The Case of the Coloured Kipper

(with apologies to Marlowe, Hammet et al.)

The melancholy building was two storeys of nothing in particular that had got itself stuck between a cut price suit emporium and an Asian drapery, with a dark narrow lobby as dirty as a chicken yard. Etched on the grimy glass panel of the third door was "De'Seesed and partner" except De'Seesed was deceased – he'd retired two years earlier with a donated .38 slug in his blades. I let myself into the smoky room and snarled a good morning to Kitty Rapture. She leaned over and switched off the smoke machine.

'Well you look like something my cat brought up,' she said. Her tongue was sharp, but her figure was round and did things to men. I kicked open the bottom drawer of her desk, trickled two inches of bourbon down my tubes, kissed Kitty on her lush red mouth and set fire to a cigarette. I looked at her ears, liking the way they were joined to her head.

'Any customers?'

'A dame called McClumphy came to see you. A looker. Had a big rope of oyster fruit round her neck. Said she would be back'.

I shimmied to the inner office where I lay down on my bunk and took another snort of the red-eye. Five minutes later an ash blonde with eyes the colour of split peas crashed in. Her chest was heaving and she looked good that way.

'Mr Trowel?' she gasped. I made a noise that could have been 'yes' and waited – I wanted to play it safe.

'Mr Trowel,' she panted, 'you – you've gotta help me.'

'Call me Tam,' I said as nicely as I could.

'Tam,' she said rolling the sound around her kisser. 'I don't think I've heard that name before. Where you from?'

I dummied up; I figured I wasn't giving anything away for free. Her sultry eyes narrowed. I could see she was enjoying the muscular twitching of my shoulders.

'Oh Mr Trowel, Archie thinks I'm trying to poison him, but I swear the kipper was already orange. If only I could find out how they had coloured it. I offered them money but they wouldn't tell!'

'Take it from the beginning babe,' I suggested.

'Well, you've heard of the golden Shakudo Nanako Goto?'.

I shook my head.

'It's a valuable tsuba….Then it disappeared for nearly five hundred years until it turned up last August where a second-hand book dealer named Steele sold it to my husband.

'….And now it's gone,' I finished.

'No,' she said, 'well at least it wasn't an hour ago when I left home.'

I leaned back on my stool and studied her legs. She had a pair of gams to tighten any man's throat. The big rope of oyster fruit shimmered round her neck. I inched along the wall and took a quick gander out of the window. A thin man was reading a newspaper outside a shop two blocks away. He was wearing an Armani beige coat, an Armani beige hat and Armani beige trousers. He was a one man Armani.

I let my cigarette burn down my fingers until it made a red mark. I studied her legs again – this was going to be trickier than I thought.

'Last night I brought home kippers for Archie's dinner - from Tesco's. You know them?'

'Bits of fish, yellow in colour?'

Her eyes darkened, lightened, got darker again. 'How did you know?'

'I haven't been a private op nine years for nothing sister! Go on.'

'I knew something was wrong as soon as Archie screamed and threw his plate at the wall,' she sobbed, 'I tried to tell him it was supposed to be orange but he's been suspicious of me ever since. More so since I made him take out the special life insurance.'

'How much?'

'Three hundred thousand – in case he died of fish poisoning. Oh Tam,' she gasped, 'help me, you gotta find out who dyed the kipper!'

'But what's in it for me?'

'Anything you want.' she whispered, but I grabbed her handbag removing her of five thousand sheets.

'This'll juice the boiler, get me a new bean-shooter and some shells,' I grunted. 'Oh, bye the way - how does the golden tsubu tie in with the kipper?'

'It doesn't,' she sighed, twisting the rock on her finger, 'I just put that in for glamour!'

I leaned out and grabbed her wrists and pulled her towards me, 'I always go for dames named Pocahontas – it was my mothers name,' I said.

'Where'd you learn my name?'

'I haven't been a private snoop twelve years for nothing, babe.'

'I thought you said it was nine?'

