The Fourth Bear

by Jasper Fforde

  “We’ll approach from the left in case this is a crime scene,” said Jack, getting out of the Allegro and walking slowly toward the Austin, which was covered with a smattering of leaves and broken twigs. There was a branch lying on the hood that had dented the panel.

  “When was the last windy night?” he called over his shoulder.

  “Sunday,” answered Mary. “I feel them more than most on the lake.”

  Jack nodded. The fact that a car could sit undiscovered for more than a week demonstrated the solitude of the forest. The interior of the car was dark, and it wasn’t easy to see inside, so with heavily beating heart Jack tried the handle. It was unlocked, and he opened the door, expecting the worst. He breathed a sigh of relief. The car was empty; Goldilocks was nowhere to be seen. Her cell phone, its battery exhausted, was lying on the passenger seat.

  “Anything?” called out Mary.

  Jack checked the trunk to make quite sure, and aside from a travel rug and a spare bottle of antifreeze, there was nothing.

  “She’s not here,” said Jack, and Mary cautiously approached in the same direction Jack had taken.

  “What do we do?” she asked. “There’s still no crime, so I can’t see Briggs agreeing to a search of the area. Not for the NCD anyway.”

  “Call Baker and Gretel,” he said, rummaging carefully in the glove box, “and see if they can’t make an excuse to get out or something. Look at this.”

  He handed her a receipt for fuel, neatly attached to several others in a bulldog clip.

  “Theale Services, dated last Saturday and timed at 7:02 A.M.,” murmured Mary. “Theale’s a thirty-minute drive from here, which puts her in the forest around 7:30 at the earliest.”

  “And Theale is itself thirty minutes from her house,” added Jack. “It all backs up the cell-phone record. She received a call at 6:04 and took, say, half an hour to get out of her house, half an hour to the services and then on to here. If I’m not mistaken, whoever called her on her mobile arranged to meet her here, in the forest—and as soon as possible.”

  They looked around. All about them the forest stood heavy and lush in the summer’s glorious embrace. It was like living in another world, or another age, when England was covered in dense oak forest and humans were few. It would have been a haven for wild boar, elk and bear.

  “Somewhere out there,” said Jack, “is Goldilocks.”

  “That sounded ominous,” remarked Mary, rummaging for her own cell phone. “I’ll get onto Baker and Gretel.”

  “Do that. I’m going to have a look around.”

  He walked slowly into the forest, the crisp detritus underfoot sounding inordinately loud in the solitude. As soon as he stepped among the trees, the high canopy of overlapping leaves shut out the daylight almost entirely, leaving just occasional spots of sunlight on the forest’s ferny floor. Jack walked for a couple hundred yards and then stopped. Not a bird stirred, not an animal dared show itself. He could see no sign of Goldilocks, nor any sign of humans at all. There was nothing to be gained by meandering aimlessly in the forest, so he walked back in the direction of the car. After five minutes, and with no sign of the car, Mary or even the road, he realized he was lost. He’d heard the rumors about the forest’s high lostability index but had not believed them until now. He continued walking in what he thought was the right direction and after about ten minutes came across a small thatched cottage in the middle of a clearing.

  It was a low building with a neat whitewashed facade and a green door and shutters. The garden path was decorated with scallop shells, and the humble abode had a cottage vegetable garden on either side. The whole was surrounded by a neat picket fence, and a couple of fruit trees stood close by. There were several hives of honey near the back door, the gentle buzz of bees adding a musical accompaniment to the idyllic scene. Neither telephone nor electrical cables led into the house, and on the breeze there hung the unmistakable smell of freshly baked bread.

  He opened the garden gate and walked briskly up the path, noticing that there was a hammock swinging gently on the veranda. But that wasn’t all. Inside the hammock and snoring loudly, with a brown derby hat over his eyes, was a bear. A large male bear dressed in purple breeches and a blue waistcoat. Jack paused. He knew that a few bears lived in the wood, but he’d never met them. These must be the traditionalists among them—most bears he knew preferred the comforts of the Bob Southey. Yesterday’s copy of The Owl was lying on the bear’s massive chest, and the remains of a honey sandwich and a huge mug of tea rested on a table nearby.

