The Big Over Easy (26 page)

Spongg Villas was
only a ten-minute walk from Reading Central, and by the time they got back, there had been a development.

“We’ve just had an anonymous phone call with info on Humpty’s car,” said Gretel, talking to Jack but looking at Brown-Horrocks.

“Who from?”

“They didn’t say. Male caller from a phone box in Charvil. Gave the information and then rang off.”

“Headway at last. Whereabouts?”

They stepped closer to the Reading and District wall map, which had to be hung sideways as it was the only way it would fit on the tiny wall.

“They said it could be found…” muttered Gretel, looking at the address on the piece of paper and finally jabbing a finger perilously close to the edge of Andersen’s Wood. “Here.”

Jack looked at the place Gretel had indicated. There were no houses within a mile in any direction.

“Right. Mary and I are going out to have a look. Check out the owners of the closest houses and see if you can spot any link.”

The crossroads where they’d been told they could find the Zephyr was in a rural setting to the west of the city, from where they could easily see Andersen’s Wood on the next hill. A single signpost with peeling paint sat forlornly at the roadside, and there was no evidence of habitation in any direction. After the bustle of the town over the past few days, the peace of the country was a welcome diversion. The roar of the M4 had been soothed into a gentle rumble by the distance, and for once it wasn’t raining.

They stopped the car and got out. Brown-Horrocks had been in the passenger seat, but the small car had not been designed to fit his lanky frame, and he had sat the whole journey with his knees almost around his ears.

“When do you get your vintage Rolls-Royce back from the garage?” he asked. “I don’t think much of their loaner.”

“Next week,” replied Jack as he pulled on a coat against the wind and looked up and down the empty road. “I don’t see a car anywhere.”

“Hoax?”

“Could be. But let’s be sure. You take that road, I’ll take this one. Search as you go.”

They went their separate ways, with Brown-Horrocks walking behind Jack and asking occasional questions.

“Are you an alcoholic or a
reformed
alcoholic?”

“Reformed…but with occasional lapses,” said Jack, hazarding a guess as to what would be most acceptable to the Guild.

“Good,” said Brown-Horrocks, making another note.

It was Mary who made the discovery. A rickety-looking Quonset hut in a field that was mostly overgrown by brambles. She called Jack over, opened the gate and walked over to the hut. Its doors had sagged and were fastened with a rusty hasp that was secured by a tent peg. Jack carefully lifted out the peg and let the doors swing open. The hut was dry and the floor made of compacted soil; the brambles that covered the outside had also forced holes in the corrugated iron roof and were now starting to take over the interior as well. Sitting in the middle of the hut and looking as clean and new as when it was built was the Zephyr.

Mary delicately tried the doors. “Locked.”

“He had no car keys on him,” said Jack. “Try the tailpipe.”

Mary walked to the back of the car as Jack cupped his hands around his face and peered in the window.

The driver’s seat was converted for Humpty’s unusual shape, looking a bit like a padded egg cup with a high back. The pedals were all on extensions for his little legs, and the gearshift had been elongated to compensate for his short arm reach.

“Bingo,” said Mary, holding up a set of car keys. She inserted one into the door and unlocked it. She grasped the handle and opened the door.

“RUN, FOR GOD’S SAKE, RUN!”
yelled Jack, sprinting out of the makeshift garage at full speed and hoping that Mary and Brown-Horrocks were behind him. He got as far as the middle of the road when the car exploded. He didn’t hear the sound at first, just a shock wave that scooped him up off his feet like an unseen hand and propelled him through the air to the ditch at the other side of the road, where he landed with a thump that knocked the wind out of him. He covered his head with his arms as a shower of debris rained down and a sheet of twisted corrugated iron fell close beside him. His ears were ringing, and in the momentary semideafness that followed, all sounds seemed dead and lacking in detail. He got up, checked he wasn’t damaged and divested himself of his singed overcoat. The remains of the car were fiercely ablaze, and the roadway was covered with wreckage. He appeared, apart from a cut on his face from where he had landed in the ditch, unharmed.

“Are you okay?” he asked Mary, who had landed a half dozen paces from him.

“I think so,” she replied as she dusted herself down. It was only when Jack started to think clearly again that he remembered there was someone missing.

