Under His Thumb

second installment of Mr. Jack. So read that first.

The quaint little inn-sign swung gently in the mild mountain breeze. A pair of stiletto heeled leather boots, hardly recognizable in their effort to look non-anachronistic, rested lightly over dainty lettering that spelt ‘The New Carabas’. The cottage was on a cliff-top, overlooking an extremely rocky coast – with no other sign of human existence anywhere in sight – unless you happened to look over the cliff and down at the sliver of a beach, which was spotted with tourists all year round. A young goat tethered to the window shutters looked quizzically at me as I flattened my hair in front of the tinted pane, before walking in.

Two seconds. That’s all I took to adjust to the darkness inside. Unfortunately, that’s all he took to react to my entrance, reach under the counter, pull his knife out, leap over the counter, lock my hands together in a tight squeeze behind me and press the blade sharp against my neck.

Another two seconds passed as both of us assessed the situation. The room was small – with wooden panels and a wooden ledge, a continuation of the counter, which ran along the length of three walls. Pushed against this ledge were a number of roughly hewn stools. Two soft yellow bulbs hung from the ceiling at two ends of the counter.

“You don’t look like a Catherine – who are you?” The raspy words were hissed into my ear, as wet and hot as the blade against my neck was dry and cold.

Catherine. Carabas. The stilettos. Of course. Of course I wouldn’t be the only one on this job.

“Likewise, mate. Although I haven’t seen much of you – but you don’t sound like a Catherine either.”

I was standing right next to the door, in front of the ledge – a slight movement, and my shin brushed against the hard leg of a stool just behind me – where my attacker’s legs were supposed to have been.

The edge of the blade cut into my skin, bringing a thin line of blood welling up to meet the sharp metal.

“No jokes – who are you?”

I kicked up hard against the stool behind. It toppled forward, sending its occupant off balance – and his knife wielding hand forward – away from my neck. Simultaneously, I butted my head back against what I assumed was his face, dodged under his arm and spun around – my hands grasped tightly around his arms this time, as he reeled back and fell on his bottom on the ledge.

A tiny man, about half my height, with a small bald patch on the top of his head and a hair cut that would make any barber cry. And, most importantly, clasped around a mean looking short blade: a right thumb that was exactly as long as his fore finger.

“Tom.” I smiled, wrenching his knife out of his grasp. “Your reputation precedes you. I haven’t had the pleasure – but no time’s too late for a hallo.”

His eyes traveled down to my belt. “Taylor,” he spat. “What are you doing here?”

“Surely you’ve guessed. Shouldn’t be too far from what you’re doing, I suppose. Where there’s smoke there’s fire – and where there’re goat shaped holes in the universe…”

Tom tried to make a dash for the door – but my foot came in the way. I knelt down closer, as he lay sprawled on the floor. “… There’s usually a Tom spiriting them away to the Big Guys for a cut. That animal outside – is she yours?”

Tom squirmed. If he hadn’t been slicing away at my throat a while ago, I’d have felt quite sorry for him at this point.

“Or, seeing as her pink collar says: ‘I’m Maribel, please return me to Clara Doris, 128 Palm Lane,’ – is she not?”

Livestock. Back in the old days, the main problem we used to have with giants, ogres and your other average countryside villain was that they kept stealing our livestock – and since they were always much bigger and stronger than us, they kept getting away with it, too. Big creatures have big appetites – and these big creatures had no idea about investing in their own animal farms.

That was a thousand years ago. Today, most hungry owners of toppling columns of gold have learnt to thrive on their own cattle farms. There’s even an old ‘acquaintance’ of mine in Kentucky who’s tried his hand with poultry. Most giants and ogres I’ve met were only waiting for a small scare to send them investing their gold in honest places – and by honest I don’t mean the shadowy grey honesty of today’s cattle or poultry farming. But some others never learn. And in my experience, it’s only a matter of time before a few innocent goats become all the livestock in the entire district – and then, when there are no four-legged creatures left to satiate the hunger, proceed to becoming the people populating that district. If there’s anything that can eat the world up faster than we can – it’s them.

Tom, I’ve heard, started off in this business very soon after he couldn’t find any more kings to butter up and impress enough to pay for his keep. The rich giants and ogres with their hoards of magic treasure caught his eye as soon as it had blinked away from the empty throne of monarchy. And being a small and slick guy – rumored to have got out unscathed from the digestive systems of a few big fish – he knew exactly which cranny of the grand scheme of things he should slip himself into. And believe it or not – when he tried this cranny out for size – it fit perfectly. In a giant-scaled plan to fill ogre-sized appetites, there could be no better thumb-sized position for a man like Tom than the one that arranged for the sudden and discreet transportation of disappearing farm animals.

