The Big Over Easy (3 page)

“Well,” said Jack, “just don’t allow yourself to be chatted up by Lord Spongg—you know what a reputation he has.”

“I have
every
intention of being chatted up by Lord Spongg,” she responded with a smile. “I need all the work he can give me.” She curled a hand around Jack’s chin and neck, brought her lips to his ear and whispered, “These dresses are notoriously tight, and the zips are
always
faulty. You may have to tear it from my body.”

She kissed him, smiled and withdrew.

“I’ll wait up.”

“Oh, no need for that is there?” she returned playfully.

“Yes.”

She laughed and was suddenly a burst of energy.

“Megan, get your shoes on—NOW! If you can’t find a woggle, use an elastic band. The rest of you behave yourselves with Jack. I’ll be back after your bedtime.”

She kissed them all, grabbed her camera bag, which spoiled the illusion of sophisticated socializing, and was out of the door in a flash.

“Da-woo,” murmured Stevie, clearly impressed.

It was after ten, the younger children were all tucked in, and Jack and Pandora were sitting in the living room. The telly was on, although they weren’t paying it much attention, and Pandora was doing some revising, as several textbooks on theoretical particle physics were strewn around the sofa. Pandora was almost twenty and still at the sort of age where she didn’t really care what her father thought of her life choices and wanted him to know it—which naturally meant she cared a
great deal
what he thought but wasn’t going to let on. And Jack, for his part, couldn’t help giving her advice that he thought valuable and pertinent but was actually useless—mostly because it had been a long time since he was her age, and he hadn’t been able to figure it out either. But there
were
small triumphs. For a start, Pandora didn’t have any piercings or tattoos. This was partly due to Jack’s relaxed attitude, something that took the wind out of her semirigged rebellious sails. Sometimes she thought Jack was using reverse psychology on her, which meant that she should double-bluff
his
double bluff, and she might have done so except that the idea of a tattoo or a piercing made her feel queasy.

Jack stared blankly at his crossword. It was the 344th consecutive puzzle he had failed to complete. A new personal best.

“Hey,” said Pandora, “tough break on the three-pigs case. I’m a committed holier-than-thou-meat-is-murder-bore-the-pants-off-all-and-sundry vegetarian, and even
I
thought they should have been served up boiled with new potatoes, peas and parsley sauce.”

“Well,” replied Jack, taking a swig of beer, “we thought we might have got Gerald—that’s Little Pig A—to squeal on his elder brothers for a lesser sentence, but he wouldn’t play ball. How’s school?”

“I’m nearly twenty, Dad. I don’t go to school anymore. It’s called uni-ver-sity, and it’s good. Can you help me with my quantum-particle homework?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Here’s the question: ‘Solve the Schrödinger equation explicitly in the case of a particle of mass
m
in a constant Newtonian gravitational field:
V=mgz.
’”

Jack thought for a moment.

“
Definitely
B.”

“Eh?”

“Box B,
unless
the previous answer was box B, in which case it’ll be box C. This
is
multiple choice, yes?”

Pandora laughed. “No, Dad. Particle physics is a little more involved than that.”

“Box A?”

She slapped him playfully on the arm. “Dad! You are so no help at all!”

The local news came on. There was a piece about Chymes and the Peabody case, of course, and more about the Jellyman’s visit on Saturday to dedicate the Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center. There was also a bit about the Spongg Footcare Charity Benefit, live from the Déjà Vu Ballrooms. They both craned their necks to catch a glimpse of Madeleine in her red dress and saw her lurking in the back of a shot where Lord Randolph Spongg, the CEO of Spongg Footcare PLC, was doing a piece for the live broadcast.

“…as well as representatives from Winsum and Loosum’s and QuangTech, we’ve seen a galaxy of Reading celebrities tonight,” said the handsome peer cheerfully, “in order to help us raise funds to replace the outdated and woefully inadequate St. Cerebellum’s mental hospital. We are very grateful indeed to Mr. Grundy, Mr. Attery Squash, the Blue Baboon, Mr. Pobble, Lola Vavoom and of course the Dong, who so generously agreed to entertain us with his luminous nose.”

“Ah, yes, Miss Vavoom,” said
The Toad
reporter as he crossed to the retired star of screen and stage, “so good to see you out in Reading society again. How do you react to the epithet ‘formerly gorgeous’?”

“Like
this,
” she said, downing the reporter with a straight right to the jaw. There was a cry, a flash going off, and they cut the live broadcast back to a bemused anchorman who hid a smile, told a heartwarming story about the efforts of the fire service to rescue a kitten stuck in a pipe, then introduced Reading’s favorite weather-girl, Bunty McTwinkle.

