The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (19 page)

'Hi there,' crooned little Tommy, raising skeletal hands.

The audience cheered and those amongst them possessed of hands clapped these wildly together.

'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' Little Tommy beamed all around and about. He exchanged air kisses with Little Miss Muffett and bowed several times to the audience. He stepped up to a microphone before the clockwork orchestra. 'I'd like to sing a song that I know will be very lucky for me,' he said into it. 'Another chart topper.'

Further wild applause issued from the audience.

'Is he really
that
good?’ Jack shouted into Eddie's ear.

'No, he's rubbish, and there's no need to shout. We bears are greatly admired for our aural capacities.'

'LJrgh,' went Jack.

Eddie rolled his button eyes. 'Aural,' he said. 'Oh, never mind.'

'This song,' continued Little Tommy, 'is dedicated to a very dear friend of mine. I cannot speak his name aloud, but
He
knows who
He
is. The song is called "You're a God to me, buddy". It goes something like this.' Little Tommy beamed over his slender shoulder towards the clockwork orchestra. 'Gentlemen, please, if you will.'

The clockwork conductor one two three'd it with his baton; the orchestra launched into the number.

Jack's head ducked this way and that, but the cameramen obscured his view. He could however hear the song. And as Jack listened to it, his jaw dropped low once more.

It was...

'Awful,' whispered Jack to Eddie. 'The song's awful and he can't even sing.'

'It is my belief,' Eddie whispered back, 'that when Wheatley Porterman penned the original nursery rhyme that made Little Tommy famous, it was intended as a satire upon the poor quality of Toy City nightclub entertainers, Little Tommy in particular: that all his singing was worth was some brown bread and butter. Ironic the way things turned out, eh?'

Jack nodded thoughtfully, curled his lip, screwed up his eyes and thrust his hands over his ears. 'Tell me when he's finished,' he said to Eddie.

Eddie did not reply to this. His paws were already over his ears.

It did have to be said that even if Little Tommy wasn't much of a singer, which indeed he was not, he did put his heart and indeed his very soul into his performance. Veins stood out upon his scrawny neck and upon his ample forehead. Tears sprang into his eyes. His spindly arms crooked themselves into all manner of unlikely positions; his long fingers snatched at the air as if clawing at the very ether. Rivulets of sweat ran down his face, joining his tears to stripe his studio tan.

The song itself was of the ballad persuasion, which, given Little Tommy's rendition in the manner that made it all his own, had about it a quality which raised excruciation to an art form. Little Tommy trembled on his toes. At every high note, his lips quivered and his mouth became so wide that those in the upper seats who had particularly good eyesight were afforded a clear view right down his scrawny throat to see what he'd had for breakfast.

The deafening applause that greeted the song's conclusion was sufficient to arouse Jack and Eddie from the foetal positions they had adopted. Eddie put his paws together. 'Bravo,' he called.

'Irony?’ Jack asked.

'Absolutely,' said Eddie.

'Bravo,' called Jack, clapping too. 'More. More.'

'Let's not overdo it.'

'Quite so.’ Jack ceased his clapping.

'What can I say?' Little Miss Muffett rose from her central tuffet, clapping lightly and professionally. 'One of the greats. If not
the
great. Join me up here, Little Tommy, come and sit with me please.'

Little Tommy took another bow and joined Miss Muffett.

'Thank you, Missy,' he said, seating himself down upon the vacant tuffet next to Missy.

Jack's empty stomach made terrible grumbling sounds. 'I really have had enough,' he whispered to Eddie.

'We might as well stick it out to the end,' said the bear. 'You never know, it might get really interesting.'

'Yeah, right,' said Jack. 'They're just going to luvvy each other.'

And that, of course, was exactly what Miss Muffett and Little Tommy
were
going to do: luwy each other big time.

'Little Tommy,' husked the Missy, 'beautiful song, beautiful lyrics, beautiful rendition.'

'I just love your dress,' crooned Little Tommy.

'And you're looking so well.'

'And you so young.'

'It's wonderful to have you here.'

'It's wonderful to be here on your wonderful show.'

'Wonderful,' husked Missy. 'But tell me, Little Tommy, I know you make very very few public appearances.'

'Very few,' Tommy agreed.

'But why this?'

