DOG WALKERS FACE BODY-FINDING BAN

Citizens who find a corpse while walking their dog may be fined if proposed legislation is made law, it was disclosed yesterday. The new measures, part of the Criminal Narrative Improvement Bill, have been drafted to avoid investigations looking clichéd once they reach the docudrama stage. Other offenses covered by the act will be motorists declaiming in a huffy tone, “Why don’t you catch burglars/real criminals for a change?” when caught speeding, if there is a documentary crew in attendance. Civil libertarians, motorist groups and dog walkers are said to be “outraged.”

—From Amazing Crime Stories editorial, December 9, 1997

Mary couldn’t sleep. She sat in the bedroom of her dilapidated flying boathouse and watched the rippled patterns the light made on the ceiling. Chymes seemed confident that the Humpty case hadn’t ended, and that bothered her. It shouldn’t have been any of her business, and that bothered her, too. At six-thirty she got up, showered and drove into Reading while it was still dark, the languid movements of late revelers and the bustle of early tradesmen the only activity in the sleeping town.

She had a coffee with the end of the night shift and at 8:00 A.M. went over to the Forensic Department to see if Skinner was by chance an early riser. He wasn’t, but she wanted to speak to him, so she sat outside his office until he arrived, coffee and papers in hand. He still had his bicycle clips on.

“I’m DS Mary,” she said. “I’m working with DI Spratt.”

She had expected a smirk when she said it but didn’t get one. Skinner was one of the friendlies.

“A fine man is Jack. Come on inside.”

He unlocked the door and let them both in. The strip lights flickered on, making Mary blink after the dinginess of the corridor.

“So,” said Skinner, guessing her intention almost immediately, “more questions over the Humpty murder? Or is it about Mrs. Dumpty?”

“Both.”

He pulled off his bicycle clips. “Shoot.”

“Five shots had been fired from Mrs. Dumpty’s .32,” she began,

“yet we can only account for one. What happened to the other four?”

But Skinner didn’t seem particularly puzzled.

“The fact they were missing from the clip means nothing, Mary. She might never even had loaded them.”

“So it’s not suspicious?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What about not finding the spent cartridge in Winkie’s garden?”

“Shells are often picked up by astute criminals, Mary. It’s fairly common knowledge that we can match a cartridge to a gun as easily as we can match a slug—often easier. Perps often use revolvers for just that reason.”

“What about a .32 caliber being able to destroy Humpty?”

He scratched his head. “I tend to agree with Mrs. Singh—I would have thought a larger caliber. He was very badly damaged. But we’re both guessing. Data on bullets going through large eggs is a little bit in short supply, as you might imagine.”

“But if we had the spent slug?”

“Oh, yes.” Skinner smiled. “If we had that, we could know for sure.”

Mary thanked him and moved to go, but Skinner laid a hand on her wrist.

“Be careful, Mary.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just that things are sometimes not always what they seem.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re new to Reading and new to Jack. Don’t underestimate him. He’s a better man than most people give him credit for.”

“I still don’t understand.”

Skinner stared at her through his thick pebble spectacles.

“Some people at Reading are too powerful for the good of the service,” he said slowly, pointing at a buff envelope on his desk, right next to the evidence bag with the two weathered shotgun cartridges that needed to be returned, “and people talk out of turn at their peril. You can take the cartridges with you, but I wouldn’t want you to make a mistake and take that buff envelope as well. Do you understand?”

She frowned but nodded her agreement, wished him good day and dutifully took both the evidence bag and the envelope.

She had a look when she was in her car. The envelope contained crime-scene photographs of the Andersen’s Wood murder, and pretty gruesome they were, too. She went through them once, then again. If there was something going on, she was definitely missing it. She replaced the pictures inside the envelope, stuffed it under the seat of her car and headed off towards Spatchcock’s Gymnasium.

Mr. Spatchcock was giving a morning keep-fit lesson to a group of women who were all a bit puffed and had begun to go red. She could almost hear the silent pleas for him to stop or at least slow down. She was glad to be able to help. She tapped on the glass and hoped Spatchcock recognized her. It didn’t do to start flashing police badges around people’s place of work—unless you needed to make a point, of course.

But he did recognize her. He told his class to take a much-welcome break and trotted up to where Mary was waiting for him.

“It’s DS Mary, isn’t it?”

“It is, Mr. Spatchcock. I’d just like to ask you a few more questions.”

“Of course. I was very sorry to hear about Mrs. Dumpty. She had been a client for about two years and, like many of my personal charges, a driven woman with appetites the same as anyone else.”