“Reading will once again experience a cloudy day with little sign of sunshine,” said Bunty without much emotion, “a bit like living inside Tupperware.”

Pandora keyed the remote, and the TV went silent.

“I was hoping I
might
make the local news this time,” said Jack despondently, “even if it was to be trashed.”

Ben finally drifted in at eleven and made a little too much noise. A light switched on in Mr. and Mrs. Sittkomm’s bedroom, which was always a bad sign. Jack beckoned him in as quickly as he could.

“Have you been drinking?”

“To excess. I had
two
shandies.”

“Almost an alcoholic. How did it go with the harpist? Did she like your anvils?”

“Oh,
her,
” he sniffed, taking off his parka and chucking it in the cloakroom. “She’s going out with Brian Eves, who plays the tuba. She says it’s the sexiest instrument in the brass section.”

“Oh, Ben,” said Jack, “I’m so sorry!”

“Shit happens,” he replied, making his way toward the staircase, his room and the welcome oblivion of low-alcohol-induced lovelorn unconsciousness. “Yes indeed, shit happens.”

Jack went to bed at midnight and was awoken in the small hours by Madeleine, who came to bed smelling of champagne, canapés and hard work.

“Guess what!” she whispered, not at all quietly in his ear.

“The house is on fire?”

“No. I snapped Lola Vavoom slugging a journalist. It’ll be on the front page of
The Mole
and
The Toad
tomorrow. She packs quite a punch—they had to wire his jaw!”

Despite the feisty and provocative talk earlier about the red dress’s having to be torn from her body, they both fell fast asleep doing nothing about it. Besides, it was rented.

“The Japanese film crew
is waiting to interview you again,” said Madeleine, interspersing stuffing spoonfuls of mashed banana into Stevie with taking surreptitious glances outside. “What do they want anyway?”

“To talk to me about Friedland Chymes and the Gingerbreadman,” replied Jack, sorting through his post and finding a notice from the Allegro Owners’ Club about checking wheel-bearing torque settings.

“Why don’t you speak to them?”

“Darling, they don’t want the truth. They want me to back up Chymes’s version of events where he ‘saved the day’ and single-handedly caught the deranged psychopath.”

Jack finished his toast and looked at Madeleine’s picture on the cover of
The Toad
, which had the headline
WASHED-UP HAS-BEEN WITH WEIGHT PROBLEM VICIOUSLY ATTACKS JOURNALIST
.
The Mole
, whose journalist
didn’t
get a broken jaw that night led with
SOCK IT TO HIM, LOLA
!

“Whatever happened to him?” asked Madeleine.

“Friedland Chymes? No idea.”

“No, silly. The Gingerbreadman.”

“Last I heard, he was still in St. Cerebellum’s Secure Wing for the Incurably Unhinged. Four-hundred-year sentence. It should have been five hundred, but we never proved his one hundred and fourth victim.”

“He couldn’t escape, could he?” asked Madeleine. “After all, he did promise to do unspeakable things to you and Friedland.”

“If he did, I’d be the first to know.” He sighed. “No, I guess I’d be the second.”

Jack’s mobile vibrated across the worktop and fell into the compost bin with a
plop.

He picked it up, wiped off the spaghetti hoops and frowned at the text message.

“‘Gngbdmn out 2 get U,’” he murmured. “Now, that’s a coincidence.”

Madeleine dropped a spoon, and Jack chuckled.

“Just kidding. It actually says, ‘Big egg down—Wyatt.’ What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” replied Madeleine, “but if the husband with the dopey line in practical jokes wants to still be breathing in ten minutes, he better be out of the house.”

Wyatt was Briggs’s deputy and not the most polite of men.

“Are you coming in today?” he asked as soon as Jack called.

Jack glanced at his watch. It was barely nine.

“Of course. What’s the problem?”

“Wall fall over at Grimm’s Road. Looks like one of yours. Briggs is on his way and wants to see you there pronto.”

Jack replied that he’d be over as soon as possible, scribbled down the address and hung up.

“What was it?”

“One for the NCD, apparently.”

“Another Bluebeard copycat?”

“I hope not. Are you interviewing any more potential lodgers today?”

“Two.”

“Good. No one weird, remember. I’ll call you.”

He kissed her, then looked over Stevie to find the area of least sticky. He eventually found a small patch on the top of his head and kissed that and was out of the door.

Jack’s car was an Austin Allegro estate Mark 3 painted in a gruesome shade of lime green that had been designated as “Applejack” by an unnamed marketing executive with an odd sense of humor. Detectives driving vintage or classic cars was a Guild-inspired affectation that Jack thought ludicrous. Friedland Chymes’s 1932 Delage D8 was a not-untypical choice. As a small, pointless and totally unnoticed act of rebellion, Jack drove the dullest car he could find. His father had bought it new in 1982 and looked after it assiduously. When it passed to Jack, he continued to care for it. It was just coming up to its twenty-second birthday and had covered almost 350,000 miles, wearing out two engines and four clutches on the way.

