Les Norton and the Case of the Talking Pie Crust by Robert G. Barrett Page A

Les checked the numbers. The house was on the right-hand side near the end, wedged between a small block of units on the right and another house on the left. Les crammed his car against someone’s driveway opposite and walked down. He checked the number, checked it again and gave a double blink.
    It was a single-storey cottage with a tatty brick fence out the front and no front gate. A small porch with a front door sat on the right-hand corner, next to a weed-infested driveway that led to an overgrown backyard. Beneath a sagging powerline, several leafless trees pushed against the front and side fences. There was no gate to the side passage, the letter box had broken off and most of the guttering had rusted away. Instead of a verandah, a double room full of broken windows faced the street, covered over by a flapping square of thin green tarpaulin, frayed at the edges and full of splits. The old house was the most decrepit, tumbledown dump Les had ever seen. Squatters wouldn’t even live in it. But as well as being an absolute eyesore, the whole place was piled with rubbish. In some parts, it was over two metres high. Les stood on the unkempt nature strip, gobsmacked.
    There were piles of newspapers, magazines and cardboard. Prams, toys, Boogie Boards, Coolite boards, surfboards, push-bikes, scooters, skateboards and other sports goods all rusted and broken. Paint tins, bottles, jars, shoe boxes, plastic containers, mattresses, cardboard boxes full of tins, broken cardboard boxes spilling out tins and jars half full of stagnant green water, crawlingwith larvae. Smashed TV sets, broken stereos, old ghetto blasters, plastic bags of vinyl records. You name an article of rubbish that had been thrown out in a street clean-up or dumped on the side of the road and something similar was in there, rusting or rotting away.
    Lord have mercy, thought Les. Where do I start? He checked the room facing the street and could perceive no sign of life. Well, I suppose I’d better start by getting my gloves. Les walked back to the car and got a pair of cheap all-purpose leather gloves from the boot. He put them on and adjusted his cap then, just as it began to rain, started searching through the rubbish.
    Les was groping around in the filth and stench, dodging cockroaches and millipedes and other horrible crawling bugs and cursing his luck when he uncovered it. Beneath a pile of rotting tea towels. A green handbag with a…dinosaur on the side.
    ‘Ahhh shit!’ cursed Les, tossing the empty bag aside.
    Filth and grime clinging to his rain soaked clothes and trainers, Les searched on amongst the sodden piles of rubbish. A trickle of cold water ran down his neck and he was seriously thinking of giving the whole idea a miss and telling Deep Throat what to do with hisinstructions the next time he called. Rummaging away, Les knelt down to upend a pile of rotting underlay and a roll of filthy grey carpet when he sensed movement behind him. Next thing, he felt a sharp pain as someone hit him across the head with something.
    ‘What the fuck!’
    Les turned and looked up at a grim, hatchet-faced old woman wearing a plastic raincoat and a blue scarf over her head. She was holding a black plastic garden rake above her which she viciously banged down across his head again.
    ‘Kriminal! Kriminal!’ the old woman shrieked as she whacked into Les with the rake handle. ‘What you are doing in my belongings, kriminal? Go vay. Go vay, kriminal.’
    ‘Jesus Christ! Piss off will you,’ yelled Les, trying to ward off the blows.
    Les was slipping and sliding around in the mud and rubbish when two women, a little younger but similar in looks and clothing to the older one, came from the door at the corner of the house and joined in the attack. One had a dust broom, the other a squeeze mop.
    ‘Kriminal. Kriminal,’ they shrieked, as they helped the older woman bash into Les. ‘Die, kriminal bastard. Die.’
    Under a torrent of blows from the three women, Les