The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse

by Robert Rankin

  On prime time TV.

  Before a large viewing audience.

  Although reruns of this particular show would top the ratings charts for many months to come, the only direct eyewitness to Little Tommy’s spectacular demise was one Eddie Bear, Toy City private eye.

  Knowing better than to risk being flattened by the stampeding audience and being incapable of assisting Jack in his travails against the rude crew pigs, Eddie had remained where he was, cowering in his seat. He had to put his paws right over his ears, though, as Tommy’s high-pressure whistlings reached an ultrasonic level, which set toy dogs in the street outside howling. But Eddie had a ringside seat to watch the explosion.

  It is another fact well known to those who know it well, and those who know it well do so through personal experience, that when you are involved in something truly dreadful and life-threatening, such as a car crash, the truly dreadful and life-threatening something appears to occur in slow motion. Many explanations have been offered for this: a sudden rush of adrenalin, precipitating a rapid muscle response, affording the individual the opportunity (however small) to take evasive action; an alteration in the individual’s perception of time, which is something akin to a near-death experience, in which the individual’s psyche, id, consciousness, or soul stuff, depending upon the chosen theological viewpoint, momentarily detaches itself from the individual in question, allowing the individual to experience the event in a different timeframe. Or the far more obvious, transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic antimatter, precipitating a flexi-tangential spatial interflux within the symbiotic parameters of existential functionalism.

  But whether or not any of these actually apply to brains comprised entirely of sawdust is somewhat open to debate.

  If asked whether he had watched the exploding of Little Tommy Tucker in what seemed to be slow motion, Eddie Bear would, however, answer, ‘Yes, and it was not at all nice.’

  Eddie watched the ghastly swellings, the vile expansions, the distortions of limbs and facial featurings, and then he saw the rending of flesh and shirt and blue silk Oh Boy! suit. And he saw the fragments of the gas-filled clockwork grenade that roared out of Tommy’s shredded body. And whether it was adrenalous rush, or detached id, or pseudo-cosmic existential functionalism, Eddie managed to duck aside as metal shards and Tucker guts flew in his direction.

  Not so, however, the wildly trottering rude crew pigs, who caught much shrapnel in their rubber rear ends.

  As the crew pigs ran squealing and Jack, who had gone down fighting, came up prepared to do some more, Eddie raised his ducked head and saw something else.

  And Eddie pointed with a paw and Jack looked up and saw it too.

  Down through the hole in the ceiling it drifted, a tiny white and brown thing. The white of it was a parachute, the brown was a hollow chocolate bunny.

  Now the mayhem hadn’t lessened, because but a few short seconds had passed. The explosion had done nothing whatever to lessen the chaos; on the contrary, it had done everything to considerably increase it.

  The fire alarm was ringing and the sprinkler system went into action. Water showered down upon the audience-turned-mob. The audience-turned-mob turned upon itself, and much of itself turned to other than itself; indeed, turned upon the rude crew pigs who were scrambling also to flee.

  It was now a full-blown riot situation.

  ‘This way.’ Jack hauled Eddie after him and took off at a rush for the rear of the stage, leaping over spattered remains of the ex-supper singer. ‘The killer’s upstairs somewhere; we have to get after them.’

  ‘Whoa!’ went Eddie as Jack passed the painted sky backdrop and entered a backstage corridor. ‘Slow down, Jack, think about this.’

  ‘We have to get after the killer.’

  ‘We don’t have any weapons.’

  ‘We’ll improvise.’

  ‘Have you gone completely insane?’

  Jack dashed along the corridor. ‘Let go of me,’ cried Eddie. ‘Put me down.’

  Jack ceased his dashings and put Eddie down. ‘The murderer may still be in the building,’ he said. ‘We have to find out; we have to do something.’

  ‘No, Jack,’ said Eddie. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can’t? Why?’

  ‘Jack, I just saw a man get blown to pieces. I think I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘Then wait here,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll go alone.’

  ‘No, don’t do it, please.’

  ‘But I might be able to catch them unawares.’

