Shad faced me. “What if Parker cut back on the bananas? Less in, less out.”
“Been tried. The fellow is addicted. He has them squirreled away everywhere. A few months before you came to the Devon office, Shad, Parker and I were assigned to represent ABCD at an award ceremony at the Royal Diana Devon & Cornwall Force Museum theater.”
“Handing out attaboys to the local blue?”
“Yes, although we call the medals gongs. A very solemn occasion officiated by Chief Constable Crowe. In attendance were two Members of Parliament, the Earl of Devon, and Her Royal Highness Princess Mehitabel. Matheson and I took Parker’s bananas away, dehydrated him, and tried to keep an eye on him. Nevertheless, he managed to tuck away a bunch or two before the ceremony.”
“Naw. He didn’t,” said Shad.
“Oh, indeed he did, ducky. What’s more, Parker didn’t even notice he’d done it. Nothing quite like a fellow dropping his load before royalty right in the middle of bleeding ‘God Save The King’.”
“Make the news, did it?”
“Shad, Matheson’s office was showered with media thank-you notes and fruit baskets.
“What’d the superintendent say when you all got back to the tower?”
“He called us into his office, pointed at his telly, and stared at Parker, his finger trembling. Matheson’s face went bright red and he did a respectable impression of a beached cod. Then he waved us out of his office, came up behind us, and slammed the door.”
“British reserve, wot, wot, Jaggers old sock?” he said using his Fowler voice.
“Frightening, actually. The superintendent really does bear a striking resemblance to John Dillinger. I half expected to be perforated by a Tommy gun. He ordered Parker into therapy.”
“To potty train him?” asked Shad.
“That’s what it amounted to.” I looked down through my window. The red air-vehicle warning lights above the crenellated spires crowning the Norman towers of St. Peters glowed softly on and off below. “He went faithfully twice each week and Matheson received in return a lot of cleaning bills and the therapist’s conclusion that gorillas—gorilla bios, in any event—cannot be trained in that regard. There are no internal warning signs noticeable to the gorilla, so the gorilla simply delivers wherever it is whenever a shipment comes in.”
“Like the old joke,” observed Shad.
“Yes. Wherever he wants.”
Shad glanced down through his side window. “Oh boy. Hey, Jaggs? We’re over Broadgate. I don’t see the ABCD van.” He placed the cruiser in stationary hover.
He banked the cruiser my way and I looked down. Opposite Dell and Madame Fifi’s side of High Street was St. Petrocks. Between the block upon which that church stood and the block opposite the Guildhall was Broadgate: a short, wide, shop-festooned thoroughfare connecting High Street and Cathedral Yard. Parked in Broadgate were three tellynet media vans, a blogosphere pool mobile, a Devon Forensic Medical Examiner’s van, and a constabulary electric, presumably Sergeant Dunn’s. There were no vehicles of any kind belonging to ABCD and no ABCD personnel I recognized, not even a furtive mountain gorilla in the shadows stealthily evacuating his bowels.
“Bugger,” I remarked.
Shad’s comment was earthier but equally apt.
There was nothing to do but head to Heavitree Consolidated Police Administration Tower in which the constabulary’s Exeter Station, Devon ABCD Interpol, and the Devon Magistrate’s Court were headquartered. As the cruiser came down from the St. James—Heavitree Air Vector Corridor, Shad brought us in over St. Luke’s College and Heavitree Hospital as we circled down to the sky dock on top of the tower. As we approached we could see that the media had already gathered far below at street level entrance. Up on the roof by himself someone very large, dark, hairy, and dejected was skulking next to the landing target. It was DC Parker. After coming in and docking in our assigned slot, we got out of the cruiser and walked across the target to the fellow.
As we approached Parker, Shad said to him in his Fowler voice, “I say, old hairball, the ruddy bloomin’ corpus is in the middle of flippin’ Parliament Street. Don’t Heavitree Tower strike you as rather inconvenient for a local command post, wot, wot?”
Upon witnessing Shad’s passive-aggressive performance, Parker’s massive shoulders sagged even farther as his incredibly ugly head hung down, his knuckles dragging against the rooftop.
“Terribly sorry, Inspector Jaggers,” he said, his voice rumbling eloquently in posh Oxford-educated tones. The urgency of his current predicament appeared to have frightened off his usual ape-of-the-people Estuary affectation. “I had the van on Broadgate, sir, but the tellies, bloggies, and shutter rats were everywhere waiting for me! Peering in the windows, underfoot, poking in their heads, all of them on geek hunts, and, good lord, the questions. Cameras ... all aimed at the van. It was like they were waiting for me to ... you know.”
“Yes,” I responded. “I know.”
“I didn’t want to let down the side again, inspector. I couldn’t’ve fit in that narrow passage in any event. Wouldn’t the tellies love seeing me try, though? That’s why I asked for someone else to work the scene. I’m so grateful to you and DS Shad.”
“You did the right thing, Parker,” I said.
“You see why I had to get out of there, don’t you?” The gorilla was motionless for a split second, then grew a bit wild-eyed. He suddenly grunted loudly, smacked his fist against the edge of the concrete landing target, cracking it. Suddenly DC Parker began turning about in a tiny circle, waving his heavily muscled arms above his head.
“Steady,” I cautioned as I backed away, almost stumbling over Shad who had managed to get behind me.
Parker stopped, lowered his arms, and slumped. “Sorry, but will no one in this bloody city ever forget that damned awards ceremony?” He thumped his chest angrily with his fists. Seeing that he startled me again and caused Shad to take wing, he said “Sorry. Terribly sorry, sir. Sorry sergeant.” He was even more crestfallen.
Shad settled further away from the gorilla. “Keep cool, Ralph. Okay?”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“What seems to be the trouble, Parker?” I prompted.
He sadly shook his head, his gaze somewhere around my feet. “It all began at Royal Diane. Before that ceremony I was just another cop bio trying to make a place for himself in ABCD. After that ceremony I was a worldwide joke. There were tourists here last summer from Kazakhstan, inspector. From Kazakhstan! Their children had these bloody little animated stuffed gorilla toys! They sing ‘God Save The King’ and then poop little licorice sweeties! I simply can’t bear it!”
“I never got my own action figure,” muttered the duck sullenly.
Parker held out his massive hands. “Princess Mehitabel has forgiven me. I wrote her soon after...”
“After the goods were delivered,” completed still sullen Shad.
“Her Highness’s secretary wrote me a few weeks ago. He wrote—well, his letter said that Princess Mehitabel understands completely, stuff happens and not to worry myself over it. Water under the bridge.” He let out his breath with what appeared to be his remaining resolve and looked up at me. “Inspector, should I tell the superintendent I can’t handle the Parliament Street inquiry? If I lead this case, the media’ll make a laughingstock of all of us.”
Shad and I glanced at each other for a beat; the duck shut his eyes, shrugged, and nodded once at me. I faced the gorilla. “Detective Constable Parker, you have an inquiry to run and I suggest you run it. Shad and I have worked the scene and we’re prepared to brief you on the evidence and the progress of the investigation. We will also back you up however we can. Leading this case will give you much needed experience. I expect you to make the most of it.”