wandered for a few steps between the harbour wall and a patchy rubbish-strewn hedge and then dropped and rolled through a gap in the branches.

  Lil walked after him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Get down!’

  Lil crouched down and shuffled over. She whispered, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I told you I’m just here to fetch my car.’

  In front of them was a high wire-mesh security fence topped with barbed spirals. Behind the fence the concrete sloped up gradually and row after row of car windscreens glinted.

  Lil squinted at the ‘Beware of the Dog’ signs. ‘Is this some kind of car park?’

  ‘This isn’t a car park; it’s a …’ He tried to find the words. ‘My car is …’

  Lil noticed the Peligan City Police insignia on the gate. ‘Impounded?’

  ‘Nice work, Sherlock.’ Mandrel stashed his prosthesis in his inside pocket and opened up a wire cutter on his Swiss Army hand. ‘A misunderstanding between myself and a loan company.’

  ‘And now we’re going to steal your car back?’

  ‘One, we’re not going to do anything – what kind of irresponsible moron would I look like if you get caught breaking the law when I’m supposed to be looking out for you? And more importantly, two, stealing is taking someone else’s property. This is my car. I’m going to liberate it.’ He got down on his knees and crawled up to the fence in front of one of the ‘No Entry’ signs and began painstakingly snipping though the sturdy wires that formed the mesh one by one.

  Snip. Snip. Snip. The wires were so tough and close together it took ten minutes for him to cut a twelve-inch slit in the security fence.

  ‘This is going to take you all night.’ Lil stood over him, watching as his jaw clenched and unclenched as though he was chewing on something bitter and hard to swallow.

  ‘I bet I can get in there and find it,’ Nedly offered.

  Lil gave him an encouraging wink and then said to Abe, ‘How are you even going to find it? There must be hundreds of cars in there.’

  Mandrel stopped cutting, tipped his hat back and wiped the sheen of sweat off his brow. ‘Do you mind giving me a bit of room? It so happens that I’ve got a plan.’ He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled map. He laid it on his lap and switched on a pen torch, which he held in his teeth like a cigar. The tiny spotlight traced the layout of the car park with all the grids marked.

  He turned the paper and then turned it again, trying to work out which way up it went. He garbled something unintelligible. Lil took the torch from him.

  ‘I said, the pound is divided into areas. Some cars are here for forensic work, some have been involved in accidents, some have been … Well, anyway, this map will show me whereabouts they are parked. My car would have come in last night so it will be on the end of a row.’ Lil looked at him sceptically. ‘Don’t sweat it, kiddo. I know how stuff like this works. I was a police officer, remember?’ He prised open the wire on either side of the hole he had created as far as it would go.

  ‘So you tell me,’ Lil muttered to herself as she watched the big man in his rumpled mac with the sole coming away from his left shoe, try to squeeze his way through the hole in the fence, snagging the cuff of his sleeve on a metal spoke and tearing it. ‘That hole is too small for you, detective,’ she said helpfully.

  He glared back at her, and then tried to reverse. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  ‘I can do better than that,’ said Lil. ‘I can go in for you.’

  ‘I can cut a bigger hole,’ the detective countered.

  ‘If you’ve got all night. Come on, Abe … You don’t mind if I call you Abe, do you?’

  ‘As it happens, I do –’

  ‘Abe,’ Lil continued, ‘I’ll bet I can find your car in the time it would take you to cut that hole big enough to squeeze through.’ She winked again at Nedly. Abe blew out his cheeks and then deflated them with a sigh. He looked irritably at the mass of cars, the too-small hole in the wire fence and then, finally, at Lil. ‘Trust me, you need my help here,’ she said. ‘You keep working on the fence. I’ll find the car.’

  Before he could answer she had snatched the map and the torch from his hand and nodded Nedly through the gap, following him before Abe could work out what was happening. He barely had time for a ‘What makes you think you can …’ before she vanished.

  A second later she stuck her head back through the hole. ‘Just one question. What kind of car are we looking for?’

  Abe hesitated. ‘It’s a turquoise Ford Zodiac with a busted back light, and the lock on the passenger side doesn’t work. And … there’s a bunch of plastic coconuts hanging on the rear-view mirror.’

  Lil clung to the edges of the car park, holding on to the wire fence as she moved away from the gap. ‘Can you find it, Nedly?’

  ‘I’m on it.’ He ran through the centre of the car park, pausing at each gap in the grid to check for the Zodiac.

