The Fourth Bear

by Jasper Fforde

  Jack was just pondering whether to knock gently on Madeleine’s door when a movement on the edge of his vision made him stop. He turned slowly, the hairs on his neck rising. At the far end of the corridor, staring at a large, gold-painted vase that was sitting atop an occasional table, was the small, apelike creature he had seen yesterday in the closet under the stairs. It was not more than two feet high and covered with a smattering of brown hair. It couldn’t reach the vase and looked around for something to stand on. As it turned, the moonlight caught its features, and Jack shivered. A large snout surrounded a mouth filled with brown teeth that were anything but straight. Small eyes stood below a wrinkled brow, and its ears, pixielike, stuck out at odd angles from the side of its potato-shaped head. This, Jack knew, was Caliban.

  He disappeared around the corner and reappeared a moment later pulling Stevie’s trike. He placed it under the table and stood precariously on top, the trike wobbling dangerously. Caliban put out two hands, picked up the shiny vase and looked at it admiringly. He stepped off the trike with some difficulty, as the vase was large and he couldn’t see around it, then took several uncertain steps toward where Jack was watching. Jack waited until the little ape was underneath him and then plucked the vase from his grip.

  “Aha!” said Jack with a triumphant cry.

  But Caliban wasn’t so easily dispossessed of his property, and with an “AHA!” he jumped up and grabbed it back, then ran off as fast as his short legs would carry him. Jack yelled, “Stop!” and ran after the small figure. The farce could end in only one way. The creature tripped over a fold in the carpet, fell flat on his face and dropped the vase, which then rolled toward the head of the stairs. Caliban put a paw to his mouth as he watched the vase escape him, and Jack, more concerned now for the vase than with capturing the ugly little ape, raced past the creature, took a running leap, fell headlong on the carpet and just managed to touch the vase as it rolled out into space, bounced on the second stair, smashed on the fifth and scattered pieces of gold-painted porcelain all over the hall downstairs. Jack lay on his stomach at the top of the stairs and watched the pieces settle on the floor below.

  “Crap,” he muttered. The vase was Madeleine’s, and it had been until very recently a priceless and much-loved family heirloom.

  Caliban walked up to where Jack was lying at the top of the stairs and looked forlornly at the remains of the vase.

  “Oh, dear,” he said. “Was it valuable?”

  Jack closed his eyes as he heard a door open behind them. “More than you know,” he answered in a low voice.

  “Who did this?” asked Madeleine as soon as she realized what had happened.

  “He did,” replied Caliban and Jack in unison, each pointing an accusing finger at the other.

  “What?!” said Jack in outrage. “You stole the vase, pal.”

  “I wouldn’t have dropped it if you hadn’t been chasing me.”

  “I wouldn’t have been chasing you if you hadn’t stolen it!”

  “I wasn’t stealing it.”

  “What then?”

  “I was borrowing it.”

  “You—”

  Madeleine interrupted them both. “I don’t care who’s to blame; you can both clear it up. My grandmother gave me that vase before she died.”

  Caliban giggled at the non sequitur but tried to make it sound like a cough when Madeleine glared at him.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” he replied meekly.

  Madeleine walked angrily back to the bedroom and shut the door with a bang.

  “Thanks a bunch,” said Jack to the misshapen ape as they both sat on the top step, “you troublemaking ignoramus.”

  “I’m not an ignoramus,” retorted Caliban crossly. “Ask me anything.”

  “All right, smart-ass. Who owns Bart-Mart?”

  “QuangTech,” said the ugly little ape without a pause. “Everyone knows that.”