  ‘Or you might walk straight into a trap. Let it go, Jack.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You’re very brave, but look at the state of you.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Jack.

  ‘You’re not, you’re all beaten about.’

  ‘Get away, they hardly laid a trotter on me.’

  ‘Carry me back to the office, Jack.’

  ‘Carry you? In broad daylight? What about your dignity?’

  ‘I’ll have to swallow that, I’m afraid.’

  And then Eddie fainted.

  *

  Jack carried Eddie back to Bill Winkie’s office. To spare his dignity, he hid the little bear beneath his trenchcoat.

  In the office Jack splashed water on Eddie and slowly Eddie revived.

  ‘That was most upsetting,’ said Eddie. ‘I didn’t like that at all.’

  ‘Are you feeling all right now?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be fine. Thanks for looking after me.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Jack. ‘As long as you’re okay.’

  ‘It was a bit of a shock.’

  ‘But let’s look on the bright side,’ said Jack.

  ‘The bright side? What bright side?’

  ‘Little Tommy Tucker went the way he would probably have wanted: live on stage before a cheering audience. Out on a high note and in a blaze of glory.’

  ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

  ‘Rather desperately so, yes.’

  ‘Then please don’t.’ Eddie shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it. The killer did it, right in front of us. Right in front of the viewing public. How audacious can you get?’

  ‘This killer is making a very big statement.’ Jack settled down in Bill Winkie’s chair. ‘There’s a very big ego involved here.’

  ‘And we’re always one step behind.’

  ‘Well, we’re bound to be. We don’t know who this loony is going to butcher next. We don’t have his hit list.’

  ‘Hit list, a celebrity hit list,’ said Eddie, thoughtfully. ‘You might have something there.’

  Eddie climbed onto the wreckage of Bill Winkie’s desk. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what we have. We have Murder Most Foul: to whit, Mr Dumpty, Boy Blue, Madame Goose, Wibbly, Jack Spratt and now Tommy Tucker. I think we can exclude Madame Goose and Wibbly; they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s the others that matter. The old rich of Toy City. What is the common link?’

  ‘Easy,’ said Jack, swivelling about in Bill Winkie’s chair, ‘I know this.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Eddie.

  ‘The common link is that they were all killed by the same murderer.’

  Eddie made the kind of face that wouldn’t buy you cheese. ‘Was that supposed to be funny too?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Jack. ‘But think about it, Eddie. She, or it, must have had a reason to kill them all.’

  ‘I understand what you’re saying. But she or it didn’t kill Jack Spratt or Tommy Tucker. She or it was already done and dusted.’

  ‘Oooh oooh.’ Jack put up his hand. ‘I’ve an idea.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Eddie once more.

  ‘All right, my idea is this. There are two killers.’

  Eddie groaned.

  ‘No, I haven’t finished. There are two killers, but they’re hired killers, working for someone else. The brains behind it all.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Eddie asked. ‘No, wait, I know what
you’re saying. If the she or it was doing the killing for her personal motives, the killings would have stopped when she was killed.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Jack, having another swivel on the chair. ‘So if you stop this latest killer, the killings won’t stop; another hired killer will take over and continue the work.’

  ‘And our job is to find out what this work is. Why it’s being done and who is the evil genius behind it.’

  ‘Evil genius is a bit strong,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s not go giving this mad person airs and graces.’

  ‘Criminal mastermind, then,’ said Eddie.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ said Jack. ‘So what we need to find is the common link.’

  Eddie groaned once more.

  ‘What’s with all this groaning?’ Jack asked. ‘Are you ill or something?’

  ‘We’re going round in circles. We need to put things in order.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jack, nodding in agreement and swivelling a bit more on the chair.

  ‘In order,’ said Eddie, in the voice of one who has been granted a sudden revelation. ‘Put things in order! As in your list. The celebrity hit list.’

  Jack did shruggings which, combined with his swivellings, nearly had him off the chair.

  ‘Why did the killer slaughter her victims in the order she did?’ Eddie asked. ‘Why Humpty first, then Boy Blue? I’ll bet there’s some reason for the order.’

