The Big Over Easy

by Jasper Fforde

  “It’s too late for deals,” sneered Chymes. “You’re finished.”

  “I don’t think so,” replied Jack, trying to keep the dread in the pit of his stomach under control. He had once had to stand up to the school bully, and this felt exactly the same. He opened the buff envelope that Skinner had given Mary and placed the pictures on the table.

  Chymes went silent.

  “These are the crime scene photographs of the Andersen’s Wood murders,” explained Jack for the benefit of Bestbeloved and Briggs. “They clearly show that the cartridges used were Eley.”

  He produced the evidence bag that contained the spent cartridges from his briefcase. “These are the ones Chymes sent down to me.”

  It was clear to everyone in the room they were Xpress.

  “Why would Chymes want to prove that the Marchetti shotgun I found at Humpty’s wasn’t the same one used on the woodcutter and his wife? Because I might have shown up a big hole in his investigation? That it wasn’t the Russian mafia at all? That Chymes concocted every single aspect of the investigation because he needed a filler for the 2003 Christmas bumper edition of Amazing Crime Stories?”

  There was a deathly hush. This was heresy of the highest order. The veins in Chymes’s temples throbbed, and Briggs and Bestbeloved looked nervously at each other. If Jack could prove it, this was explosive stuff and heads would roll. A lot of them.

  Chymes broke the tension by laughing.

  “A ludicrous suggestion, Spratt. This is the sort of stuff that conspiracy theories are made of. There has clearly been an error in the continuity of evidence procedure. It is unfortunate but not irredeemable. I will hunt down the culprit and make sure he is suitably admonished.”

  “You can do all that if you want,” said Jack, growing more confident by the second, “but it would be easier just to interview Max Zotkin, the surviving member of the Russian mafia who so eloquently gave evidence at his own trial supporting your every point. Only once he was sent down for ten years, he vanished from view. Who was he? An actor?”

  There was silence.

  “I don’t want to bring you down or tarnish the public’s perception of the Guild,” said Jack slowly. “I just want to find Humpty’s murderer without let or hindrance.”

  Chymes thought hard for a moment and then said, “That’s it. He was part of a repatriation deal whereby UK convicts in Russian jails are swapped—”

  “You can’t keep on making it all up,” interrupted Jack, “but if you insist, I’ll go head-to-head with you and ask embarrassing questions. How many other investigations did you ‘embellish’ in order to boost your Amazing Crime circulation figures?”

  There was a pause while Chymes thought about this. Briggs exchanged nervous glances with Bestbeloved. They’d never seen Chymes bested, and to them—although they would never admit it—it was a not-unpleasant spectacle. The great man made to eat humble pie.

  “Very well,” said Chymes at length, “I withdraw all interest in the Humpty investigation.”

  “And I want your vote if I ever make it to a Guild final application.”

  “I can do that,” said Friedland grudgingly. He was only one of five on the board, so it wasn’t a huge concession.

  “And I want you to resign from the force.”

  Chymes laughed, and Jack realized he’d taken it a step too far. Friedland, for all his faults, was almost untouchable. The Jellyman himself had requested him to look after his personal security for his visit on Saturday. The man was a legend. A flawed one, but a legend. And they don’t tumble that easily.

  Chymes glared at Jack, then leaned closer. “We aren’t finished yet, Spratt.”

  And he left the room. They heard him thump the door farther on down the corridor and a cry as he took out his rage on a subordinate.

  “Are we done?” asked Jack.

  Briggs and Bestbeloved exchanged another nervous glance. If Jack was capable of talking like that to Chymes, he was capable of anything.

  “I will return when I have conducted further investigations,” announced Bestbeloved hurriedly, “and I may be some time.”

  He ejected both tapes, threw them in his bag and left without another word.

  “Well, Jack,” said Briggs when they were alone, “you really enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

  “Friedland’s a jerk who’s become obsessed with circulation figures.”

  “No,” retorted Briggs, “Friedland’s a jerk with power and influence. I hope you know what you’re doing. As far as he’s concerned, I’m now in your camp.”