'Well, Missy,' said Little Tommy, crossing his spindly legs, 'I just don't have the time. The way I see it, it is the duty of a superstar such as myself to maintain the appropriate lifestyle: a lifestyle to which the less fortunate amongst us, your audience for instance, can only aspire to in their most exalted, and dare I say, perverted dreams.'

'You might certainly dare,' said Missy. 'In fact you have.'

'Take it to excess,' said Little Tommy. 'Such is expected of someone like myself. It is my duty.'

'And you certainly have taken it to excess.' Miss Muffett smiled big smiles upon Little Tommy. 'Your squanderings and indulgences are of legend.'

'Well, thank you very much.'

'And you've just come out of detox, I understand.'

'Detox, rehab, it's a •weekly thing with me. They say, "If you've got it, flaunt it." I say, "If you've got it, use it up, wear it out, get it flushed and start again on Monday." '

'What a thoroughly unpleasant individual,' said Jack.

'Everyone misbehaves,' said Eddie. 'That's nature. Everyone gets away with as much as they can get away with. And the more they can get away with, the more they will.'

'That's a somewhat cynical view of life.'

'You know that I'm telling the truth.'

'That doesn't mean that I want to admit it.'

Eddie grinned. 'You're a good lad, Jack,' said he.

'But
he
isn't.'

'No,
he's
an absolute stinker.'

'Drugs?' said Little Tommy, in an answer to a question from Miss Muffett that Jack and Eddie hadn't heard. 'Well, yes, all right, I must admit that I am no stranger to drugs. Not that I'm advocating them to others, don't get me wrong, I'm not. Only for me. To me, an unhealthy cocktail of alcohol and narcotics spices things up for a bit of hot groupie action.'

'There have been reports in the Toy City Press regarding the, how shall I put it, tender ages of some of your groupies.'

'If they're old enough to walk on their own,' said Little Tommy, 'then they're up for it.'

'What?' went Jack.

Miss Muffett tittered. 'You're a very naughty boy,' she said.

'I know,' said Little Tommy. 'But you can't help liking me, can you?'

'I hate him,' said Jack. 'Hate her, hate him. I'm exhibiting no preferences, you notice.'

'Very democratic,' said Eddie. 'He needs a smack,' said Jack. 'So does she.’

‘Well,' said Little Miss Muffett, 'it's been an absolute pleasure to have you here on the show, Little Tommy. I think the audience would agree with me on this.' Missy smiled towards the audience. The audience gave out with further wild applause. 'So I think we should finish this interview on a high note. Would you honour us, Little Tommy, by giving us another of your marvellous high notes one more time?'

'It would be my pleasure, Missy.' Little Tommy threw back his head, opened his mouth as widely as widely could be and gave vent to a crackling high note of such appalling awfulness that Jack's hands and Eddie's paws rushed upwards once more towards their respective ears. It was a long high note. A prolonged high note. An elongated high note.

And there's no telling for how protracted a period this particular long, prolonged, elongated high note might have continued for had it not been suddenly cut short.

The cause of its cut-shortedness was not viewed by Jack as a clockwork cameraman was once more obscuring his view. Eddie saw it clearly, though.

Something dropped down from above. From above the controller's control booth. From above the clockwork lighting-pedallers. From the very ceiling of the studio.

Through a hole that had been drilled through this very ceiling.

Whatever this something was, and it was very soon to be apparent exactly what this something was, it dropped through this hole and fell directly down and into Little Tommy Tucker's open mouth and onward further still until it reached the area inside him where rested his breakfast.

'Gulp!' went Little Tommy, suddenly foreshortening his high note. 'What was that?'

'What was
what?'
Miss Muffett asked.

'Something.' Little Tommy clutched at his throat and then at his diminutive stomach regions. 'Something fell into my mouth.'

'Well, it wouldn't be the first time.' Miss Muffett tittered some more.

'Yes, but I didn't like this. Oooh.'

'Oooh?' questioned Miss Muffett.

'Yes, Oooh, something is going on in my guts.'

'Well, upon that high note, we have to take another commercial break. But we'll be right back after it with a love triangle which turned out to be more of a pentangle. We'll say goodbye. Please put your hands together for my very special guest, Little Tommy, and I know that you'll all be going out to purchase his latest hit. What was the name of that song again, Tommy?'

