The Ho Ho Ho Mystery (11 page)

T
wo days later I was back at work.

What about holidays? I hear you say, but a detective’s work is never done. Anyway, I was looking for something to occupy myself. Having spent Christmas in close proximity to a flatulent ex-genie who snored like a foghorn had left me understandably eager to get out of the apartment.

Once more I was in the office, feet up on my desk, enjoying the silence (and the lack of unpleasant odours). At the other side of the desk, Jack Horner was showing me what he’d got from Santa, which, considering the part he’d played in the rescue, was a substantial haul indeed. Apparently his mother had been more than a little surprised at the amount of gear heaped under the Horner tree on Christmas morning.

I was basking in the satisfaction of a job well done. Santa had been delivered back to the North Pole just before
midnight, just in time to commence deliveries. I’d asked him how long the job would take once he’d frozen time and set off on his journey.

‘About twenty-four years, give or take a day or so. Our record is twenty-one years, three months, two days and twelve seconds but we were much younger then,’ he’d said, a tad ruefully.

‘Let me get this straight. Every Christmas Eve it takes you about twenty-five years to get around the world, delivering presents to everyone then you get home and start the whole thing all over again?’

‘That’s about right, yes.’

Wow, and I thought I had a tough job.

Jack’s chattering interrupted my thoughts.

‘Harry, there’s a few things I don’t understand.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Well, Kohl got away, didn’t he? Won’t the police lock up Ali Baba ’cause they still think he did it?’

‘They still suspect him, that’s true, but now that he knows Kohl did it, he can ensure enough evidence is planted at the various crime scenes to incriminate him.’

‘You mean he’s going to frame him?’ Jack sounded indignant.

‘Well, I don’t think it’s considered framing someone when they’ve actually committed the crime, do you?’

‘I suppose not,’ said Jack doubtfully. ‘But what about Danny Emperor?’

‘Well, you can imagine his surprise when he went to his warehouse yesterday and everything had been put back exactly where it had been before Ali Baba had taken it. That was the deal I made with Ali and, in fairness to him, he stuck to it. Danny still has a faint suspicion he might have hallucinated the robbery and who am I to dissuade him from that thought? At least we got a few suits for Basili out of it, seeing as Danny was so grateful.’

‘Yeah, that’s not a bad thing. Basili’s yellow outfit is a bit … um … loud.’

I stood up and slapped Jack on the shoulder. ‘That’s true,’ I laughed. ‘Come on, let me buy you lunch.’

Jack sat there with a frown on his face. ‘There’s one thing that I don’t understand though.’

‘Only one?’

Jack ignored my insult. ‘Well, if the time travel thing is such a big secret and only the Santas know about it, apart from us, of course,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘How then did Kohl know about it? He had to know about it in order to carry out the robberies in the first place, didn’t he?’

‘You know, Jack, that’s a very good question.’ It was a very good question – and one I’d spent quite an amount of time thinking about over the previous few days. I wasn’t going to tell Jack, but I had a sneaking suspicion that there was more going on here than we knew about. Somebody
had tipped Kohl off and I didn’t think that somebody was Santa or anyone in his immediate circle. Something told me we hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of this particular mystery. Call it a hunch if you like but my detective senses had been tingling since Christmas Eve. Something was brewing; I was certain of it and this case had only been the beginning. There was more to what went on than met the eye and I was convinced that I was going to be involved whether I liked it or not.

But today wasn’t the day to be worrying about it. I needed to treat Jack to a well-earned lunch.

We were on our way out of my office when there was a timid knock on the door.

There goes lunch,
I thought.

I opened the door to a very petite, very pale and very obviously frightened young woman.

‘Can I help you, madam?’ I asked.

The woman was clearly on the verge of tears.

Not another one, I thought. Why do they gravitate towards me?

‘Please, Mr Pigg, I need your help. My name is Muffet, Matilda Muffet, and I’m having a terrible spider problem.’

The End
The Third Pig Detective Agency will return
in
The Curds and Whey Mystery

Again, a whole raft of people contributed hugely to getting this book on the shelves.

As always, thanks are due to Scott and Corinna at The Friday Project for their work in making
The Ho Ho Ho Mystery
presentable in the first place. The comments that came with with the edits were worth the admission price alone!

To my agent, Svetlana, for the support, advice and help and for educating me in the mysterious and arcane ways of the publishing industry – and she makes great jam too.

To all those who offered help, advice and assistance over the past few years : Darren Craske (great writer, buy his books now), Guy Saville (great writer, buy his book when it comes out in 2011), all at CBI, David Maybury, Dooradoyle and Adare libraries (again), and all those places around Limerick that have great coffee and a quite corner to write in. It all adds up folks.

Above all, thanks to my family, Gemma, Ian, Adam and Stephen for ‘encouraging me’ to be in front of the computer at 9:30 every day and for ensuring my feet were firmly fixed
on the ground during the process. No chance of any airs and graces with you lot around!

Ian: please be advised that beating me once at Pro Evo Soccer does not make you better than me.

Adam: Bazinga!

Stephen: they won the Premiership and the FA Cup, Drogba ended up the top scorer by a country mile, isn’t it about time you admitted that Chelsea are far superior to Manchester United in every way? No? All right then, they’ll just have to do it again.

The Friday Project
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published by The Friday Project in 2010

Copyright © Bob Burke 2010

1

Bob Burke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-00-736401-5

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-36402-2

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