'It just seems like twelve,' I held her until she went blue on the lips, and then pushed her out the door. Then I slipped a pint of corn-juice in my pocket, picked up a deck of luckies and went to look for a book-dealer called Robin Steele. I knew he didn't have anything to do with the kippers, but in my business you don't overlook anything.

The thin Armani man had taken the slip by the time I got outside, so I hired a hack to St Boswells, cut over to Newtown, bussed to Kingsknowe then hitched to Selkirk. Somebody could be tailing me so I doubled back to Newtown and hopped a crate to Gala Bank Street, where the second-hand bookshop was.

A greasy sap with a cable sweater told me his name was Steele. His eyes became twisted when I asked if he had anything on fumousus heringus or the common kipper.

'You got the wrong handle mister – you're tooting the wrong ringer,' he squirmed.

'Maybe some spinach'll smarten you up,' I said as I folded a blue note and scratched his chin with it. 'There's more of this for anyone who knows why Pocahontus McClumphy's kipper was orange.' His eyes got small, big, then smaller again.

'I might talk for a tenner.' He nodded through to the back. I took a step forward. Four seconds later my head went off like a Harlem sunset. When I came round, I was licking the floor with my kisser and big Jock from Lothian and Borders was leaning over me.

'Someone coshed me,' I grunted.

'Yeah, his name was Oxford. Oxford unabridged,' and he held up a copy of the dictionary. 'You tripped, and this fell on your brain cage.' He pointed over to where Robin Steele lay slumped over a sweaty pile of westerns. 'He passed out cold when he saw you take a fall.'

I covered up, letting Jock play his game. I wasn't showing my hand until I knew what game I was playing. I sidled off to Macarie's where I spent the next twenty minutes shooting caffeine and thinking. I was sitting next to a punk who could have been Northern Latvian, but wasn't. I set fire to a gasper and headed out. I needed to get to a horn. I found an empty blower booth and put a call through to a geezer I knew over Grundison Heights. Worked a small delicatessen counter in Safeway. It took a while to get the juice because it was a bad line and the dick had been dead two years, but I don't give up that easy.

By the time I got back to the office, via Earlston and Charlesfield to cover my tracks, all the pieces were in place. Or so thought until she appeared from my wall cupboard with a heater pressed up against my beezer. It was a Derringer multi-barrel rotating striker with a .357 Magnum cartridge.

'Get them up gum-shoe!' Pocahontus McClumphy's voice was colder than an icebox but her Armani dress was smokin' hot. 'So - you found out about the tainted kipper?' she sneered,

'Yeah – easy. It was Sunset Yellow E110 with Tartrazine. And all you had to do was add a slug of nux vomica commonly recognised as a member of the Loganiaceae family, or Strychnine - to your husband's fish. You knew it wouldn't show up when the croaker did the post-mortem! It would be masked by the monosodium glutamate allergy your husband had! Then you and playboy Chris Tobalz would collect on the policy and lay low in Peebles till the heat died down. But you didn't count on me!'

'You,' she laughed, 'what are you gonna do about it?'

'This.' I snarled as I twisted the rug from beneath her and she went down like a fish. The bullet whinnied past me into the roof as I scissored over the desk and pinned her to the wall.

'Tam.' Suddenly her body was soft and the voice was limp. 'Don't turn me in. You cared for me – once.'

'Too bad Pocahontus. You'd only double-cross me again.' I said.

'Oh darling, don't you see we'd be real good together. Don't call copper!'

There was a silence in the room, only broken by Kitty's breathing against the keyhole. I picked up the blower and dialled through to the Lothian and Borders Police clubhouse.

For ten minutes after they carried her away to the cooler I sat alone in empty silence, only broken by Kitty's breathing against the keyhole, watching the lights outside come on, then off, then on, then off and on again. I soaked my pipes with some giggle juice and made for Kitty's desk outside. She scowled at me from her copy of 'National Enquirer'.

'Need me any more tonight boss?'

'Nope,' I answered and dropped a pair of C's on her lap. 'Here - buy yourself some new glad rags and ice for those fingers.'

'So Tam - you figured out the red-herrings?' Kitty sneered, folding the bills down into her cleavage.

'No red-herrings babe,' I smiled, 'just an orange kipper…….'