The Fourth Bear

by Jasper Fforde

  He reached over and kissed her affectionately. “That sounds like a beautiful idea, Pookums. Can it be a really serious punch-up? Like we used to have in the good old days?”

  “You’re just a sweet romantic at heart, aren’t you?” she replied tenderly. “I’ll ring up the Green Parrot for a reservation, book a couple of beds at the hospital and alert the finest emergency trauma team in Berkshire—and it’s my treat.”

  Jack and Madeleine went back inside and upstairs to bed, shooing Caliban out the door when he tried to follow them. They were both fast asleep a half hour later, the best and deepest sleep for them both in many weeks. And as they slept, Mr. and Mrs. Punch donned their evening dress and knuckle-dusters, Agatha had a heart-to-heart with her husband, and below on the street outside, a single rust bubble popped up on the paintwork of the otherwise pristine Allegro.

  31. The Truth Is Out There

  Largest flying boat ever: In 1934 the Soviet Union decided to enter the global-travel world with the mighty Ilyushin-95. With a wingspan of 520 feet and weighing in at almost two hundred tons, this monstrous behemoth of the skies was powered by no fewer than sixty-eight Vokspod-87 290-horsepower radial engines. The first and only attempt to fly it was on June 15, 1934, when it was tugged out into the Caspian Sea, filled with fuel and the pilot and crew told not to return until they “had brought glory on the motherland.” With all engines roaring, the flying boat vanished over the horizon and into legend. Nobody knows what became of it, but it is thought that after failing to get airborne it made landfall in Turkey, where the crew, too worried about the repercussions of failure, quietly sold it for scrap.

  —The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition

  Jack woke with a start at 5:30 A.M. He and Madeleine were still entwined, and he carefully unraveled her sleeping form from his before donning a dressing gown and walking into the bathroom. He examined the bruise on his chin where Briggs had thumped him and the one on his head from the rolling pin. He swallowed a couple of Tylenol, relieved himself and went downstairs.

  Jack sighed deeply. He had told Briggs he was on a three-month rest, although in reality he was anything but. There were at least two murderers loose in Reading, a mother of all conspiracies was unfolding unseen in front of him, and if what he thought was true, the geopolitical future of the world was very much in the balance. Perhaps. He made some coffee and tapped in to toadnews.com to see if the Gingerbreadman had been caught or shot. He hadn’t.

  “Can I come to work with you?”

  It was Caliban, sitting on the kitchen table.

  “I’m on leave.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “I am. And get off the table.”

  “Please?” implored Caliban as he jumped to the floor.

  “There is no place for you in—Hang on,” he added, suddenly thinking of something. “You’re a thieving little swine, aren’t you?”

  “One of the finest,” replied Caliban proudly, puffing out his chest.

  “Then I may have a job for you.”

  “Sorry,” said the ape, wagging a finger at him. “I never steal to order—that would be immoral. I only do it for fun.”

  “Okay, then—do you want to have some seriously good fun?”

  Caliban nodded vigorously, and Jack ran upstairs to get dressed. He kissed Madeleine, who mumbled something in her sleep along the lines of “Knock ’em dead, tiger.”

  Forty minutes later Jack was bumping down the track to the gravel pit and Mary’s Short Sunderland flying houseboat. It was still not yet six-thirty, and the lake was a flat calm. Not so much as a ripple broke the broad expanse of silver, and when Jack walked along the jetty, he could see fish feeding in the gin-clear shallows. It was almost idyllic, and hard to believe that, as likely as not, a ten-mile radius would encompass not only this picture of calm and tranquillity but also a raging psychopath and a fugitive member of Parliament wanted for murder.

  Jack knocked twice on the hull door, and after a few minutes it was opened by Mary, who was wrapped up in a dressing gown. She blinked sleepily.

  “Shit, Jack, what’s the time?”

  “Early.”

  “What happened to your face?”

  “This one was Briggs,” he said, pointing to his chin, “and this one was Madeleine.”

  “Madeleine?”

  “It’s all right—we made up. Can I have some coffee?”

