The Big Over Easy

  Madeleine frowned. “Such as?”

  “Why the toast always falls butter side down. Why you can look for something for hours and then find it in the first place you looked. These are the real puzzles that will face humanity. There is, he claims, a single theory that will explain not only why the queue you choose at a supermarket is always the slowest but why trains always leave on time when you are late and leave late when you are on time.”

  “There isn’t an answer to those,” murmured Madeleine doubtfully. “It just happens.”

  “That’s what they used to say about lightning,” replied Pandora, “and rainbows.”

  Jack greeted them both, took a satsuma from the fruit bowl and walked through to the living room. He stared out the window and peeled the fruit. He had bested Friedland and stopped him trying to pinch the Humpty investigation, but he didn’t feel as good as he thought he would. By unmasking Chymes as a charlatan, he had the feeling that he might have let the genie out of the bottle when it would have been better for everyone concerned to keep it in. Was Chymes the only one, or did all Guild detectives make up their investigations? Since Inspector Moose began at Oxford, there had been a huge upswing in the number of intricately plotted murders around the dreaming spires. And what about Miss Maple and the previously quiet village of St. Michael Mead? It was now almost a bloodbath, with every household harboring some form of gruesome secret. Coincidence? Or just some skillful invention by a talented sidekick?

  “Your daughter is an exceptional woman.”

  It was Prometheus. He was standing at the door with the light behind him. He looked ethereal, unreal almost.

  “She takes after her mother.”

  “And her father.”

  “I was being overprotective last night, and I apologize,” said Jack as Prometheus moved forward into a pool of light thrown by the reading lamp.

  “I’d be the same, Jack. I want to marry her.”

  “What?”

  Prometheus repeated it, and Jack sat on the edge of a table.

  “But you’re immortal, Prometheus. I’m not sure I want my daughter marrying someone who will stay young as she grows old.”

  “It’s more of a partnership than a marriage,” he explained. “I can get British citizenship and then we can—”

  “So it’s a marriage of convenience?”

  “Let me explain. Remember I told you about the ills of the world that the first Pandora let out of the jar?”

  “Sure.”

  “Your Pandora wants to put them back in!”

  Jack frowned. “It seems quite a task.”

  “A titanic one.” Prometheus grinned. “Mythology has been static for too long, Jack, I’ve decided we’ve got to get it moving again—and Pandora is the one to help me.”

  Jack took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling. “I never thought I’d have a Titan for a son-in-law. Promise me one thing.”

  “Name it.”

  “Renounce your immortality.”

  “I shall, after we locate the ills or, failing that, on Pandora’s fiftieth birthday. We’ve got it all planned.”

  Prometheus smiled, and Jack put out his hand. As he grasped it, a strong feeling of power seemed to emanate from the Titan. There were so many questions still unanswered about him, but now there was plenty of time.

  “Drink?” said Jack.

  “Nah,” said the Titan, “Friday night is strippers night down at the Blue Parrot—Just kidding. Let’s have that drink. Let’s have several.”

  37. The Man from the Guild

  ALBINOS DEMAND ACTION ON MOVIE SLUR

  The albino community demanded action yesterday to stop their unfair depiction as yet another movie featured an albino as a deranged hitman. “We’ve had enough,” said Mr. Silas yesterday at a small rally of albinos at London’s Pinewood Studios. “Just because of an unusual genetic abnormality, Hollywood thinks it can portray us as dysfunctional social pariahs. Ask yourself this: Have you ever been, or know anyone who has ever been, a victim of albino crime?” The protest follows hot on the heels of last week’s demonstrations when Colombians and men with ponytails complained of being unrelentingly portrayed as drug dealers.

  —Extract from The Mole, July 31, 2003

  Jack got into the station at nine. It was Saturday, and the whole place was buzzing with activity over the Jellyman’s visit later in the day. His Eminence’s Special Protection Group in collaboration with DCI Chymes had taken charge, and everyone had to go through a metal detector and be issued a color-coded badge that related to how close you could be to the Jellyman. It ranged from red for “close proximity” all the way through the spectrum to violet, which meant “no proximity.” Jack’s was violet.

