Authors: Jasper Fforde
“It might be crucial.”
Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. All I
do
know is that she’s my sister and she’s missing. Do you have a sister, Jack?”
“I have six. I could lose one without too much of a problem.”
Jack regarded the worried journalist in front of him and thought for a moment. On the one hand, this man had caused him a great deal of trouble. Disrespectful headlines, awkward questions, press-conference grillings. But on the other hand, with Josh’s support the NCD might not get such a severe drubbing, and it might possibly even sway the Gingerbreadman case into his court. It smacked of sleeping with the enemy, but all of a sudden doing Josh Hatchett a favor seemed to make the vaguest semblance of sense.
“Tell me,” said Jack, having a sudden idea, “was she very particular about things? Not too hot, not too cold, not too hard, not too soft—that kind of thing?”
“How did you know that?” asked Josh, genuinely amazed.
He smiled. “Call it a hunch.”
Jack looked at Madeleine, who stared at him in disbelief. If she’d been in a similar situation,
she
would have just told Josh to go screw himself.
“I’ll see you at the table, darling,” she said, glared hard at Hatchett and then departed. Jack and Josh walked over to the ornate marble fireplace, where they could talk more easily.
“Your sister, eh?”
Josh sighed with relief, smiled and handed over a photo of an attractive woman in her late twenties with long, curly blond hair. She had a large head and big eyes, which made her look quite young and a bit cutsey-ditzy—kind of like a character from a
manga
comic.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Josh, “but don’t be fooled by the bimbo looks. She’s as hard as nails and just as sharp.”
“When did you last hear from her?”
“Did you hear about the events up at Obscurity?”
“Of course.”
“I spoke to her Tuesday morning, the day after the blast. She said she’d interviewed Stanley Cripps six hours before he died and was going back up there as soon as the authorities reopened the site. She told me she
thought
she was onto something really big and that I’d be proud of her. I next spoke to her on Thursday afternoon, when she said she was
sure
it was something big, and… well, I haven’t heard from her since.”
“Was Stanley Cripps a bear?” asked Jack, ever hopeful.
“No. On Monday morning I went to her apartment to look for her. Her flat was empty and nothing seemed amiss. I found this in her desk drawer in the newsroom.”
He handed Jack a manila folder with “Important” written in felt pen on the cover.
“Hmm,” murmured Jack, “this could be important.” He opened the file and idly flicked through the contents. “What’s it all about?” he asked, unwilling to study it at length right now.
“Unexplained explosions—I think Goldy included the Obscurity blast somewhere in the list.”
“The Home Office’s report has the explosion as an undiscovered wartime bomb set off by Cripps himself with a rototiller or something.”
“It’s not likely that he’d be using the rototiller at night, Inspector.”
“You never know,” mused Jack. “They’re all a bit funny in that area of Berkshire. Do you have any
suspicion
as to what’s become of her?”
“Jack,” Josh sighed, “I don’t know anything. It could be the Easter Bunny for all I know.”
“It’s not likely to be her,” replied Jack after a moment’s thought. “Kidnapping was
never
her MO. Did your sister have a car?”
“A green 1950s Austin Somerset,” replied Hatchett. “It’s not outside her flat or at
The Toad
’s offices. I don’t know the number. This is her address, and these are her spare keys.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Josh, but don’t expect miracles. There’s just one thing I’d like from you.”
“Anything.”
“Lay off the NCD, hey?”
“I’ll give DI Copperfield my full support.”
That wasn’t
precisely
what Jack had in mind, but to say so would have sounded disloyal, so he gave Josh a half smile, passed him his empty glass and went to find Madeleine. He caught her eye across the crowded room, and she beckoned him to her.
“I want you to meet Mr. Attery-Squash, my publisher. He’s on our side, so play nice, sweetheart.”
