The Fourth Bear полностью

Haig smiled and drove on. “The wristwatch thing I gave you is a proximity alert. No air mortar will arm or fire with one of these within fifteen feet. It means that you can be in the front lines under heavy fire, be showered on by soil, smell the cordite, experience the battle yet be in no real danger.”

The Daimler drove past the abandoned church and on up the hill to the area where Mary and Jack had been earlier. The terrain had changed since they were there, and several new craters had opened up. At the bottom of one, they could see the air mortar itself, a cylindrical iron tube half filled with soil.

“Do you have any idea who wandered into the park?”

“We have some ideas. We’re going to have to sift through this soil, Mr. Haig. It may take some time.”

Haig seemed unperturbed. It wasn’t his theme park, after all.

“I’d better alert QuangTech,” he said, taking out his cell phone and pressing a few keys. “They like to know what’s going on.”

He turned away to speak on the cell phone, and Jack and Mary started to look around for anything of Goldilocks. After twenty minutes Jack made the first discovery. It was a woman’s shoe, with the foot still inside it.

Mary called Briggs, and he reluctantly agreed to send in the whole forensic machinery. Within an hour the area was crawling with paper-suited Scene of Crimes officers, who divided the ground into sections and started a minute search while Jack and Mary stood by and watched. In two hours they had found several parts of her bag, assorted scraps of clothing, eighty-seven parts of her laptop and sixty-two pieces of gristly bone, the only recognizable parts of which were her foot, a finger and half a jaw, all of which were sent to the labs.

“Will you be in early tomorrow?” asked Jack as he and Mary prepared to part for the evening.

“At sparrow’s fart,” she replied. “I’ve asked Mrs. Singh to expedite that identification, and I’d like to have the news as soon as possible.”

“Will you tell Josh as soon as you have confirmation?”

“Of course.”

“In charge of your first NCD murder inquiry. How does it feel?”

“We don’t know it was murder, Jack.”

“It’s murder all right,” he replied. “Take my word for it. Grown women don’t wander into well-posted and extremely hazardous theme parks accidentally.”

“Do you think the three bears have told us the truth?”

“Yes. It’s all turned out pretty much as expected. I wasn’t sure if she was the Goldilocks to begin with, but I was in good company: Neither did she. One thing’s for certain, though: The moment she entered the three bears’ house, everything just started to slot into place. She couldn’t have stopped the trail of events even if she’d wanted to. Her visit could only end in one way: with her running out of the bears’ house and into the forest, never to be seen again.”

“Hello, sweetheart,” said Madeleine as Jack walked in the door. “What did your psychiatric evaluator have to say?”

“I’m only mad if my car isn’t. If my car is mad, then I’m sane—but I have to prove that my car is insane for me to be seen as sane. Is that clear?”

“As mud.”

“And I think we’ve found Goldilocks—or bits of her anyhow.”

“Murder?”

“Possibly. Have you seem Jerome’s pet whatever-it-is today?”

“There was a gnawing sound from behind the hot-water tank,” she replied, “but I didn’t see anything.”

“And the Punches?”

“They are the neighbors… from hell,” she replied coldly.

Jack looked at the partition wall. All was silent. “They seem pretty quiet to me.”

“They’re taking a breather,” replied Madeleine, consulting the kitchen clock. “Since they got in from work, I’ve noticed they have a strict schedule to their arguments—fifty minutes of violent squabbling, then ten minutes’ rest. Regular as clockwork.”

“Oh, come on!” said Jack. “No one fights to a schedule.”