  “You know where it is. I’ll get dressed.”

  Jack walked through the main part of the hull and up into the flight deck, where he lit the gas and put on the kettle. He sat in the copilot’s seat and stared absently at the view. There were still a lot of unanswered questions, but he hoped he could fit all the pieces together before the shitstorm really began.

  Mary reappeared a few minutes later, drying her damp hair with a towel.

  “You have an alien stuck to the ceiling,” observed Jack.

  “I know,” said Mary, pouring some coffee. “He needed somewhere to stay.”

  “How did the date go?”

  “Probably the oddest I’ve ever been on. I think our two species are so fundamentally different that any form of physical bond between us is almost inconceivable. Still, he’s fun to be with—and his family is completely nuts. His brother’s called Graham, he has a dopey sister named Daisy, and he—”

  Mary realized that she had been gushing a little too much and stopped. Jack hid a smile, and she took a sip of coffee.

  “So…what’s going on Jack?”

  “Everything. If we don’t get to the bottom of it all within the next twelve hours, then I’m a dead man.”

  Mary’s eyes narrowed. “You were serious about all that Bartholomew-being-innocent stuff last night?”

  “Absolutely. There’s something rotten in the city of Reading, and it’s up to the NCD to do something about it.”

  “So where does the twelve-hour death thing enter into it?”

  “Because that’s how long it’ll be before Danvers or Briggs starts checking Bartholomew’s phone records and…and…finds out that it was me who tipped him off.”

  Mary was stunned. She couldn’t quite believe it.

  “You called him so he could escape?”

  “I did.”

  “Jack—that’s not good. In fact, it’s very much worse than not good—it’s illegal. Really illegal. You’ll be bounced out of the force and banged up into the bargain.”

  “I had to do it to save his life. He didn’t kill Goldilocks. He’s the patsy, the fall guy. And like all fall guys in a frame-up, he won’t live twenty-four hours. If I hadn’t told him to run, we would have found him hanging by his pajama cord with a convenient confession close by. Everyone walks away, and Goldilocks’s murderer goes free. More important, the reason for her death remains secret.”

  “So…she wasn’t killed over illegal porridge quotas?”

  “Of course not. They were both good friends to bears. They were into that harmless little scam together—easing the burden of the average bear by free handouts of porridge midmonth. They were working together when photographed at the Coley Park Bart-Mart—and with Vinnie Craps in the background, monitoring them.”

  “I get it. So who framed him?”

  Jack paused for a minute. “NS-4. I thought at first they were protecting him, but they weren’t—they were setting him up to take the blame for Goldy’s death. They planted the Post-it note in the three bears’ house about Bartholomew meeting Goldilocks on Saturday morning, and they knew he wouldn’t have an alibi for that time period.”

  “How did you know it was a plant?”

  “Easy. The note referred to ‘Andersen’s Wood.’ Ed never called it a wood. It was always a forest.”

  “As you say,” breathed Mary, feeling a bit stupid that she hadn’t spotted it, “easy. But NS-4? That means this is all wrapped in that dodgy beast known as ‘national interest.’”

  “National interest be damned,” replied Jack. “Goldilocks is dead, and the Bruins ar
e fighting for their lives. I tell you, someone’s going to go down for this.”

  “Are you going to take it to Briggs?”

  Jack sighed. “I can’t. He’s a good cop, but he’s politically motivated. He’ll blab to the seventh floor, and the shutters will bang down tight. As long as NS-4 thinks we’ve bought into the whole Bartholomew/porridge scenario, then we’re safe. Any hint that we’re not and the pair of us could find ourselves in a trillion pieces at SommeWorld—or somewhere equally imaginative.”

  “Good morning,” said a voice from the door. It was Ashley, dressed only in a pair of yellow boxer shorts. “The short pauses and nervous intakes of breath woke me up.”

  “There’s some cooking oil in the cupboard,” said Mary. Ash poured himself a glass of oil and sat down.

  “So if Bartholomew didn’t kill Goldilocks,” said Mary, “who did?”

