“Get what?”
“It. Us. The whole bit. You’ll see. The second thing you learn is that they’re really not that interesting, so don’t strike up a conversation without a good reason to excuse yourself. Despite that, Ashley excels with records, filing, indexing and general data crunching.”
“It’s not as though I actually wanted to be a policeman,” said Ashley, who had returned as quickly as he left, “but the filing here is to die for.”
“Here as in earth?” asked Mary, without meaning to be patronizing.
“No,” replied Ashley without even the smallest trace of taking offense, “here as in Reading.”
The other officer was a woman. She was very tall and willowy and had long straight hair made up into a single plait. She looked as though she had been heated up at birth and then drawn out like a soft candle. She was over six foot two, and when she ran, it looked as if she were in slow motion, like a giraffe. In the park where she jogged every morning, there were at least a half dozen men and two women there for no other reason than to watch her.
“Mary, this is Constable the Baroness Gretel Leibnitz von Kandlestyk-Maeker, all the way from Cologne. She doesn’t know what she’s doing here, and we don’t know what she’s doing here, but we’re glad she is, because she’s a damn fine officer. She used to work with Chymes.”
“Really?” asked Mary, interested all of a sudden. “What happened?”
“I was—how can I say it?—less respectful than I should have been. If Chymes asks you to do something, refuse it at your peril. I could have been DS by now—just look at me.”
“Thank you, Gretel,” said Jack, none too happy at the inference. “Gretel’s area of expertise is forensic accounting.”
“Forensic accounting?” asked Mary. “What’s that?”
“It is paper chasing mostly,” replied Gretel. “If you want to find where money came from or where it went, you come to me.”
“Best in the land,” added Jack, “which is why Chymes will still use you even after your—how shall we put it?—vigorous exchange of discourtesies.”
Gretel leaned closer to Mary and whispered, “I called him an arsehole.”
“Daring.”
“No, just stupid,” replied Gretel with a sigh.
“Okay,” continued Jack, “grab a seat, everyone. I want to tell you what has happened so far.”
“Sir?”
“Yes, Ashley?”
“Do we get any more officers this time?”
Jack looked at all of them in turn. “I’ll ask, but you know how Briggs feels about the NCD. Short-staffed is kind of standard operating procedure with the division, so we’ll have to make our arm-work and legwork count. Let’s get straight to it, then.”
Ordinarily they would all have sat, but there wasn’t room, so they leaned against the door and the filing cabinets, except Ashley, who nimbly stuck himself to the wall.
“Welcome to the hunt, all of you. Mary is my number two on this, and even though she is new to Reading, I want you to give her all the help you can. Ashley will be based here to look after the incident room and keep him near his beloved Internet…and, Ashley?”
“Yes, sir?”
“No checking eBay for unusual beer mats.”
Jack pointed to Madeleine’s photo of Humpty with Charles Pewter.
“Victim’s name is Humperdinck Jehoshaphat Aloysius Stuyvesant van Dumpty, more commonly known as Humpty Dumpty. He was sixty-five years old and died at approximately one o’clock yesterday morning, killed by a single gunshot wound to the back. He died instantly. He had a bitter ex-wife and a girlfriend we haven’t found; no witnesses, no suspects, no weapon and no motive.”
He wrote “MOTIVE—WEAPON—SUSPECTS” on the board with a felt pen and underlined each word.
“For the past year, Dumpty has been operating a business from Grimm’s Road, changing a carefully earned two-and-half-million-pound profit into a one-and-a-half-million-pound loss. Yes, Baker?”
“Was he living at Grimm’s Road?”
“Good point. It seems not, so we need to find out where he was. He had this photo on his desk.”
Jack showed them the photo of Humpty with the woman in the back of the horse-drawn carriage in Vienna.
“We need to find this woman. Dumpty and she were together in Vienna—and that’s all we know about her.”
He held up the auburn hair.