  “So?”

  Briggs shrugged. “I just hoped he’d write me into his stories so I could do the rounds of the Friedland Chymes conventions. Watson did almost nothing else when Sherlock retired—made him a fortune. Still, I don’t think there’s much chance of that now.”

  Jack relaxed. He had every reason to dislike Briggs, but he didn’t. He wasn’t bad, just weak.

  “If I ever make it to the Guild, I’ll include you in my stories.”

  Briggs seemed to cheer up at this. He’d wanted to be like Fried-land Chymes for years—yet now he was thinking he’d prefer to be like Spratt. A bit down at heel and almost invisible locked away at the NCD—but honest.

  “If you do,” said Briggs, a glint in his eye, “will I get to suspend you at least once in every adventure?”

  “Of course.”

  “And should I change my name to Föngotskilérnie?”

  Jack smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Briggs will be fine.”

  35. Summing Up

  STRAW-INTO-GOLD DEFENDANT NAMED

  The jury was shocked into wakefulness on the eighth day of the Straw-into-Gold trial by the dramatic naming of the defendant yesterday. The previously unnamed illegal gold-spinner had been making a mockery of British justice by his insistence that the judge try to guess his name before he would agree to plea. After seven days and 8,632 guesses, the judge finally hit upon the correct name, whereupon Rumplestiltskin (this reporter can now faithfully record) flew into an inflamed passion, accused the judge of “listening down chimneys” and stamped his foot so hard it went through the floor. The defendant thus identified, the trial came to a speedy conclusion, and he was jailed for twenty years.

  —From The Gadfly, April 30, 1999

  “What’s your prose like, Mary?”

  “Rusty—but not too bad.”

  “Good. There exists the faintest possibility that I might make it into the Guild. If I do, I want you as my Official Sidekick.”

  “I’m flattered of course, sir—but Chymes is on the selection committee. How would you get him to change his mind?”

  “Need-to-know basis, Mary. What news?”

  “Mrs. Singh sent up the initial autopsy report on Winkie.”

  Jack took it from her and read. There was nothing that had changed dramatically since her initial ideas the night before. One cut, very savage, leading to death from shock and loss of blood. The look on Winkie’s face, partial rigor and the fact that he had urinated on himself might relate to his witnessing something terrifying.

  “Terrifying?” queried Jack. “I suppose someone coming at you with a broadsword would be terrifying.”

  Jack handed the report back. It seemed unusual, but what in this inquiry wasn’t?

  “Okay, boys and girls,” Jack announced to the NCD officers who had waited patiently and a little nervously for him to return from almost certain suspension at the hands of the IPCC, “it’s the end of day four. The body count is rising, and we’re no closer to finding out who killed Humpty. Here’s the story so far: Mr. and Mrs. Christian, the woodcutter and his wife, find a missing consignment of gold. Ashley, any luck on this?”

  “Nothing recently stolen, sir—just the usual urban myths of missing Nazi bullion.”

  “Keep on it. Small-time criminal opportunist Tom Thomm murders them both with the Marchetti shotgun we find at Humpty’s and steals the gold. He takes it to his old friend and mentor Humpty Dumpty,
who starts to sell the gold to buy shares in a company that’s rapidly going down the tube. All goes well until Humpty comes home to his flat six months later to find Tom Thomm shot dead in the shower. He correctly assumes it was his ex-wife, Laura, and the shots were meant for him, so he goes to earth. Where, we don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t he report it?” asked Otto.

  “Probably because he’s in over his head laundering money from the original theft. It would make him an accessory.”

  “Ah.”