  Lil watched him fade into the evening light. Once his footsteps died away he was only a glimmer in the shadows; a minute later and there was no sign of him at all. The car park was silent but for the sounds of the nearby docks: rigging clanking in the breeze and the odd gull screeching as it flew overhead. The water gave off the salt and ammonia smell of the sewers. A whistle cut through the night air. Lil looked in the direction of the sound and saw a shadow coalesce into a boy shape waving his arms over his head.

  ‘It’s here!’ cried Nedly as she drew near.

  The Zodiac had seen better days. The side panels were dented and scored, rust was creeping up from under the wheel arches, the rear bumper was missing, the front tyre looked flat and the number plate was only held on by one screw.

  ‘I can’t believe this is actually the one he wants back,’ said Lil. ‘There must be another turquoise Zodiac here. We’ll have to keep looking.’

  Nedly was peering in through the windscreen. ‘It’s the one.’ He pointed at the three plastic coconuts that dangled from the rear-view mirror like a clutch of shrunken heads.

  ‘Classy,’ grinned Lil.

  ‘Shhh,’ hissed Nedly, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Someone’s there!’ They saw the flicker of a torch – a white beam dancing along the furthest fence. It blinked as the bearer turned it towards them. Nedly pointed to the car. Lil nodded. She crept round to the passenger’s side, where the lock was busted, pulled at the handle and crawled inside, closing the door quietly behind her. The foot well was a nest of discarded stake-out materials: empty cardboard cups, greasy brown-paper bags and serviettes with old ketchup stuck to them. Lil crawled over it all to the relatively clean driver’s side and crouched down beside the pedals.

  A dog started barking. Lil peered out through the window. A few rows away she could see a sleek black-and-tan Rottweiler with a spiked leather collar pulling a guard towards them on a heavy chain. The guard’s torch beam bounced along the windscreens and windows of the parked cars as they passed each one.

  The dog stopped suddenly, twitched its long black nose and let out a rumbling growl like an engine ticking over. It whipped its head round towards the Zodiac and then it launched i
tself in Lil’s direction, almost dragging the guard off his feet. When it was close enough that Lil could see the foam dripping from its jaws she heard Nedly nervously clear his throat and then step out of the shadows towards it. As he approached, the hound skidded to a halt, pinned its ears back, and the fur on its haunches rose. With a throaty snarl its black lips peeled back to reveal pink gums and sharp white fangs.

  Lil gasped and ducked down as low as she could get. She fumbled to lock the door, her hand trembling, and jammed her head under the steering wheel.

  The growl grew louder and more menacing. Lil could hear the guard saying, ‘What is it, girl?’ as the dog snapped at the air in front of it.

  She heard Nedly’s frightened voice yelling: ‘I’m going to draw them off. Get ready to run, Lil.’ Then she heard his footsteps pounding away. There was a shout followed by the zip and clatter of a metal chain being pulled out of someone’s hand and then dragged across concrete by a dog running at full pelt. The sound travelled further away, pursued by the beat of the guard’s footsteps as he tore after it.

  Lil breathed out with relief. She pulled at the door handle and leant forward to climb out but her hood snagged on something under the steering wheel and yanked her backwards. She grabbed it and pulled herself free. She opened the door and saw the slick concrete of the car park roll by beneath her as the car lurched slowly forward. She had to stare at it for a moment before she realised what was happening. She gulped, slammed the door and climbed up onto the seat.

  Although she was riding low and the docks area was poorly lit, Lil could still see the silver glint of a row of parked cars ahead. The Zodiac was moving slowly down through the car park, veering towards them.

  Lil had never driven an actual car before but she’d been on the dodgems at the amusement park a couple of times so she understood steering, and that was all she could do. She heaved the wheel to the right and almost missed the last car in the row, clipping its rear bumper; the impact sent her veering towards the grid of cars on the other side. The Zodiac careened onwards, picking up speed.

  Lil slid down, stretched her legs into the foot well and struck out for a pedal but the seat was too far back and she couldn’t make herself let go of the steering wheel. She wrestled it from side to side, trying to get it to straighten up but she couldn’t get the right balance and the Zodiac began slaloming. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Abe clambering through the hole in the fence. He stared at her in disbelief as she drifted past the last row of cars and then she saw him mouth a swear word before turning on his heel and trying to squeeze his way back through the gap, clutching his hat.