The Big Over Easy

7. The Nursery Crime Division

“Make yourself at home, Mary.”

She looked around at the close confines of the NCD offices. They were cramped and untidy. No. They were worse than that. They had gone through cramped and untidy, paused briefly at small and shabby before ending up at pokey and damp. Dented and chipped steel filing cabinets ringed the walls, making the room even smaller than it was. There was barely enough space for a desk, let alone three chairs.

“How long has the NCD been in these offices, sir?”

“Since they started the division. Why?”

“No reason. It just seems a bit… well, close.”

“I like it,” replied Jack mildly, taking a telephone from one of the filing cabinet drawers. “We have a room next door as well, but Gretel and the filing take up most of that. It’s generally okay, as long as we don’t all want to walk around at the same time.”

“Gretel?”

“She’s a specialist in forensic accountancy, but she helps us out when we’re short-staffed, so we consider her one of ours. You’ll like her. She’s good with numbers and speaks binary.”

“Is that important?”

“Actually, it is. Constable Ashley generally understands everything we say, but complex issues are best explained to him in his mother tongue.”

“Ashley’s a Rambosian?”

“Yes, first ever in uniform.”

There was a pause.

“Do you have any problems with aliens, Mary?”

“Never met one,” she replied simply. “I take people as I find them. What’s that smell?”

“Boiled cabbage. The canteen kitchens are next door. Don’t worry; by the third year, you’ll barely smell it.”

“Hmm,” murmured Mary, looking disdainfully around the small room and the piles of untidy case notes. “I might have an issue with the window.”

“What window?”

“That’s the issue.”

At that moment a cloud of cold germs loosely held together in the shape of a human being walked in through the door. This, guessed Mary, was another part of the NCD. She was right.

“Good morning, sir,” said the sickly-looking individual. He took a sniff from a Vick’s nasal spray and dabbed his red nose with a handkerchief.

“Good morning, Baker,” replied Jack. “Cold no better?”

Baker’s cold never got better. A semidripping nose seemed to be a permanent fixture since a bout of flu eight years earlier. He wore a scarf even when it was quite warm, and his skin seemed pale and waxy. Despite looking as if he had barely three weeks before a terminal illness mercifully carried him away, he was actually extremely fit — he passed his annual medical with flying colors and completed the Reading Marathon every June in a creditable time.

“This is Charlie Baker, the station hypochondriac. I call him the office terrier. I give him a problem to solve and he won’t let go until it’s done. He’s also convinced he has only a month to live, so he doesn’t mind going through the door first on a raid.”

“How do you do?” said Mary, shaking his hand.

“Not terribly well,” replied Baker. “The dizzy spells have got worse recently, I have a rash on my scrotum, and a twinge in the knee might be the onset of gout.” He showed her his forearm.

“Does this look swollen to you?”

“Have you seen Ashley or Gretel?” asked Jack, trying to change the subject before he really got started.

“Ashley’s burning some spinning wheels that were handed in as part of that amnesty thing,” said Baker as he squeezed a few drops of Visine into his eyes and blinked rapidly, “and Gretel is having the morning off — I think she’s being checked for Orzechowski’s syndrome, a curious disease that plays havoc with the central nervous system and causes rapid movements of hands, feet and eyes — incurable, you know.”

Jack and Mary stared at him, and he shrugged.

“Or maybe she’s just waiting in for a plumber.”

“Right. Mary, call St. Cerebellum’s and get the name of Humpty’s doctor, and, Baker, dig up some background info on Humpty — we should know what he’s been up to and if he has a record. I’ll be back in half an hour, and I take my coffee white with one sugar.”

Jack picked up the evidence bag that contained the shotgun and walked out the door.

The Nursery Crime Division, it seemed, didn’t generate many headlines — the framed news clippings that hung on the wall were just short, faded sections of newsprint culled from the few papers that carried the stories. There were clippings about Bluebeard’s arrest, Giorgio Porgia, the notorious crime boss, and several others, going back over four decades. Uniquely, there was one regarding the Gingerbreadman from the front page of The Toad, but since it described Jack as “Chymes’s assistant,” Mary could understand why it was the least prominent.