  “There was someone else in the cottage that morning.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because of the porridge temperature differential. It’s been bothering me for days. How could the three bears’ porridge be at such widely varying temperatures when it was all poured at the same time?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mary. “Because…of the different bowl sizes?”

  “The Guv’nor’s right,” remarked Ashley. “From a thermodynamic point of view, that’s just not possible. The bowl with the smallest volume would cool fastest, making Junior’s the coolest—yet his was warmer than Mrs. Bruin’s.”

  “Perhaps it’s about surface area?” suggested Mary.

  “If that was the case, then Ed’s would have been cooler,” replied Ashley.

  “Exactly,” said Jack. “This is the scenario as I see it: Goldilocks is investigating the murder of champion cucumber growers around the globe. She is talking to someone who may or may not be a long-dead scientist named McGuffin, who, aside from taking a cheery delight in blowing things up, also dabbled in cucumbers and was connected for a time to QuangTech. Every serious world-championship contender has had his cucumber strain destroyed and himself with it. She is about to go public with what she found out—but someone wants to keep her quiet at all costs and lures her to the three bears’ cottage on Saturday morning by telling her Bartholomew will be waiting for her.”

  “How do you know they used Bartholomew as the lure?”

  “She was naked in bed when the three bears found her.”

  “Of course. And the porridge?”

  “I’m coming to that. Her assailant tells her to be there at eight-fifteen, and he arrives just after the three bears left for their walk but just before Goldilocks arrived. He waits—but the smell of porridge is too tempting, and he eats the coolest porridge—baby bear’s. Then he refills it. But…he’s still hungry, so he eats father bear’s porridge, too. And then he refills that.”

  “I get it,” said Mary. “So when Goldilocks arrives and tastes the porridge, father bear’s is too hot because it’s just been poured, mother bear’s is too cold because it was the original pouring, but baby bear’s was just right—and that’s the one she ate.”

  “But then…who was there that morning?” asked Ashley.

  “Who can’t resist porridge?”

  “Bears.”

  “But there’s a problem,” observed Mary. “Bears are essentially peaceful, and Goldy’s Friend to Bears status would have protected her. And besides, why didn’t they tell you about him? His scent would have been all over the house.”

  “Because…he was sleeping with Ed’s wife.”

  “You can’t tell that from the porridge, surely?”

  “No. Do you remember the three bears all had their own beds? I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but Punch mentioned it last night, and all of a sudden it made sense. Mr. and Mrs. Bruin were sleeping separately because there were serious marital problems within the bear family. The interloper in the cottage that morning was another bear, a fourth bear. He was the one that ate and repoured the porridge. He was the one sleeping with Ursula Bruin. He was the one waiting for Goldilocks. He was the one that killed her—and he was the one Ed wanted to tell me about.”

  “Then it was the fourth bear and not Bartholomew who ordered the Gingerbreadman to kill the Bruins?”

  “I believe it was. And if he was diddling Ursula under Ed’s nose without being killed, he’s dominant. Very dominant.”

  “Ed Bruin was ranked sixty-eight in the Reading Ursa Major Bear Hierarchy,” said Mary. “They’re very big on male dominance. Which leaves us with sixty-seven more suspects than we need right now.”

  They all sat in silence for a moment, digesting the latest revelations.

  “So…continue your scenario?” said Mary.

  “Okay. Goldilocks arrives at the cottage about eight-ten, and she’s hungry, so she eats the porridge, accidentally breaks a chair and then undresses to wait for Bartholomew in bed. She falls asleep because she has been up all night working on her story, and she might have been dispatched there and then, except the three bears return half an hour early because of Ed’s appointment with the vet. They don’t realize who she is. She gives a truthful account of herself and runs off into the forest.”

  “And is never seen again—at least, not alive,” murmured Mary.

  “Precisely. Her flight from the cottage is watched by her assailant, who has seen the three bears return and elects to stay hidden—they don’t know he’s arranged this little meeting. He follows her, kills her and dumps the body in SommeWorld, where it is hoped she will either not be found or it will be assumed she died accidentally.”