  ‘I can’t see why the order matters. Why don’t we go to Jack Spratt’s and search for some clues there? Or back to the studios; we might find something.’

  ‘No,’ said Eddie. ‘If I’m right about this, we’ll be ahead of the game.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Jack. ‘Oh damn!’

  ‘Oh damn?’

  ‘I’ve got the hem of my trenchcoat caught in the swivelling bit of the chair.’ Jack yanked at the trenchcoat’s hem and was rewarded with a ghastly tearing sound. ‘Oh double damn,’ he said.

  Eddie ignored him. ‘It’s this way,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking that the victims are being killed in a particular order. I’ll just bet you that it’s the order that their nursery rhymes were written. I’m pretty sure that I read somewhere that Humpty was the first nursery rhyme millionaire.’

  ‘But how does this help?’ Jack fought with the chair for possession of the trenchcoat. So far the chair was winning.

  ‘Wake up, Jack,’ said Eddie. ‘If I am right and the victims are being murdered in that order, then we’ll know who’s going to be the next on the celebrity hit list, won’t we?’

  Jack ceased his struggles. ‘Eddie, that’s brilliant,’ he said. ‘Then we can beat the police to the crime scene when the next murder happens.’

  Eddie threw up his paws in despair.

  ‘Only joking,’ said Jack. ‘We can be there before it happens, prevent it and capture the hired killer and get Bellis’s boys in blue to beat the name of the criminal mastermind out of them. Or something like that.’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Eddie. ‘So, it’s The Hall of Nearly All The Records for us.’

  ‘The hall of nearly all the records?’

  ‘The curator is a very honest man. He can’t be expected to remember everything.’

  ‘Well, obviously not,’ said Jack. ‘He’d look stuff up in the record books.’

  ‘Record books?’ said Eddie. ‘What are record books?’

  ‘Books with records in them.’

  ‘A novel idea,’ said Eddie. ‘I’ll pass that on to the curator. He has nearly all the records in his head.’

  ‘What?’ said Jack. ‘They’re not written down?’

  ‘He does have a very large head.’

  Jack shook his not-so-very-large head. ‘Just one thing,’ he said. ‘How far away is this hall?’

  ‘Right across the other side of the city.’

  ‘And will we be taking a cab?’

  ‘I don’t think I have sufficient money for the fare. I was so drunk that I actually paid off my bar bill at Tinto’s last night.’

  ‘So you’ll be walking?’

  ‘We’ll be walking,’ said Eddie.

  ‘You’ll be walking,’ said Jack. ‘I did enough walking yesterday. And I’ll keel over from hunger soon anyway. We should have used the Chief Inspector’s money to get some new wheels for Bill’s car.’

  ‘I know what,’ said Eddie. ‘We’ll telephone The Hall of Nearly All The Records.’

  ‘Inspired,’ said Jack. ‘Where’s the telephone?’

  ‘Somewhere amongst all this mess; let’s search for it.’

  A thorough search of Bill Winkie’s office turned up a number of interesting things.

  It also turned up a telephone.

  Jack turned up the telephone.

  ‘Is this it?’ he asked, turning it down again.

  ‘That’s the kiddie,’ said Eddie.

  ‘This toy telephone with the piece of knotted string holding the handset on?’

  ‘Pretty smart telephone, eh? I bought it for Bill as a birthday present.’

  ‘But it’s not a real telephone.’

  ‘Please don’t start all that again, Jack. Just dial The Hall of Nearly All The Records and let’s get on.’

  ‘And the telephone number is?’

  ‘Oh, give it to me.’ Eddie snatched away the telephone. Then he looked at it in a mournful manner. And then he handed it back. ‘You’ll have to dial,’ he said; ‘no fingers.’

  ‘I’ll just dial a number at random,’ said Jack. ‘You never know, luck might be on our side.’

  Eddie, who had tired with groaning, made a low and growly sound instead. Jack dialled out some numbers and held the wooden handset to his ear.

