Fourth Bear (25 page)

“Crap,” he muttered. The vase was Madeleine’s, and it had been until very recently a priceless and much-loved family heirloom.

Caliban walked up to where Jack was lying at the top of the stairs and looked forlornly at the remains of the vase.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “Was it valuable?”

Jack closed his eyes as he heard a door open behind them.

“More than you know,” he answered in a low voice.

“Who did this?” asked Madeleine as soon as she realized what had happened.

“He did,” replied Caliban and Jack in unison, each pointing an accusing finger at the other.

“What?!” said Jack in outrage. “
You
stole the vase, pal.”

“I wouldn’t have dropped it if you hadn’t been chasing me.”

“I wouldn’t have been chasing you if you hadn’t stolen it!”

“I wasn’t stealing it.”

“What then?”

“I was
borrowing
it.”

“You—”

Madeleine interrupted them both. “I don’t care who’s to blame; you can
both
clear it up. My grandmother gave me that vase
before
she died.”

Caliban giggled at the non sequitur but tried to make it sound like a cough when Madeleine glared at him.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” he replied meekly.

Madeleine walked angrily back to the bedroom and shut the door with a bang.

“Thanks a bunch,” said Jack to the misshapen ape as they both sat on the top step, “you troublemaking ignoramus.”

“I’m
not
an ignoramus,” retorted Caliban crossly. “Ask me anything.”

“All right, smart-ass. Who owns Bart-Mart?”

“QuangTech,” said the ugly little ape without a pause. “Everyone knows
that.
”

Most-suspended police officer (UK):
As of this writing, the most-suspended officer in England and Wales remains DCI Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division in Reading, Berkshire. Since beginning his career in 1974, he has been suspended from duty over 262 times, with only one of them leading to further action, a reprimand, in 2004. The next-highest is ex-DCI Friedland Chymes (also of Reading) with 128 suspensions, with again no further action on any of them. In consequence of this, the senior officer who holds the record for suspending the most officers is Chymes and Spratt’s immediate superior, Superintendent Briggs. Upon being told of his dubious distinction, he growled ominously, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

—
The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records
, 2004 edition

Jack didn’t get back
to sleep at all that night and eventually got up at six. He had a bath, then went downstairs to have a cup of coffee and listen to the early news, which didn’t carry any bulletins about the Gingerbreadman, so he figured he must still be at large. He thought of going to speak to Madeleine but decided against it, took his keys off the hook and glared at Caliban, who had somehow overcome his initial shyness and was sitting on the windowsill, picking his nose and staring out the window.

“Hey,” said Jack, “you better be out of the house by the time I get back.”

“Yeah, right,” replied Caliban with a reproachful sneer, “and what if I’m not?”

Jack jabbed a finger in his direction but for the life of him couldn’t think of anything either vaguely threatening or even intelligent. “Oh, nuts to you,” he said, and made for the door.

“Nuts to you, too,” murmured Caliban, and continued to stare out the window.

Jack got into his car, slotted the ignition key in, then stopped. Where was he going to go? His department wasn’t his anymore, and Briggs would almost certainly have something to say if he turned up there. He sighed. He wanted to stay out of Madeleine’s way, but he didn’t actually have any work to go to. He thought for a moment, tuned the radio to something mindless and settled back to think about Goldilocks. They had a victim but no obvious cause of death, no suspect, no motive and no particular leads apart from the mysterious Mr. Curry and QuangTech, who seemed to be cropping up a lot. NS-4 was somehow interested, and it seemed as though Goldy had been doing a story about unexplained explosions. Then there was the Gingerbreadman, and Vinnie Craps, who seemed to think he was above the NCD’s jurisdiction. And it was with thoughts like these that Jack drifted off to sleep, a lot more successfully than he’d been able to in the spare bedroom. He was just dreaming about the Dungeness nuclear power station and his Aunt Edith when the plaintive trill of his cell phone roused him to confused wakefulness.

“Yuh?” he said.

“It’s me,” said Mary.

“What’s the time?”

“Ten past nine.”

Jack rubbed his face. He’d been asleep for over two hours, and now he noticed that Ben had written “Working hard, Dad?” on the driver’s-side window as he’d slept. Madeleine must have seen him sleeping, and he half hoped he’d have a message from her, too—but he didn’t.

“What’s the news?”

“Positive ID from Mrs. Singh—it’s Goldilocks all right.”

“What did Briggs have to say about it?”

“He said he wasn’t going to elevate this to a full-level NCD murder inquiry without some sort of proof that she was killed unlawfully, but that I should continue ‘rigorous inquiries’ with my current level of resources.”

“Which is you and Ashley,” observed Jack, “a woeful lapse of responsibility, even for Briggs—he must be stretched thin with the hunt for the Gingerbreadman. Have you spoken to Josh?”

“I’ve just told him. He’d been expecting it, but the confirmation was still a shock. I showed him the list of Mr. Currys to see if he knew which one Goldilocks had been having dinner with the night before she died.”

“And?”

“He didn’t even look at the list. He said it was a code name—and that Goldilocks had made him swear not to reveal who it was.”

“I’ve a feeling this is
seriously
bad news.”

“You’d be right. ‘Mr. Curry’ was… Bartholomew.”

Jack was suddenly wide awake.

“Bartholomew?
Sherman
Bartholomew?”

“The very same.”

“Why the secrecy? Was she investigating him?”