“Well?” I asked again. “Are you going to tell me why you were lying in wait for Catherine?”

Tom, current custodian of Maribel Doris, 128, Palm Lane, eased himself up against the door with a wary eye on the knife in my hand.

“I wasn’t lying in wait for her – I was waiting for her. Like she told me to. ‘The New Carabas, the cottage on the cliff top, 9 in the morning, Wednesday. Come alone and I’ll make it worth your while – Catherine.’”

He reached into his pocket under my watchful eye (and the knife’s attentive twinkle) and drew out a small chit of paper. I scanned the handwriting – no familiar loops or crosses, which made me doubly certain that it really was from Catherine.

“Judging from your reaction when you met me, and the fact that the only weapon you carried in here was your knife – you’ve never met Catherine.”

Tom glared at me sullenly. “Should I have brought a machine gun?”

“You brought Maribel – I’m sure you and I both know she was your bargaining chip. What did you have in mind? Maribel in return for money?”

“What else? It’s me we’re talking about. Like you said, my reputation precedes me.”

I scanned his face. “Nope – you’re not as stupid as all that. Dragging your only bargaining chip to an anonymous proposition. You’ve been in this scam for a long time. You have information to offer – and you wanted to see whether you’d get more from Catherine than your current income from whoever you’re working for right now. Or whether you could get both ends of the deal, if what they say about you is indeed true. Maribel’s only the carrot dangling on the edge of the stick. There’s a story at the other end of that stick – a story you’re going to tell me.”

“Or what?” Well, he tried to put it in a raspy voice. But the shifting gaze that lingered on the knife was far from convincing.

I pocketed the knife. “Well, Tom, I’m in the mood for being generous. Let’s say I’m after your boss’ loot. And I really could use an inside man on the job. You help me and I’ll give you a generous share of what I earn.”

“How generous?”

“You’re not really in a position to negotiate – but I’ll gift wrap it for you. Five per cent.”

Tom’s tongue shot out to lick his chapped lips. “Five per cent. And I get to slip off with Maribel right now.”

“Without, Tom. I think Clara Doris is waiting for her right now, don’t you? And only after you’ve told me some more about your employer.”

“I don’t know who he is –”

The knife slipped back out of my pocket.

“I swear – look, I was approached by this man on my personal number.” I raised my brows. “My cell phone number – I circulated it through the industry a couple of years ago. I’ve freelanced all over the continent. I swear – you can check up on me. This is how I work now. The man calls me, tells me the name of this village and four others, I tell him my fees and he gives me a drop off address. That’s all I know.”

“And the drop off address?”

“It’s about twenty miles away down the coastline. An abandoned lighthouse that gets cut off from the mainland at high tide – some tourists drowned there a few months ago, and the place has been shut since then. At least, the papers said they drowned.”

Tom flashed me a far from innocent grin. “That was all before I came down here to offer my services, you see. A guy will get hungry. He must be pretty ugly to not want to show his face at all. I’ve never seen him – but he leaves a cheque for me in the letterbox and I have to go collect it just before the tide starts coming in. That’s so I have to hurry back, you see. So that I can’t catch sight of him.”

“And Catherine? Where does she come into this?”

“She opened this inn this week – number of customers: nil. I checked her up after I got this note stuffed into my coat when I got it back from the dry cleaners. I don’t know anything about her – except that she bought this place cheap off a lottery winner who’s somewhere in the Maldives right now. And she’s alone.”

He narrowed his eyes slyly. “But you seem to know her pretty well?”

I had a sudden vision of an extremely well tailored suit of lavender silk.

“Old friend,” I smiled.

Tom was beginning to look a little shifty eyed. “I’ll just return the goat to Palm Lane now, then?”

I stood up. “Keep the goat. We’ll need her at high tide one of these days. This place is an inn, right? I’ll need someplace to stay while you find out what happened to Catherine. And remember the five per cent before you think of doing anything funny.”

I held out my hand. He didn’t deliberate too long before accepting it and helping himself up. Five per cent. As he disappeared down the rough path that led away from the cottage, I wondered how much he hadn’t told me. He must know a bit more about the stranger in the abandoned lighthouse than what he’d let on if he was satisfied with a mere five per cent. And if Tom was satisfied with a mere five per cent, it made you wonder what he knew about the magnitude of the full hundred.