  ‘Hall of Nearly All The Records,’ said a voice.

  ‘Wah!’ went Jack, dropping the handset.

  Eddie scooped it up between his paws. ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Hello,’ said the voice. ‘Hall of Nearly All The Records.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Eddie. ‘This is Chief Inspector Bellis here. I need some information.’

  ‘If I have it, it’s yours,’ said the voice.

  ‘Splendid once more,’ said Eddie, turning to Jack. ‘Get a pen and paper, Jack, and write down what I tell you.’

  Jack sought pen and paper. ‘Go on then,’ he said, when his seeking had reached a successful conclusion.

  Eddie awoke with a start. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘nodded off there.’ And he told the curator of The Hall of Nearly All The Records what he wanted to know.

  ‘Easy,’ said the curator, and he reeled off the list.

  ‘Slow down,’ said Eddie, as he dictated this list to Jack.

  ‘And …’ said the curator.

  ‘Yes?’ said Eddie.

  ‘Aaaaaagh!’ went the curator, and the line went dead.

  ‘Oh,’ said Eddie.

  ‘How do you spell that?’ Jack asked. ‘Is it a single “O”?’

  ‘No, it’s Oh! As in a surprised, if not a little shocked, Oh! The curator just went Aaaaaagh! And then the line went dead.’

  ‘So how do you spell Aaaaaagh?’

  Eddie shook his head. ‘I think the curator just got murdered,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jack. ‘That’s bad. That’s really bad. This new killer is as smart as the old one. But at least we do have the list.’

  Eddie sighed. ‘Read it back to me,’ he said.

  Jack read the list:

  ‘Humpty Dumpty,

  ‘er …

  ‘Little Boy Blue,

  ‘Jack Spratt,

  ‘Little Tommy Tucker,

  ‘Little Jack Horner,

  ‘Little Miss Muffett,

  ‘Georgie Porgie,

  ‘Old Mother Hubbard.’

  ‘Humpty Dumpty, Little Boy Blue, Jack Spratt,’ said Eddie, beating the palm of his right paw with as near to a fist as he could make from the left. ‘They’re in the correct order. But hold on. There’re only eight names. I’m sure I gave you nine. I wasn’t really pay
ing attention to which ones they were at the time, I was just trying to keep up with the curator. But I do remember how many there were. There were nine. You’ve left one out.’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ said Jack.

  ‘You have, Jack. I remember there were nine. Show me the list.’

  ‘There’re just eight.’ Jack made to tear up the list, but Eddie knocked it from his hand and fumbled it up from the floor.

  And then Eddie perused this list and then Eddie really groaned.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jack.

  Eddie shook his head, slowly and sadly. ‘I should have known,’ he said. ‘I should have realised.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s not the same one,’ said Jack.

  ‘It’s the same one,’ said Eddie. ‘There was only ever one Wee Willy Winkie. Even though he preferred to be known as Bill.’

  They repaired to Tinto’s Bar to take a late and liquid breakfast.

  Eddie was a sad and sombre bear.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Jack. ‘It only really clicked when you called out his name for me to write down. Who Bill Winkie really was. But what I don’t understand is, why did he become a detective? He should have been lording it up on his nursery rhyme royalties.’

  ‘He was tricked out of his royalties by Wheatley Porterman. Signed a really bad contract. Porterman had made so much money from Humpty, he thought he’d take all from the next client. Wee Willy went public on the way he’d been tricked; no one ever got tricked again. But he was broke, but he was a natural detective, you know, all that “tapping at the windows and crying through the locks” stuff in the nursery rhyme. And checking up on whether the children were in their beds by eight o’clock. Natural detective. And now he’s … you know.’

  ‘We don’t know he’s you know. He’s missing, that’s all.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Eddie, dismally. ‘He’s as dead as. This killer delights in fitting ends for his victims. Boiling the big egg man, giving the ex-shepherd the bitter end of his crook, Tommy Tucker going out on a high note, like you said. And the fellow who does all the searching goes missing. Simple as that.’