“Demetrios!”
The small bear turned.
“You’re under arrest, bear—for murder.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I do. On the ground.”
“You can’t arrest me.”
“I can.”
“You can’t!”
“He’s right, Jack.”
It was Briggs, and he approached the two of them cautiously.
“He’s NS-4, Jack, and outside our jurisdiction. We have to get a warrant from the Home Secretary. The Chief Constable is on the phone to her at the moment, but the case is taking some explaining. Don’t worry, though. We’ll still have him. Once you write your report, he’ll be inside quicker than you can say ‘corrupt civil servant.’"
The bear looked at Jack. He had been surprised himself at the turn of events.
“Let him go now and you’ll not see him again!” Jack shouted to Briggs. “Contained in that briefcase are the details of a technology that will grant him asylum in any nation he chooses!”
“The law is the law, Jack,” insisted Briggs. “We can’t touch him.”
Jack’s shoulder’s slumped, and Demetrios grinned.
“Like he said, Jack, You can’t arrest me. I’ll be on my way with my property.” He patted the briefcase and adjusted his tie. “Bad luck, Inspector. I guess I’ll see you about.” He looked around for transport. “And do you know,” he added, “I think I’ll even borrow your car.”
“Be my guest.”
Demetrios smiled again, but it was a smile of relief. The probable course of events that Jack had outlined was pretty near the truth. He would be out of England in less than an hour, and he could then pick a country at leisure in which to instigate phase two of his plan. He jumped into Jack’s Allegro and threw the briefcase on the passenger seat. He started the car and drove slowly toward the gates of the theme park, the assembled officers moving aside to let him pass.
“I’m sorry,” said Briggs. “We couldn’t hold him. Politics.”
“Don’t be,” replied Jack quietly. “He won’t get far.”
As they watched, one side of the car collapsed, a suspension arm giving way. The rear screen shattered, followed by a clattering noise from the engine and a few puffs of blue smoke from the exhaust. With a grinding of metal, the front of the car started to pull itself in, releasing a trail of brown radiator water. Rust popped out along the bottom of each door, and all the lights extinguished. The car juddered to a halt as another suspension arm gave way and all four tires burst in quick succession. A dent appeared in the roof, and the damage that Jack had inflicted on the car against the tree started to make itself known again, the rear buckling up as the car squirmed and shook and it gently imploded with a shudder. There was an agonized cry from within as the Small Olympian Bear tried to escape, then, with a rattling and grinding of metal, the car rapidly collapsed in on itself, crushing Mr. Demetrios to a painful death and leaving the car nothing more than a piece of gnarled scrap sitting in a lake of black sump oil and rusty water.
“Gosh,” murmured Briggs, “was that an NCD thing?”
“Not really,” replied Jack, “but the theory’s similar.”
He stared at the crushed car and thought that if it hadn’t been for Mary and Ash, that might have been him winging his way to eternal damnation. As it was, it occurred to him that perhaps the Dark One had got a bum deal—Demetrios would have made his own way to hell in the fullness of time, without an Allegro Equipe to take him there.
“Jack,” said Briggs, laying a hand on his shoulder, “you’ve got a serious amount of explaining to do.”
“Of course,” replied Jack. “There were these three bears, see, and one morning they made some porridge and went into the forest while it cooled—”
“Not now. Get a decent night’s sleep, and I’ll see you in the morning. You did well. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Jack,” said Mary, who had just arrived at his side, “I want you to meet Professor McGuffin. I found him in the—” She looked around in confusion. “That’s funny,” she murmured. “He was here a second ago.”
Jack smiled, opened his cell phone and dialed home. Madeleine would want to know he was all right, but, more important, he just wanted to hear her voice.
DCI Jack Spratt was unanimously declared “more or less sane” by a medical review board and was reinstated as head of the Nursery Crime Division. He received a Distinguished Conduct Award for his expert tackling of the Gingerbreadman. He continues to live and work in Reading.
PC Ashley was taken home, patched, refilled with rambosia vitae and had his memories uploaded from his memory jar. Due to the infrequency with which he had conducted backups, the last two weeks of his life were irretrievably lost. He still works at the NCD, has no idea why he was awarded the Ursidae Order of Friendship and hopes one day to pluck up enough courage to ask Mary out for a date.
DS Mary Mary was not charged or reprimanded over her “lewd behavior.” It was decided that jurisdiction could not be firmly established, since the offense occurred 220 miles above the Atlantic Ocean in an advanced form of alien technology at twelve times the speed of sound. She continues to work at the Nursery Crime Division and hopes that Ashley might once again ask her out for a date.
Nick Demetrios died from multiple crush injuries. The recovered briefcase contained notes relating to the highly improbable idea of using auto-deuterium-extracting cucumbers as fuel for a Cold Ignition Fusion reaction. Such an idea is quite impossible and belongs in the realms of loony pseudoscience. The briefcase also included a pickle, presumably his lunch. It was consigned to the waste-bin.
Professor McGuffin, despite being hazily identified by DS Mary, remains officially dead. Two years after Nick Demetrios’s death, a garden near Madrid erupted into a fireball that fused soil and melted iron. No suitable explanation has yet been forthcoming, but Dr. Parks is investigating.
Punch and Judy sold their house next to Jack and Madeleine, explaining that they wanted to go and make some noise next to some real neighbors. They were last heard of making an appalling nuisance of themselves in Slough and continue to be the finest marriage counselors in the Southeast.
Sherman Bartholomew retired from politics and returned to his legal practice in Reading. He now specializes wholly in nursery law, and does pro bono work for bears. He is currently defending Tarquin Majors on charges of smuggling forty thousand gallons of surplus Europorridge to needy bears in Eastern Splotvia.
SommeWorld is still behind schedule, but problems should be ironed out “by Christmas.” Despite this, Mr. Haig insists “the situation is favorable.”
Josh Hatchett remains a staunch supporter of the NCD and backs it fully in all its undertakings. The job of uninformed criticism of the NCD has been taken over by Hector Sleaze of The Mole.
The Great Long Red-Legg’d Scissor-man was sentenced to eight years for assault but was released over a technicality. His whereabouts are unknown. The NCD has issued a bulletin exhorting children not to suck their thumbs, just in case.