The Big Over Easy

5. Prometheus

Jack walked up the creaky steps to the upstairs landing. He had just raised his hand to knock on the door opposite Humpty’s when a deep male voice, preempting his knock, boomed, “One moment!”

Jack, puzzled, lowered his hand. There was a sound of movement from within, and presently the door opened six inches. A youthful-looking, darkly tanned man with tightly curled black hair answered the door. He had deep black eyes and a strong Grecian nose that was so straight you could have laid a set-square on it. He looked as though he had just got out of the shower, as he had a grubby towel wrapped around his waist. On his muscular abdomen were so many crisscrossed scars on top of one another that his midriff was a solid mass of scar tissue. He was so cleanly shaven that Jack wondered whether he had any facial hair at all, and his eyes bored into Jack with the look of a man used to physical hardship.

“Yes?” he asked in a voice that seemed to rumble on after he had spoken.

“Mr. Prometheus?”

“Just Prometheus.”

“I’m Detective Inspector Spratt, Nursery Crime Division. We’re investigating Mr. Dumpty’s death. I wondered if I might talk to you?”

Prometheus looked relieved and invited him in, his voice losing its rumble as he no longer took Jack to be a threat.

The room was similar to Humpty’s in levels of shabbiness, but Prometheus had tried to make it look a little more like home by pinning up holiday posters of the Greek islands. Stuffed in the frame of the mirror was an assortment of postcards from other Titans and minor demigods, wishing him well with his ongoing asylum application. A mattress covered with rumpled sheets lay on the floor, and on the bedside table, next to a copy of Plato’s Republic, was an empty bottle of retsina and a small bowl of olive stones. A copy of Shelley’s account of Prometheus’ escape from the rock in the Caucasus lay open on the only table, and Jack picked it up.

“A bit fanciful,” remarked the Titan. “He took a few liberties with the truth. I had only ever met Asia and Panthea once at a party and I certainly was never in love with Asia. As I recall, she was myopic and couldn’t pronounce her r’s. The bit about us having a child was pure invention. I would have sued him for libel, but he died — which was most inconvenient.”

“Yes,” agreed Jack, knowing that to an immortal such as Prometheus, death really was something that only happened to other people, “it generally is.”

“I was sorry to hear about Humpty,” said the Titan, thumping the vibrating pipes with a wooden mallet to get the water flowing out of the rusty tap and onto his toothbrush.

“You knew him well?”

Prometheus squeezed the remains of a toothpaste tube onto the brush. “Not really, but well enough to know he was a good man, Inspector. Good and evil are subjects I know quite a lot about. He had righteousness in spades, despite his criminal past.”

Prometheus rinsed his mouth, popped the toothbrush back in its glass, immodestly dispensed with the towel and wrapped himself in a dressing gown that had once belonged to the Majestic Hotel.

“We chatted quite a lot when we bumped into each other,” continued the Titan. “He was always busy but made the effort.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Last night at about six. He called me over to help him tie his cummerbund.”

“Cummerbund?”

“Or cravat. It’s difficult to tell with him. He’d had an argument with his girlfriend. Did Mrs. Hubbard tell you?”

“She mentioned it. Do you know her name?”

“Bessie, I think,” replied the Titan.

“No surname?”

“I’m sure she has one, but I don’t know it. I don’t think she was a serious girlfriend, but she was the most regular.”

“There was more than one?”

“Humpty was probably the least monogamous person I’ve ever met. I couldn’t agree with his lifestyle, but despite it I think he had a good heart. I can’t imagine Grimm’s Road was a great place to bring women, but, knowing him, he enjoyed the sport of sneaking them past Mrs. Hubbard.”

“What else did you and Humpty talk about last night?”

“Not a lot, but he seemed upset, or annoyed, or unwell. Put it this way: He looked pretty pasty. When it was time for him to go, he thanked me for my companionship and shook my hand. He didn’t usually do that, and, looking back on it, I suppose he might have been saying… good-bye.”