She steered him toward a large, friendly-looking man who seemed to be trying to avoid the many unpublished writers who milled around him like bees to a honeypot, hoping to be discovered. Attery-Squash was a sprightly octogenarian with a center part in his white hair and a matching beard decorated with a single red ribbon. He wore a suit in large checks of decidedly dubious taste and had a jolly red face that reminded Jack of Santa Claus. He had run Crumpetty Tree Publishing since he bought it from QuangTech in the sixties, and was reputed to be one of the few people who knew the Quangle-Wangle personally.
“Hello, Mr. Spratt,” said Attery-Squash kindly, “good to finally meet you. We were just discussing
Reading by Night
. Do you like it?”
“I love all Madeleine’s work, but no one seems to want to buy photographic books these days.”
Mr. Attery-Squash took a sip from his champagne.
“Publishing photography is a tricky game, Mr. Spratt. Much as I love Madeleine’s work, I’d be a whole lot happier if she’d start concentrating on the bread and butter of the photography world—celebrities misbehaving themselves and kittens in beer mugs.”
“Kittens in beer mugs?” echoed Jack.
“Yes,” continued Attery-Squash, eager to get Jack on board and somehow sway Madeleine away from her doubtlessly artistic but wholly unprofitable images, “babies with spaghetti on their heads, ducklings snuggling up to kittens. That’s where the
real
money is—that and puppies, lambs and calves shot with a wide-angle lens to give them big noses and make them look cuter, and chimpanzees dressed up as humans sitting on the toilet.”
“Babies with spaghetti on their heads?” said Jack, thinking of a typical mealtime with Stevie. “Sounds like you might have something there.”
He nudged Madeleine, who said, “Yes, I’ve often considered spreading my creative wings. I thought swans during sunset might be a good idea, too.”
“Mr. Ottery-Squish?” inquired a young man dressed in a faded sports jacket and a necktie that looked as though it would have been better tied by his mother.
Attery-Squash smiled politely, despite the interruption.
“Yes?”
“My name’s Klopotnik. Wendell Klopotnik. I have a novel that I’ve just written, and I’ve chosen
you
to publish it for me.”
“That’s very kind of you,” replied Attery-Squash, winking at Madeleine.
“I have a résumé somewhere,” Klopotnik muttered, rummaging through his pockets. “It’s called
Proving a Point
—a psychological thriller set in an all-night bakery.”
Jack and Madeleine excused themselves and walked off to find their table.
“What did Hatchett want?” whispered Madeleine as they threaded their way through the crowded ballroom.
“Help. His sister’s gone AWOL.”
“I hope you told him to get lost.”
“On the contrary. Politically it could be a good move. I’ll make a few inquiries and see what I can dig up—metaphorically speaking, of course.”
She shook her head and smiled at him. Jack rarely bore a grudge. It was one of his better features.
They sat down at their table, and Jack introduced himself to his neighbor, a shabby-looking individual named Nigel Huxtable. He was, it transpired, another Armitage Shanks finalist, and he jumped when Jack spoke, as he had been trying to hide two bread rolls in his jacket pocket.
“So what’s your book about?” asked Jack brightly.
“It’s called
Regrets Out of Oswestry
,” he said, fixing Jack with an intelligent gaze that was marred only by a slight squint. “It traces one woman’s odyssey as she returns to the place of her childhood in order to reappraise the relationship with her father and perhaps reconcile herself with him before he dies of cancer.”
Jack frowned. “Didn’t you submit that book to the competition last year?”
Huxtable looked hurt. “No.”
“Oh. It just sounded familiar, that’s all.”
Madeleine hid a smile.
“I know what you’re saying,” said Huxtable in an aggrieved tone, “but I tell you, more copies of my book have been stolen from bookshops than all the other Armitage Shanks finalists’ put together.”
“Do stolen books count on the bestseller lists?”
“I should certainly hope so,” replied Huxtable, thinking that it had been a colossal risk and a waste of his time if they didn’t, “but in any event it’s a modern benchmark of success, you know.”