  After picking up a Jack Spratt no-fat special bacon sandwich and a cup of coffee, he went and sat in his office. He stared at the pertinent points written up on the board. If it had been an ordinary murder inquiry, they would have had armies of officers and an incident room the size of a gymnasium, but this was the NCD. He knew he was understaffed and had to make do with the cast-offs and social misfits that no one else wanted, but he liked to think he did a reasonable amount with not very much.

  As he was sitting there trying to figure out exactly why Humpty would think Spongg’s shares should go up, someone very tall walked past the open doorway. After a second or two, he came back, stooped to look in the door and said, “I say, is this the Nursery Crime Division?”

  “Yelblf,” said Jack with his mouth full of bacon sandwich. “Can I helbpf you?”

  “I’m looking for Detective Inspector, er…” He looked at a sheet of paper he had on a clipboard. “Jack Spratt.”

  “That’s me. What can I do for you?”

  “Ah!” said the tall man, looking at the clipboard again and then at the tiny office as though there had been some sort of mistake,

  “My name’s Brown-Horrocks. I’m from the Guild of Detectives. I’ll be observing you today and reporting back to the selection committee.”

  It took a moment for Jack to take this in, but when he had, he carefully wiped his mouth with a napkin and rose to shake the man by the hand.

  “How do you do?” he said, trying to sound all professional and businesslike. “Won’t you come in and take a seat?”

  Brown-Horrocks stooped once more and just about managed to get his large frame into the tiny room and sit in Mary’s chair by folding his legs in an uncomfortable manner.

  “Thank you,” said Brown-Horrocks, looking around in an agitated manner. “Aren’t these offices a bit small for you?”

  “We’re moving shortly,” lied Jack. “Ashley, would you get Mr. Brown-Horrocks a cup of tea, please?”

  He said this as Ashley appeared at the door, more to get him out of the way than anything else.

  “What was that?”

  “Constable Ashley. One of the NCD staff.”

  “Is he all right? He looked…well, blue.”

  “All Rambosians are blue, Mr. Brown-Horrocks. He’s an alien.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” said Brown-Horrocks. “There must be something wrong with my hearing. For a moment I thought you said he was an alien.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  Brown-Horrocks stared at Jack, reached into his jacket pocket for a pen and made a note on the clipboard. Jack tried to see what he was writing, but Brown-Horrocks leaned away from him so he couldn’t.

  “Let me explain what my job is,” said the Guild man kindly.

  “As I understand it, you have applied to join the Most Worshipful Guild of Detectives, and your application has been passed to the second stage: a practical demonstration of your skills as a detective and any other attributes that you can bring to the Guild to further enhance and illuminate the Guild’s good standing with the public and the publishers of Amazing Crime Stories. Now, I understand you have four failed marriages. Is this true?”

  “Yes,” said Jack. He didn’t know what Madeleine had written on the application, so he was goin
g to have to wing it.

  “Your application also says you have a drinking problem and are something of a loner.”

  “Yes. I drink to excess, and my family has abandoned me completely. I make do with short-term flings with totally unsuitable and very dangerous women.”

  “Hmm,” said Brown-Horrocks, and made another note.

  “That’s good, right?”

  “Not really.”

  “No, I meant for the application.”

  “I can’t give anything away as regards my report, Inspector, and it would be very improper of you to ask.”

  “Of course. Here’s your tea.”

  Ashley placed the cup and the saucer on the desk and said,

  “Sugar?”

  “Two, please.”

  Ashley looked embarrassed and glanced at Jack.

  “That’s 10, Ashley. He’s a Rambosian,” explained Jack. “They only understand binary.”

  “Only…understand…binary,” repeated Brown-Horrocks slowly, making a note.

  “Yes,” replied Jack, trying to act as if it were entirely normal and not strange at all. “If we need something in, say, eight days’ time, we just tell Ashley it’s needed in 1,000 days. Aside from a few lapses in common sense brought on by cultural differences, as befits a visitor from eighteen light-years away, he’s a model officer.”