  “Hey!” said Jack, knocking on one of the wooden uprights that supported the roof over the veranda.

  The bear didn’t wake. He just yawned and displayed a huge set of sharp white teeth and a tongue the size of Jack’s forearm.

  “Hey, wake up!” repeated Jack, this time louder.

  When this didn’t elicit an answer, he tapped the sleeping bulk with his foot. There was a grunting and a stirring, and the bear licked his chops, coughed politely with his fist in front of his mouth and said, in a deep, gravelly baritone, “Is it dinner?”

  “Police,” said Jack, holding out his ID.

  The bear pushed up the brim of his hat with one claw, squinted at the document and then looked up at Jack. He lowered his hat again and clasped his paws together over his stomach. “So, Mr. Policeman, what do you want?”

  Jack put his ID away. “The name’s Detective Chief Inspector Spratt. I want to talk to you about a missing woman.”

  The bear made no answer, and Jack thought he had gone back to sleep. He was about to repeat the question when the bear said, “You’re a city cop, Inspector. I can smell the exhaust and concrete on your clothes. You had bacon for breakfast, buy your toiletries at the Body Shop and once owned a cat. You work closely with a woman who is not your wife, you did number two less than an hour ago and you’re lost—I can smell several different areas of the forest on you, which tells me you didn’t come here in a straight line.”

  “You’re very perceptive.”

  The bear twitched his nose. “The mighty sniffer never lies, Officer.”

  “What’s your name, bear?” asked Jack.

  The bear chuckled and scratched his nose. “Bruin,” he said, “Edward Bruin.” He looked at Jack again and added, “You can call me Ed.”

  “How many of you live here in the wood?”

  “It is not a wood,” retorted Ed pedantically, “it’s a forest. It’s always a forest. Wood is something you make cricket bats out of.”

  “Sorry. How many of you live here in the forest?”

  “My good lady wife, Ursula, and Nigel, our son. The missus is indoors, and Junior’s at school.”

  Jack nodded. There were three of them—things were looking better and better. He showed the bear Goldilocks’s photo.

  “Have you seen this woman in the forest sometime in the last week?”

  Ed donned a pair of spectacles and squinted at the snap, recognizing her immediately and opening his eyes wide. “That’s her!”

  “You’ve seen her recently?”

  “Seen her?” echoed the bear. “Why, she nearly wrecked the place.”

  “When?”

  Ed scratched his head and rolled off the hammock onto all fours, stood up to his full height, which was at least seven foot six, stretched, farted and then lumbered off into the house.

  “Come inside, Inspector,” he said, beckoning Jack to follow. “I want to show you something.”

  The interior of the bear’s house was austerely furnished but neat and tidy. There were only two rooms, one up and one down, and the downstairs comprised kitchen, dining and living area all in one. There were flagstones on the floor, and the walls were finished in a pastel blue color. A pretty pine dresser laden with crockery was against one wall and next to that a small upright piano, the lid up and a book of hymns open on the music rest. In front of the hearth there were three stoutly built wooden chairs. A large one for Ed, a slightly smaller one for his wife a
nd next to that a tiny chair that had recently been broken and mended. On the wall were various sepia-toned pictures of friends and relatives, and above the mantelpiece was the Lord’s Prayer embroidered upon a framed piece of cloth. The small dwelling was plain, and no modern contrivances littered its simplicity. There was no television, no stereo player, nor any modern appliance of any sort. The only artificial light was a large brass oil lamp in the center of the oak kitchen table.

  Mrs. Bruin was at the range, taking a loaf out of the oven with a pair of oven gloves. She was smaller than her husband and wore a rose-patterned dress with a lace pinafore and a bonnet through which stuck her ears. She didn’t take any notice of Jack at all.

  “Darling…?” said Ed in a low voice, holding his hat in his paws and blinking nervously. She looked up sharply and glanced at Jack.

  “You’ve spilled honey down your front,” she said in a voice that was not quite as low as her husband’s.

