The big over easy

a nearby room, selected a key and unlocked the door.

“We are moving one of our secure patients,” explained the nurse as he ushered them into what had once been a small cell.

“It’s safer to lock ourselves in while he’s being transported.”

The lock clunked shut, and the nurse spoke briefly on the radio. Up and down the corridor, they could hear doors slamming and locks being thrown.

“Who is it?” asked Jack.

The nurse indicated the small glass porthole in the door. “Take a look.”

Jack peered out cautiously, which seemed daft, considering the door was iron-banded oak. After a few moments, he caught sight of six burly nurses who surrounded a tall figure wrapped in a strait-jacket and bite mask. Each of the six nurses held the patient by means of a long pole that was connected to a collar around his neck. As they drew closer, Jack could see the dark brown cakey texture of the prisoner’s skin, and with a shiver he knew exactly who it was. He had hoped never to see him again but was thankful at least that Cerebellum’s was taking no chances. As they walked past, the patient looked at Jack with his glace-cherry eyes and his thin licorice lips curled up into a cruel smile of recognition. He winked at Jack, and then they were gone.

Jack stepped away from the window, his palms damp with perspiration. Images of the night he and Wilmot Snaarb had tackled the Gingerbreadman filled his head. He could still see Snaarb’s look of pain and terror as the cakey psychopath playfully pulled his arms out of their sockets.

“Are you okay, sir?” asked Mary.

“Yes, yes, quite well.”

The male nurse laughed and went to the window to check for the all-clear.

“Believe me, you really don’t want to get any closer to Ginger than that,” he said, placing the key in the door and pausing. “He’d kill you as soon as look at you.”

“I know,” replied Jack. “I was the arresting officer.”

“Nah,” said the nurse, “everyone knows that was Friedland Chymes.”

They were led into Dr. Quatt’s office, a light and airy room with a good view of Prospect Park through large floor-to-ceiling windows. There were testimonials and letters of support hanging on the walls, and bottled specimens that contained misshapen creatures covered every work surface. Jack and Mary looked more closely and winced: The carefully bottled specimens looked like some bizarre form of animal “mix and match.”

A few moments later, an elegantly dressed woman of Jack’s age walked brusquely in from an anteroom, removed a pair of surgical gloves and tossed them in a bin. Under her white lab coat, she was dressed in a wool suit and blouse with a ring of pearls high on her neck. Her features were delicately chiseled, she wore only the merest hint of makeup and had her hair swept up in the tightest bun Mary had ever seen. She didn’t look as mad as a barrel of skunks; she looked quite sophisticated.

“Dr. Deborah Quatt?” said Jack. “My name is Detective Inspector Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division, and this is Detective Sergeant Mary Mary.”

“Jack Spratt?” she asked, staring at him quizzically. “Have we met before?”

“We were in the same year at Caversham Park Junior School,” replied Jack, astounded that she remembered.

“Of course we were. You always insisted on being the pencil monitor — a policeman at heart, clearly.”

She said it with a slight derogatory air that he didn’t like.

“And you were expelled for sewing the school cat to the janitor.”

“The joyous experimentation of children,” she declared, laughing fondly at the memory. “What fun that was! Did you come all this way for a reunion?”

“Not at all. We wanted to talk to you about one of your patients — a Mr. Dumpty.”

Dr. Quatt shook her head slowly. “I never discuss patients’ records, Inspector. It is a flagrant breach of doctor-patient confidentiality. However, I could stretch a point given some form of fiscal reparation. Shall we say fifty pounds?”

“Doctor, you do know that he’s dead?”

“I was nowhere near him,” declared Dr. Quatt haughtily. “If you want to try me for malpractice, you’ll have to mount a good case. I’ve plenty of experience defending them, believe you me.” She stared at Jack for a moment. “Mr. Dumpty? Dead? What a pity. A very, very great pity.”

“His death was tragic, I agree,” admitted Jack.

“Death comes to us all, Inspector. No, it’s a pity the patient-confidentiality clause is null and void — I could have done with fifty pounds. The price of lab equipment these days is simply scandalous.”

She looked around, lowered her voice and leaned forwards. “Did you know that I have successfully grafted a kitten’s head onto a haddock?”

“Should you be telling me this?” asked Jack, also in a quiet voice.

She leaned back and raised an eyebrow. “It’s not against the law — I just can’t get any funding to do proper research because of that damnable Jellyman and his outdated moral principles. In the world of cutting-edge genetic research, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”

“Which brings us back to Mr. Dumpty,” said Jack. “How long had you been his doctor?”

“For five years,” she said as she sat behind her large desk and indicated for them to be seated, “ever since I arrived in this dump. I was a psychiatrist before I moved into genetic research. What do you want to know?”

“His state of mind.”

“Ah!” she said, getting up to rifle through a rusty filing cabinet. “You are considering suicide, Inspector?”

“It is possible.”

“Indeed it is,” replied Dr. Quatt, looking at the files carefully.

“Physically, he was in a pretty ropy state. He was a lifelong salmonella sufferer, with frequent recurrences; when he had a bad bout, it was most debilitating. He drank more than was good for him, frequently overate and didn’t get much exercise — he never could walk far on those short legs.”

“And mentally?”

“Not good — but functional. He suffered from a sense of extreme low worth that manifested itself in frequent and self-destructive binges of drinking and womanizing. He also had depressive fits that sometimes lasted for days; all he could do was sit on his wall. Aside from that, he sometimes had problems differentiating reality from fantasy. He was particularly fearful that a giant mongoose was after him, was phobic about souffle, meringue, and egg whisks, and had a recurring nightmare of being boiled alive for exactly three minutes.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Six days ago. Easter was a bad time for him, as you can imagine, with all those chocolate eggs being eaten and real ones dyed — he was a virtual prisoner in his own home. We had two sessions last week, and I think we really made some headway.”

“Did he talk about his work?”

She shook her head. “Never. It was all purely domestic.”

“But could he have been suicidal?”

Dr. Quatt thought for a moment. “I’m sorry to say that I can’t rule it out, despite my best attentions.”

Jack nodded slowly. It was what he had been expecting to hear.

“One more thing: How long had he been coming to St. Cerebellum’s?”

“For forty years, Inspector. It was almost his second home.”

Jack got up. “Thank you, Dr. Quatt; you’ve been most helpful. Tell me — and this is just personal curiosity — were you serious when you said you’d grafted a kitten’s head onto a haddock?”

Dr. Quatt’s eyes lit up, and she looked at them in turn, her youthful enthusiasm boiling to the surface. “Do you want to see?”

“That was pretty gross, wasn’t it?” announced Mary as they drove away from St. Cerebellum’s a few minutes later.

“Yes, but fascinating in a prurient, icky, dissecting-frogs, brains-in-jars kind of way. I thought keeping the