The big over easy

“Him.”

Mary followed Briggs’s outstretched finger to an untidy figure who had taken his turn at the lectern. He was in his mid-forties, had graying hair and one eye marginally higher than the other, giving him the lopsided look of someone deep in thought. If he was deep in thought, considered Mary, it was clearly about something more important than his personal appearance. His suit could have done with a good pressing, his hair styled any way but the way he had it. He might have shaved a little less hurriedly and made more of an attempt to exude some — any — confidence. He fumbled with his papers as he stared resignedly after the rapidly vanishing press corps.

“I see,” said Mary, sounding a great deal colder than she had intended. “And who’s he?”

Briggs patted her arm in a fatherly manner. He could sense her disappointment, but it wasn’t up to him. Chymes picked his own people.

“That’s DI Jack Spratt, of the Nursery Crime Division. The NCD. You’ll be on his team. Or at least you and a few others will be the team. It’s one of our smallest departments.” He thought for a moment and then added, “Actually, it is our smallest department — if you don’t count the night shift in the canteen.”

“And his Amazing Crime Stories rating? What about that?”

“He’s not rated,” replied Briggs, trying to make it sound all matter-of-fact and not the embarrassment that it was. “In fact, I don’t think he’s even in the Guild.”

Mary stared at the shabby figure and felt her heart fall. All of a sudden DI Flowwe didn’t seem quite so bad after all.

Jack Spratt looked around the room. Most of the newsmen had by now left, and aside from Briggs and a woman Spratt didn’t recognize at the door, there were only two journalists still in the room. The first was a large man named Archibald Fatquack, who was the editor of the Reading weekly gossip sheet The Gadfly. The second was a junior newshound from the Reading Daily Eyestrain, who appeared to be asleep, drunk, dead or a mixture of all three.

“Thank you all for attending this press conference,” announced Jack in a somber tone to the as-good-as- empty room. “I’ll try not to keep you any longer than is necessary. This afternoon the Reading Central Criminal Court found the three pigs not guilty of all charges relating to the first-degree murder of Mr. Wolff.”

He sighed. If he was intending it to be a dramatic statement, it wasn’t, and it didn’t help that no one significant was there to witness it. He could still hear the excited yet increasingly distant chatter of the newsmen as they filed down the corridor, but it was soon drowned out by Chymes’s 1932 Delage D8 Super-Sport, which started up with a throaty roar in the car park. Jack waited until he had gone, then continued on gamely, the extreme lack of interest not outwardly affecting his demeanor. After nearly twenty years, he was kind of used to it.

“Since the death by scalding of Mr. Wolff following his ill-fated climb down Little Pig C’s chimney, we at the Nursery Crime Division have been following inquiries that this was not an act of self- defense but a violent and premeditated murder by three individuals who, far from being the innocent victims of wolf-porcine crime, actually sought confrontation and then acted quite beyond what might be described as reasonable self-defense.”

Jack paused for breath. If he had hoped his misgivings over the outcome of the trial would be splashed all over the paper, he was mistaken. Page sixteen of The Gadfly was about the sum total of this particular story, sandwiched ignominiously between a three-for-two Hemorrelief advert and the Very Reverend Conrad Poo’s weekly dental-hygiene column.

“Mr. Spratt,” began Archibald, slowly bringing himself up to speed like a chilled gecko. “Is it true that Mr. Wolff once belonged to the Lupine Brotherhood, a secret society dedicated to traditional wolfish pursuits such as the outlawed Midnight Howling?”

“Yes, I understand that to be the case,” replied Jack, “but that was over fifteen years ago. We do not deny that he has been invesigated over various charges of criminal damage arising from the destruction of two dwellings built by the younger pigs, nor that Mr. Wolff threatened to ‘eat them all up.’ But we saw this as an empty threat — we produced witnesses who swore that Mr. Wolff was a vegetarian of many years’ standing.”

“So what was your basis for a murder prosecution again?” asked Archie, scratching his head.

“We believed,” replied Jack in exasperation, as he had made the same point in the same room to the same two uninterested journalists many times before, “that boiling Mr. Wolff alive was quite outside the realm of ‘reasonable force’ and the fact that the large pan of water would have taken at least six hours to reach boiling point strongly indicated premeditation.”

Archibald said nothing, and Jack, eager to go home, wrapped up his report.

“Despite the not-guilty verdicts, we at the NCD feel we have put up a robust case and were fully justified in our actions. To this end we will not be looking to reexamine the case or interview anyone else in connection with Mr. Wolff’s death.”

Jack sighed and gazed down. He looked and felt drained.

“Personally,” said Briggs in an aside, “I didn’t think the jury would go for it. The problem is that small pigs elicit a strong sympathetic reaction and large wolves don’t. There was a good case for self-defense, too — Mr. Wolff was trespassing when he climbed down the chimney. It really all hinged on whether you believed that the pigs were boiling up a huge tureen of water to do their washing. And the jury did. In only eight minutes. Do you want me to introduce you?”

“I’d prefer tomorrow, once I am officially on duty,” said Mary quickly, thinking she might have to go outside and scream or something.

Briggs picked up on her reticence.

“Don’t underestimate the Nursery Crime Division, Mary. Spratt does some good work. Not high-profile, you understand, but important. His work on the Bluebeard serial wife killings case was… mostly good solid police work.”

“That was Spratt?” asked Mary, something vaguely stirring in her memory. It hadn’t been in Amazing Crime, of course, just one of those “also-ran” stories you usually find dwelling in the skim-read part of the dailies, along with city prices, dog horoscopes and “true-life” photo stories. It had been under the subheading “Colorfully hirsute gentleman kills nine wives; hidden room contained gruesome secret.”

“That’s him. Jack was onto Bluebeard and was well ahead of events.”

“If nine wives died, he couldn’t have been that good.”

“I said it was mostly good police work. More notably, he arrested Rumplestiltskin over that spinning-straw-into-gold scam and was part of the team that captured the violently dangerous psychopath the Gingerbreadman. You might have heard about Jack in connection with some giant killing, too.”

Something stirred in Mary’s memory again, and she raised an eyebrow. Police officers weren’t meant to kill people if they could help it — and giants were no exception.

“Don’t worry,” said Briggs, “it was self-defense. Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“The last one he ran over in a car.”

“The last one?” repeated Mary incredulously. “How many have there been?”

“Four. But don’t mention it; he’s a bit sensitive over the issue.”

Mary’s heart, which had already fallen fairly far, fell farther.

“Well, that’s all I have to say,” said Jack to the sparsely populated room. “Are there any more questions?”

Archibald Fatquack stirred, scribbled in his pad, but said nothing. The reporter from the Reading Daily Eyestrain had moved slowly forward during Jack’s report, until his head was resting on the seat back in front. He began to snore.

“Good. Well, thank you very much for your time. Don’t all rush to get out. You might wake Jim over there.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” said Jim, eyes tightly closed. “I heard every word.”

“Even the bit about the bears escaping into the Oracle Center and eating a balloon seller?”

“Of course,” he murmured, beginning to snore again.

Jack picked up his notes and disappeared through a side door.