  18. Early Morning

  Most-suspended police officer (UK): As of this writing, the most-suspended officer in England and Wales remains DCI Jack Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division in Reading, Berkshire. Since beginning his career in 1974, he has been suspended from duty over 262 times, with only one of them leading to further action, a reprimand, in 2004. The next-highest is ex-DCI Friedland Chymes (also of Reading) with 128 suspensions, with again no further action on any of them. In consequence of this, the senior officer who holds the record for suspending the most officers is Chymes and Spratt’s immediate superior, Superintendent Briggs. Upon being told of his dubious distinction, he growled ominously, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  —The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition

  Jack didn’t get back to sleep at all that night and eventually got up at six. He had a bath, then went downstairs to have a cup of coffee and listen to the early news, which didn’t carry any bulletins about the Gingerbreadman, so he figured he must still be at large. He thought of going to speak to Madeleine but decided against it, took his keys off the hook and glared at Caliban, who had somehow overcome his initial shyness and was sitting on the windowsill, picking his nose and staring out the window.

  “Hey,” said Jack, “you better be out of the house by the time I get back.”

  “Yeah, right,” replied Caliban with a reproachful sneer, “and what if I’m not?”

  Jack jabbed a finger in his direction but for the life of him couldn’t think of anything either vaguely threatening or even intelligent. “Oh, nuts to you,” he said, and made for the door.

  “Nuts to you, too,” murmured Caliban, and continued to stare out the window.

  Jack got into his car, slotted the ignition key in, then stopped. Where was he going to go? His department wasn’t his anymore, and Briggs would almost certainly have something to say if he turned up there. He sighed. He wanted to stay out of Madeleine’s way, but he didn’t actually have any work to go to. He thought for a moment, tuned the radio to something mindless and settled back to think about Goldilocks. They had a victim but no obvious cause of death, no suspect, no motive and no particular leads apart from the mysterious Mr. Curry and QuangTech, who seemed to be cropping up a lot. NS-4 was somehow interested, and it seemed as though Goldy had been doing a story about unexplained explosions. Then there was the Gingerbreadman, and Vinnie Craps, who seemed to think he was above the NCD’s jurisdiction. And it was with thoughts like these that Jack drifted off to sleep, a lot more successfully than he’d been able to in the spare bedroom. He was just dreaming about the Dungeness nuclear power station and his Aunt Edith when the plaintive trill of his cell phone roused him to confused wakefulness.

  “Yuh?” he said.

  “It’s me,” said Mary.

  “What’s the time?”

  “Ten past nine.”

  Jack rubbed his face. He’d been asleep for over two hours, and now he noticed that Ben had written “Working hard, Dad?” on the driver’s-side window as he’d slept. Madeleine must have seen him sleeping, and he half hoped he’d have a message from her, too—but he didn’t.

  “What’s the news?”

  “Positive ID from Mrs. Singh—it’s Goldilocks all right.”

  “What did Briggs have to say about it?”

  “He said he wasn’t going to elevate this to a full-level NCD murder inquiry without some sort of proof that she was killed unlawfully, but that I should continue ‘rigorous inquiries’ with my current level of resources.”

  “Which is you and Ashley,” observed Jack, “a woeful lapse of responsibility, even for Briggs—he must be stretched thin with the hunt for the Gingerbreadman. Have you spoken to Josh?”

  “I’ve just told him. He’d been expecting it, but the confirmation was still a shock. I showed him the list of Mr. Currys to see if he knew which one Goldilocks had been having dinner with the night before she died.”

  “And?”

  “He didn’t even look at the list. He said it was a code name—and that Goldilocks had mad
e him swear not to reveal who it was.”

  “I’ve a feeling this is seriously bad news.”

  “You’d be right. ‘Mr. Curry’ was…Bartholomew.”

  Jack was suddenly wide awake.

  “Bartholomew? Sherman Bartholomew?”

  “The very same.”

  “Why the secrecy? Was she investigating him?”

  “Josh said we should ask Bartholomew.”

  “He’s right,” said Jack. “We will.”

  “Shouldn’t I okay it with Briggs first?” asked Mary nervously. “This could be a very hot potato.”

  “I’ve had hotter,” said Jack. “Besides, Briggs said this wasn’t an all-out murder inquiry yet.”