  “Have I, my dove?” said Ed, looking down at the sticky stain on his blue waistcoat and rubbing at it ineffectually with a claw.

  “You’ll make it worse!” she scolded, and took a cloth to the offending stain. Ed gave an embarrassed smile in Jack’s direction.

  “What does the human want?” asked Mrs. Bruin, again without looking at Jack.

  “Police,” said Ed simply.

  Mrs. Bruin stopped rubbing his waistcoat and looked at Jack suspiciously, placed her hands on her hips and said, in a weary tone, “Okay, what’s he done now?”

  “Sorry?”

  “What’s he been up to? If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a thousand times: Man is a bad influence. I caught him wearing his baseball cap on backward, and he insists that the tongues of his sneakers stick out. He keeps on using phrases like ‘monster’ and ‘far out.’ Yesterday he sneaked a GameBoy into the house. He keeps on asking for an iPod and won’t forage. He’ll come to a sticky end, and it’s all your fault!”

  She had directed the last sentence at her husband, who reacted as if he had been stung with a cattle prod.

  “Mine, sweetness?”

  “Yes, yours. If you’d been more firm after we adopted him, we might not have a delinquent on our hands. ‘Clip him around the ear,’ I said. ‘Oh, no,’ you said, ‘youth must have its voice,’ you said. Well, look what’s happened. All you ever do is lounge around; I get all the meals, and you won’t lift a finger to help!”

  Ed had been fiddling nervously with the brim of his hat, slowly backing away from the tirade.

  “To think what I could have had!” she added, curling a lip at Ed and showing him a large white canine. She grunted and turned to Jack, smiled and said, “He’s really just a cub, Officer. I’m sure he was only under the influence of some of that human rabble from the village. What exactly has he done?”

  “I’m not here about your son, Mrs. Bruin.”

  “No?”

  “No. I’m looking for this woman.” He held out the photo.

  Mrs. Bruin glared at her husband, who shrugged. She wiped her paws on a tea towel and examined the photo closely. “Ah,” she said. “Her.”

  “Perhaps you can tell me a bit more?”

  “My husband will tell you all about it, Officer. He’s the boss in this house.”

  Ed stood up straight when he heard this and placed his hat on the bentwood stand. He led Jack to the other side of the room and offered him a chair.

  “Have a seat, Inspector. Tea?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Honey sandwich? It’s all quota—no substance abuse in this house.”

  “Thank you, I’ve already eaten.”

  “Do you mind if I have one?”

  “Not at all.”

  Ed licked his lips and shouted across to his wife, “Two teas, pet—and a honey sandwich for our guest.” He winked broadly at Jack and smiled slyly.

  “So when did you last see her?” asked Jack.

  “It must have been Friday morning—”

  “Saturday,” said Mrs. Bruin from the other side of the room.

  Ed looked around. “I think it was Friday, actually, dear.”

  “Saturday,” she growled. “We had to go to the vet about your worms.”

  There was a ghastly pause. Ed looked at Jack with an expression of acute embarrassment etched upon his features. He smiled sheepishly.

  “Thank you, darling,” said Ed sarcastically. “I’m sure Inspector Spratt has better things to do than hear about my ailments.”

  “If you hadn’t been rummaging in the trash, you never would have got them in the first place,” replied his wife airily.

  I was not in the trash,” he said indignantly. He lowered his voice and turned to Jack. “Worms can happen to almost anyone. Even,” he added, nodding in his wife’s direction, “to the trouble and strife.” He nodded his head triumphantly, checked to make sure she hadn’t heard and then sat back in his chair. “What were we talking about?”

  “Goldilocks.”

  “Oh, yes. It was last Saturday. My good lady wife had made some porridge for breakfast—again, strictly quota—and we all went for a walk in the forest while it cooled.”

  “Is that normal procedure?”

  “Yes, indeed; it’s completely true what they say about bears and forests. Our morning constitutional, as it were. The forest speaks, you know, Inspector. Every morning it has changed in some small way. By the way the trees sway and the birds sing and the leaves—”

  “That’s very interesting, Mr. Bruin,” interrupted Jack, “but what happened about the porridge?”

