“You’re wrong. It’s about us, And since you have to stand in judgment of me, I think I’m entitled to know just what sort of a person I’m dealing with and where you fit into the grand scheme of things. A tall, thin, beaky appearance with colored-frame spectacles. Pointlessly aggressive, doubtlessly single and seemingly without a clue as to the proper procedure for a psychiatric evaluation. From where I’m sitting, you look like a poorly realized stereotype, a one-dimensional character without backstory or future—and a name to match your bearing and position within the bigger picture.”

It was Kreeper’s turn to be flustered. She ran a hand through her lank hair, trembled for a moment and then said, “I… I… don’t know what you mean, I’m sure. A stereotype? Bigger picture? What are you suggesting?”

“Let’s put it this way,” said Jack, suddenly feeling a lot more self-assured. “You and I have perhaps more in common than you think. And you sitting behind that desk questioning my motivations smacks of the very worst kind of hypocrisy. Essentially, you’re nothing but a vehicle for a series of bad psychiatric jokes and a plot device to stop me from getting to the truth. A threshold guardian, whose only purpose in existence is for me to circumvent—which I’m doing right now, if you haven’t noticed.”

Kreeper stared back at him, trying to adopt a bemused air of condescension to disguise her sudden nervousness.

“A one-dimensional threshold guardian? No, no, you’re quite wrong. Look, here!” She opened her purse and passed him a picture of a teenager in pigtails and wearing glasses. “It’s my niece,” she explained. “I take her out on her birthday to all kinds of places. Last year we went to the Natural History Museum. So you see I’m not poorly realized at all—I’m flesh and blood and fully in command of my own destiny—and having a recollectable past proves I’m not one-dimensional.”

She glared at him hotly, but Jack had enough experience of PDRs and incidental characters to know one when he saw one.

“What’s her name?”

“Her… name?”

“Yes. Your niece has a name, I take it?”

Kreeper blinked at him, and tears started to well up in her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said at last, breaking out in a series of sobs. “I just… don’t…know!”

Jack felt sorry for her. It can’t be easy to have your entire life summed up in a few perfunctory descriptive terms, the sole meaning of your existence just a few lines in the incalculable vastness of fiction. Still, this was his career in the balance. If he didn’t deal with her, the Jack Spratt series was likely to stop abruptly at the second volume. No third book and definitely no boxed set.

“The only question we have here,” said Jack without emotion,

“is this: ‘Am I sane enough to be back on active duty?’ Do we understand each other?”

But Kreeper was in no state to say or do anything. Her shoulders heaved with silent sobs, and tears rolled down her cheeks. She buried her face in her notes and mumbled, “Why?… Why?… Why? Oh, the echoing void, the meaninglessness of it all!”

Jack looked at his watch. This was becoming tiresome, and he had a journalist to find.

“Her name’s Penny,” he said in a quiet voice, “Penny Moffat. She’s your brother Dave’s second daughter. They have another daughter called Anne, who’s at Warwick. You and Dave were brought up in Hampshire, and once, when you were six and he was eight, you fell off your bike and cut your chin. That’s how you got that scar.”

Kreeper stopped sobbing and looked up. “Penny?” she said, picking up the photograph of her niece, then gently touching the small raised scar that had suddenly appeared on her chin.

“Yes. Your brother’s wife is called Felicity, and… she’s the best friend you have.”

Kreeper’s eyes filled with tears again, but this time they were tears of joy. “She is, isn’t she?”

“Yes. Last year you all went to Cádiz on holiday. It was hot.”

“Very hot,” agreed Kreeper. “I got sunburned and had to spend the third day indoors.” She smiled to herself, then at him.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. So… when do you put me back on the active list?”

She dabbed her eyes with Jack’s handkerchief and took a deep breath. “If it was in my power, I’d do it here and now, Jack.”

He raised an eyebrow. “But…?”

“But the whole self-repairing car issue is a continuing subplot and completely out of my hands. The best I can do is ask you for some sort of proof the car is doing what you say it is.”

“I give you my word, Kreeper.”

She looked around and lowered her voice. “Jack, you and I both know there are bigger forces at play here. If I don’t have proof about your car, I can’t give you a clean bill of health. You know how it works. Besides, cars don’t repair themselves.”

“This one does. I bought it with a guarantee from this guy named Dorian Gray over at Charvil. Ever heard of him?”

“No.”

Jack stared at her for a moment. She was right—this was the best she could do. He snapped his fingers as an idea came to him.

“Come with me.”

A few minutes later, they found themselves back in the underground garage, facing the shiny new Allegro Equipe. He showed her the oil painting of the busted-up Allegro, but she wasn’t impressed.

“So?” she said, hands on hips.

“I’ll break something on it, and you can see for yourself how it mends itself. Then you’ll understand and I’m sane, right?”

“No. I’d be as mad as you—which is the same thing, relatively speaking.”

Jack took the wheel brace from the trunk and with a single swipe took off the side mirror and put a dent in the door. The mirror fell to the ground with a tinkling of broken glass.

“Watch carefully,” he said. “The last time it happened, the whole car repaired itself from a total wreck in under a minute, so a side mirror should be a snap. Any moment now. Pretty soon. A few seconds.”

Kreeper folded her arms.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t be watching it,” mused Jack after they had stared at it for more than a minute without the car’s giving even the slightest sign of repairing itself.

“Listen, I’ve been very patient over this—”

“Just turn around, Kreeper. We have to not be watching. That’s when it works.”

Jack turned around, and Virginia reluctantly joined him.

“I’m very busy,” said Kreeper, glancing at her watch, “and if you want, we can talk about this tomorrow.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Jack. “Just give it a moment.”

They waited a minute and turned around. The mirror was still broken, the dent still showing clean and crisp in the door. Jack rubbed his head. This wasn’t going so well.

“Listen,” said Virginia, resting a friendly hand on his shoulder, “being swallowed by a wolf has probably stressed you out more than you think. You work in an area of policing that requires giant leaps of imaginative comprehension, and perhaps… well, perhaps you’ve been at it too long.”

Jack sighed. “Then I’m not back on the active list?”

“No. Concede that this whole car-mending-itself nonsense was some sort of bizarre fiction-induced delusion, and I’ll suggest you return to work after a three-month rest.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“I’ll recommend retirement on grounds of mental ill-health, and they’ll put you in front of a board of medics—and they’ll be a whole lot less understanding than me. It’s a good deal, Jack—in effect a paid holiday.”

She was right. It was a good deal. But he hadn’t been seeing things.

“It happened, Kreeper.”

She sighed and stared at him. “I’ll leave you to think about it for a few days. My report doesn’t have to be with Briggs until Monday next. If you change your mind,” she announced with the closest thing she had to a kindly smile, “you know where to find me.”

And she walked off, leaving Jack staring stupidly at the door mirror he had just broken off. Perhaps Kreeper was partly right. Perhaps he had been overdoing it recently. But it didn’t matter. He’d get Dorian Gray to explain the nature of his “special” guarantee and be back on the active list. He was just annoyed that his reality had been questioned twice in twenty-four hours, when no one had even suggested he was anything but genuine flesh-and-blood for over a decade. He turned and headed back toward the NCD offices, deep in thought.