The big over easy

His directness caught Jack on the hop, and he laughed at his own stupidity.

“Terrific!” he said at last. “I’m going to bed.”

Pandora and Prometheus continued talking as the fire gradually burnt itself down. Prometheus pointed out the flaws in evolutionary theory, such as how a bird could possibly have evolved wings without having useless appendages for thousands of years that would have hindered its survival. Pandora countered by saying that rule number one of the cosmos was that unlikely things do happen. Indeed, given the time scale involved and the size of the universe, unlikely things, paradoxically enough, become quite commonplace.

“What do you think?” asked Jack as he took off his shirt in the bedroom.

“About what?”

“Pandora and Prometheus.”

“Science meets mythology. It’ll be interesting to see what conclusions they draw before the night is out. I’ll be fascinated to hear what Prometheus has to say about the fossil record.”

“Hmm,” said Jack as he climbed into his pajamas and pushed the inert form of Ripvan off his side of the bed. The cat fell to the floor with a thump — and without waking.

Jack slept well that night, curled up with Madeleine like two spoons in a drawer. Below them in the living room, Prometheus and Pandora talked into the small hours, while barely a mile away, in Granny Spratt’s garden, the beanstalk creaked and groaned to itself as it grew, like a bamboo plantation in the tropics.

32. Giorgio Porgia

CRIME BOSS TO RUN PRISON

History was made last week when Giorgio Porgia, Reading’s onetime crime boss and self-proclaimed “menace to society,” was unanimously elected governor of Reading Gaol. The surprise result followed an equal- opportunities advertisement for a replacement governor to which Mr. Porgia applied. Septuagenarian former blowtorch-wielding sadist Giorgio Porgia was found to be the most qualified to run the prison as he had himself spent much time within such institutions and has an almost unparalleled understanding of the irredeemable criminal mind — his own. The Home Secretary happily endorsed his appointment, and “Governor” Porgia will begin work in March.

From The Owl, January 29, 1999

If the Sacred Gonga hadn’t been due for dedication by the Jellyman the following day, the papers would have had nothing else but the Humpty Dumpty case. As it was, they were half Humpty, half Jellyman. Even so, the Humpty part of it wasn’t good, and they all followed pretty much the same line: that Jack was an imbecile who was too proud to ask for help from one of the most eminent and upright pillars of the detecting community. Jack took the papers from the breakfast table and tossed them in the bin, then switched off the radio.

“The crowd is gathering,” said Madeleine as she looked out the window at the pressmen and TV news crews waiting to get a reaction. “I’m going to take the children to see the Jellyman,” she added. “Do you think you’ll be able to join us?”

“I’m nursemaiding the Sacred Gonga,” replied Jack sullenly.

“Sorry.”

Stevie screamed “Da-woo!” enthusiastically and hurled his spoon on the floor because he could. Mary arrived at eight-thirty on the dot and ignored the journalists as she pushed past them. She was introduced to the family and said her respectful hellos before they both took a deep breath and stepped outside to meet the press.

They were met by the glare of video camera lights and the rapid-fire questions of the journalists.

“When can we expect you to relinquish the case to DCI Chymes?”

“Are you competent to run this investigation?”

“Doesn’t Humpty deserve more?”

“Will you plead on bended knee for Chymes’s help?”

“Do you really think that tie suits that jacket?”

“Will you resign from the force?”

“How many more people have to die before you ask for help?”

“What is your beef with tall people?”

“Is that really your Allegro?”

Jack and Mary pushed their way through the throng, got into Jack’s car and drove off with the newsmen still shouting questions.

“Expect more at the station,” said Jack, winding down the window as the windscreen began to mist up, then winding it shut again, as he was being rained on. He pulled out something he was sitting on. It was a man’s cap. “Whose is this?”

“That?” said Mary awkwardly, “Oh, that’s… that’s… Arnold’s hat.”

Jack laughed. “You’re taking him out for the evening in my fine automobile? I thought you were trying to dump him?”

“I told him the Allegro was mine,” confessed Mary. “I thought it might put him off for good.”

“And did it?”

“No. He has an Austin Maxi — and he asked me if I’d checked the torque settings on the rear wheels recently.”

They entered the one-way system in Reading with caution, for even frequent and experienced users of it had been known to become trapped for hours, sometimes days. It was not unique in that it took you where you didn’t want to go before it took you to where you did, no; what made Reading’s system special was that it always spat you out where you didn’t want to go no matter how hard you tried to get to where you did. It was the established technique of heading for where you didn’t want to go that allowed you to end up, quite by accident, in the area where you did. And it was in this manner that they arrived at Reading Gaol.

Giorgio Porgia’s womanizing days were over. He was now seventy-five and in poor physical health. The days when women would swoon at his charms were long gone, the trail of irate husbands long since dried up. Giorgio Porgia had spent the last twenty years of his life in jail, a jail that would be his final resting place. As befits a man of his seniority within the underworld and the prison service, his apartments were large, well appointed and of the highest security. It wouldn’t be right and proper to have the governor of the jail in with the other convicts, nor would it be safe to have someone who once used a tire iron to enforce discipline kept under anything but the strictest security. Thus it was that Mary and Jack were handed over by a prison officer at the outside of Governor Porgia’s secure office to a disreputable character named Aardvark within it.

“They call me Aardvark,” said the shambling, bony character as he led them down the corridor, “’cause I’m Mr. Porgia’s number one. I’m also doing twelve to sixteen for armed robbery, so just watch it.”

Aardvark led them into a good-size room that had bars on the window and was tastefully furnished with antiques. A large, high-backed leather armchair faced the open fire away from them. A wrinkled index finger tapped time on the chair’s arm to an aria from Madame Butterfly.

Aardvark signaled for them to halt, then whispered to the unseen figure in the chair. Jack nudged Mary and pointed to a framed photograph of Porgia and Friedland. There was another figure on the other side of Giorgio, but he had been cropped out.

“You?” mouthed Mary, and Jack nodded.

“You will have to excuse Mr. Porgia,” announced Aardvark, “but he speaks only in the language of his heart.”

“And what language is that?” asked Jack, hoping that Mary could understand Italian.