Fourth Bear (48 page)

“I’m sorry,” said Briggs. “We couldn’t hold him. Politics.”

“Don’t be,” replied Jack quietly. “He won’t get far.”

As they watched, one side of the car collapsed, a suspension arm giving way. The rear screen shattered, followed by a clattering noise from the engine and a few puffs of blue smoke from the exhaust. With a grinding of metal, the front of the car started to pull itself in, releasing a trail of brown radiator water. Rust popped out along the bottom of each door, and all the lights extinguished. The car juddered to a halt as another suspension arm gave way and all four tires burst in quick succession. A dent appeared in the roof, and the damage that Jack had inflicted on the car against the tree started to make itself known again, the rear buckling up as the car squirmed and shook and it gently imploded with a shudder. There was an agonized cry from within as the Small Olympian Bear tried to escape, then, with a rattling and grinding of metal, the car rapidly collapsed in on itself, crushing Mr. Demetrios to a painful death and leaving the car nothing more than a piece of gnarled scrap sitting in a lake of black sump oil and rusty water.

“Gosh,” murmured Briggs, “was
that
an NCD thing?”

“Not really,” replied Jack, “but the theory’s similar.”

He stared at the crushed car and thought that if it hadn’t been for Mary and Ash, that might have been him winging his way to eternal damnation. As it was, it occurred to him that perhaps the Dark One had got a bum deal—Demetrios would have made his own way to hell in the fullness of time, without an Allegro Equipe to take him there.

“Jack,” said Briggs, laying a hand on his shoulder, “you’ve got a serious amount of explaining to do.”

“Of course,” replied Jack. “There were these three bears, see, and one morning they made some porridge and went into the forest while it cooled—”

“Not
now.
Get a decent night’s sleep, and I’ll see you in the morning. You did well. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Jack,” said Mary, who had just arrived at his side, “I want you to meet Professor McGuffin. I found him in the—” She looked around in confusion. “That’s funny,” she murmured. “He was here a second ago.”

Jack smiled, opened his cell phone and dialed home. Madeleine would want to know he was all right, but, more important, he just wanted to hear her voice.

DCI Jack Spratt
was unanimously declared “more or less sane” by a medical review board and was reinstated as head of the Nursery Crime Division. He received a Distinguished Conduct Award for his expert tackling of the Gingerbreadman. He continues to live and work in Reading.

PC Ashley
was taken home, patched, refilled with rambosia vitae and had his memories uploaded from his memory jar. Due to the infrequency with which he had conducted backups, the last two weeks of his life were irretrievably lost. He still works at the NCD, has no idea why he was awarded the
Ursidae Order of Friendship
and hopes one day to pluck up enough courage to ask Mary out for a date.

DS Mary Mary
was not charged or reprimanded over her “lewd behavior.” It was decided that jurisdiction could not be firmly established, since the offense occurred 220 miles above the Atlantic Ocean in an advanced form of alien technology at twelve times the speed of sound. She continues to work at the Nursery Crime Division and hopes that Ashley might once again ask her out for a date.

Nick Demetrios
died from multiple crush injuries. The recovered briefcase contained notes relating to the highly improbable idea of using auto-deuterium-extracting cucumbers as fuel for a Cold Ignition Fusion reaction. Such an idea is quite impossible and belongs in the realms of loony pseudoscience. The briefcase also included a pickle, presumably his lunch. It was consigned to the waste-bin.

Professor McGuffin,
despite being hazily identified by DS Mary, remains officially dead. Two years after Nick Demetrios’s death, a garden near Madrid erupted into a fireball that fused soil and melted iron. No suitable explanation has yet been forthcoming, but Dr. Parks is investigating.

Punch and Judy
sold their house next to Jack and Madeleine, explaining that they wanted to go and make some noise next to some
real
neighbors. They were last heard of making an appalling nuisance of themselves in Slough and continue to be the finest marriage counselors in the Southeast.

Sherman Bartholomew
retired from politics and returned to his legal practice in Reading. He now specializes wholly in nursery law, and does pro bono work for bears. He is currently defending Tarquin Majors on charges of smuggling forty thousand gallons of surplus Europorridge to needy bears in Eastern Splotvia.

SommeWorld
is still behind schedule, but problems should be ironed out “by Christmas.” Despite this, Mr. Haig insists “the situation is favorable.”

Josh Hatchett
remains a staunch supporter of the NCD and backs it fully in all its undertakings. The job of uninformed criticism of the NCD has been taken over by Hector Sleaze of
The Mole
.

The Great Long Red-Legg’d Scissor-man
was sentenced to eight years for assault but was released over a technicality. His whereabouts are unknown. The NCD has issued a bulletin exhorting children
not
to suck their thumbs, just in case.

The Gingerbreadman
’s hospital uniform, fountain pen, thumb, elephant gun and a single glacé cherry eye can now be viewed in a special exhibition at Reading Museum, along with his original seven-foot-high cutter, and declassified Project Ginja Assassin material, kindly loaned by the QuangTech Trust (Foss), PLC.

Mr. and Mrs. Bruin
survived the attack on their lives and have returned to their cottage. They received counseling from the Punch™ marriage counselors and are delighted to report that there are now only
two
beds in the house. They continue to eat porridge and take long walks in the forest.

John Wooten
of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for his assistance in matters regarding physics and atoms and fusion and suchlike.

Elmarie Stodart
of Cape Town, who coined the “right to arm bears” phrase, which lent itself well to the novel.

Bill Mudron
and
Dylan Meconis
of Portland, Oregon, for their excellent frontispiece and work on my postcards and merchandising. Further examples of their artwork can be found at www.thequirkybird.com (Dylan), www.excelsiorstudios.net/ (Bill).

Also to:

Mari Roberts,
who once again puts up with a partner who is in residential absentia for five months of the year.

Carolyn Mays
and
Molly Stern,
two editors cut from the finest cloth, who never push me
that
hard, even when the manuscript is the teeniest-weeniest bit late.

Gretchen Koss
and
Emma Longhurst,
the best publicity gurus in the known galaxy, whom I am lucky to have.

The unsung multitudes at
Hodder
and
Penguin Group (USA),
who have been so utterly supportive of my efforts.

Tif Loehnis, Eric Simonoff
and all the hardworking associates at
Janklow and Nesbit,
without whom I would as likely as not still be making Snicketty-Dicketty breakfast cereal commercials, and hating it.

And:

To the master himself,
Jonathan Swift,
for the initial inspiration for this novel:

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.

—
Gulliver’s Travels
, “A Voyage to Laputa”

The Nursery Crime Division, the Reading Police Department and the Oxford & Berkshire constabulary in this book are entirely fictitious, and any similarities to authentic police procedures, protocol or forensic techniques are entirely coincidental, and quite unintentional.