Fourth Bear (12 page)

“Elephants? Good Lord, no!” replied Marcus, adjusting his glasses. “The leviathan in my novel is the colossal and destructive force of human ambition and its ability to destroy those it loves in its futile quest for fulfillment. Seen through the eyes of a woman in London in the mid-eighties as her husband loses control of himself to own and want more, it asks the fundamental question ‘to be or to want’—something I consider to be the ‘materialistic’ Hamlet’s soliloquy. Ha-ha-ha.”

“Ha-ha-ha,” said Jack, but thinking, Clot. “Is it selling?”

“Good Lord, no!” replied Marcus in a shocked tone. “Selling more than even a few copies would render it…
popular.
And that would be a death knell for any serious auteur,
n’est-ce pas?
Ha-ha-ha.”

“Ha-ha-ha,” said Jack, but thinking, Even
bigger
clot.

“But it’s been short-listed for twenty-nine major awards,” continued Marcus. “I’ll send you a signed copy if you have a tenner on you.”

“If I gave you twenty, you could write me a sequel, too.”

Madeleine pulled Jack away and told him to behave himself, while at the same time trying to stop herself from having a fit of giggles.

“God, I love you,” she whispered in his ear, “but
please
stop messing around and behave yourself!”

“Spratt!” boomed Lord Spooncurdle, bored with talking to writers and agents and not recognizing anyone else.

“Hello, sir,” said Jack brightly. “You remember my wife, Madeleine?”

“Of course, of course,” he replied genially, offering his hand to Madeleine. “Your husband did a splendid job on that Humpty lark. Never did trust Spongg, y’know—eyes too close together. Reminded me of a governess who ran off with the handsome young silver and half the family’s boot boy.”

Madeleine excused herself with a whispered entreaty for Jack
not
to talk about his NCD work, as it usually had a confusing effect on people, and went off to mingle.

“Been here before, Spratt?” asked Spooncurdle, waving a hand at the inside of the Déjà Vu. “I’m sure I’ve seen that headwaiter, but I’m damned if I know where. I say, old stick, do us a favor and ask him if he has a lion tattooed on his left buttock.”

“He hasn’t,” replied Jack, humoring him. “I asked earlier.”

“Did you, by George? Must have been someone else. I must say, I never knew you were a member of the Most Worshipful Company of Cheese Makers.”

“I’m not, sir. This is the Armitage Shanks Literary Awards.”

“A literary award for cheese making? That doesn’t sound very likely.”

“There’s no cheese making here, sir—I think you’re confusing the event.”

“Nonsense, old boy,” said Spooncurdle amiably, having never knowingly been mistaken once in all of his sixty-seven years. “I say,” he added, changing the subject completely and leaning closer, “sorry to hear about that Riding-Hood debacle. Don’t let it get you down, eh? We all drop a serious clanger sooner or later.”

“You’re too kind,” replied Jack, wondering if this was a good time to point out that Spooncurdle had himself “dropped a clanger” on numerous occasions—and that shooting a grouse beater
was
illegal, despite the good Lord’s insistence that it wasn’t, or shouldn’t be.

Behind them the footman boomed out,
“Ladies and Gentlemen, Admiral Robert Shaftoe. Never lost a ship, a man or in retreat, a second.”

“Bobby a cheese maker?” said Spooncurdle suddenly. “How extraordinary. I must go and speak to him. You will excuse me?”

“Of course.”

Spooncurdle left Jack standing on his own near the bar. He ordered a drink but was not alone for long.

“Hello, Jack.”

A small man in his late forties and dressed in a black collarless shirt had appeared next to him. He was accompanied by a thin, gawky woman dressed in flamboyant mix-and-match clothes, a necklace of large orange beads and a huge pair of spectacles with matching frames.

“Hello, Neville,” said Jack coldly. He never felt easy speaking to Madeleine’s first husband. He was, after all, supporting this man’s children and loved them as he did his own, and Neville’s continuing efforts to ingratiate himself with Madeleine and the children would have been acceptable—if he didn’t try to do it at Jack’s expense.

“This is Virginia Kreeper,” said Neville, introducing the thin woman to Jack. She nodded and stared at Jack with ill-disguised malevolence, as though Neville had said some disparaging things about him prior to their meeting.

“Hello, Virginia,” Jack replied pleasantly, and made a point of starting a conversation with her rather than Neville. “What do you do?”

“I’m a counselor,” she replied in a thin, nasal voice.

“Really?” returned Jack. “Reading council?”

“No,
counselor.
I offer help to people who are suffering stress.”

“What sort of stress?” asked Jack suspiciously.

She stared him straight in the eye. “Anything from police harassment to… being swallowed alive by a wolf.”

Jack felt himself stiffen defensively. “You’ve been busy recently, then.”

“No thanks to you,” she replied sarcastically. “Every time the NCD breaks a case, I end up picking up the pieces. First the three pigs that you shamelessly pursued with the slenderest evidence imaginable, now the Riding-Hood disaster—it could take years of counseling before she and her grandmother can even
speak,
let alone dress themselves or have any sort of useful life skills.”

Neville was looking at Jack with obvious delight. He despised Jack with the lingering hatred of an idle underachiever who had lost everything by his own stupidity and was now looking for someone to blame. Virginia was not a girlfriend; he had simply brought her along to try to humiliate Jack, something he seemed to treat a bit like a hobby. Jack sighed. He hadn’t expected he’d have to defend his actions to anyone, least of all to some dopey friend of Neville’s, but he wasn’t going to take this sitting down.

“Ever been face-to-face with a serial wife killer?” he asked her.

“No.”

“How about being chased by a deranged genetic experiment with murder on its mind?”