“Brown-Horrocks?” he said, quietly at first, scanning the roadway for any sign of life. “BROWN-HORROCKS!” he said again, this time louder as he ran towards the shattered building with a sinking feeling. Of the Guild examiner there was no sign, and the car looked as if someone had tried to inflate it with an air hose. The roof bulged outwards, and all the doors had blown off.

“BROWN-HORROCKS!” he yelled once more, now looking around the wreckage for any clue as to what had happened to him, no matter how gruesome.

“Where is he?” asked Mary, who’d arrived by Jack’s side.

“I don’t know. Shit. Killing a Guild examiner. And he was a giant. I’ll never live this down at the station.”

“I’m six foot nine,” came an indignant voice behind them. “I’m
not
a giant.”

They turned to find him staggering up from the side of the road. He had been thrown in a quite different direction and been deposited in a muddy ditch.

“Thank God,” said Jack. “Turn around.”

He turned around for them, and they checked him over. Apart from some singed hair and a few cuts and bruises, he was fine.

“I expect you’ll want to call it a day after that?”

“On the contrary,” said Brown-Horrocks in a resolute tone,

“I’m curious to see how this turns out.”

Jack shook his mobile phone, and some bits fell out. “Buggered. Where’s yours, Mary?”

“Car.”

They walked back towards the Allegro to find a dent in the hood and a nail that had pierced the door skin like a crossbow bolt.

“Look what they’ve done to my car!”

“Did someone just try to kill us?” asked Mary as her mobile hunted for a signal.

“I think so,” replied Jack as he opened the door and took a seat.

She got through to the NCD and told Ashley to have uniform close the road and get the fire service down there—and the bomb squad, too. She snapped the mobile shut and sat on the hood. “I owe you, sir. How did you know?”

Jack ran his fingers through his hair and picked out several bits of debris.

“The interior light had been pried off and a small piece of wire ran down the inside of the door pillar. It might have been nothing, but I wasn’t going to risk it.”

“I have to say I’m very glad you didn’t.”

“So am I,” said Brown-Horrocks, making a note on his muddy and singed clipboard.

“Probably about two pounds of high explosive,” explained Lee Whriski, a young major in the bomb squad, “attached to a short time-delay fuse. We’ll be able to tell you which explosive it was given a few days, but not much more, I’m afraid. This kind of thing is not hard to do—obtaining the explosives is harder—but when we find out what it was, we might be able to narrow the search. You were lucky.”

They were standing on the road surrounded by several drab green army vehicles. The road had been closed while the bomb squad made a detailed search of the area.

Jack thanked him and walked over to where Mary was being checked by a medic.

“You know you’re near the target when you start to cop flak,” said Mary.

“Yes,” agreed Jack. “But which target?”

“Don’t you know?” asked Brown-Horrocks.

“Of course,” replied Jack hastily. “It was a rhetorical question. I’m just waiting for them…to make a mistake. Then we’ll have them.”

“I see,” said Brown-Horrocks, clearly not believing Jack in the least. “And how many assassination attempts do you think you can survive before they make a mistake?”

“It’s all in hand, sir,” replied Jack unconvincingly.

“I hope so. By the way, how many giants
have
you killed? I ask only by way of curiosity and self-preservation, you understand.”

“Technically speaking, only one,” replied Jack with a sigh. “The other three were just tall.”

“To kill one giant might be regarded as a misfortune,” said Brown-Horrocks slowly. “To kill four looks very much like carelessness.”

“I was cleared on all counts.”

“Of course,” said the Guild man, making another note on his clipboard.

“Sir?” said Mary, who had been going around collecting debris that might have been in Humpty’s car. It was surprising how much had survived—explosions are quixotic beasts. Most of it was worthless. A portion of poultry-feed packaging, a charred couple of pages from last week’s
Mole,
the remains of the Zephyr’s service manual. But one particular item caught Jack’s attention. It was part of some promotional material advertising the Goring Foot Museum. Jack and Mary exchanged looks, and Mary called the office to ask Baker whether he knew anything about the museum. She listened intently for a while, then hung up.

“Well?” asked Jack.

“Know the way to Goring, sir?”

“Sure. You going to tell me why?”

“Thomas Thomm was a research assistant there.
That
was the job that Humpty had got for him.”