  “He then buys shares in Spongg’s with the laundered gold money, but not even Randolph Spongg has any idea how he could raise the share value—the company has been sliding downhill for years. Humpty has a jealous mistress named Bessie Brooks, who tries unsuccessfully to kill him, and this afternoon we learn from her that he remarried sometime in the past two weeks.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “His will had ‘all to wife’ written on it, so until Humpty’s Spongg shares are worthless, she is a wealthy woman and a thirty-eight percent shareholder of Spongg’s. On Sunday, Humpty breaks cover and is seen drunk at the Spongg Charity Benefit, offering to pledge fifty million to rebuild the woefully outdated and inadequate St. Cerebellum’s mental hospital, somewhere he has been an outpatient for nearly forty years. He offers to offload his shares to Grundy, who refuses. That night someone kills Humpty. It’s likely that William Winkie saw the murderer from his kitchen window and tried to blackmail whoever it was. So he’s killed, too.”

  “It was a Porgia MO, wasn’t it?” observed Gretel.

  “It was,” conceded Jack, “but I’m pretty sure he had nothing to do with it.”

  Mary nodded in agreement.

  “The killer might have done that to send us off looking in other directions, a logical inference of which is that we just might be looking in the right place,” said Jack.

  Then he paused for a moment.

  “We need to know several things: who his new wife is and where he’s been living for the past year. Grimm’s Road was just his office. He might have spent a few nights there on his wall, but not more. Grundy says he turned down Humpty’s offer of ten million, and Grundy’s wife, Rapunzel, was having an affair with Humpty—something Grundy knew about and sanctioned. Humpty’s car is still missing, and then there’s the bird shit.”

  A brief titter went round the room.

  “It’s not funny. If he had enough shit on his shoes to bring it all the way to Grimm’s Road, he must have been wading in it. And wherever the bird shit was will be the place he’s been living the past year. Ashley, any leads on the car?”

  “Not good, sir. We spoke to his garage. He had his car serviced three months ago—so we know it’s probably still around.”

  “Okay, what about Humpty’s marriage?”

  Ashley and Gretel shook their heads. They had exhausted all the registrars in Berkshire and Oxford and were moving farther afield. As Gretel pointed out, he might have got married in Las Vegas.

  Jack surveyed their faces. “Any questions?”

  There weren’t any.

  “Okay. Make yourselves comfortable, because we’re going to run over tomorrow’s job from midday to 1530 hours: looking after the visitors’ center for the Sacred Gonga.”

  He went over what they’d be doing with the aid of a drawing on a flip chart and a hastily photocopied plan. There wasn’t much to say, but he tried to make it as important and serious as he could. Besides, there was an outside chance they might get a look at the Jellyman. They all listened to Jack but soon realized they were supernumerary to the Sacred Gonga security staff.

  “We’re there to make up the numbers, aren’t we?” asked Gretel.

  “It’s orders, so we do our best,” replied Jack. “Mary will take questions. That’s it for now. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  36. Refilling the Jar

  KING ORDERS SPINNING WHEELS DESTROYED

  The spinning industry was shaken to its foundations yesterday by the shocking royal proclamation that all spinning wheels in the nation were to be destroyed. The inexplicable edict was issued shortly after the King’s only daughter’s christening and is to be implemented immediately. Economic analysts predict that the repercussions on the wool, cloth and weaving trade may be far-reaching and potentially catastrophic. “We are seeking legal advice on the matter,” said Jenny Shuttle, leader of the Spinning & Associated Skills Labor Union. “While we love our King dearly, we will fight this through the courts every step of the way.” The King-in-opposition has demanded a judicial review.

  —Extract from The Mole, July 15, 1968

  As Jack drove towards home, he could see the beanstalk illuminated by two searchlights that swept lazily to and fro, crisscrossing the night sky with their powerful beams. Curious, he altered course and drove up to his mother’s, where the streets had been closed and crowds of curious sightseers milled around the neighborhood, taking in the extraordinary spectacle of a giant beanstalk growing in the back garden of an ordinary suburban house.

  He parked as near as he could and elbowed his way through the crowd. The closer he got, the more impressive the beanstalk looked. It had entwined itself into a tightly woven, self-supporting stalk of a dark green color and was now at least seventy feet in height. Big umbrella-size leaves like canopies drooped out of the main stalk as it spiraled skywards, and the bean pods were already the size of dachshunds. Jack could understand the crowd’s interest. The whole thing was clearly unprecedented; he wondered what the botanists would make of it. As he stared, he once again had the strange feeling that he should climb it, but it soon passed.

