The Big Over Easy

He looked away from them and rested his cheek on his wife’s forehead. It was a tender moment between a bullying tyrant and an attractive woman young enough to be his granddaughter. Jack suddenly felt as though he were intruding.

“Are there any more questions, Inspector?” asked Solomon without looking up.

“No,” said Jack, rising to his feet. “Thank you for your time, Mr. and Mrs. Grundy. We’ll see ourselves out.”

They left the couple holding each other on the drawing room sofa, accompanied by four dogs and twenty-eight feet of the most beautiful hair either of them had ever seen.

“That was unexpected,” said Mary as they walked back to the Allegro.

“Shows that looks can be deceptive. I’m sure his business competitors would be surprised to know that old Grundy had a soft side to his nature. Extraordinary hair, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” replied Mary thoughtfully, then adding as a practical afterthought, “but think of all that brushing!”

27. Perplexity, complexity

FLAUTIST’S SON JAILED FOR PIG STEALING

Tom Thomm, son of Reading Philharmonic’s noted solo flautist, was finally convicted of serial pig theft yesterday. “I don’t know what comes over me,” said Thomm when asked to account for his actions. “I just see a pig, this pink veil falls over my eyes, and next thing I know, I’ve grabbed it and I’m off. I don’t even like pork—I’m a vegetarian.” The judge heard that Thomm had been a serial pig stealer for some years, having grabbed a total of 2,341 porkers since he was twelve. In his summing-up, Mr. Justice Cutlett told him, “Despite numerous court orders to attend compulsive behavior-disorder realignment sessions, you are still unable to control your urges. I have no choice but to detain you for two years.” Several pigs who attended court were said to be “overjoyed at the outcome.”

—Extract from the Reading Mercury, July 18, 1990

They hadn’t been wasting time back at the NCD offices. It was Ashley who had come up with the first good lead. He had put a name to the man in the photograph, the one in Humpty’s still-untraced Ford Zephyr.

“Who?” asked Jack.

“Thomas Timothy Thomm. DI Drood down at Missing Persons found him. I did you a printout of his record—but on acetate so you could still look at your desk while reading it.”

“Very… thoughtful of you, Ashley.”

It seemed that Thomm was the son of the Reading Philharmonic’s premier flautist. Unable to stop an unexplained compulsion to steal pigs, he was sent at age sixteen to a young offender’s institute to “straighten him out.” It achieved the opposite, and after being in and out of jail for a number of offenses, he was eventually sentenced to fifteen years for armed robbery. He had been released on parole two years previously.

“Looks like he’s prime NCD jurisdiction,” murmured Jack.

“They should have sent him through to me. Where is he now?”

“That’s the thing,” observed Ashley. “He’s not been seen at all for over a year. Didn’t turn up for parole meetings—there is an outstanding arrest warrant, and his parents have put him on the Missing Persons register. I’m trying to contact his parole officer and see what else I can learn.”

“More questions!” said Jack in exasperation. “It’s about time we had some bloody answers!”

Baker had been in town making inquiries but had drawn a blank. No one had seen Humpty for over a year, leading some wag in Humpty’s old local to remark that he was surprised to find that Humpty was still alive to be murdered. Baker questioned him further, but it seemed that the man was only reflecting Humpty’s slightly downmarket business reputation. “Shady” was the word the man used, although neither he nor anyone else could say who had actually fallen foul of him. Indeed, everyone Baker met commented on how much he was liked. Humpty’s womanizing was well known, but Baker didn’t find out much more.

“Out of sight for over a year?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Baker. “Apart from his neighbors around Grimm’s Road, no one’s seen anything of him at all.”

“In hiding?” murmured Jack, half to himself.