Jack couldn’t avoid a smile, and Huxtable gave up on him, striking up a conversation along similar lines with his other neighbor.
In the end neither Huxtable nor Sphincter won. The first prize went to Jennifer Darkke’s
Share My Rotten Childhood
. Lord Spooncurdle gave a pleasant after-dinner talk. He made several obscure puns about cheese making and wondered why no one laughed.
That night Jack lay awake in bed, staring at the patterns on the ceiling. He was thinking about Goldilocks and the Gingerbreadman, the NCD, his career and the psychiatric assessment—and just how noisy Mr. and Mrs. Punch’s lovemaking was next door.
“How long have they been at it now?” asked Madeleine sleepily, pillow over her head to block out the thumping, groans and occasional shrieks that penetrated through the shared wall.
“Two and a half hours,” replied Jack. “Go to sleep.”
Most illegal substance for bears:
The euphoria-inducing porridge (“flake”) is a Class III foodstuff, and while admitting a small problem, the International League of Ursidae considers that rationed use does no real harm. Buns (“doughballs”) and honey (“buzz” or “sweet”) remain on the Class II list and are more rigorously controlled, except for medicinal purposes. Honey addicts (“sweeters” or “buzzboys”) are usually weaned off the habit with Sweet’n Low, with some success. The most dangerous substance on the Class I list is marmalade (“chunk,” “shred” or “peel”). The serious pyschotropic effects of marmalade can lead to all kinds of dangerous and aberrant behavior and are generally best avoided as far as bears are concerned.
—
The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records
, 2004 edition
The day broke
clear and fine. A light breeze in the night had cleared away the haze, and the morning felt crisp and clean and sunny—the sort of morning that is generally reserved only for breakfast cereal commercials, where members of a nauseatingly bouncy nuclear family leap around like happy gazelles while something resembling wood shavings and latex paint falls in slow motion into a bowl.
No one was bouncy in the Spratt household that morning, but Jack dragged himself up and was out of the house at eight, telling Madeleine he was off to see the counselor first thing. She’d replied, “You’re a lying hound. Good luck on the Goldilocks hunt, and invite Mary and Ashley around for dinner one evening.”
Twenty minutes later he was driving down the unpaved road to the lake where Mary lived. There were many flooded gravel pits dotted around the area, but only one had people living on it. Several boat-minded individuals had settled here in the thirties and begun a precedent that couldn’t easily be broken. Until Mary started living on the lake, Jack hadn’t known that residential moorings existed here at all. It was quiet at the lakeside, and the houseboats, moored on the ends of pontoons to stop them from running aground, barely moved at all in the placid waters. The first boat was a converted Great War naval pinnace, her decks covered in plastic and in a constant state of conservation. She had been a Dunkirk little ship, so the enormous effort being expended in her rebirth, thought Jack, was quite justified. Beyond this was a Humber lighter, sunk at its moorings three winters earlier and abandoned by its owners. Next was the
Nautilus
, an ancient riveted-iron submarine designed by its owner, an eccentric and reclusive millionaire by the name of Nemo, who was spending his retirement in the rusting hulk writing his memoirs and redefining the classification of sea creatures after a lifetime’s research. The
Nautilus
was resting on the gravelly bottom with its large viewing windows on the waterline. No one knew how he’d gotten the submarine into the lake, and he never gave anyone a straight answer when they asked.
Mary lived on the next mooring to Nemo in an old Short Sunderland flying boat, an ex-civilian version that she had bought from a bankrupt theme restaurant in Scotland, dismantled and shipped to the lake on the back of two flatbed trucks. She spent her spare time converting the inside to a comfortable home and had recently managed to get the number-three engine started, the only one still in position. Madeleine and the children had come down for a barbecue that day and cheered as the old radial burst into life, belching clouds of black smoke, frightening a flock of geese and straining the old airplane at its moorings until Mary feathered the prop.