“Sir, I was wondering—”

Briggs stopped her midsentence, divining precisely what she was about to say. The reason was simple: All the detective sergeants he had ever allocated to Jack said the same thing.

“Look upon it as a baptism of fire. The NCD is good training.”

“For what?”

Briggs had to think for a moment. “Unconventional policing. Your time won’t be wasted. Oh, and one other thing.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Welcome to Reading.”

2. Jack Spratt

Jack drove home that evening with a feeling of frustration that would have been considerably worse had it been unexpected. He and the prosecution had tried to present the pig case as well as they could, but for some reason the jury didn’t buy it. Briggs hadn’t said anything to him yet, but mounting prosecutions such as The Crown v. Three Pigs was undeniably expensive, and after the failed conviction of the con men who perpetrated the celebrated emperor’s new-clothes scam the year before, Jack knew that the Nursery Crime Division would be under closer scrutiny by the bean counters. Not that the NCD was consistently racked with failure—far from it—but the fact was that few of his cases attracted much publicity. And in the all-important climate of increased public confidence, budget accountability and Amazing Crime circulation figures, Friedland’s crowd-pleasing antics were strides ahead of Jack’s misadventures—and hugely profitable for the Reading police force, too. But all of this was scant comfort to Mr. Wolff, who went to his casket unavenged and parboiled.

He drove along Peppard and took the left fork into Kidmore End.

“Shit,” muttered Jack under his breath as the whole wasted six-month investigation sank in. He didn’t want murder cases, of course—he would be happier not to have any, ever—but there was a slight frisson that went with them that he welcomed. The NCD, after an early rush of celebrated cases, had settled down into something of a workaday existence. There is a limit to how many lost sheep you could track down, how many illegal straw-into-gold dens you could uncover, how many pied pipers arrived in town trying to extort money from the authorities over pest control and how often Mr. Punch would beat his wife and throw the baby downstairs. He knew there was not much prestige, but there was an upside: He was left pretty much to his own devices.

He stopped the car outside his house and stared silently into his own kitchen, where he could see his wife, Madeleine, attempting to feed the youngest of their five children. They had brought two children each from previous marriages—the two eldest, Pandora and Ben, were Jack’s, and Megan and Jerome were Madeleine’s. As if to cement the union further, they had had one that was entirely down to the pair of them—Stevie, who was a year old.

“This is why I do this,” he muttered under his breath, opening the car door. Pausing only to place a block of wood under the rear wheel to stop his Allegro from rolling down the slope, he picked up his case, bade good evening to his neighbor Mrs. Sittkomm, who was glaring suspiciously at him from over the fence, and took the side entrance to the house.

“Honey,” he yelled without enthusiasm as he dumped his case on the hall table, “I’m home!”

She coo-eed from the kitchen, and the sound of her voice made all the stresses of the day that much more bearable. They had been married almost five years, and neither of them had any regrets over their choice. She bounded in from the kitchen, gave him a kiss and hugged him tenderly.

“Otto called me about the Wolff thing,” she whispered in his ear. “Bum deal. The pigs deserved to fry. I’m sorry.”

And she hugged him again.

“I’d say ‘you win some,’ but I don’t seem—”

She placed a finger on his lips and took him by the hand to walk him through to the kitchen, where Stevie was attempting to reduce his dinner to a thin film that might, through careful skill, be made to cover the entire room.

“Hi, kids!” Jack shouted, summoning a small amount of enthusiasm.

“Hullo!” said Jerome, who was just eight, was enthusiastic about everything and smelt strongly of fish fingers. “I can wiggle my ears!”

He then attempted to demonstrate his newfound skill, and after about a minute of grunting and going bright red and with his ears not wiggling even the tiniest bit, said, “How was that?!”

“Awesome,” replied Jack, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Wiggle them any more and you’ll be able to fly.”

“Jack!” began Megan, her mouth full. “My teacher Miss Klaar eats… puppies!”

“And how do you know that?”

“Johnny said so,” she replied intensely, all curls and big questioning blue eyes the color of a Pacific lagoon.

“I see. And does Johnny have any corroborative evidence?”

“Of course,” said the ten-year-old, knowing a few technical police terms herself. “Johnny said that Roger told him that a friend of his who lives next door to someone who knows Miss Klaar said it’s a fact in her street. Do we have a case?”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Jack. “I often go to court with far less.”

“Da-woo!” screamed Stevie, waving a spoon as he scattered food around the room, much to the pleasure of the cat, with whom, it was generally agreed, Stevie had an “understanding.” Ripvan—as in “Winkle,” naturally—was the laziest cat that had ever lived, ever. She would sleep in corridors, roads, paths, puddles, gutters—anywhere she suddenly felt tired. She would rather sit in the cold and have to be revived from near hypothermia with a hair dryer than trouble herself to use the cat flap. If she hadn’t had the sense to lie on her back under Stevie’s high chair with her mouth open, she would probably have starved.

Madeleine sidled up to where Jack was absently staring at the children gorging themselves and wrapped an arm around his waist.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Deflated,” he replied. “And Friedland got another standing ovation at the press conference.”

“Don’t worry about Friedland,” said Madeleine soothingly. “He only gets the good cases because he’s in the Guild of Detectives.”

“Don’t talk to me about the Guild. Heard the saying ‘If you’re in, you’re made. If you’re out, you’re traffic’?”

“Many times. But you’re not traffic.”

“Check in again a week from now.”

“Did you apply like we discussed, darling?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“No. Listen, I’m not really Guild material. How many people want to read about three disreputable pigs and a dopey wolf with a disposition towards house demolition?”

“If you were in the Guild, maybe lots.”

“Well, I’m not so sure. The Guild won’t want someone like me. The NCD conviction record is … well, shit.”

“That’s because the force doesn’t appreciate what you’re doing. If you were Guild, Briggs and the Crown Prosecution Service would soon change their tune. Aside from that, Ben and Pandora will both be at university in two years, so we could do with the extra cash.”

“That’s true. The cost of mac and cheese, subsidized beer and cannabis these days is simply scandalous—think I can get a cheap deal from the drug squad?”