  “Oh, well, we came home to find that my son’s porridge had been eaten. He was most upset about it.”

  “Goldilocks?”

  He held up a claw. “Wait a minute. Then we noticed that my son’s chair had been sat on and broken.”

  “This one here?”

  “Yes, I’ve tried to mend it, but it’s never quite the same, is it?”

  “And then?”

  “We went upstairs and found that woman asleep in my son’s bed!”

  The bear stared at Jack as though he should be as outraged as Ed was.

  “Then what did she do?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” asked Ed angrily. “You would have thought that finally, after two thousand years of being hunted, kept in grotty zoos, made to ride motorcycles and dance to some forgettable tune played by a repulsive and usually toothless Eastern European, we members of the Ursidae family had won the right to be left alone.”

  “She broke a chair, but surely that’s not the end of the world?”

  “It’s the thin end of the wedge,” he replied indignantly. “How would you like it if a bear wandered into your house when you were out, ate your breakfast, destroyed your property and then had the barefaced cheek to fall asleep—naked—in your bed?”

  “I see your point. Why didn’t you report it?”

  “What’s the use? Most of the police I’ve ever met have been ursists.”

  “Not in my department.”

  Ed sighed. “You may not think you’re ursist, Inspector, but you are. You said to me earlier, ‘What’s your name, bear?’ Is that how you treat other men? ‘What’s your name, human?’”

  Jack could see his point. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.”

  Ed harrumphed. Since he occupied the moral high ground for the moment, he thought he would carry on.

  “We’ve had a pretty checkered history with humans, you know. But the way I figure it, you lot can’t seem to make up your minds about us at all. On the one hand, you name constellations after us, make us deities and use us as strong national symbols, and on the other hand you hunt us to near extinction.”

  “Bears are not exactly alone in that category.”

  “Agreed, but you also name athletic teams after us, create in our image tremendously popular characters like Winnie-the-Pooh, Paddington and Yogi, and every child has a teddy bear of some sort, yet up until 1835 it was considered a fun day out to pay good money to see
my kind either being torn apart by dogs or blinded and then beaten with a stick. Your first Queen Elizabeth liked nothing better than to watch us being tormented in some highly imaginative way.”

  “I can only say that I hope we have made up for it,” replied Jack, unable to defend the indefensible but loyally trying to apologize for his own species’ treatment of bears over the years. “The Animal (anthropomorphic) Equality Bill was quite far-reaching.”

  “Equality is not what we want, although it is a start,” said Ed slowly, flicking away a fly that was trying to get at the honey spilled down his front. “Any creature that wants to be the equal of a human has set its sights way too low. We have an ursine saying, Inspector, that goes something like this: ‘If you crap with your ass in the mountain stream, the poo won’t stick to your fur.’ Do you see what I mean?”

  “Not really.”

  Ed frowned. “Yes, I guess it loses something in the translation.”

  “Tea?” inquired Mrs. Bruin, placing a tray of steaming cups on the table in front of them. “I’m sorry the mugs are a bit large, Officer. I won’t be upset if you don’t drink it all.” She smiled sweetly and tickled her husband affectionately behind the ear.

  The mugs held about a gallon of tea each, and Jack could hardly even lift his. As soon as his wife was back at the cooking range, Ed greedily ate up the honey sandwich that Mrs. Bruin had put in front of Jack.

  “Well, I’m sorry for all that, but my chief interest at the moment is Goldilocks.”

  “Who?” asked Ed, who could be dense at times.

  “The one who broke the chair.”

  “Oh, her. Well, like I said, it’s not the damage, it’s the principle. An apology would help.”

  “I’ll see what we can do,” asserted Jack, wondering whether Goldilocks was in a fit state to apologize—or do anything at all. “Why was she asleep in your son’s bed?”

  “Tired, I guess,” said Ed simply. “We quizzed her, of course. She said that my porridge was too hot and Ursula’s was too cold, but Junior’s was just right.”

  “So she ate it up?”

  “Right. Then she said she tried my chair but it was too hard, my wife’s but it was too soft, but Junior’s again was just right.”