  They agreed to meet at the council offices where Bartholomew was holding a surgery that morning. But Sherman Bartholomew wasn’t a doctor. He was Reading’s representative in the House of Commons. The Right Honorable Sherman Oscar Bartholomew, MP.

  19. The Right Honorable Sherman Bartholomew, MP

  European nation with highest politician/lover ratio: Few European states can hope to compete with France and Italy in this department, and the two nations have been battling for European political lothario supremacy for over thirty years. The contest has been increasingly acrimonious since 1998, when France was initially the clear winner but somehow “lost” sixty-eight illicit lovers in the recount and had to concede defeat. The following year was no less rocked in scandal, when the Italians were disqualified for “stretching the boundaries” of their elected representatives to include senior civil servants—and the crown was tossed back to France. No one was quite prepared for the disgraceful scandal the following year when it was discovered that one French minister had no mistress at all and “loved his wife,” a shocking revelation that led to his resignation and ultimately to the fall of the government.

  —The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition

  “I’m sorry we always have to meet under such disagreeable circumstances,” said Jack to a well-dressed, handsome man in his late fifties. “This is Detective Sergeant Mary Mary, also of the NCD.”

  “I was the defense attorney for the Gingerbreadman,” explained Bartholomew for Mary’s benefit. “No one else would handle it.”

  “You put up a robust defense,” replied Jack with a smile.

  “I’m always relieved it wasn’t robust enough, Inspector. He got better than he deserved—have you caught him yet?”

  “We’re not on the chase. I shouldn’t worry—you’re the last person he’d want to attack.”

  “I’m very relieved to hear it.” Sherman Bartholomew shook their hands with a firm grip and offered them a seat in his office. He was that rare thing in politics, a freethinking and radical MP who wasn’t sidelined by his party to the anonymity of the back benches. He was an asset to the city and took his job seriously. The constituency hours took place once a week in the council offices, and Jack and Mary had managed to jump the line of disgruntled bears and other assorted citizens who sat grumbling in the waiting room. Bartholomew, in keeping with the strongest parliamentary tradition, shunned the possibility of any kind of scandal and agreed to see them straightaway. “Perhaps you might tell us what you know about Goldilocks, Mr. Bartholomew?”

  He didn’t answer and instead drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. “It’s a situation of the utmost delicacy,” he said without making eye contact.

  “Was she investigating you about something?”

  “No.”

  “Extortion?”

  “No!”

  “Blackmail?”

  “No, no—it was nothing like that.” He stood up and paced nervously back and forth behind his chair.

  “Sir,” said Jack, this time more forcefully, “I have to tell you that this morning we positively identified the remains of a woman we found up at SommeWorld.”

  Bartholomew looked at Jack with a pained expression. “Goldilocks?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need to sit down, if you don’t mind,” he mumbled, and sat heavily in his chair.

  “We know,” continued Jack, “that you dined with her the evening before she vanished. If you have been involved in any sort of parliamentary impropriety that Goldilocks was investigating, it will almost certainly come out in the fullness of time.”

  He looked at them both and rubbed his forehead. “We were lovers,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “What?” exclaimed Jack with undisguised astonishment. He was expecting any explanation but this one.

  “Lovers,” repeated Bartholomew. “Goldilocks and I. For more than a year now.”

  “Wait, wait,” said Jack in a state of some confusion. “You were, to great fanfare, Westminster’s first openly gay MP and have remained a vociferous mouthpiece for all kinds of minority-rights issues for the past twenty-five years, and now you’re telling me…you’re straight?”

  Bartholomew covered his face with his hands, and his shoulders shook with a silent sob.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” he said miserably, “living a lie. I’ll be ruined and disgraced if this gets into the papers. My parliamentary career will be finished and my hard-fought pink credentials in tatters.”

  “What about Douglas?” asked Mary, equally shocked by Bartholomew’s confession. “Your long-term relationship and much-publicized adoption of two children has always seemed so…perfect.”