  “By the way,” said Ashley, pointing at Brown-Horrocks’s tea,

  “they were out of milk, so I used emulsion paint.”

  “See?”

  “Yes,” said Brown-Horrocks slowly, making another note and staring at the alien curiously. “Tell me, Mr. Ashley, what’s it like being an alien?”

  “Well, goodness,” he said, tapping one of his thumbs on his temple, “do you know, I’ve never really thought about it before.”

  “Thank you, Ashley,” said Jack before any more damage was done. “Would you check my pigeonhole for any correspondence, please?”

  Ashley got the message and beat a fast retreat.

  “Anyway,” continued Brown-Horrocks, “I’ve got a copy of your interim report, so I have an idea what is going on, although, to be honest, I’m a little disappointed. Repeat interviews with prime suspects to eke out the information have not been undertaken, and two false confessions does seem to push it a bit. I think the second one could have been played down. In fact,” he added loftily, “I’ve never seen a more badly structured investigation. Did you not consider publication at all when you conducted it?”

  “It’s a new technique,” replied Jack hastily, “experimental.”

  “Well, I’ll try to keep an open mind,” Brown-Horrocks said in the manner of a man who won’t. “What do you plan to do today? Interview all the prime suspects and finger the murderer in a stunning turn of events that will challenge and surprise any potential readers?”

  “Brown-Horrocks,” said Jack slowly, “this is a police investigation—not a mystery writers’ convention.”

  Brown-Horrocks lowered his pen and stared at Jack. “You will find,” he said, attempting to keep his obvious dissatisfaction hidden, “that Guild members have many responsibilities. Not only to the victims of crime and the public in need of reassurance against a hostile and dangerous world but also to the publishers of Amazing Crime Stories and the rest of the entertainment business.”

  Jack thought of telling him to take his clipboard and stuff it up his arse, but opportunities to join the Guild didn’t come around every day. Despite Chymes, he still wanted to join. The cash would help. And the kudos. And he might get a few convictions, too. He needed to defuse the situation—and fast.

  “Is that tea all right?”

  “It’s undrinkable.”

  “Excellent. Ah, Mary,” he said with some relief. “Mary, I’d like you to meet Mr. Brown-Horrocks, who is from the Guild.”

  “Oh!” said Mary, who understood the difficulties of the situation at a glance and panicked into saying the first thing that came into her head: “You’re very tall.”

  “Why do people think I might not have noticed?” asked Brown-Horrocks with a trace of annoyance.

  “No, it’s just that Jack has a reputation for killing—”

  “Thank you, Mary. DS Mary is my potential Official Sidekick and has a few interesting character traits of her own that would doubtless make good copy.”

  “What are they?” asked Brown-Horrocks.

  “Yes,” said Jack, looking at Mary expectantly. “What are they?”

  “Well,” said Mary, thinking hard, “I live in a half-converted flying boat.”

  “So does my uncle,” replied an unimpressed Brown-Horrocks.

  Ashley returned, and Brown-Horrocks looked at him curiously. “What about you, Constable Ashley? Any strange character traits?”

  “None at all,” replied the alien wistfully. “I enjoy car-spotting which is like train-spotting but with cars. I keep them in a book and swap the numbers with friends. I collect jam jars, beer mats, buttons, and I’m building a hyperspace-propulsion unit in my garage.”

  “You’re right,” muttered Brown-Horrocks, “nothing odd there.”

  “Good morning,” said Gretel as she walked in the door. “They gave me a violet security—Oh!”

  “This is Constable Gretel Kandlestyk-Maeker,” announced Jack, “another member of our team.”

  They shook hands. Brown-Horrocks stared at Gretel, and Gretel stared back. Being of greater-than-average height can sometimes be a lonely business.

  “Six foot…three and a half?” asked Brown-Horrocks.

  “Two and a quarter,” replied Gretel shyly. “It’s these boots.”

  “Right,” said Jack, who was desperate to be anywhere but here. “I’m going to interview Lola Vavoom again to see if she can shed any light on Humpty’s new wife. Brown-Horrocks? I suppose you’ll stay here and await results?”

