But the Gingerbreadman didn’t pull his arm off. Abruptly, he relaxed his hold. Jack looked up at him, but the Gingerbreadman was looking past Jack, his licorice eyebrows raised in exclamation.
“Careful,” he said to Mary, who had found the Holland & Holland and was now pointing it at him. “You might hurt someone.”
Mary slid off the safety with a loud click. “That’s the idea.”
The Gingerbreadman’s licorice mouth drooped at the corners. “Be careful, miss,” he repeated as he let Jack fall into a heap at his feet. “That’s a .600-caliber elephant gun loaded with Nitro Express cartridges. It has a muzzle energy of over eight thousand foot-pounds—the recoil can dislocate a shoulder!”
“I’ll be careful,” replied Mary evenly. “Just step away from Jack and lie facedown on the ground with your arms outstretched.”
They were less than ten feet apart, and Mary couldn’t have missed. The Gingerbreadman took a step back but didn’t lie facedown. He stared at Mary and narrowed his eyes, wondering what course of action to take.
“Have you ever killed anyone, miss?”
“JUST LIE FACEDOWN ON THE GROUND!”
“No,” said the Gingerbreadman simply. “I’ve been locked in St. Cerebellum’s for twenty years, and I’m not going back. If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to fire.”
Mary’s finger tightened on the trigger. She was in no doubt that the Gingerbreadman would have killed her after he had dealt with Jack and would kill again, given the chance. There was no decision to make. She would shoot him. In the back, if necessary—and to hell with procedure.
The Gingerbreadman, despite his resigned attitude, was not out of tricks. He turned and jumped to one side, leaped back again and then ran away, zigzagging crazily. He knew, as Mary soon found out, that a heavy elephant gun wasn’t designed to follow a fast-moving object, and by the time Mary had him in her sights, he jinked out again. Mary gave up following him and held the gun still, waited for him to leap back into her sights, and then she squeezed on the trigger.
There was a concussion like a thunderclap, and for a moment Mary thought the gun had exploded. She was pushed violently backward, caught her foot on a tree root and fell over in an untidy pile. When the smoke had cleared, the forest was empty. She had missed; the Gingerbreadman had escaped.
“You all right, sir?”
“Fine,” said Jack, rubbing his shoulder and standing up as the distant wail of sirens brought the outside world once more into the forest. “What about you?”
“Pissed off I didn’t kill him, sir.”
“I can understand that.”
Mary reloaded the rifle from the cartridge belt the Gingerbreadman had discarded and walked slowly up the road to make sure that he wasn’t wounded and lying out of sight. She looked around carefully, satisfied herself that he was long gone and then picked something up from the ground before she returned to Jack.
“I didn’t miss after all,” she announced, showing Jack what she’d found. In her hand was a single gingerbread thumb.
26. Jack’s Explanation
Most coincidence-prone person: Mrs. Knight (née Day) of Wargrave, Berkshire, holds several world records for the quantity and quality of the coincidences that assail her every waking hour. “It’s really more of a burden,” she replied when interviewed. “Every wrong number I get turns out to be a lost relative or something. I can’t walk in the street for fear of bumping into an endless parade of long-forgotten school friends.” Her powers of coincidence question the very dynamics of time, leading some scientists to theorize that cause and effect are actually two sides of a cosmic scale that have to be in balance—and that Mrs. Knight may be a beacon of effect where orphaned causes flock, like moths to a lamp.
“You better have a good explanation for this, Spratt—how many times do I have to tell you the Gingerbreadman is not your inquiry?”
Briggs wasn’t in a terribly good mood. True, he was never really in a good mood, but right now he was less so than usual. He liked to think that there existed a strong feeling of trust between his officers and that they wouldn’t go against what he had told them. He had trusted Jack more than most, which annoyed him especially.
“I know this might seem a bit hard to swallow, sir, but this is a coincidence as well.”
“Oh, yes?” replied Briggs, “And give me one good reason why I shouldn’t arrest you for working while suspended?”
“Because you like me and I’m good and I’m the only chance you’ve got to catch the Gingerbreadman.”
Briggs fell silent. He’d begun to think exactly the same. They were standing outside the three bears’ cottage. The trauma team from the Bob Southey Medical Center had turned up promptly and without getting lost; they were an immediate blur of action upon arriving at the scene, successfully stabilizing Ed and Ursula before gently transferring them into ambulances and vanishing back to Reading in a blare of sirens.
The human contingent took a little longer to get there, as they did get lost, but wasted no time as soon as they arrived: Police photographers covered every angle of the two shootings as the white-overalled SOCO officers went through the small cottage to find anything that might show either where the Gingerbreadman was going or where he had been. Jack sat and glowered at all the activity; if the Gingerbreadman hadn’t been involved, then Mary would have had to go begging to Briggs for resources, as usual.
As if the whole thing weren’t bad enough already, NS-4 had turned up in a shiny black Ford Scorpio, and Agent Danvers insisted her “associates” have a good look around. Even more annoyingly, Danvers also wanted to hear Jack’s appraisal of the situation. Briggs declared that this was a police matter but was swiftly overruled by Danvers, who called the Chief Constable personally.
“How is the attempted murder of two bears a national security issue?” asked Jack.
“It just is,” replied Danvers shortly. “Mr. Demetrios himself has requested that we attend.”
“No good can come of squabbling,” announced Briggs, “so why don’t you tell us what you know, Jack, and we can take it from there. Let’s face it, this is one hell of a mess. Berkshire has the best record of Ursidae equality in the European Union. When the Animal Equality Federation gets hold of this, the shit’s really going to hit the fan.”
“At least you know who did it.”
“I suppose so. What were you doing out here anyway?”
“Ed Bruin called me. He said he wasn’t happy and needed to talk.”
Jack felt Danvers’s eyes bore into him but pretended not to notice.
“About the Gingerbreadman?” asked Briggs.
“About Goldilocks.”
“Her death wasn’t an accident, was it?”
“No, sir.”
“Sir,” said Mary as she walked up and handed Jack two clear plastic envelopes. One had a note handwritten in highly distinctive ursine-styled cursive script, the other a photograph. “I thought you’d better see these—I found them on Ed Bruin’s desk.”
Briggs and Copperfield leaned over his shoulder to read the note.
"‘Mr. Curry, Sat., 8:15 A.M., Andersen’s Wood,’" read Briggs.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” said Jack slowly, thinking carefully, “that ‘Mr. Curry’ was to meet Goldilocks the morning she died.”
“And who’s Mr. Curry?” asked Copperfield.
“It was a code name for Goldilocks’s boyfriend. A man named… Sherman Bartholomew.”
Briggs started as though stuck with a cattle prod, and Danvers beckoned to one of her minders and whispered something in his ear.
“Are you nuts?” asked Briggs. “That’s one of the least likely things I’ve ever heard.”