“SOCO found this in Humpty’s office. It’s a single human hair, auburn colored and twenty-eight feet long. Shouldn’t be difficult to trace. Tibbit, what have we got on your initial door-to-door?”
Tibbit was delighted. To him, this was real police work. He flipped open his notebook and summarized his notes. Eager to make an impression, he had copied them up neatly the evening before.
“Some people heard dustbins being knocked over sometime after midnight.”
“And?”
“A box van was seen on several nights prior to the night he died.”
Tibbit flipped over some more pages.
“There was a silver VW Polo, too—with a woman in it.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nope. Everyone I met liked him, though.”
“Okay, we’ve established that he was popular, and not just with the ladies. We should cross-check any VW Polos with the names ‘Bessie’ or ‘Elizabeth.’ Otto and Baker, I want you to go back to Grimm’s Road and try to find the slug that killed him; you should liaise with Mrs. Singh and Skinner to estimate where it fell. I want drains lifted and bins searched, along with any other place where we might conceivably find a gun. Ashley, start the usual trace proceedings on Miss Vienna and ring around to hair salons to see if you can match the auburn hair.”
He held up a photograph of the Marchetti shotgun.
“And there’s this. It was found in Dumpty’s office and links to one of Chymes’s cases, a double murder eighteen months ago, about the same time that Dumpty starts to buy shares in the rapidly failing Spongg foot-care empire, apparently against all better judgment. The dates might be a coincidence, but equally, there might be a link between the two.”
“The shotgun proves that, doesn’t it, sir?” ventured Baker.
“Not at all. It could have changed hands a dozen times. Skinner is matching the shell cases as we speak to see if it was the murder weapon. Gretel?”
“Where did he get the money to buy all those shares?”
“Another good question. We don’t know. He traded in bonds, commodities, currency, scrap, béarnaise sauce, strawberries—anything he could lay his hands on. I’d like you to unravel just exactly where all his capital came from. He made two and a half million from scratch in eighteen months and spent the lot on shares in a failing chiropody empire. I think we should know the reason why.”
“I’ll get onto it straightaway,” said Gretel, rubbing her hands in happy anticipation of all the forensic accounting to come.
Baker had been studying the photo of Humpty. “I think he owned a car, sir.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s those short legs. I don’t suppose he could go far on them without getting a bit pooped.”
“I’ll have a look,” said Ashley, twisting the computer terminal towards him and tapping in to the Police National Computer.
“At the same time,” continued Jack, “I want you to run the usual checks on his background. I want every single scrap of information on him you can find.”
Ashley turned from his terminal. He had found Humpty’s car.
“Registered to Mr. H. A. Dumpty, a red 1963 modified Ford Zephyr, registration number Echo Golf Golf three one four. One owner since new, tax disc renewed a month ago. Grimm’s Road address.”
“I want this car found. Mary, speak to uniform and put out a bulletin. Baker, I want you to put your ear to the ground in town. He’s been lying low this past year, so see if you can find out why and where.”
Mary thought of something and rummaged in a box of filed evid
ence. She located what she was looking for—the pictures that they had found in Humpty’s desk of the Sacred Gonga Visitors’ Center. They were all pictures taken from the window of a car. A red car.
“You’re boys,” she said, showing the pictures to Ashley and Baker. “Tell me, does that look like a Ford Zephyr?”
“Definitely,” replied Baker. “My uncle used to own one.”
Jack took the picture that had the young man in it and handed it to Tibbit.
“Then we need to find this chap, too. He’s a known associate of Humpty’s, and they were together, as this date in the photo would attest, almost exactly a year ago. Tibbit, get copies made and circulate them around the station—if he’s a local lad with a record, someone might recognize him.”
Tibbit took the picture and hurried off.
“Mrs. Dumpty is his ex-wife, still bitter and still in love with him. Mary, have you spoken to her?”
“Not yet, sir. She’s not at home or work. I’ve left messages.”
Jack looked at his watch. “That’s all for now. We’ll reconvene after lunch.”
He picked up his coat and headed for the door.