  “Not at all,” he replied with a sigh. “I am here to observe you and your ‘experimental’ techniques whether I like it or not. Lead on.”

  38. Lola Vavoom Returns

  VAVOOM BREAKS SELF-EXILE TO CLAIM,

  “I WANT TO BE ALONE”

  The actress Lola Vavoom broke her self-imposed exile of fourteen years yesterday to demand that the press leave her alone. The reclusive fifty-five-year-old former star of screen and stage who has been absent from newspaper columns since 1990 demanded that the press stop hounding her every move and making her life a misery. “I thought she was dead,” admitted “Skip” McHale, The Toad’s entertainment correspondent, “but now I know she’s around and wants to be left alone, we can dig up some of her ex-husbands to spill the beans on her bedroom antics for a crisp twenty-pound note and eight minutes of fame.” Miss Vavoom is to give a televised broadcast to eight networks tomorrow evening to decry her “lack of privacy.”

  —Extract from The Mole, April 22, 2004

  “Did you ever see Anthrax! The Musical?” asked Brown-Horrocks as they climbed up the creaking stairs at Spongg Villas to Lola’s apartment.

  “No, I think I missed that one.”

  “Brilliant piece of work,” said Brown-Horrocks reverentially. “You would have thought that a musical about the experimental anthrax bombing of the Scottish island of Gruinard would be tasteless but Miss Vavoom’s performance of chirpy biological-warfare scientist ‘Boobs’ McGonagle was both sensitive and touching.”

  Spongg Villas had been surrounded by journalists, all eager to speak to the actress since Thomm’s body had been discovered the day before, but Jack, Mary and Brown-Horrocks had just pushed their way through.

  They reached her apartment, and Jack pressed the doorbell. It didn’t work, so he knocked instead.

  Lola opened it like a whirlwind but seemed surprised to see them. She was wearing a kimono and looked faintly alluring.

  “Ah,” she said, “it’s you, Inspector.” She lazily extended a hand for him to shake, then looked at Mary.

  “DS Mary, isn’t it?”

  Mary nodded.

  “We
ll! Haven’t we all got extraordinary names? Quite unbelievable, don’t you think? Who’s the giant?”

  “This is Brown-Horrocks of the Guild of Detectives, Ms. Vavoom, and he’s not technically a giant. He’s a big fan of your work.”

  “Oh, Brown-Horrocks,” she cooed, “you are indeed my biggest fan!”

  “Kjdshdieupw,” said Brown-Horrocks, struck inarticulate in her presence.

  “Won’t you all come in?”

  She walked away without waiting for an answer, and they followed. Her apartment smelled of lavender, and the walls were adorned with black-and-white photographs of Lola as a young woman with the stars of the screen and stage in the seventies and eighties.

  “So you kept good company?” asked Jack as he pointed at a photo of her with Giorgio Porgia. She pulled down one of the blinds on the window and laughed a high, shrill laugh.

  “In the early days. He was a charming man, Inspector. When one searches for exciting men who treat a girl with respect, one is willing to overlook the shadier aspects. Gentlemen like Giorgio just don’t exist anymore, either side of the law.”

  The room was lit mostly by table lamps. There were several drapes hanging on the walls, and all around them were the collected memorabilia of her short yet illustrious film career. Her Milton was on the mantelpiece, in pride of place among an impressive array of other awards. She lay on a chaise longue and indicated the chairs opposite her. “Please.”

  They sat down.

  “A few questions, Ms. Vavoom. You don’t mind?”

  “Not at all. I was rather hoping you’d have that handsome constable with you. How can I help?”

  “We’d like to know a little bit more about Humpty Dumpty—and women.”

  She looked up at the ceiling and placed her head on one side. “He was devoted to his first wife.”

  “Lucinda Muffet-Dumpty?”

  “Yes; he never really got over her death. She died in a car accident when he was in prison. I don’t think he ever forgave himself. If he had been there, he often said, it might have been different.”