He didn’t drive straight to Grimm’s Road. He had an errand to run first—for his mother.

She opened the door within two seconds of his pressing the doorbell, letting out a stream of cats that ran around with such rapidity and randomness of motion that they assumed a liquid state of furry purringness. The
exact
quantity could have been as low as three or as high as one hundred eight; no one could ever tell, as they were all so dangerously hyperactive. The years had been charitable to Mrs. Spratt, and despite her age she was as bright as a button and had certainly not lost any of her youthful zest. Jack put it down to quantity of children. It had either made her tough in old age or worn her out—if the latter, then without Jack and his nine elder siblings, she might have lived to one hundred ninety-six. She painted people’s pets in oils because “someone has to,” collected small pottery animals, Blue Baboon LPs and Jellyman commemorative plates. She had been widowed seventeen years.

“Hello, baby!” she enthused merrily. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Mother—and I’m not a baby anymore. I’m forty-four.”

“You’ll
always
be my baby. Did the pigs dangle?”

Jack shook his head. “We did our best. The jury just wasn’t convinced we had a case.”

“It’s hardly surprising,” she snorted, “considering the jury was
completely
biased.”

“The defendants might be pigs, Mother, but they do have the right to be tried by their peers. In this instance twelve
other
pigs. It’s a Magna Carta 1215 thing—nothing to do with me or the Prosecution Service.”

She shrugged and then looked furtively around. “Best come inside. I think the aliens are trying to control my thoughts using the mobile network.”

Jack sighed. “Mother, if you met an alien, you’d quickly change your mind; they’re really just like you and me—only blue.”

She ushered him in and shut the door. The house smelled of lavender water, acrylic paint and fresh baking, and it echoed with the stately
tock
of the grandfather clock in the hall. A quantum of cats shot out of the living room and tore upstairs.

“It’s the diet I have them on, I think,” she murmured, passing Jack a canvas wrapped in brown paper. She didn’t really want to sell her Stubbs painting of a cow, but since she had discovered all the must-have goodies on eBay, there was really no choice.

“Remember,” she said firmly, “take it to Mr. Foozle and get him to value it. I’ll make a decision after he’s done that.”

“Right.”

She thought for a moment.

“By the way, when are you going to remove those three bags of wool from the potting shed so I can have it demolished?”

“Soon, Mother, I promise.”

The rain had eased up after the previous night’s deluge, and puddles the size of small inland seas gathered on the roads where the beleaguered storm drains had failed to carry it all away. Grimm’s Road was in an area that had yet to fully benefit from the town’s prosperity. There were terraced houses on either side of the potholed road, and two large gas holders dominated the far end of the street, casting a shadow over the houses every month of the year except July. The houses had been built in the latter part of the nineteenth century and were typical of the period: two up, two down with kitchen behind, an outdoor loo, a yard at the rear and a coal house beyond this. A door at the back of the yard led out into an alley, a cobbled track scattered with rubbish and abandoned cars, a favorite playing ground for kids.

The traffic had slowed Jack down badly in the latter part of the journey, and it was about twenty minutes later when he drove slowly down Grimm’s Road trying to read the door numbers. He had received two other calls asking where he was, and it was fairly obvious that Briggs would not be in a sympathetic mood. Jack parked the car and pulled on an overcoat, keeping a wary eye on the darkening sky.

“Nice car, mister,” said a cheeky lad with a grubby face, trying to bounce a football that had a puncture. His friend, whose face his mother had cruelly forgotten to smear with grime that morning, joined in.

“Zowie!” he exclaimed excitedly. “An Austin Allegro estate Mark 3 deluxe 1.3-liter 1982 model. Applejack with factory-fitted optional head restraints, dog cage and Motorola single-band radio.” He paused for breath. “You don’t see many of those around these days. It’s not surprising,” he added, “they’re total shit.”

“Listen,” said the first one in a very businesslike tone, “give us fifty quid and we’ll set it on fire so you can cop the insurance.”

“Better make it a tenner,” said the second lad with a grin. “Fifty is all he’d get.”

“Police,” said Jack. “Now, piss off.”

The boys were unrepentant. “Plod pay double. If you want us to torch your motor, it’s going to cost you twenty.”

They both sniggered and ran off to break something.

Jack walked up to the house in question and looked at the shabby exterior. The guttering was adrift, the brickwork sprouted moss, and the rotten window frames held several sheets of cardboard that had been stuck there to replace broken panes. In the window the landlady had already put up a sign saying “Room to Let. Strictly no pets, accordion players, statisticians, smokers, sarcastics, spongers or aliens.”

