Arvin Cummerbund nods. “You were, Mr. Titwhistle. Just this morning.”
“And alas, Basil—you don’t mind if I call you Basil? I don’t mean to be rude… thank you, my dear fellow—yes, friend Basil, I’m afraid we must take Mr. Spork from you at this time. He has a pressing appointment. It absolutely will not wait, and if he should miss it the consequences would be… well, all manner of chaos and confusion to the nation as a whole. Lest your duty to the mundane conventions of the law supravene, Basil, I did bring the necessary…”
And with this salvo, he removes from his inner pocket a long, pale document folded upon itself, and passes it to Patchkind. Patchkind unfolds it and peers, then snorts, then peers some more.
“It’s not signed,” he says, at last.
“No,” Mr. Titwhistle says blandly, “these ones never are.”
Patchkind sighs.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to confess, Mr. Spork? To the murder, I mean?” He seems to be offering it as an escape.
“No. I’m afraid I wouldn’t.”
“Well, you know best, I suppose.” Patchkind sighs and folds the paper up again. “He’s all yours.”
“Indeed, he is,” Mr. Titwhistle replies. “I would say we were never here, but alas, that’s not a fiction I imagine we can maintain. So never mind. See you soon, Detective Sergeant Patchkind.”
At which, to Joe’s outrage and amazement, Arvin Cummerbund steps lightly behind him and fastens his wrists together in the small of his back with a pale nylon strip. Joe gives a startled shout of “Hey!” and turns his head to Patchkind in mute appeal. Do something!
Patchkind looks very grey, and quite deliberately turns to face the scene of the crime.
“DC Topper,” he says, as if through a mouthful of dust, “tell me about our corpse.”
“You’re not under arrest,” Arvin Cummerbund murmurs into Joe Spork’s ear, “because we don’t do that.”
The fat man drives, and Rodney Titwhistle sits next to Joe in the back. His earlier chattiness has evaporated, and Joe’s bewildered affront has lost its edge, so that a sad, nostalgic quiet settles on the car as Cummerbund guides it through London’s complex tangle, each man thinking his own thoughts in a curious kind of fellowship.
The traffic light turns red again in front of them, and Mr. Cummerbund tuts. Rodney Titwhistle sighs.
“Arvin, my apologies, I’m going to start the conversation. You’ll just have to join in from the front. You can multitask, can’t you?”
“Certainly, Rodney.”
“Thank you, Arvin.”
“Thank you, Rodney.”
“In that case, let us proceed. I wonder, Mr. Spork, if you could tell me just one thing?”
“You could tell me who the hell you are. Not the bloody Loganfield Museum, I know that.”
“Oh, dear me. No. Let us say, we are the embodiment of an unpleasant necessity of the global reality, specifically concerned with the well-being of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And let us further say, in accordance with convention, that I will be asking the questions.
“I should also remind you that you are not in the custody of the police. The usual rules, as so often referenced in popular television programmes, do not apply. Our mandate is not justice. It is survival. In that context, you will understand when I say you should not attempt to ‘take the fifth.’ The U.K. no longer recognises a right to remain silent, you know. We protect the nation’s future, rather than its conscience. I find this noble.” Mr. Titwhistle smiles apologetically, then, as the car stops at a set of traffic lights, gazes out of the window to a small horde of teenaged girls in fishnet who are whooping and bouncing up and down. After a moment, he goes on.
“Suppose I were to ask you ‘What is the Apprehension Engine?’ What would you say?”
“‘I don’t know.’”
“And if you were to speculate?”
“A device which makes people afraid.”
Rodney Titwhistle gives a soft cough. “Which you conclude from the use of the term ‘Apprehension’. Indeed. Well, Mr. Spork, in a way you are quite right. It is indeed a device, and it certainly scares the bejeezus out of me. Tell me, instead, about the Magic Beehive of Wistithiel.”
“How do you know about that?”
Rodney Titwhistle sighs. “Very shortly, Mr. Spork, everyone will know about that.”
“Why? It’s just an automaton. What’s any of this got to do with Billy, anyway?” Joe sees Billy’s corpse beneath the blanket, smells the room, and swallows bile.
“Everyone will know because everyone will see. In the beginning, the bees will fly around the world. They will awaken further hives. The device is intended to encompass the globe. There will be—shall we call them ‘outbreaks’?—during which the machine will function at its lowest level where the swarms are concentrated. Then, when they are all in position, it will activate. I would conservatively estimate that three or four million people will die shortly thereafter by ordinary human action. Murders and so forth. If the machine moves on to the second and third stages, as I understand them—and I will grant you that this certainly is not the notional purpose of the device—the fatality rate rises dramatically. In the worst case, it approaches one hundred per cent of the world’s population. So you understand why I feel a little unwilling to let this slide?
“In retrospect, it should have been dismantled years ago, but governments do so hate to throw things away, especially dangerous things. Did you know, incidentally, that ‘retrospect’ can be an adjective? One might say ‘Joshua Joseph Spork is retrospect; he’s a man who learns from his mistakes.’ In any case, Mr. Spork, the beehive is not just some clockwork toy. It is a scientific advance of ludicrous complexity, so secret that no one who knew about it could understand it and no one who would understand it could be allowed to know about it. A game-changer. And consequently in many ways we might also call it a time bomb. It is the Apprehension Engine to which I referred earlier. We are, as you see, somewhat nervous about what will happen now that it’s active. So I must ask you: how do we switch it off again?”
An opportunity to come clean—perhaps without prejudice. Very attractive. Except that, on diverse occasions, unscrupulous persons have been known to use this line of argument to lure a suspect into unwise confessions.
Deny. Hedge. Evade. Play stupid. Which, in any case, is what you are.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I just… I have no idea.”
“No, I am almost sure that you don’t.” Mr. Titwhistle sighs. “Ted Sholt’s the fellow I need to talk to, isn’t he?”
“I suppose he may be.” A pleasant vision: urbane Rodney Titwhistle in his clean car, struggling with Ted of the foul-smelling sandalled feet, the burlap smock and the sou’wester pressed against the window and the weird battle cry sounding: Angelmaker! Although… no. Ted Sholt might not fare so well in that engagement.
And that word: angelmaker. That’s much less funny, here and now. One way of making angels, in cartoons and so on, is to kill people. He should mention it. But if he does, will they keep him for ever? And will “mention” equal “confess” in the watery eyes of Rodney Titwhistle?
The moment passes. Rodney Titwhistle claps his hands, very lightly, as punctuation.
“Taking myself as the example, Mr. Spork, the problem—and it’s a common problem in this debased age—” the faintest nod of the head towards the horde, still audible over the hiss of the tyres “—is that while I am known to be mostly infallible, I have also been known, very occasionally, to be quite wrong. Do you see?”