Mary and Jack trod silently through the crates and vintage Rolls-Royces beneath dust sheets until they found the transit van, tucked away in a corner beneath the up-ramp and illuminated by the harsh glow of strip lights, one of which flickered annoyingly. They moved close enough to hear and see what was going on but remained hidden downwind.
The van’s doors were open, and several bags of contraband were heaped in the back, all taped up in clear plastic bags. A few of them had already been transferred to a waiting wheelbarrow. Tarquin was looking around furtively as another bear wearing faded Levi’s and a BEARZONE T-shirt cut open a packet of the contraband and carefully drew out a spoonful. He sniffed it suspiciously, mixed it with milk and heated it over a lighter before adding some brown sugar and salt, then sipping the result.
“This is good,” he said at last in a deep voice, making a few lip-smacky noises. “How much you got?”
“Forty keys for now,” said Tarquin, his voice also a low baritone, “plus as much as you can shift in the future. It’s nine-fifty a key, Algy—nonnegotiable.”
The bear named Algy laughed and scratched his head. “Hey, Tarq, it’s good but not that good. I can get this from Safeway for half that price.”
“And who’s going to march up to the checkout and buy it? You?”
“Sure. It’s easy to pass for human. Just act like you own the place.”
“You wish it were that easy. Listen, you pay me nine-fifty for this and everything I can get in the future and I’ll give you six pounds of honey just for you and the missus. Call it a sweetener.”
The second bear thought for a moment. “Comb or jar?”
Tarquin opened his arms wide and smiled, displaying a mouthful of sharp white teeth. “Algy! Who do you think I am? Comb of course.”
Algy licked his lips and rapidly came to a decision. “Then you’ve got a deal. Ninety-five pence times forty is—let me think—thirty-eight pounds.” He pulled a wallet from his back pocket. “Have you got change for two twenties?”
Jack told Mary to stay put and then stepped out from behind the concrete pillar. The two bears stared shortsightedly in his direction, flicked their ears down flat on their heads and growled until they recognized who it was, then looked around innocently and tapped their claws together. If they could have whistled, they would have.
“Hello, Tarquin,” said Jack as he approached. “Up to your old tricks again?”
Tarquin winced and nodded a polite greeting. “Private sale, Inspector. Nothing for you here.”
“Oh, yes?” replied Jack, taking a handful from the opened bag. “Planning a party?”
“For private consumption only,” replied Tarquin unconvincingly.
“Not even you could eat this much porridge,” said Jack as he let the rolled oats spill through his fingers onto the ground.
“Where did you get all this? Porridge dot com?”
“It’s not for porridge,” announced Tarquin with a defiant air.
“We’re going to use it to make… flapjacks.”
Jack looked into the van. Forty kilos of rolled oats was a reasonable-size pile. Not huge, but enough. “That’s a lot of flapjacks.”
“I like flapjacks.”
Jack paused for thought. This was a new approach. Porridge was a restricted-quota foodstuff for bears, along with honey, marmalade and buns, but rolled oats weren’t classified at all. They were merely something the NCD called “porridge paraphernalia,” along with bowls, spoons, brown sugar and so forth. Legal to buy and sell, but generally used for only one purpose.
“Flapjacks, eh?”
“Yes, Inspector,” replied Tarquin innocently. “Heaven forbid I would try and flog cheap porridge to Reading’s bears.”
“Well, okay then,” said Jack cheerfully, “let’s make flapjacks. How much honey you got?”
“What?” asked Tarquin, suddenly wary.
“Honey,” replied Jack as he opened the front door of the van and found half a dozen jars and six honeycombs. “We’re going to make flapjacks. Rolled oats and honey. Let’s mix it all up here and now.”
Algy and Tarquin looked at each other in horror.
“Mix it… up?”
“Yeah. Come on, guys, you said it was for flapjacks!”
The bears watched with mounting horror as Jack picked up a two-kilo bag of oats and made to open it over Algy’s wheelbarrow.
Algy muttered, “Oh, lawks!” and put a paw over his eyes.
“WAIT!” shouted Tarquin. Jack stopped. “Okay,” he said with a sigh, “you’ve got me. Bloody NCD. You’d never try this if I was an Ursa Major.”
“If you were a major, you’d know better than to peddle porridge. So… where did you get this? Safeway? Somerfields? Waitrose?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Have it your own way,” said Jack as he begun to tear open the bag of oats over the wheelbarrow.
Tarquin put up a paw to stop him. “Okay, okay. I buy it wholesale from this person I’ve never met over in Shiplake.”
“How can you have never met him in Shiplake?”
“I’m sorry,” said Tarquin with a confused look. Like many bears he could be dense at times. “You’re going to have to ask me that question again.”
“What’s their name?”
“I don’t know. I pick the stuff up from a warehouse and leave the money in a cookie tin.”
“I get it. How do they contact you?”
“By phone. About eight months ago. Said they needed to shift some merchandise and could I help them out. I’ve never met them.”
“Ursine?”
“No. Human.”
“Old, young, male, female? What?”
“I don’t know,” said Tarquin with a shrug. “You all sound pretty squeaky to me.”
“If you’re lying to me…”
“On my cub’s life,” said Tarquin earnestly, crossing his chest, stamping one foot and then clicking a claw on one of his canines.
“I can give you the address and the code to get in.”
“Okay,” said Jack as he handed him his notepad. Tarquin jotted down an address and handed it back. “Good. Now you—what’s your name?”
“Algernon. Algy.”
“Okay, bear-named-Algy, Tarquin here is going to sell you these oats for sixty pence a kilo. Give him the money.”
Tarquin threw his arms in the air, opened his eyes wide and growled dangerously. Blabbing to the cops was one thing, but taking a loss on an oat deal was quite another. He took a pace toward Jack and stared at him in the sort of way he’d stare at a leaping salmon, if he’d ever done such a thing, which he hadn’t. Jack stood his ground.