Waiting for Jack was a young constable who looked barely out of puberty, let alone probation, which was pretty near the truth on both counts. He had made full constable and was sent to the NCD for three months to ease him into policing. But someone had mislaid the paperwork, and he was still there six months later, which suited him just fine.

“Good morning, Tibbit.”

“Good morning, sir,” replied the eager young man, his blue serge pressed into a fine crease—by his mother, Jack guessed.

“Where’s the Super?”

Tibbit nodded in the direction of the house. “Backyard, sir. Watch the landlady. She’s a dragon. Jabbed me with an umbrella for not wiping my feet.”

Jack thanked him, wiped his feet with great care on the faded and clearly ironic “Welcome” doormat and stepped inside. The house smelled musty and had large areas of damp on the walls. He walked past the peeling wallpaper and exposed lath and plaster to the grimy kitchen, then opened the door and stepped out into the backyard.

The yard was shaped as an oblong, fifteen feet wide and about thirty feet long, surrounded by a high brick wall with crumbling mortar. Most of the yard was filled with junk—broken bicycles, old furniture, a mattress or two. But at one end, where the dustbins were spilling their rubbish onto the ground, large pieces of eggshell told of a recent and violent death. Jack knew who the victim was immediately and had suspected for a number of years that something like this might happen. Humpty Dumpty. The fall guy. If this wasn’t under the jurisdiction of the Nursery Crime Division, Jack didn’t know what was. Mrs. Singh, the pathologist, was kneeling next to the shattered remains dictating notes into a tape recorder. She waved a greeting at him as he walked in but did not stop what she was doing. She indicated to a photographer areas of particular interest to her, the flash going off occasionally and looking inordinately bright in the dull closeness of the yard.

Briggs had been sitting on a low wall talking to a plainclothes policewoman, but as Jack entered, he rose and waved a hand in the direction of the corpse.

“It looks like he died from injuries sustained falling from a wall,” Briggs said. “Could be accident, suicide, who knows? He was discovered dead at 0722 this morning.”

Jack looked up at the wall. It was a good eight feet high. A sturdy ladder stood propped up against it.

“Our ladder?”

“His.”

“Anything else I need to know?”

“A couple of points. Firstly, you’re not exactly ‘Mr. Popular’ with the seventh floor at present. There are people up there who think that spending a quarter of a million pounds on a failed murder conviction for three pigs is not value for money—especially when there is zero chance of getting it into
Amazing Crime Stories
.”

“I didn’t think justice was meant to have a price tag, sir.”

“Clearly. But it’s a public-perception thing, Spratt. Piglets are cute; wolves aren’t. You might as well try and charge the farmer’s wife with cruelty when she cut off the mice’s tails with a carving knife.”

“I did.”

“And?”

“Insufficient evidence.”

“A good thing I never heard of it. So what you’re going to do here is clean up Humpty’s tumble with the minimum of fuss and bother. I want it neat, quick and cheap—and without hassling any more anthropomorphized animals.”

“Including pigs?”

“
Especially
pigs. You so much as look at a bacon roll and I’ll have you suspended.”

“Is there a third point?”

“The annual budgetary review is next week, and because of that pig fiasco, the NCD’s future is on the agenda. Stir up any more trouble and you could find yourself managing traffic volume on the M4.”

“I preferred it when there were only two points.”

“Listen, Jack,” went on Briggs, “you’re a good officer, if a little overenthusiastic at times, and the Nursery Crime Division
is
necessary, despite everyone’s apparent indifference. The bottom line is that I want this ex-egg mopped up neat and clean and a report on my desk Wednesday morning. The Sacred Gonga’s new visitors’ center is being dedicated by the Jellyman on Saturday, and I need all the hands I can get for security—and that includes your little mob hiding down there at the NCD.”

“You want me to head up Jellyman security, sir?” asked Jack with a gleam in his eye. He liked the idea of being near the great man; guaranteeing his safety was even better.

“No, we need someone of unimpeachable character, skill and initiative for that; Chymes is already drawing up security plans. I want you to ensure the safety of the Sacred Gonga itself. Anti-Splotvian protesters might try to disrupt the dedication ceremony. Protect it with your life and the lives of your department. Solomon Grundy paid forty million to keep it in the country, and we wouldn’t want to upset him. You should go and look over the visitors’ center; there’ll be a Jellyman security briefing on Thursday at 1500 hours.”

“Sir, I—”

“I would consider taking the assignment with all enthusiasm, Jack,” observed Briggs. “After that three-pigs debacle, you’ll need as many friends as you can get.”

“Is this where I say thank you?”