“Ashley, keep on trying Mrs. Dumpty and let Randolph Spongg and Solomon Grundy know we’re on our way. Mary—with me.”
He was feeling good again, for the first time in as long as he could remember.
“Where are we going, sir?”
“To learn a bit more about Reading’s foot-care empire.”
18. Lord Randolph Spongg IV
Spongg Footcare is an island of benevolent industrial practices, slowly being eroded by the sea of change. All the other companies around it are run by hard-nosed businessmen to whom profit is everything and workers merely numbers on a report. Spongg’s is, of course, unlikely to survive long.
—Report in The Financial Toad, June 11, 1986
Jack parked the Allegro in the deserted visitors’ car park, next to a huge stylized sculpture of a foot with a large void through it. He pulled his collar up against the rain and looked up at the Gothic-style redbrick factory. Apart from a few wisps of smoke creeping from its chimneys and the muffled sound of machinery from within, the whole place seemed deserted. It was shabby, too. Large sections of stucco were missing from the walls, the brickwork was badly stained and the windows were cracked and grimy.
They walked up the steps to the grand entrance and noted how the carved stone doorway depicted, in ten stages, the evolution of the foot from a flipper to the appendage of modern man. There was no one around, so Jack pushed open the heavy doors. The interior was similarly deserted; a musty, damp smell that reminded them both of Grimm’s Road rose up to meet them. As their eyes became accustomed to the gloom, they could see that they were standing in a vast entry hall dimly lit by roof-high stained-glass windows depicting great moments in chiropody. The foot theme didn’t end with the windows—they were standing on an immense mosaic of a foot with one of Spongg’s corn plasters on its big toe, picked out in gold and azure tiles. Below the picture, Spongg’s easily recognizable logo was written in brass letters a yard high. The walls were similarly adorned with an exquisite mural of mythical creatures in a setting of a forest in summer. There were satyrs, nymphs, cherubs and centaurs, all suffering from various foot problems and bathed in shafts of light. Next to each was a painted Spongg product being lovingly administered by beautiful and appropriately dressed maidens. The expressions of contentment on the creatures’ faces left one with little doubt as to the effectiveness of the remedies.
“Guess the product,” murmured Jack, gazing around at the curious decor and the large twin marble staircases that rose before them, curving up to the left and the right.
“Yeah, but what a dump,” replied Mary, pointing out the galvanized buckets that had been scattered about on the steps to catch the rainwater that leaked in.
“My grandfather used to work at Spongg’s,” said Jack. “He always said it was the best place to work in Reading. He lived in nearby Sponggville, and my father went to a Spongg-financed school. If Granddad ever fell ill, he went to the Spongg Memorial Hospital, and when he retired, he stayed in one of the Spongg retirement homes dotted around the country.”
“Was he buried in a corn plaster?”
“You must be Detective Inspector Spratt,” boomed a voice so suddenly that they both jumped. They turned to find a tall man dressed in a black frock coat standing not more than a pace behind. He had crept up on them as noiselessly as a cat.
Lord Randolph Spongg IV was a handsome man in his midfifties. He had black hair that was streaked with gray and a lined face that fell easily into a smile. His eyes glistened with inward amusement.
“Correct, sir,” replied Jack. “This is Detective Sergeant Mary Mary.”
He shook both their hands in turn and bowed graciously, then led them towards the staircase.
“Thank you for seeing us, Lord Spongg—” began Mary, but Spongg interrupted her.
“Just ‘Spongg’ will do, Sergeant. I don’t use my title much, and—don’t see me as fussy—but the first g is short and the second g long. Just let it roll around for a bit before you let it go.”
“Spongggg?” ventured Mary.
“Close enough,” replied Spongg with a mischievous grin. “Just put the brakes on a little earlier and you’ll be fine.”
He pointed his silver-topped cane at a satyr with pustules on its hoof and laid a friendly hand on Mary’s shoulder that she didn’t much care for—but might get used to, on reflection, given the opportunity.