“You were intimate?”

“If that is how you like to phrase it, yes. You may not approve of what I do, but no one is hurt by it, and I fulfill an important role. Laura was a lot better than most; I think we even had an affection of sorts for each other. Anyway, I have a friend in the pathology lab who told me they thought Humpty had been murdered, so naturally I thought Laura would be in the frame. Of course, I knew she hadn’t killed him—and that’s why I called you straightaway.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Which part?”

“The ‘hadn’t killed him’ part.”

“Well, Sergeant,” he said in a quieter voice, “I was with her the night of the Spongg Charity Benefit. I have no proof, of course, but that’s why I contacted you.”

“Wait,” said Mary, “I haven’t spoken to you at all since we met at the Cheery Egg on Tuesday morning.”

“I know that. You weren’t there, so I spoke to the other officer.”

“DI Spratt?”

“No, the one who is always on TV with that annoying chirpy cockney sidekick.”

“Friedland Chymes?”

“That’s the one. I told him all about it. Did he not tell you?”

“No,” replied Mary, suddenly feeling confused. She thanked him and walked outside to her car. If Flotsam had known about Spatchcock when she spoke to him at the coffeehouse the previous evening, why didn’t he tell her? Wasn’t she part of their team? Chymes, she knew, conducted his investigations in a strange way—perhaps this was part of some bigger plan—and Flotsam followed orders, just like her. But what if there was another reason for it? What if Chymes was waiting until Jack had closed the investigation before he reopened it? That would fit into his dramatic way of doing things. She pulled out her mobile and started to dial Jack, then snapped it shut again. She needed more information. She started the car and drove rapidly across to Grimm’s Road.

She parked in the alleyway and, after consulting the diagram Skinner had sketched for her, attempted to find out where the spent slug had returned to earth. It seemed simple enough. Lining up Humpty’s entrance and exit wounds gave Mary a zone of probability the shape of a wedge with a twenty-degree spread up to a hundred feet from where Humpty was sitting when he was killed. She worked from the sharp edge of the wedge back, scouring the earth, rubbish and junk in the back alleyway that the simple plan had indicated. She searched for forty minutes in an increasing state of agitation until a sudden thought had her standing on an upturned dustbin to check in the guttering—and there it was, looking small, gray and innocuous. It had been only slightly deformed—an almost perfect specimen for Skinner to work with. Better than that, it was a .44 caliber. Even if Spatchcock had lied—and there didn’t seem any reason for him to do so—then Mrs. Dumpty had killed her ex-husband with another gun. Not out of the question, but out of the ordinary. The two facts together would be enough to keep the investigation open.

“Well, well. DS Mary.”

She turned around quickly. Standing in the alleyway was Friedland Chymes.

“Sir,” she said, trying to hide her feelings of nervousness, and jumping down, “what are you doing here?”

“The same thing as you, I suspect,” he replied. “Trying to get to the bottom of Humpty’s death. What have you discovered?”

She stared at him, and he stared back. She had stumbled, but she had not yet fallen. She prayed she wouldn’t blow it.

“I spoke to Mr. Spatchcock this morning.”

Chymes wasn’t fazed for even a second. He smiled again.

“You figured there was something hokey about the whole thing on your own, Mary? I’m very impressed. Jack’s about to roll over and wee on himself in Briggs’s office, but you’re out here hunting down the truth. I can’t begin to tell you how valuable I think you would be to my team.”

Two hours earlier it would have been the single greatest compliment she’d ever received from anyone who wasn’t her mother. But he hadn’t answered her question. And Mary always liked to have an answer.

“When did you know that Humpty had been shot, sir?”

“Long before you,” he said. “Mrs. Singh is highly diligent—too much so, to my taste. She wanted to be a hundred percent sure of what she had before she called you. Myself, I’ll go with a seventy percent probability any day.”

“You knew,” said Mary softly. “You knew the evening before about the shooting and about Spatchcock. You withheld crucial evidence from our investigation.”

“No I didn’t. And it would be very wrong and detrimental to your career if you were to mention it again. Tell me what you know, Mary.”

She paused for a moment, bit her lip and looked down—the full gamut of someone unable to come to a decision, and Friedland pounced.

“I think you should tell me,” he said a little more forcefully.

“You should know that I generally get what I want and that people who help me are rewarded. Conversely and contrariwise, people who withhold information from me rarely last the course. I’ll ask you once more, and I expect an answer: What have you found?”