Kreeper sighed. “No.”

“Staked out a grandmother’s cottage for three weeks solid because you had a gut instinct something
might
happen?”

“No.”

“Walked unarmed into an illegal porridge buy?”

“No!”

“You run a relatively risk-free life, in fact. I don’t. I put my ass on the line every time I go out there. Don’t think that ‘Nursery’ in the title of my division makes it cozy kittens, fluffy toys and shades of pink—it’s a violent and dangerous world, full of murder, theft and cannibalism. When did you last make a life-or-death decision?”

Kreeper was unrepentant. “That doesn’t condone harassment of the three pigs or the reckless disregard with which you failed to protect Riding-Hood and her grandmother.”

Jack stared at her coldly. “You don’t get it, do you?” he said after a pause, his voice rising. “In the world of nursery crime, some things just
happen,
despite my best endeavors. Humpty takes a nose dive, the pigs boil the wolf—and Riding-Hood and her gran get eaten. In
my
world, the world of the vaguely predestined, you have to work five times as hard to involve yourself in the unfolding of the case and ten times harder still to change the outcome. I couldn’t stop the wolf eating them—but I did my best.”

“Your best?” said Kreeper with a contemptuous laugh. “How can you have the cold arrogance to stand there and tell me you did everything in your power to stop them from being eaten?”

“Because,” said Jack slowly,
“the wolf ate me, too.”

Virginia’s mouth dropped open. She didn’t know about this; not many people did. Being swallowed whole wasn’t something he’d like to repeat, as it had ruined a perfectly good suit, but once past the esophagus it hadn’t been so bad. Strangely, it wasn’t as dark as he had suspected—but certainly cramped, with Red
and
her granny in there, too. But Briggs had been right: Without the woodsman’s timely intervention, they’d all be wolf shit by now, and Kreeper would be talking to a column of air.

Fed up, Jack pounced. “They didn’t tell you that? Didn’t tell you I went in alone and unarmed to face a murderous wolf as soon as I realized it wasn’t Gran in bed?”

She shook her head.

“Did they tell you I grabbed Riding-Hood’s ankles as she disappeared down his gullet? That I had my feet pressed against the wolf’s jaws to stop her from going down? That I couldn’t save her and was gobbled up, too?”

His voice rose. He’d been vilified in the press about this, and he’d had enough. “But get this,” he continued, “I could have just legged it and called the regulars. But I didn’t. I faced down the wolf and was devoured for my trouble. The first time, in fact, that a serving police officer in the British Isles has been eaten alive in the line of duty. Did Josh Hatchett write any of
that
?”

Jack stopped talking and looked around. Every occupant of the Déjà Vu ballroom was staring at him, hanging on his every word. Neville had a look like thunder. He had hoped Virginia would decimate his ex-wife’s husband, but he had underestimated Jack. Again.

“What was it like?” asked a nearby guest, breaking the silence that had descended on the ballroom.

“The gastric juices burn your nose hairs, if you must know,” replied Jack, adding by way of explanation and giving a shrug,

“It’s an NCD thing.”

Neville and Virginia took the opportunity to slip away. Partly because they felt defeated and deflated, and partly because Neville could see Madeleine approaching, and he was something of a coward in the presence of his ex-wife.

“Really,” said Madeleine, leading Jack to another part of the room as the conversation started up again, “I leave you alone for
five minutes
and you start banging on about being eaten. Honestly, what did I tell you?”

“Sorry.”

Madeleine sighed and stared at him. She understood him, but the NCD thing could be confusing for anyone not used to it. Jack shrugged and took another drink from a passing waiter. He felt bored and tired. It had been a long day.

“I didn’t come to an awards ceremony to have my professional actions judged,” he grumbled.

Madeleine gave him a hug. “Never mind, sweetheart. Let’s find our table.”

“Inspector?”

Jack turned to see the last person on earth he wanted to meet face-to-face. Someone who had made his life something very close to unpleasant for a long time. Someone who, if Jack hadn’t been a policeman, would have deserved—and probably received—a punch on the nose. It was Josh Hatchett of
The Toad
.

“What do you want?” asked Jack, politeness not foremost in his mind.

“I heard you say you were swallowed alive,” said Josh, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. “What was it like?”

“Ask an oyster. Good evening, Mr. Hatchett.”

Jack turned to go, but Josh stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. Jack stared at the hand, and Josh quickly released him. The journalist sighed, leaned forward and lowered his voice.

“I’m not here to talk about the Red Riding-Hood… problem.”

“Magnanimity personified.”

“I’ll come straight to the point.”

“It’s what you seem to do best.”

“It’s my sister. She’s vanished.”

“Who is she? A magician’s assistant?”

“I’m serious.”

“Try Missing Persons.”

“I told them yesterday. They instructed me to wait a month before filing her missing.” Josh rubbed his face. He looked tired and haggard—even for a journalist. “I need help, Inspector.”

But Jack wasn’t in the giving vein.

“So did I—and I didn’t get it. You might have given me the benefit of the doubt. I’m Jack Spratt the ‘incompetent bonehead’ of the NCD who is now, almost wholly thanks to you, sidelined in his own department. Give me one good reason I should even
listen
to you.”

“Her name’s Henrietta,” said Josh, “but she has long blond hair.”

“So?”

“She’s always been known as…
Goldilocks
.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying this might have an NCD angle?”

“It’s possible.”

“Had she been in contact with any bears recently?”

Josh thought for a moment. “She’s a journalist. She wrote a long piece about whether bears should be allowed to carry weapons for self-defense.”

“The ‘right to arm bears’ controversy?”

“Yes. I guess she must have quizzed a few bears about it.”

“A few? Or three?”

“Is it important?”