  “Jack!” said his mother as soon as he had walked up the garden path and knocked on the door. “What a stroke of luck!” She beckoned him through to the kitchen, where a neatly dressed man was sitting at the table holding a brown briefcase. He had small wire-rimmed glasses, seemed to be sweating even though it wasn’t hot and had oily black hair combed backwards from the crown.

  “This is Percival Quick of the Reading Planning Department. Mr. Quick, this is my son, Detective Inspector Jack Spratt.”

  “It’s just plain Mr. Spratt,” said Jack, knowing full well how bureaucrats hate having rank pulled on them. “What seems to be the problem?”

  Mr. Quick laid his briefcase on the table as several of Mrs. Spratt’s cats shot past his feet in a blur.

  “As I was saying to your mother, there is a maximum size of structure that can be permitted to be built without recourse to a planning application. This…er…‘thing’…”

  “It’s a beanstalk, Mr. Quick,” said Mrs. Spratt helpfully.

  “Precisely. This ‘beanstalk’ exceeds those guidelines quite considerably. I’m sorry to have to say that you are in contravention of planning regulations. We will be issuing a summons and require you to have it demolished at your own expense—there might be a fine, too.”

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “I don’t make the rules,” said Quick, “I just enforce them.”

  They all stopped as a large bear of a man in a tweed suit and deerstalker hat entered the room. He was barefoot and sported a long, shaggy beard that appeared to have several rare strains of lichen growing in it. Under his arm he was carrying a giant beanstalk leaf.

  “This is Professor Laburnum from the British Horticultural Society,” explained Mrs. Spratt. The Professor rolled his eyes but seemed uninterested in anything but the plant. Jack noticed that he had dirt not only under his fingernails but under his toenails, too.

  “Just in time for tea, Professor!” exclaimed Mrs. Spratt. “What have you found out?”

  “Well, it’s difficult to say,” he began in a deep baritone that made the teacups rattle in the corner cupboard, “but what you have here is a Vicia faba, or common broad bean.”

  Mrs. Spratt nodded, and the Professor sat down, clutching the large leaf lest anyone try to take it away from him.

  “For some reason that I have not yet fathomed, it is at least fifty
times bigger than it should be. It has a complex root structure and from first indications would seem to be capable of reaching a height in excess of two to three hundred feet. It is quite unprecedented, unique even—extraordinary!”

  “And the planning authority,” Jack added provocatively,

  “wants to demolish it.”

  Professor Laburnum went a deep shade of purple and glared dangerously at Mr. Quick, who seemed to inflate himself like a puffer fish, ready to ward off an attack.

  “Not,” growled Professor Laburnum dangerously, “if we have anything to do with it!”

  “The rules are very clear on this matter,” said Mr. Quick indignantly, “and I have a fourteen-volume set of planning regulations to back me up.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said Laburnum as he got to his feet.

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks for helping out,” said his mother as she showed him to the door. Behind them in the kitchen they could still hear Quick and Laburnum screaming obscenities at each other. A brief bout of fisticuffs had been succeeded by a series of prolonged and increasingly loud and vulgar name-callings.

  “I didn’t really do much, Mother. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  Pandora was talking to Madeleine when Jack walked in through the side door of his own house less than ten minutes later.

  “A creationist, of course, but what an intellect!”

  “If he’s a creationist,” said Madeleine, “what did he make of the fossil record?”

  “Created to maintain our curious nature. He said it was useful to strive for knowledge even though there is no end to the knowledge that we could gain. It might take two hundred years more to figure out how the universe came about, or five hundred to devise a grand unifying theory. But when we finally crack those questions, they will still remain a sideshow, a mere exercise, he said, to offer us valuable groundwork to solve even greater problems of incalculable complexity.”