The Fourth Bear полностью

Mary stared at him. “We’re going to help the person instrumental in your enforced sick leave and effective demotion? Who got you reprimanded over the Scissor-man case? Are you nuts?”

“Yes, yes and quite possibly, in that order. Look upon it as a long-term strategic operation to bring about a quantum change in press relations as regards the continuing effectiveness of the NCD.”

“We’re cozying up to Josh to get better press coverage?”

“More or less. I think it might be an NCD case. Her name’s Goldilocks.”

“So? She could be a Goldilocks, not the Goldilocks. There’s probably hundreds of people with that name.”

“We have a vague bear connection—and she’s fussy.”

“Ah. A not-too-hot-not-too-cold-just-right sort of fussy?”

“In one. She may have found out some answers about the blast at Obscurity and three other unexplained explosions around the globe.” He handed her the manila folder that Josh had given him.

“Hmm,” she said, looking at the “Important” written on the front, “this could be important.”

“I did that joke already.”

“Sorry.”

She opened the folder. It contained newspaper clippings. The most recent explosion was at Obscurity, and it had attracted a lot of competing theories from news sources of varying reliability. The Obscurity “event” had been catnip for conspiracy theorists, who generally liked things going bang for no clearly explained reason. Mary flicked through the clippings to find an article about a detonation in the Nullarbor Plain, a lonely area in the vast emptiness of the Australian desert.

“September 1992,” she observed, “twelve years ago.”

“The Australian government denied that any tests had been undertaken,” said Jack, who had been reading the clippings the previous evening, “and no explanation was forthcoming.”

Mary turned over another clipping to reveal a faxed extract from the Pasadena Herald dated March 1999. It, too, described an explosion, this time in a neighborhood on the edge of town. The detonation had shattered windows up to three miles away and tossed debris over a thousand feet into the air. The owner of the house, who died, had been retired mathematician Howard Katzenberg. There were more clippings about a blast in Tunbridge Wells, where someone named Simon Prong had perished in an unexplained fireball, and that was it. Four explosions with no link that they could see other than that they were all reported as “strange” or “unexplained.”

“What do you think?” asked Mary.

“No idea. Josh seemed to think she was looking for a link between them.”

“And how is this related to bears?”

“I’m not sure. On Monday she meets up with Cripps in Obscurity. Six hours later he’s dead in the blast. She tells her brother she’s onto something big, and he last hears from her Thursday afternoon.”

Mary shrugged. “She might be on holiday.”

“And she might not.”

They both sat in silence and watched a pair of swans attempt a long and slow takeoff from the surface of the lake. As soon as they were airborne, they landed again with a flurry of spray. It seemed a lot of effort to travel three hundred yards.

“I don’t like station politics,” said Mary a half hour later. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Listen: The longer that twit Copperfield is playing hunt-the-cookie, the more victims there will be. Look upon it as a back door to the natural order of things.”

“I don’t like it, Jack.”

“It’s NCD, Mary. It’s what we do.”

“No, I mean I don’t like your car.”

They were driving across Reading toward Shiplake and the industrial unit that Tarquin had told them was the place where he had picked up the porridge oats. It was the first time that Mary had driven the new Allegro.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Couldn’t I explain what’s right with it? It’ll take a lot less time. Why don’t you get a proper car?”

“A car without porous alloy wheels that let the tires go flat overnight?” asked Jack, smiling. “A car whose drag coefficient is better forward than in reverse? A car whose rear window doesn’t pop out when you jack up the back tires?”

“Anything. I’d prefer to be seen in a wheelbarrow.”

“It could be arranged.”

They picked up Ashley, who was waiting for them at a prearranged street corner. He wished Mary a very good morning and inquired meticulously after her health, and Jack smiled to himself. Quite unlike Mary, Ashley was dead impressed with his new Allegro, and since he had memorized all the chassis numbers of every British car built between the years 1956 and 1985, he could proudly announce that the car came off the production line at Long-bridge on September 10, 1979.

“Really?” said Jack, amazed at Ashley’s ability to recall utterly pointless facts. “How do you remember all this stuff?”