“I figured you were a coffee person,” said a voice. Mary turned to find the young constable she had seen earlier at Grimm’s Road doing house-to-house. They had spoken, but only about work. She didn’t even know his name.

“Thank you,” replied Mary, taking the coffee gratefully and waving a hand at the press cuttings. “What do you know about all this?”

“Before I was even born,” replied Tibbit, “but according to Gretel, the Giorgio Porgia collar was more DI Spratt’s than Chymes’s. The Super got funny about it when things got dirty. No one gives a damn about the nurseries as long as they kill one another. Porgia made the mistake of taking out real people. The Guv’nor had all the evidence, but Chymes closed the case — and got the credit.”

“No wonder Jack doesn’t like him.”

“It goes back further than that. He doesn’t talk about it much.”

Mary’s mobile started ringing. She dug it out of her pocket and looked at the Caller ID. Arnold again.

“This is a guy named Arnold,” said Mary, handing the still-ringing phone to Tibbit. “Can you tell him I’m dead?”

Tibbit frowned doubtfully but took the phone and pressed the answer button anyway.

“Hello, Arnold?” he said. “PC Tibbit here. I’m afraid to tell you that DS Mary has been killed in an accident.” He winced as he said it, and there was a pause as he listened to what Arnold had to say. “Yes, it was very tragic and completely unexpected.” He listened again for a moment. “That’s no problem, I’ll tell her. Good day.”

He pressed the end-call button and handed the mobile back.

“He said he was very sorry to hear about your accident and he’ll call you later. I don’t think he believed me.”

“No, it’s going to take more than my death to put him off, but thanks anyway. What’s your name?”

“Constable Tibbit.”

“Sergeant Mary Mary,” said Mary, shaking Tibbit’s hand, “pleased to meet you.”

The young officer thought hard for a moment, then said, “Arrange a… symmetry.”

Mary arched an eyebrow. “Pardon?”

He didn’t answer for a moment but again thought hard and finally said in triumph, “Many… martyrs agree.”

“Are you okay?”

“Of course!” replied the young constable brightly. “It’s an anagram. If you take ‘Sergeant Mary Mary’ and rearrange the letters you get ‘Arrange a symmetry’ or ‘Many martyrs agree.’ The trick is to have them make sense. I could have given you ‘My matey arrangers’ or ‘My artery managers,’ but they sort of sound like anagrams, don’t you think?”

“If you say so.”

She had thought that perhaps Tibbit might have been a life raft of normality that she could somehow cling to for sanity, but that hope was fast retreating. It was little wonder he had been allocated to the division.

“It’s a palindrome,” continued the young constable.

“Sorry?”

“Tibbit. Easy to remember. Reads the same backwards as forwards. Tibbit.”

Mary raised an eyebrow. “You mean, like ‘Rats live on no evil star’?”

He nodded his head excitedly. “I prefer the more subtle ones, myself, ma’am, such as ‘A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.’”

Mary sighed. “Sure you’re in the right job?”

Tibbit appeared crestfallen at this, so Mary changed the subject.

“How long have you been here?”

“Six months. I was posted down here for three months, but I think they’ve forgotten about me. I don’t mind,” he added quickly.

“I like it.”

“First name?”

“Otto,” he replied, then added by way of explanation, “Palindrome as well. My sister’s name is Hannah. Father liked word games. He was fourteen times world Scrabble champion. When he died, we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score. He spent the greater part of his life campaigning to have respelt those words that look as though they are spelt wrongly but aren’t.”

“Such as…?”

“Oh, skiing, vacuum, freest, eczema, gnu, diarrhea, that sort of thing. He also thought that ‘abbreviation’ was too long for its meaning, that ‘monosyllabic’ should have one syllable, ‘dyslexic’ should be renamed ‘O’ and ‘unspeakable’ should be respelt ‘unsfzpxkable.’

“How did he do?”

“Apart from the latter, which has met with limited success, not very well.”

Mary’s eyes narrowed. She feared she was having her leg pulled, but the young man seemed to be sincere.

“Okay. Here’s the deal. You stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours. Get me St. Cerebellum’s number and make Jack a cup of coffee.”