He opened the garden gate and walked briskly up the path, noticing that there was a hammock swinging gently on the veranda. But that wasn’t all. Inside the hammock and snoring loudly, with a brown derby hat over his eyes, was a bear. A large male bear dressed in purple breeches and a blue waistcoat. Jack paused. He knew that a few bears lived in the wood, but he’d never met them. These must be the traditionalists among them—most bears he knew preferred the comforts of the Bob Southey. Yesterday’s copy of The Owl was lying on the bear’s massive chest, and the remains of a honey sandwich and a huge mug of tea rested on a table nearby.
“Hey!” said Jack, knocking on one of the wooden uprights that supported the roof over the veranda.
The bear didn’t wake. He just yawned and displayed a huge set of sharp white teeth and a tongue the size of Jack’s forearm.
“Hey, wake up!” repeated Jack, this time louder.
When this didn’t elicit an answer, he tapped the sleeping bulk with his foot. There was a grunting and a stirring, and the bear licked his chops, coughed politely with his fist in front of his mouth and said, in a deep, gravelly baritone, “Is it dinner?”
“Police,” said Jack, holding out his ID.
The bear pushed up the brim of his hat with one claw, squinted at the document and then looked up at Jack. He lowered his hat again and clasped his paws together over his stomach. “So, Mr. Policeman, what do you want?”
Jack put his ID away. “The name’s Detective Chief Inspector Spratt. I want to talk to you about a missing woman.”
The bear made no answer, and Jack thought he had gone back to sleep. He was about to repeat the question when the bear said, “You’re a city cop, Inspector. I can smell the exhaust and concrete on your clothes. You had bacon for breakfast, buy your toiletries at the Body Shop and once owned a cat. You work closely with a woman who is not your wife, you did number two less than an hour ago and you’re lost—I can smell several different areas of the forest on you, which tells me you didn’t come here in a straight line.”
“You’re very perceptive.”
The bear twitched his nose. “The mighty sniffer never lies, Officer.”
“What’s your name, bear?” asked Jack.
The bear chuckled and scratched his nose. “Bruin,” he said,
“Edward Bruin.” He looked at Jack again and added, “You can call me Ed.”
“How many of you live here in the wood?”
“It is not a wood,” retorted Ed pedantically, “it’s a forest. It’s always a forest. Wood is something you make cricket bats out of.”
“Sorry. How many of you live here in the forest?”
“My good lady wife, Ursula, and Nigel, our son. The missus is indoors, and Junior’s at school.”
Jack nodded. There were three of them—things were looking better and better. He showed the bear Goldilocks’s photo.
“Have you seen this woman in the forest sometime in the last week?”
Ed donned a pair of spectacles and squinted at the snap, recognizing her immediately and opening his eyes wide. “That’s her!”
“You’ve seen her recently?”
“Seen her?” echoed the bear. “Why, she nearly wrecked the place.”
“When?”
Ed scratched his head and rolled off the hammock onto all fours, stood up to his full height, which was at least seven foot six, stretched, farted and then lumbered off into the house.
“Come inside, Inspector,” he said, beckoning Jack to follow. “I want to show you something.”
The interior of the bear’s house was austerely furnished but neat and tidy. There were only two rooms, one up and one down, and the downstairs comprised kitchen, dining and living area all in one. There were flagstones on the floor, and the walls were finished in a pastel blue color. A pretty pine dresser laden with crockery was against one wall and next to that a small upright piano, the lid up and a book of hymns open on the music rest. In front of the hearth there were three stoutly built wooden chairs. A large one for Ed, a slightly smaller one for his wife and next to that a tiny chair that had recently been broken and mended. On the wall were various sepia-toned pictures of friends and relatives, and above the mantelpiece was the Lord’s Prayer embroidered upon a framed piece of cloth. The small dwelling was plain, and no modern contrivances littered its simplicity. There was no television, no stereo player, nor any modern appliance of any sort. The only artificial light was a large brass oil lamp in the center of the oak kitchen table.
Mrs. Bruin was at the range, taking a loaf out of the oven with a pair of oven gloves. She was smaller than her husband and wore a rose-patterned dress with a lace pinafore and a bonnet through which stuck her ears. She didn’t take any notice of Jack at all.
“Darling…?” said Ed in a low voice, holding his hat in his paws and blinking nervously. She looked up sharply and glanced at Jack.
“You’ve spilled honey down your front,” she said in a voice that was not quite as low as her husband’s.
“Have I, my dove?” said Ed, looking down at the sticky stain on his blue waistcoat and rubbing at it ineffectually with a claw.
“You’ll make it worse!” she scolded, and took a cloth to the offending stain. Ed gave an embarrassed smile in Jack’s direction.
“What does the human want?” asked Mrs. Bruin, again without looking at Jack.
“Police,” said Ed simply.
Mrs. Bruin stopped rubbing his waistcoat and looked at Jack suspiciously, placed her hands on her hips and said, in a weary tone, “Okay, what’s he done now?”
“Sorry?”
“What’s he been up to? If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a thousand times: Man is a bad influence. I caught him wearing his baseball cap on backward, and he insists that the tongues of his sneakers stick out. He keeps on using phrases like ‘monster’ and ‘far out.’ Yesterday he sneaked a GameBoy into the house. He keeps on asking for an iPod and won’t forage. He’ll come to a sticky end, and it’s all your fault!”
She had directed the last sentence at her husband, who reacted as if he had been stung with a cattle prod.
“Mine, sweetness?”
“Yes, yours. If you’d been more firm after we adopted him, we might not have a delinquent on our hands. ‘Clip him around the ear,’ I said. ‘Oh, no,’ you said, ‘youth must have its voice,’ you said. Well, look what’s happened. All you ever do is lounge around; I get all the meals, and you won’t lift a finger to help!”
Ed had been fiddling nervously with the brim of his hat, slowly backing away from the tirade.
“To think what I could have had!” she added, curling a lip at Ed and showing him a large white canine. She grunted and turned to Jack, smiled and said, “He’s really just a cub, Officer. I’m sure he was only under the influence of some of that human rabble from the village. What exactly has he done?”
“I’m not here about your son, Mrs. Bruin.”
“No?”
“No. I’m looking for this woman.” He held out the photo.
Mrs. Bruin glared at her husband, who shrugged. She wiped her paws on a tea towel and examined the photo closely. “Ah,” she said. “Her.”
“Perhaps you can tell me a bit more?”
“My husband will tell you all about it, Officer. He’s the boss in this house.”
Ed stood up straight when he heard this and placed his hat on the bentwood stand. He led Jack to the other side of the room and offered him a chair.
“Have a seat, Inspector. Tea?”
“Thank you.”
“Honey sandwich? It’s all quota—no substance abuse in this house.”
“Thank you, I’ve already eaten.”
“Do you mind if I have one?”
“Not at all.”
Ed licked his lips and shouted across to his wife, “Two teas, pet—and a honey sandwich for our guest.” He winked broadly at Jack and smiled slyly.
“So when did you last see her?” asked Jack.
“It must have been Friday morning—”