“Did he seem depressed or anything recently?”

The Titan thought for a moment. “Less talkative. Preoccupied, perhaps.”

“When did you see him again?”

“I didn’t. I heard him go into his room about ten-thirty, and the next thing I knew, Mrs. Hubbard was banging on my door and asking if I wanted Humpty’s room for an extra fifty quid a week.”

There didn’t seem to be anything more Jack could learn, at present.

“Thanks for your help. I can usually find you here?”

Prometheus sighed. “Humpty was paying half of my rent. I can’t afford this dive any longer. You could always leave me a message at Zorba’s — I wait tables there three times a week.”

Jack had an idea.

“We need a lodger. Come around to this address and meet my wife tonight at about seven.”

Prometheus took the proffered scrap of paper.

“Thank you,” he said. “I think I might just do that.”

Mary had been speaking to the neighbors. They were suspicious at first but soon became keen to help when they found out it was Humpty who had died. He had, it seemed, been very generous in the neighborhood.

“What have you got?”

“Couple of people thought they heard dustbins, though no one can put a time on it. I got a statement from Mr. Winkie. I think he’s narcoleptic or something; he fell asleep as I was talking to him. SOCO didn’t come up with much. No prints on the shotgun, but some unusual traces on the carpet — and a single human hair.”

“Brunette? Like the woman in the Vienna photograph?”

“No, red — and twenty-eight feet long.”

She passed him an evidence bag with a long piece of auburn hair wrapped carefully around itself like a fishing line.

“Now, that is unusual. Rings a bell, too. What about Mrs. Dumpty?”

“Not really the grieving widow. In fact, technically speaking, not a widow at all — they divorced over a year ago. She said to drop in at any time.”

“Then we’ll do just that. We really need to find the woman in the Viennese picture. She and Humpty had a row last night.”

“What about?”

“We’ll ask her when we find her. Her name’s Bessie.”

“I’ll get the office onto it,” said Mary. “Was that Prometheus upstairs?”

“Yes. Creator of mankind to Mrs. Hubbard’s lodger. Make’s Humpty’s fall look like a stumble, doesn’t it?”

Jack unlocked the car and pushed some papers off the passenger seat so that Mary could get in. She looked at the baby seat in the back.

“You have children, sir?”

“Lots of people do. I have five.”

“Five?”

“Yup. Strictly speaking, only two are mine. Two more belong to my second wife, and we share the other. You married?”

“Me? No. I collect ex-boyfriends — and more than five, at the last count.”

Jack laughed, started the engine and selected first gear. There was an ominous growling from deep within the gearbox, and they pulled out into the road to head off to the Caversham Heights district and Mrs. Dumpty.

“So what do you reckon?” asked Mary, still not having come to terms with her new job. She thought she wouldn’t tell her friends back at Basingstoke about this quite yet — if at all.

Jack thought for a moment. “How about this: ‘Big egg gets a shellful, throws himself off wall in fit of drunken depression.’ Or this: ‘Humpty goes to party, gets completely smashed, comes home and… gets completely smashed.’”

Mary’s mobile rang. She looked at the Caller ID before answering. Arnold again.

“I can’t speak right now,” she said before Arnold had a chance to say anything. “I’m at work. I’ll call you back tonight. Promise. Bye.”

She pressed the “end-call” button angrily, and Jack raised an eyebrow.

“I have a mother like that,” he observed.

“It wasn’t my mother,” replied Mary sullenly. “It was an ex-friend who doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase ‘I never want to see you again.’”

There was a pause as they negotiated a roundabout, and Jack decided it was time to embark on his usual induction speech.

“I know that the Nursery Crime Division isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but you should know the basics. The NCD’s jurisdiction covers all nursery characters, stories, situations and directly related consequences of same. If a civilian is involved, then the regular CID can take over, but they generally don’t. I answer to Briggs, but otherwise I’m independent. Because we cover well-established situations, patterns do begin to emerge. You can never quite tell how something is going to turn out, but you can sometimes second-guess the investigation.”