“A charming picture, don’t you agree, Sergeant?”
Mary narrowed her eyes and looked at the strange creature.
“Not really, I’m afraid.”
Randolph Spongg paused for a moment, looked at the picture again and sighed deeply. “You’re right of course,” he said at last. “My grandfather had this all painted in 1921 by Diego Rivera. He suffered terribly from fallen arches, did Rivera. Did you know that?”
“I have to say that I didn’t,” confessed Jack.
“No matter. The result was a classical study of mythical beasts. My grandfather thought that it should reflect his products more, and he insisted that the creatures be made to suffer from some kind of foot ailment. Rivera quite rightly refused, so a Reading sign writer named Donald Scragg finished it off with all this product-placement stuff. Sometimes I think I will have Scragg’s paint removed, but artistic restoration is but the least of Spongg’s problems at the present.”
They followed Spongg as he ran nimbly up the marble staircase, expertly avoiding several more buckets that had been laid out on the landing. The corridor upstairs was almost wide enough to accommodate two lanes of traffic, but for stacks of old papers pushed haphazardly against the walls.
“Records,” explained Spongg, following Jack’s look. “We had a spot of bother with damp in the basement. Wait! Have a look at this.”
He had stopped in front of an oil painting of a venerable-looking gentleman, one of several that lined the corridor. Spongg gazed at it with obvious affection.
“Lord Randolph Spongg II,” he announced. The painting was of an elderly man with divergent eyes standing barefoot on a chair.
“My grandfather. Died in 1942 while attempting the land speed record. A great man and a fine chemist. He devised a trench-foot preparation in 1917 that paid for the company to lead the world in foot-care products for the next thirty years. He was the world’s leading authority on carbuncles and was working on an athlete’s foot remedy when he died. My father carried on his work, and we cracked it in the fifties; it kept us financially afloat for a bit longer. This way.”
He led them along the cluttered corridor until they arrived at a large mahogany door. Spongg pushed it open and stepped back to allow them to enter.
Spongg’s office was a spacious room with oak-paneled walls and a high ceiling, dominated by a portrait of a man they took to be the first Dr. Spongg. At the far end was a desk the size of a snooker table cluttered
high with reports, and in the middle of the room was a model of the factory within a glass case. The room was lit by a skylight, and several more buckets and an old tin bath were laid around the floor to catch the water that leaked in.
Spongg read Jack’s expression as he saw the room and laughed nervously.
“It’s no secret, Inspector. We’re in a bit of a pickle financially, and I can’t afford to have the roof done. Cigarette?”
“Thank you, I don’t,” said Jack, noticing that there were actually no cigarettes in the box anyway.
Spongg smiled. “Wise choice. My father was trying to prove a link between nicotine and fallen arches when he died.”
“Did he?” asked Mary
“No. There isn’t one. But it’s due to my father’s hard work that we know even that much. I heard of Humpty’s death on the news last night. For almost a year now, we have been thanking providence for supplying the company with such an upright benefactor.”
He beckoned them both to the window and pointed out a large building of modernist style, a mirror-covered office block surrounded by a high-tech factory.
“Do you know what that is?”
Jack had lived in Reading all his life, and the rivalry between the two companies was well known.
“Of course. It’s Winsum and Loosum’s.”
“Winsum and Loosum. Right. They’ve been wanting to absorb us for some time. The Spongg family has only forty percent of the company, so a danger exists; we have been borrowing against the assets for the past twenty years to keep the old place alive—even old Castle Spongg is in hock.”
He indicated a table that was groaning under the weight of Spongg’s varied foot products.
“These are our bestselling lines. The need to remain competitive keeps the profit margin small, and we also suffer the most ironic of marketing difficulties.”
“Which is?”
“Success.”
“Success?”
“Product success, Inspector, not financial success. Have you ever had cause to use a Spongg preparation?”
“Yes.”
“And it worked?”
“Very well, as I recall.”
The Big Over Easy Page 14