  “Then what?” asked Mary.

  “It all goes fine until we start to ask questions and connect Goldy with Obscurity and the cucumber-related deaths. But Ed Bruin is deeply disturbed that a Friend to Bears has died and is suspicious about the fourth bear being in the cottage that morning. He decides to call me, but the fourth bear acts quickly: He orders the Gingerbreadman to kill them and plant the note on Ed’s desk about meeting Bartholomew. If all had gone according to plan, we would arrest and charge Bartholomew and he’d be silenced shortly afterward, and the killings would have looked like an unrelated ursist attack.”

  “Had we not got to the forest as quick as we did.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Are you saying the Gingerbreadman, the fourth bear and NS-4 are all connected?”

  “I’m not sure, but muse on this: Ginger’s been on low-security transportation for over six years yet chooses to break out exactly at this time and place. He’s being controlled by someone, I’m almost positive.”

  “How do you control the Gingerbreadman?”

  “I don’t know. He was in St. Cerebellum’s when Goldilocks died, so that rules him out from the actual murder.”

  They all went silent for a moment.

  “This is the plan,” announced Jack. “We find out the story Goldilocks was working on. If it was big enough to have her killed, then it’s as big as she boasted. Four unexplained fireballs with world-class cucumber growers at the center of three of them.”

  “You think Cripps and the other cucumberistas were murdered and their champions stolen?”

  “I do. Cripps must have entered his greenhouse that night and come across an empty sight—holes where his plants had been.”

  “‘Good heavens! It’s full of holes.’” murmured Mary. “His final words. Bisky-Batt said the nutritional value of a giant cucumber is almost zero, but perhaps Cripps and the others were working on giant cucumbers to then cross-pollinate with other foodstuffs that would be useful. Since GM research is banned in the UK, maybe QuangTech was having a bunch of well-meaning amateurs do their work for them—and occasionally ‘lending a hand’ with visits from the Men in Green.”

  “You’re right,” replied Jack. “Fuchsia mentioned something about the MIGs taking core samples and clippings and so forth—and if McGuffin didn’t die and is supervising the research…”

  They thought about all this for a while,
as it was quite far-fetched, but then NCD investigations generally were, as a rule.

  “It’s a solid theory,” said Jack finally, “but we need to know more—and we’ve got a good place to start.”

  “Where?”

  “The Gingerbreadman. Find him and with a bit of luck he’ll lead us to the fourth bear.”

  “We’re going to do a plot device number twenty-six after all,” observed Mary with a smile. “One small thing: How do we find Mr. G. when Copperfield and six hundred officers are running around Reading without a clue?”

  Jack said nothing but took a paper evidence package from his jacket and showed it to her.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s the gingerbread thumb you shot off.”

  “You removed evidence from the evidence store? How the hell did you manage that?”

  “I have a good friend who steals things for me. This is what we’ll do: Mary, you’ll be with me and we’ll take this broken cookie to Parks. Ashley, I want you to go into the office and pretend everything is as normal. If Briggs or anyone else asks what’s going on, you’re to tell them that Mary is looking into a minor domestic bear incident down at the Bob Southey.”

  “You mean lie to a ranking officer?”

  “Yes,” said Jack, “and do it well. But remember: no elephants, no pirates.”

  Ashley was halfway out the door before Jack called him back.

  “What?”

  “You’d better get dressed if you’re going to work.”

  “Of course,” said Ashley, and he dashed off into the hull of the flying boat.

  32. Parks Again

  Strangest degree course: Gone are the days when only traditional academic disciplines were offered for further study. A quick trawl of UK prospecti reveals that Faring-don University offers a three-year B.A. in Carrot Husbandry, a course that is only mildly stranger than Nuffield’s Correct Use of Furniture or Durham’s Advanced Blinking. Our favorite is the B.A. offered by the University of Slough in Whatever You Want, in which you spend three years doing…whatever you want. Slough has reported, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the pass mark is 100 percent.