Jasper Fforde - NC 01 by The Big Over Easy

Author:The Big Over Easy
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-02-15T16:37:22.009000+00:00

She parked in the alleyway and, after consulting the diagram Skinner had sketched for her, attempted to find out where the spent slug had returned to earth. It seemed simple enough. Lining up Humpty’s entrance and exit wounds gave Mary a zone of probability the shape of a wedge with a twenty-degree spread up to a hundred feet from where Humpty was sitting when he was killed. She worked from the sharp edge of the wedge back, scouring the earth, rubbish and junk in the back alleyway that the simple plan had indicated. She searched for forty minutes in an increasing state of agitation until a sudden thought had her standing on an upturned dustbin to check in the guttering—and there it was, looking small, gray and innocuous. It had been only slightly deformed—an almost perfect specimen for Skinner to work with. Better than that, it was a .44 caliber. Even if Spatchcock had lied—and there didn’t seem any reason for him to do so—then Mrs. Dumpty had killed her ex-husband with another gun. Not out of the question, but out of the ordinary. The two facts together would be enough to keep the investigation open.

“Well, well. DS Mary.”

She turned around quickly. Standing in the alleyway was Friedland Chymes.

“Sir,” she said, trying to hide her feelings of nervousness, and jumping down, “what are you doing here?”

“The same thing as you, I suspect,” he replied. “Trying to get to the bottom of Humpty’s death. What have you discovered?”

She stared at him, and he stared back. She had stumbled, but she had not yet fallen. She prayed she wouldn’t blow it.

“I spoke to Mr. Spatchcock this morning.”

Chymes wasn’t fazed for even a second. He smiled again.

“You figured there was something hokey about the whole thing on your own, Mary? I’m very impressed. Jack’s about to roll over and wee on himself in Briggs’s office, but you’re out here hunting down the truth. I can’t begin to tell you how valuable I think you would be to my team.”

Two hours earlier it would have been the single greatest compliment she’d ever received from anyone who wasn’t her mother. But he hadn’t answered her question. And Mary always liked to have an answer.

“When did you know that Humpty had been shot, sir?”

“Long before you,” he said. “Mrs. Singh is highly diligent—too much so, to my taste. She wanted to be a hundred percent sure of what she had before she called you. Myself, I’ll go with a seventy percent probability any day.”

“You knew,” said Mary softly. “You knew the evening before about the shooting and about Spatchcock. You withheld crucial evidence from our investigation.”

“No I didn’t. And it would be very wrong and detrimental to your career if you were to mention it again. Tell me what you know, Mary.”

She paused for a moment, bit her lip and looked down—the full gamut of someone unable to come to a decision, and Friedland pounced.

“I think you should tell me,” he said a little more forcefully.

“You should know that I generally get what I want and that people who help me are rewarded.

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