'Oooh,' went Tommy. 'Aaaargh!'

Jack looked at Eddie.

And Eddie looked at Jack.

'What's happening?’ Jack asked. 'I can't see.'

'Something bad,' said Eddie. 'Something very bad.'

'Oooh!' went Little Tommy once again. And 'Aaaargh' again also. He clutched at himself and leapt from his tuffet.

And then all kinds of terrible things happened.

Little Tommy, arisen from his tuffet, was now clutching all over himself and howling in evident anguish.

The audience members, under the mistaken belief that this was just part of the show — albeit a somewhat bizarre part - rocked with laughter and clapped together what hands they possessed.

'What's going on?’ Jack shouted to Eddie.

'Up there,' Eddie shouted back. 'Above the controller's box. Hole in the ceiling. Something dropped through it into Tommy's mouth.'

'It's the serial killer again.’ Jack jumped to his feet. 'Call an ambulance,' he shouted, pushing aside a clockwork cameraman and toppling his clockwork camera.

Little Tommy lurched about the stage. Something horrible was happening inside him. He jerked upwards as if being lifted physically from his feet and then slammed down onto the floor.

Jack rushed to offer what assistance he could, although he knew little of first aid. Rude crew pigs came snorting down the aisles; the audience continued with its laughter and applause, although it was dawning upon its brighter members that something was altogether amiss.

As Jack reached the now-prone supper singer, a most horrible occurrence occurred: as if by the agency of some invisible force, Little Tommy swung upright.

He hung, suspended in the air, his tiny feet dangling twelve inches above the stage. He stared at Jack face-to-face with pleading eyes and open mouth.

'We'll get you help,' said Jack, but he could clearly see that help would be too late. Little Tommy began to vibrate and rattle about. Great tremors ran up and down his slender body. Steam began to issue from his ears.

'Oh no,' croaked Jack, taking several sharp steps'back-aways. 'He's going to blow. Take cover, everyone.'

Whistling sounds came from Tommy, rising and rising in volume and pitch. Buttons popped from his triple-breasted suit, strange lumps bulged from his forehead and his shoulders began to expand. The laughter and applause in the audience died away. Horror and panic refilled the momentary void.

As Jack fell back from the stage the horde of rude crew pigs fell upon Jack. 'We'll teach you some manners,' snorted the one that Jack had recently sent packing.

And oh so quickly, as it always does, chaos reigned supreme.

The audience arose from their uncomfortable seats and made the traditional mad dash for the exits. The controller bawled instructions to the lighting pedallers, but the lighting pedallers were now dismounting and abseiling down ropes, eager to make their escape. Miss Muffett was being rapidly escorted from the stage by burly men in dark suits and mirrored sunglasses who all sported tiny earphones with mouth mic attachments. And as Jack vanished beneath a maelstrom of trotters, Little Tommy Tucker exploded.

On prime time TV.

Before a large viewing audience.

Although reruns of this particular show would top the ratings charts for many months to come, the only direct eyewitness to Little Tommy's spectacular demise was one Eddie Bear, Toy City private eye.

Knowing better than to risk being flattened by the stampeding audience and being incapable of assisting Jack in his travails against the rude crew pigs, Eddie had remained where he was, cowering in his seat. He had to put his paws right over his ears, though, as Tommy's high-pressure whistlings reached an ultrasonic level, which set toy dogs in the street outside howling. But Eddie had a ringside seat to watch the explosion.

It is another fact well known to those who know it well, and those who know it well do so through personal experience, that when you are involved in something truly dreadful and life-threatening, such as a car crash, the truly dreadful and life-threatening something appears to occur in slow motion. Many explanations have been offered for this: a sudden rush of adrenalin, precipitating a rapid muscle response, affording the individual the opportunity (however small) to take evasive action; an alteration in the individual's perception of time, which is something akin to a near-death experience, in which the individual's psyche, id, consciousness, or soul stuff, depending upon the chosen theological viewpoint, momentarily detaches itself from the individual in question, allowing the individual to experience the event in a different timeframe. Or the far more obvious, trans-perambulation of pseudo-cosmic antimatter, precipitating a flexi-tangential spatial interflux within the symbiotic parameters of existential functionalism.

But whether or not any of these actually apply to brains comprised entirely of sawdust is somewhat open to debate.

