Luckily, Gretel and Baker were engaged on other duties, and Ashley was the only incumbent, which made it feel positively roomy—sort of.

“Good morning, Ash,” said Jack.

“It is indeed,” replied the small alien with a joyous ripple of blue from within his semitransparent body. “I’ve got some good news for you both.”

“Briggs just called to change his mind about the Gingerbread inquiry?”

“No—much better. I’ve finally managed to complete my beer-mat collection. I’ve got them all. Every single one.”

“That’s… wonderful news,” said Jack in an absent sort of way. Ashley was best humored, and since he didn’t really get sarcasm, he never took offense. “Any messages?”

“Of course. You’ve got one from the Force Medical Officer requesting that you attend a hearing with an independent psychiatric evaluator tomorrow, then another, also from the FMO, informing you that you shouldn’t be at work to receive these messages and suggesting you go home and watch a few reruns of Kojak.”

“Anything else?”

“No,” replied Ashley, “but I think the FMO is wrong.”

“That’s very good of you to say so, Ash.”

“Not at all. Kojak is entirely the wrong show to be watching for relaxation. We watched your TV a lot back home on Rambosia, and Kojak was never our thing.”

“No?” replied Jack without humor.

“No. All that lollipop and ‘Who loves ya, baby?’ stuff—and the singing career? What was that all about? No, we always preferred Jim Rockford—especially Noah Beery, who played his father. I suggest you watch The Rockford Files.”

“You and Briggs should have a chat,” said Jack, glaring at the small alien. “He thought I should be watching Columbo.”

“That’s good, too,” mused Ashley. “A bit unusual for a whodunit, since we always knew in the first five minutes who had done it. Perhaps it should be called a ‘howcolumbofindsoutwhodunit’—”

“What about my other messages?” interrupted Jack before Ashley gave him a rundown of every single U.S. cop drama of the seventies, a subject on which he was something of an expert.

“Nothing else. These are all for Mary.” He passed a large stack of yellow message slips to her and added, “They’re from Arnold.”

“Blast,” murmured Mary. She had been trying to dump Arnold for several years now, but without success, despite trying almost everything from feigned death to pretending she had the bubonic plague, for which she was grateful to Baker for being able to furnish a complete list of symptoms. “I thought I had it once,” Baker had said, mildly disappointed.

“Do you want me to speak to him again?” asked Jack.

“No thanks,” replied Mary, recalling the mess he had made of it the last time.

“Are we on the Gingerbreadman hunt?” asked Ashley.

“No.”

“Are we going to do a plot device number 11010?”

“No.”

“Would you like to see my beer-mat collection?” asked Ashley, in a state of some excitement. “It might cheer you up.”

“You wouldn’t get them all in here, would you?” asked Jack, looking around at the diminutive offices.

“On the contrary,” replied Ashley, blinking laterally and producing a shoe box from under the table. “They’re in here.”

“How many do you have?” asked Jack, suddenly suspicious.

“100100001.”

“One hundred and forty-five?”

“Yes. Every single one different—except an Arkley’s Bitter 2003 Drunk-Driving Warning Special, of which I have two.”

“You tell him, Mary,” said Jack wearily. The phone rang, and he picked it up. “Spratt, NCD.”

He listened for a moment and then sat back and twiddled absently with his tie.

“Yes, there is some good news, Mrs. Dish. Your daughter has turned up in Gretna Green…. Gretna, yes, as in Green. Are you sitting down?… Good. Well, she’s married to Wallace Spoon.” Jack winced and held the receiver a little farther from his ear before continuing. “No, there are no grounds for criminal proceedings unless you can prove to us that she was forced into marriage, which she personally told me she wasn’t…. No, Mrs. Dish, I’m afraid not. The police have stopped ‘teaching people a lesson’ for quite some time now…. This isn’t a police matter, Mrs. Dish…. Yes, I’m sure the cow will be over the moon. Good day, Mrs. Dish.”

He put the phone down and shook his head sadly.

“How many different ones?” asked Ashley in a shocked tone.

“Perhaps more,” explained Mary apologetically, “probably tens of thousands.”

Ashley opened his eyes so wide you could see the greens.

“But that could take years!”

Jack passed Mary the address that Tarquin had scribbled out for him. “Check this out. See if it’s for real and who might be leasing the unit if it is.”

The phone rang again.

“Spratt, NCD.”

“It’s for you, Mary.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “I think it’s Arnold.”

“Do you want me to speak to him?” asked Ashley.

“Would you? Tell him anything.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

Ash took the phone from Jack and said, “Hello, Arnold, PC Ashley here. Mary can’t have a date with you because she’s going out with me. Yes, with me. No, we’re going dancing that evening. She didn’t want to tell you because she thought it might hurt your feelings. Yes, I am the weird alien chappie and no, this isn’t some kind of sick joke—she’ll confirm it herself. Mary?”

He held the receiver up, and Mary yelled, “Yes, it’s true!”

“Sorry about that, Arnold,” continued Ashley. “No, that’s not true at all. It must have been someone else doing the abductions. And while we’re on the subject, a saucer is entirely the wrong shape for interstellar travel—they were probably hubcaps or something. Good day.”

And he put the phone down.

“How was that?”

“Very… straightforward.”

“Best like that. I was kidding about the dancing, by the way—I dance very badly, on account of my liquid-filled physiology. Shake me up and I tend to hallucinate. Driving over a cattle grid at speed has the same effect. But dinner would be pleasant. We’ll arrange something, right?”

“R-r-r-ight,” replied Mary, unsure of whether he was kidding or not, but she had never really known Ash to make a joke, so she suspected not.

The phone rang again. It was Briggs, wanting to know what Jack was doing answering the phones at the NCD when he was on sick leave. Jack replied that he’d popped in to collect his things and promised to be out of the station in ten minutes.

“Knowing Briggs, he might come down here to check,” observed Mary.

“Right,” said Jack reluctantly, fidgeting and hunting for some papers to shuffle or something.

“Ash and I can look after the office. If Copperfield calls with any questions over the psychocake, I’ll get him to call your cell phone.”

“O-o-okay,” said Jack. “We’ll check out Tarquin’s porridge contact first thing tomorrow morning—and just so there’s no confusion, the Gingerbreadman’s a cookie.”

“Cake.”

“Cookie.”

“A cake goes hard when it goes stale,” explained Jack as he got up, “and a cookie goes soft. That’s the difference. He’s pliable, so he’s a cookie—and I don’t want to hear anything more about it.”

There was a pause as Ashley and Mary considered the feasibility of Jack’s cake/cookie definition.

“But it’s not all bad,” Jack added from the door. “At least the Gingerbreadman gives the papers something to write about other than the Riding-Hood debacle. Good bye.”

And he left the two of them staring at each other. Mary was thinking about how she’d never even considered going on a date with Ashley, and Ashley was thinking about how he’d been trying to pluck up enough courage for weeks.