“
That’s
the lead we’re looking for,” said Jack in the manner that Chymes used.

Brown-Horrocks raised an eyebrow but was otherwise unmoved.

“I’ll go in the back,” he said. “I’m meant to be just an observer anyway.”

And with a sinuous movement of folding arms and limbs, he compacted his large frame sufficiently to fit in the rear seat.

Jack had been
to the Foot Museum only once before, when he was at school. It had been considered the low point of the school year, only marginally less interesting than Swindon’s Museum of the Rivet or Bracknell’s collection of doorstops. The museum was another Spongg bequest and was an impressive structure built in the Greek style, and despite being sandwiched between a supermarket and a fast-food restaurant, had lost little of its imposing grandeur.

They were met by a white-haired gentleman of perhaps sixty. He had a bad stoop and walked with uncertain steps. He had to look at them sideways, as his chin was almost resting on his chest.

“Professor Tarsus? I am Detective Inspector Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division, Reading Police. This is Detective Sergeant Mary Mary.”

“I’ll never remember all that. I’ll just call you Ronald and Nancy. Who’s he?”

“This is Mr. Brown-Horrocks from the Most Worshipful Guild of Detectives.”

“Ah. You can be Ronald as well. Took your time, didn’t you?”

He had a heavy, gravelly voice that sounded like thimbles on a washboard.

“Pardon me?” asked Jack, unsure of his meaning.

“You chaps don’t seem to be interested at all. I had a couple of you johnnies around about three months ago, just after the theft. Ronald and, er…
Ronald,
I think their names were. They promised to make inquiries, and that was that. Bad show, I call it.”

“We’re not here about the theft, sir.”

The Professor appeared not to hear and beckoned them to follow him past the rows of ancient foot-orientated exhibits. The interior was as old and dusty as Jack remembered, the leaded windows caked with grime and the hard flags smoothed from three-quarters of a century of bored, shuffling feet. The Professor led them through a door marked “Private” and into a modern laboratory. Racks of jars lined the walls, most of them containing some sort of chiropodic specimen pickled in formaldehyde.

“What’s this?” asked Jack, pointing to an acrylic and polypropylene test foot in a worn jogging boot being sprayed with a foul-smelling liquid inside a glass case. The foot and its stainless-steel leg trod a rolling road in a convincing manner.

“Our test foot. I call him Michael. We can program it for any type of walking gait. We can even,” he continued excitedly, “simulate a dropped arch to investigate what type of shoe offers the best support. We have it sweating a salt-nutrient mixture and then analyze the bacteria that grows in the gaps between the toes. Would you care to take a look?”

“No thanks,” said Jack quickly.

Professor Tarsus grunted, then shuffled to one side of the room and pulled a sheet off a big glass cabinet. The lock had been forced, and inside the empty cabinet was a large cotton pad the shape of an inner tube. On the side were precise controls that monitored temperature and humidity. Jack’s nose wrinkled at the cheesy odor it exuded. Tarsus pointed at the empty case with a petulant air, as if they could somehow magically restore his property.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Jack, “I don’t have any details of your break-in. We’re investigating several murders in the Reading area, and we hoped you might be able to help.”

Tarsus looked at them all suspiciously. “Murders? How can the Foot Museum be connected?”

“Thomas Thomm, Professor,” said Mary, “we understand he used to work here?”

“The name means nothing to me, Nancy.”

“He worked as a lab assistant—sponsored by Mr. Dumpty. You might have known him as…Ronald.”

“Then why didn’t you say so? Yes, I remember Ron very well. He was Dr. Carbuncle’s assistant. Left about a year ago.”

“Dr. Carbuncle?” repeated Jack, making a note. “Is he here?”

“He took early retirement,” replied Tarsus. “Ron even lived in his house for a bit, I understand. Nancy can tell you more. NANCY!”

He bellowed it so loudly that Mary and Jack jumped. A small voice said, “Coming!” and presently “Nancy” appeared. She was about the same age as Tarsus but displayed none of his infirmities. She walked with a youthful step and wore bright red leggings, a T-shirt with a picture of a foot on it and a leather jacket. She looked like some sort of aged foot groupie.

“Nancy, this is Ronald, Nancy and—er—Ronald. They’re police.”