“Such as?”

“Aside from people like Mrs. Hubbard? Well, there’s usually a rule of three somewhere. Either quantitative, as in bears, billy goats, blind mice, little pigs, fiddlers, bags of wool or what-have-you, or qualitative, such as small, medium, large, stupid, stupider, stupidest. If you come across any stepmothers, they’re usually evil, woodcutters always come into fame and fortune, orphans are ten a penny, and pigs, cats, bears and wolves frequently anthropomorphize.”

“I wondered why Reading had talking animals,” mused Mary, having never really thought about it before.

“The Billy Goats Gruff are a blast,” said Jack. “I’ll introduce you one day.”

“No troll?”

“In the clink. Eight-to-ten-year stretch for threatening behavior.”

“Do they know?”

“Do they know what?”

“Do they know they’re nursery characters?”

“I think sometimes they suspect, but for the most part they have no idea at all. To the Billy Goats, Jack and Jill and the Gingerbreadman, it’s all business as normal. Don’t worry — you’ll get into the swing of it.”

Mary went silent thinking about how nursery characters could possibly not know what they were when Jack, suddenly remembering something, picked out his mobile and pressed auto-redial 1.

“Hiya, Mads. It’s me. Tell me, did you get any pictures of Humpty Dumpty at the Spongg Footcare Charity Benefit?… No, Humpty Dumpty…. Sort of, well, like a large egg but about four foot six…. Yeah, but with arms and legs. I’d appreciate it. See ya.”

He pressed the “end-call” button.

“As chance would have it, my wife was photographing the Spongg Charity Benefit last night. She may have some snaps.”

They drove on for a moment without talking. Mary thought she should grasp the bull by the horns and explain that she really wasn’t suited for the NCD; perhaps Jack could have a quiet word with Briggs and she could get out without being seen as something of a quitter. She bit her lip and tried to think of how to frame it, but luckily Jack broke the silence and saved her from the opportunity of making a fool of herself.

“Where did you say you were from?”

“Basingstoke.”

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed of it.”

“How many years in the force?”

“Eight, four as detective sergeant. I worked with DI Flowwe for four years.”

“As Guild-Approved Official Sidekick?” asked Jack, surprised that Briggs had offloaded a pro on him. “I mean, Hebden was Guild, right?”

“Right. Only one of my stories got printed in Amazing Crime, though.”

“You know I’m not Guild, Mary?” said Jack, just to make sure there wasn’t some sort of embarrassing mistake going on. He didn’t think he’d tell her quite yet that Madeleine had applied on his behalf.

“Yes, sir, I knew that.”

“What was the case you had printed?”

“Fight rigging at the Basingstoke Shakespeare Company.”

“Tell me about it.”

Mary took a deep breath. She didn’t know how much he knew and wondered whether it wasn’t a test of her own humility; she had been commended for her part in the inquiry and was naturally proud of her work. She looked across at Jack, but he was concentrating on his driving.

“We didn’t know there was a fraud going on at all for about a year,” she began. “It all started on the last night of a Home Counties tour of Romeo and Juliet. All went well until the fight between Romeo and Tybalt at the beginning of act three.”

“What happened?”

“Tybalt won.”

Jack frowned. He was no culture vulture, but he could see the difficulties. “So the play ended?”

“There was almost a riot. A fencing referee who happened to be in the audience was called onto the stage, and he declared it a fair fight. The play finished with the company improvising an ending where Paris married Juliet, then was led to his own suicide by his failure to compete successfully with the love that Juliet held for her dead first husband.”

“Quick thinking.”

“You said it.”

“So where’s the crime?”