If asked whether he had watched the exploding of Little Tommy Tucker in what seemed to be slow motion, Eddie Bear would, however, answer, 'Yes, and it was not at all nice.'

Eddie watched the ghastly swellings, the vile expansions, the distortions of limbs and facial featurings, and then he saw the rending of flesh and shirt and blue silk
Oh Boy!
suit. And he saw the fragments of the gas-filled clockwork grenade that roared out of Tommy's shredded body. And whether it was adrenalous rush, or detached id, or pseudo-cosmic existential functionalism, Eddie managed to duck aside as metal shards and Tucker guts flew in his direction.

Not so, however, the wildly trottering rude crew pigs, who caught much shrapnel in their rubber rear ends.

As the crew pigs ran squealing and Jack, who had gone down fighting, came up prepared to do some more, Eddie raised his ducked head and saw something else.

And Eddie pointed with a paw and Jack looked up and saw it too.

Down through the hole in the ceiling it drifted, a tiny white and brown thing. The white of it was a parachute, the brown was a hollow chocolate bunny.

Now the mayhem hadn't lessened, because but a few short seconds had passed. The explosion had done nothing whatever to lessen the chaos; on the contrary, it had done everything to considerably increase it.

The fire alarm was ringing and the sprinkler system went into action. Water showered down upon the audience-turned-mob. The audience-turned-mob turned upon itself, and much of itself turned to other than itself; indeed, turned upon the rude crew pigs who were scrambling also to flee.

It was now a full-blown riot situation.

'This way.' Jack hauled Eddie after him and took off at a rush for the rear of the stage, leaping over spattered remains of the ex-supper singer. 'The killer's upstairs somewhere; we have to get after them.'

'Whoa!' went Eddie as Jack passed the painted sky backdrop and entered a backstage corridor. 'Slow down, Jack, think about this.'

'We have to get after the killer.'

'We don't have any weapons.'

'We'll improvise.'

'Have you gone completely insane?'

Jack dashed along the corridor. 'Let go of me,' cried Eddie. 'Put me down.'

Jack ceased his dashings and put Eddie down. 'The murderer may still be in the building,' he said. 'We have to find out; we have to do something.'

'No, Jack,' said Eddie. 'I can't.'

'You can't? Why?'

‘Jack, I just saw a man get blown to pieces. I think I'm going to be sick.'

'Then wait here,' said Jack. Til go alone.'

'No, don't do it, please.'

'But I might be able to catch them unawares.'

'Or you might walk straight into a trap. Let it go, Jack.'

'Are you sure?'

'You're very brave, but look at the state of you.'

'I'm fine,' said Jack.

'You're not, you're all beaten about.'

'Get away, they hardly laid a trotter on me.'

'Carry me back to the office, Jack.'

'Carry you? In broad daylight? What about your dignity?'

Til have to swallow that, I'm afraid.'

And then Eddie fainted.

Jack carried Eddie back to Bill Winkie's office. To spare his dignity, he hid the little bear beneath his trenchcoat.

In the office Jack splashed water on Eddie and slowly Eddie revived.

'That was most upsetting,' said Eddie. 'I didn't like that at all.'

'Are you feeling all right now?’ Jack asked.

'Yes, I'll be fine. Thanks for looking after me.'

'No problem,' said Jack. 'As long as you're okay.'

'It was a bit of a shock.'

'But let's look on the bright side,' said Jack.

'The bright side? What bright side?'

'Little Tommy Tucker went the way he would probably have wanted: live on stage before a cheering audience. Out on a high note and in a blaze of glory.'

'Are you trying to be funny?'

'Rather desperately so, yes.'

'Then please don't.' Eddie shook his head. 'I can't believe it. The killer did it, right in front of us. Right in front of the viewing public. How audacious can you get?'

'This killer is making a very big statement.' Jack settled down in Bill Winkie's chair. 'There's a very big ego involved here.'

'And we're always one step behind.'

'Well, we're bound
to
be. We don't know who this loony is going to butcher next. We don't have his hit list.'

'Hit list, a celebrity hit list,' said Eddie, thoughtfully. 'You might have something there.'