“Hello!” said Nancy. “It’s Fay Goodrich, actually.”

They introduced themselves as she perched nimbly on one of the desktops. Tarsus looked on disapprovingly.

“Did you ever meet Mr. Dumpty?”

“Yes,” she said, as a smile crossed her lips, “he was a pal of Dr. Carbuncle. He used to come in here quite a lot.”

“What did they talk about?”

“This and that, feet ailments mostly. They were good friends. Hump was staying at his house.”

“Dumpty? With Dr. Carbuncle?”

She nodded. “Humpty said he’d been forced to leave his apartment. Carbuncle was a widower; he lived alone in Andersen’s Farm, just on the edge of the forest. I expect he took in paying guests for the company.”

Jack thought for a moment. “So when did Dr. Carbuncle retire?”

“Three months ago. We had quite a party. Humpty was there with a tall brunette, and I think almost every chiropodist in the Home Counties turned up—Carbuncle was much respected. Spongg gave a warm speech and presented Dr. Carbuncle with one of his celebrated Bronze Foot Awards for services to the foot-care industry.”

“And the break-in occurred…?”

“Two days later,” said Miss Goodrich provocatively. The Professor shot her a fierce glance.

“The two events are unconnected,” explained Tarsus. “Carbuncle would
never
have stolen it. I have known him for almost three decades.”

Miss Goodrich muttered something and stared at the ceiling. This was obviously an argument that had been grumbling on for some time. Jack’s attention went back to the broken cabinet as Mary took Fay off for more information.

“Perhaps you’d better tell me what was stolen?”

“In here,” said Tarsus proudly, “was my life’s work. Thirty years ago I extracted it, nurtured it, fed it, kept it warm and damp, protected it from parasites, even defended it from financial cutbacks in the seventies. It was the greatest, most stupendous…
verruca
in the world.”

He sat on a nearby chair and covered his face with his hands and sobbed loudly.

“A verruca?” repeated Jack. “You mean that nasty little warty thing you get on your foot? That’s all?”

Tarsus looked up at him angrily. “It wasn’t just any verruca, Ronald. Hercules was a thirty-seven-kilo champion. The biggest—and finest—in the world!”

He shed twenty years as he spoke animatedly about what was obviously his favorite subject.

“He was the son I never had. The only other verruca to come close was a lamentable twenty-three-kilo tiddler owned by L’Institute du Pied in Toulouse. Hernán Laso of Argentina claimed that he had a forty-seven-kilo specimen, but it turned out to be a clever fake made from papier-mâché and builder’s plaster.”

Jack looked at the broken case again, and Tarsus continued. “It was used primarily for research. Dr. Carbuncle was working with it when he retired; some sort of genetic engineering, I believe. Experimenting with a new viral strain of superverruca.”

Suddenly things started to come into sharp and terrible focus.

“Isn’t that
unbelievably
dangerous?”

“Not if conducted properly. Anyway, it didn’t bear fruit. He’d been on the project for nearly two years and eventually called a halt and retired. I came in the following week to find Hercules gone. Its only value is in research. Without precise heat and humidity control, it will dry out and die. And I think, Ron—may I call you Ron?—that even you can appreciate the uselessness of a dead verruca.”

“Of course,” said Jack uneasily. “I need Dr. Carbuncle’s address.”

Tarsus grasped Jack’s elbow, drew him close and whispered, “You will find Hercules, won’t you?”

“Of course,” replied Jack. “He was the son you never had, right?”

As Jack, Mary and an increasingly uncomfortable Brown-Horrocks drove towards Andersen’s Wood and Dr. Carbuncle’s house, they could see a throng of traffic heading into the city center. It was still only ten, and the Jellyman’s dedication wouldn’t be until midday. That done, he would be driven on a parade route around the town, open several hospitals and an old-people’s home, meet members of the community and then have dinner over at the QuangTech facility with the mayor and a roomful of Reading’s luminaries, Spongg, Grundy and Chymes among them.

“Hercules is the answer,” said Jack as they drove rapidly down the road. “I think I know what Humpty’s plan was—I’m just not sure how he was going to execute it.”

“You don’t think…?”

“I do,” replied Jack grimly.

“You do?” echoed Brown-Horrocks, folded up in the backseat. “How, exactly?”