“At the bookies’. Tybalt, never a strong favorite, had been pegged at sixty to one, and someone pulled in an estimated three hundred grand. We were informed, but it seemed as though the bookies were just complaining that they had to pay out. It wasn’t until a matinee performance of Macbeth three weeks later that the gang struck again. At the final big fight, Macduff was the clear favorite at even money. The bookies, now more vigilant, had placed Macbeth at three to one. It seemed a foregone conclusion; Macduff had fifty-eight pounds and eight years on Macbeth, not to mention some crafty footwork and a literary precedent that stretched back four hundred years.”

“So Macbeth won?” asked Jack.

Mary shook her head. “No. It was smarter than that: Banquo did.”

“Banquo?” echoed Jack in surprise. “Doesn’t he get killed off earlier in the play?”

“Usually,” replied Mary, “but this time he returned to the stage and made a brief speech explaining why he faked his own death, then slew Macbeth.”

“I bet the bookies weren’t pleased,” observed Jack.

“You could say that. They hadn’t suffered such a devastating loss since David beat Goliath. A rash of late bets had dropped Banquo’s odds from five hundred to one down to a hundred to one, but it wasn’t enough.”

“How much did the gang make?”

“Ten million.”

Jack whistled softly, and Mary continued: “This time there could be no mistake; someone was rigging the fights. Flowwe was put in command, and I went undercover as Lady Anne in their upcoming production of Richard III. It didn’t take long before we caught them in the final act. After a matinee performance, I saw the theater director giving out script revisions. I alerted Flowwe, and that evening we had eight undercover officers hidden in the audience, disguised variously as popcorn salesmen, tourists from the Midlands and critics from the Basingstoke Bugle. I had sneaked a look at the ‘revisions’ and knew what they were up to. At a suitable moment, we pounced, halted the Battle of Bosworth Field and arrested not only Richard III, but Lords Richmond and Stanley as well. Plots had been laid to call the battle a draw and then form a governmental coalition, a surprise result that would have netted the perpetrators over three million quid. It led directly to Flowwe gaining an extra twelve places on his Amazing Crime ranking to a creditable twenty-fifth. No Basingstoke officer had ever been higher.”

“And a commendation for you?”

She blushed and tossed her head modestly. “That, too.”

Jack remembered now where he had seen her name before. She had been commended not only for her sterling police work but also for her memorable performance as Lady Anne.

“Impressive. Is there anything you want to know about me apart from the fact that I’m not Guild?”

“Yes,” replied Mary. “What happened to your last DS?”

“His name was Alan Butcher. A good man. He died in a car accident.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I was; I was the one that ran over him in my wife’s Volvo. But it wasn’t my fault — he stepped out in front of me.”

“Was he… tall?” asked Mary a bit recklessly.

Jack shook his head sadly. “You’ve heard about the giant killing already? Sometimes I think the station talks of almost nothing else. Well, hear it from the horse’s mouth: Aside from Butcher, they were all self-defense. When someone that big comes at you with a knife, you don’t stop to worry about using lethal force. It was him or me. Same as the other two. Mind you, only one of them was technically a giant — the rest were just tall. But you know what really annoys me?”

“No, what really annoys you?”

“Well, did you hear about the time I saved Hansel and Gretel from being eaten alive by a witch?”

“No, I’m afraid I didn’t.”

“Or the time I rescued a hundred children from the Pied Piper of Hamelin?”

“Don’t… think so.”

“What about dealing with serial wife killer Bluebeard?”

“Only when Briggs mentioned it yesterday.”

“How about the time I closed down the illegal straw-into-gold den?”

“Not really.”

“Convicted Jill of aggravated assault against Jack?”

“Nope.”

“Stopped Mr. Punch throwing the baby downstairs?”

“Must have missed that one.”

“This is my point. I’ve worked hard at the NCD for twenty-six years, trying to bring justice to everyone within my jurisdiction. I deal with most things within the NCD, and I like to think I make a difference. Is any of that remembered? Not a bit of it. I kill a few tall guys and all of a sudden I’m nothing but a giant killer.”

They reached Mrs. Dumpty’s house a few minutes later. It was named, ironically, the Cheery Egg.