The Big Over Easy Read online

  —From The Gadfly, August 10, 1984

  “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.” H
e 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?”

  “You do.” Briggs beckoned the policewoman over. “Jack, I want you to meet Detective Sergeant Mary.”

  “Hello,” said Jack.

  “Mary Mary,” said Mary Mary.

  “Hello, hello?”

  “Don’t play the fool, Spratt,” cut in Briggs.

  “It’s Mary Mary,” explained Mary. “That’s my name.”

  “Mary Mary? Where are you from? Baden-Baden?”

  “First time I heard that one, sir—today.”

  Jack sighed. He smiled mechanically, she smiled mechanically, and they shook hands.

  “Pleased to meet you, sir,” she said.

  “And you,” replied Jack. “Who are you working with?”

  She looked across at Briggs rather pointedly.

  “Mary is your new detective sergeant,” said Briggs. “Transferred with an A-one record from Basingstoke. She’ll be with you on this case and any others that spring up.”

  Jack sighed. “No offense to DS Mary, sir, but I was hoping you could promote Ashley, Baker, or—”

  “Not possible, Jack,” said Briggs in the tone of voice that made arguing useless. He looked up at the ominous sky. “Well, I’m off. I’ll leave you here with Mary so you can get acquainted. Remember: I need that report as soon as possible. Got it?”

  Jack did indeed get it, and Briggs departed.

  Jack shivered in the cold and looked at her again. “Mary Mary, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Kind of an odd name.”

  Mary bit her lip. It was a contentious point with her, and the years had not diminished the hot indignation of playground taunts regarding contrariness. It was an odd name, but she tried not to let her feelings show.

  “It’s just my name, sir. I come from a long line of Mary Marys—sort of like a
family tradition. Why,” she added, more defensively,

  “is there a problem?”

  “Not at all,” replied Jack, “as long as it’s not an affectation for the Guild’s benefit—Briggs was threatening to change his to Föngotskilérnie.”

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  “Friedland Chymes’s investigations usually end up in print, as you know,” explained Jack, “and Briggs is habitually not referred to. He thought a strange name and a few odd habits might make him more…mentionworthy.”

  “Hence the trombone?”

  “Right.”

  There was a short silence, during which Jack thought about who he would have preferred to have as his DS and Mary thought about her career.

  “So the NCD disbanded?” she said, using her best woeful voice to make it sound like terribly bad news. “That would mean all the staff would have to be reassigned to other duties, right?”

  “Along with the chairs and table lamps, yes, I suppose so.”

  “When is this budgetary meeting?”

  “The Thursday following next.”

  Mary made a mental note. The sooner she could get away from this loser department, the better.

  Jack turned his attention to the shattered remains of Humpty’s corpse.

  Mary took her cue and flicked open her notepad. “Corpse’s name is—”

  “Humpty Dumpty.”

  “You knew him?”

  “Once,” Jack sighed, shaking his head sadly. “A very long time ago.”

  Humpty’s ovoid body had fragmented almost completely and was scattered among the dustbins and rubbish at the far end of the yard. The previous night’s heavy rain had washed away his liquid center, but even so there was still enough to give off an unmistakably eggy smell. Jack noted a thin and hairless leg—still with a shoe and sock—attached to a small area of eggshell draped with tattered sheets of translucent membrane. The biggest piece of shell contained Humpty’s large features and was jammed between two dustbins. His face was a pale white except for the nose, which was covered in unsightly red gin blossoms. One of the eyes was open, revealing a milky-white unseeing eye, and a crack ran across his face. He had been wearing a tuxedo with a cravat or cummerbund—it was impossible to say which. The trauma was quite severe, and to an untrained eye his body might have been dismissed as a heap of broken eggshell and a bundle of damp clothing.