Eddie climbed onto the wreckage of Bill Winkie's desk. 'Right,' he said. 'Let's see what we have. We have Murder Most Foul: to whit, Mr Dumpty, Boy Blue, Madame Goose, Wibbly, Jack Spratt and now Tommy Tucker. I think we can exclude Madame Goose and Wibbly; they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's the others that matter. The old rich of Toy City. What is the common link?'

'Easy,' said Jack, swivelling about in Bill Winkie's chair, 'I know this.'

'Go on,' said Eddie.

'The common link is that they were all killed by the same murderer.'

Eddie made the kind of face that wouldn't buy you cheese. 'Was that supposed to be funny too?' he asked.

'I don't think so,' said Jack. 'But think about it, Eddie.
She,
or »'(, must have had a reason to kill them all.'

'I understand what you're saying. But
she
or f'f didn't kill Jack Spratt or Tommy Tucker.
She
or
it
was already done and dusted.'

'Oooh oooh.’ Jack put up his hand. 'I've an idea.'

'Go on,' said Eddie once more.

'All right, my idea is this. There are two killers.'

Eddie groaned.

'No, I haven't finished. There are two killers,
but
they're hired killers, working for someone else. The brains behind it all.'

'What
are
you saying?' Eddie asked. 'No, wait, I know what you're saying. If the
she
or
it
was doing the killing for
her
personal motives, the killings would have stopped when she was killed.'

'Exactly,’ said Jack, having another swivel on the chair. 'So if you stop this latest killer, the killings won't stop; another hired killer will take over and continue the work.'

'And our job is to find out what this
work
is. Why it's being done and who is the evil genius behind it.'

'Evil genius is a bit strong,' said Jack. 'Let's not go giving this mad person airs and graces.'

'Criminal mastermind, then,' said Eddie.

'That's more like it,' said Jack. 'So what we need to find is the common link.'

Eddie groaned once more.

'What's with all this groaning?' Jack asked. 'Are you ill or something?'

'We're going round in circles. We need to put things in order.'

'Right,' said Jack, nodding in agreement and swivelling a bit more on the chair.

'In order,'
said Eddie, in the voice of one who has been granted a sudden revelation. 'Put things in order! As in your list. The celebrity hit list.'

Jack did shruggings which, combined with his swivel-lings, nearly had him off the chair.

'Why did the killer slaughter her victims in the order she did?' Eddie asked. 'Why Humpty first, then Boy Blue? I'll bet there's some reason for the order.'

'I can't see why the order matters. Why don't we go to Jack Spratt's and search for some clues there? Or back to the studios; we might find something.'

'No,' said Eddie. 'If I'm right about this, we'll be ahead of the game.'

'I don't understand,' said Jack. 'Oh damn!'

'Oh damn?'

'I've got the hem of my trenchcoat caught in the swivelling bit of the chair.' Jack yanked at the trenchcoat's hem and was rewarded with a ghastly tearing sound. 'Oh double damn,' he said.

Eddie ignored him. 'It's this way,' he said. 'I'm thinking that the victims are being killed in a particular order. I'll just bet you that it's the order that their nursery rhymes were written. I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that Humpty was the first nursery rhyme millionaire.'

'But how does this help?' Jack fought with the chair for possession of the trenchcoat. So far the chair was winning.

'Wake up, Jack,' said Eddie. 'If I am right and the victims are being murdered in that order, then we'll know who's going to be the next on the celebrity hit list, won't we?'

Jack ceased his struggles. 'Eddie, that's brilliant,' he said. 'Then we can beat the police to the crime scene when the next murder happens.'

Eddie threw up his paws in despair.

'Only joking,' said Jack. 'We can be there before it happens, prevent it and capture the hired killer and get Bellis's boys in blue to beat the name of the criminal mastermind out of them. Or something like that.'

'Something like that,' said Eddie. 'So, it's
The Hall of Nearly All The Records
for us.'

'The hall
of nearly all
the records?'

'The curator is a very honest man. He can't be expected to remember everything.'

'Well, obviously not,' said Jack. 'He'd look stuff up in the record books.'

'Record books?' said Eddie. 'What are record books?'

'Books with records in them.'

'A novel idea,' said Eddie. 'I'll pass that on to the curator. He has nearly all the records in his head.'

'What?'
said Jack. 'They're not written down?'

'He does have a very large head.'

Jack shook his not-so-very-large head. 'Just one thing,' he said. 'How far away is this hall?'