“Josh said we should ask Bartholomew.”

“He’s right,” said Jack. “We will.”

“Shouldn’t I okay it with Briggs first?” asked Mary nervously. “This could be a very hot potato.”

“I’ve had hotter,” said Jack. “Besides, Briggs said this wasn’t an all-out murder inquiry yet.”

They agreed to meet at the council offices where Bartholomew was holding a surgery that morning. But Sherman Bartholomew wasn’t a doctor. He was Reading’s representative in the House of Commons. The Right Honorable Sherman Oscar Bartholomew, MP.

European nation with highest politician/lover ratio:
Few European states can hope to compete with France and Italy in this department, and the two nations have been battling for European political lothario supremacy for over thirty years. The contest has been increasingly acrimonious since 1998, when France was initially the clear winner but somehow “lost” sixty-eight illicit lovers in the recount and had to concede defeat. The following year was no less rocked in scandal, when the Italians were disqualified for “stretching the boundaries” of their elected representatives to include senior civil servants—and the crown was tossed back to France. No one was quite prepared for the disgraceful scandal the following year when it was discovered that one French minister had no mistress at all and “loved his wife,” a shocking revelation that led to his resignation and ultimately to the fall of the government.

—
The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records
, 2004 edition

“
I’m sorry
we always have to meet under such disagreeable circumstances,” said Jack to a well-dressed, handsome man in his late fifties. “This is Detective Sergeant Mary Mary, also of the NCD.”

“I was the defense attorney for the Gingerbreadman,” explained Bartholomew for Mary’s benefit. “No one else would handle it.”

“You put up a robust defense,” replied Jack with a smile.

“I’m always relieved it wasn’t robust
enough,
Inspector. He got better than he deserved—have you caught him yet?”

“We’re not on the chase. I shouldn’t worry—you’re the last person he’d want to attack.”

“I’m very relieved to hear it.” Sherman Bartholomew shook their hands with a firm grip and offered them a seat in his office. He was that rare thing in politics, a freethinking and radical MP who wasn’t sidelined by his party to the anonymity of the back benches. He was an asset to the city and took his job seriously. The constituency hours took place once a week in the council offices, and Jack and Mary had managed to jump the line of disgruntled bears and other assorted citizens who sat grumbling in the waiting room. Bartholomew, in keeping with the strongest parliamentary tradition, shunned the possibility of any kind of scandal and agreed to see them straightaway. “Perhaps you might tell us what you know about Goldilocks, Mr. Bartholomew?”

He didn’t answer and instead drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. “It’s a situation of the utmost delicacy,” he said without making eye contact.

“Was she investigating you about something?”

“No.”

“Extortion?”

“No!”

“Blackmail?”

“No, no—it was nothing like that.” He stood up and paced nervously back and forth behind his chair.

“Sir,” said Jack, this time more forcefully, “I have to tell you that this morning we positively identified the remains of a woman we found up at SommeWorld.”

Bartholomew looked at Jack with a pained expression. “Goldilocks?”

“Yes.”

“I need to sit down, if you don’t mind,” he mumbled, and sat heavily in his chair.

“We know,” continued Jack, “that you dined with her the evening before she vanished. If you have been involved in any sort of parliamentary impropriety that Goldilocks was investigating, it will almost certainly come out in the fullness of time.”

He looked at them both and rubbed his forehead. “We were lovers,” he said in a quiet voice.

“
What?”
exclaimed Jack with undisguised astonishment. He was expecting any explanation but this one.

“Lovers,” repeated Bartholomew. “Goldilocks and I. For more than a year now.”

“Wait, wait,” said Jack in a state of some confusion. “You were, to great fanfare, Westminster’s first openly gay MP and have remained a vociferous mouthpiece for all kinds of minority-rights issues for the past twenty-five years, and now you’re telling me… you’re
straight?
”

Bartholomew covered his face with his hands, and his shoulders shook with a silent sob.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he said miserably, “living a lie. I’ll be ruined and disgraced if this gets into the papers. My parliamentary career will be finished and my hard-fought pink credentials in tatters.”

“What about Douglas?” asked Mary, equally shocked by Bartholomew’s confession. “Your long-term relationship and much-publicized adoption of two children has always seemed so… perfect.”

“I did it for appearance’s sake,” he mumbled sadly. “Doug knows what I am and will stand by me if any of this gets out.”

Jack and Mary looked at each other as Bartholomew massaged his temples and stared at the blotter on his desk, as though the dark smudges might reveal some sort of answer to his dilemma. He blew his nose and tried to compose himself.

“Mr. Bartholomew,” said Jack after a pause, “it won’t be the first time I’ve had to investigate a potential crime that has involved sensitive issues of a strictly personal nature. But you must understand that our prime consideration at this point is to find out what happened to Goldilocks.”

“Potential crime?” he said, looking up at him. “What do you mean?”

“We don’t know precisely how she died.”

“Are you saying she might have been…
murdered?
”

“No, I’m saying we don’t know precisely how she died. I need to know more about the circumstances surrounding Miss Hatchett’s death before we can decide one way or another. I’m not here to ruin anyone’s career.”

Jack meant it. Bartholomew was a good MP, and Jack didn’t want to see him ousted over something as meaningless as his utterly orthodox sexual orientation. Bartholomew served Reading well and represented quite a few of the nursery figures that Jack worked with. In many ways, the concerns of Jack’s were Bartholomew’s, too.