  “I did it for appearance’s sake,” he mumbled sadly. “Doug knows what I am and will stand by me if any of this gets out.”

  Jack and Mary looked at each other as Bartholomew massaged his temples and stared at the blotter on his desk, as though the dark smudges might reveal some sort of answer to his dilemma. He blew his nose and tried to compose himself.

  “Mr. Bartholomew,” said Jack after a pause, “it won’t be the first time I’ve had to investigate a potential crime that has involved sensitive issues of a strictly personal nature. But you must understand that our prime consideration at this point is to find out what happened to Goldilocks.”

  “Potential crime?” he said, looking up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “We don’t know precisely how she died.”

  “Are you saying she might have been…murdered?”

  “No, I’m saying we don’t know precisely how she died. I need to know more about the circumstances surrounding Miss Hatchett’s death before we can decide one way or another. I’m not here to ruin anyone’s career.”

  Jack meant it. Bartholomew was a good MP, and Jack didn’t want to see him ousted over something as meaningless as his utterly orthodox sexual orientation. Bartholomew served Reading well and represented quite a few of the nursery figures that Jack worked with. In many ways, the concerns of Jack’s were Bartholomew’s, too.

  “I think I knew deep down something terrible had happened to her,” said Bartholomew unhappily. “It was unlike her not to be on the end of the phone. The police’s involvement was predictable, too—but I must confess I was expecting a more—how shall I put it?—conventional branch of the service. No offense meant.”

  “None taken. There appears to be a Nursery Crime angle to this.”

  “Ah,” said Bartholomew, “bears. I knew my support of them might be my undoing.”

  “Bears?” echoed Jack. “I never mentioned anything about bears.”

  “I think you’ll find that Goldilocks and bears are inextricably linked, Inspector. It was bears that brought us together, in July of last year. Since all the anthropomorphized animals in Reading are my constituents, I have a duty to promote their interests in Parliament—I met Goldilocks when she came to my office to press for a law to allow lethal ursine self-defense.”

  “The ‘right to arm bears’ controversy?”

  “Yes. It seemed pointless to have given bears equal rights, only for them to be unable to defend themselves against illegal hunting and the bile tappers who still stalk their community. If a hunter takes a rifle to kill a bear, it seems entirely just and proper
to me that a bear should be able to obtain an identical rifle in order to defend itself.”

  “The hunters claim that it’s not antibear or ursism but tradition.”

  “Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition, Inspector. We got to talking, and before I knew it, I had asked her out to dinner. We worked closely to draft the Ursine Self-Defense Bill. It was my fifth private member’s bill and met with general approval, although the final vote was disappointing—six hundred and eight against and one for.” He sighed. “A lone voice in the wilderness.”

  “When did you last see her?” asked Mary.

  “We had dinner at the Green Parrot last Friday. Do you know it?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” returned Mary, knowing full well that it was one of the most expensive and exclusive restaurants on the Thames. It was so exclusive, in fact, that most nights the guests never attained the necessary high criteria, and it remained empty.

  “What time did you part company?”

  “About eleven. We spoke again a little after midnight. I wished her good luck, and…that was the last time we spoke. I called her at about ten on Saturday morning, but she didn’t answer.”

  “At ten on Saturday morning?” queried Jack. “You’re sure it wasn’t before?”

  “Definitely.”

  “And you block your number on your cell phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry, please continue.”

  “I tried the rest of the day to call both her cell phone and her home but only got her answering machine. When I hadn’t heard anything by Sunday evening, I went around to her flat. It was locked and dark, so on Monday morning I called her brother to see if he knew where she was. He didn’t.”

  “And he speaks to me four days later at the Déjà Vu,” observed Jack. “You’re the last human we know to have seen her alive. Did she seem normal Friday night?”

  “Excitable, I would say. She said she was close to an important breakthrough in a story.”