Jack took the wheel brace from the trunk and with a single swipe took off the side mirror and put a dent in the door. The mirror fell to the ground with a tinkling of broken glass.
“Watch carefully,” he said. “The last time it happened, the whole car repaired itself from a total wreck in under a minute, so a side mirror should be a snap. Any moment now. Pretty soon. A few seconds.”
Kreeper folded her arms.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t be watching it,” mused Jack after they had stared at it for more than a minute without the car’s giving even the slightest sign of repairing itself.
“Listen, I’ve been very patient over this—”
“Just turn around, Kreeper. We have to not be watching. That’s when it works.”
Jack turned around, and Virginia reluctantly joined him.
“I’m very busy,” said Kreeper, glancing at her watch, “and if you want, we can talk about this tomorrow.”
“It’ll be fine,” said Jack. “Just give it a moment.”
They waited a minute and turned around. The mirror was still broken, the dent still showing clean and crisp in the door. Jack rubbed his head. This wasn’t going so well.
“Listen,” said Virginia, resting a friendly hand on his shoulder, “being swallowed by a wolf has probably stressed you out more than you think. You work in an area of policing that requires giant leaps of imaginative comprehension, and perhaps… well, perhaps you’ve been at it too long.”
Jack sighed. “Then I’m not back on the active list?”
“No. Concede that this whole car-mending-itself nonsense was some sort of bizarre fiction-induced delusion, and I’ll suggest you return to work after a three-month rest.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“I’ll recommend retirement on grounds of mental ill-health, and they’ll put you in front of a board of medics—and they’ll be a whole lot less understanding than me. It’s a good deal, Jack—in effect a paid holiday.”
She was right. It was a good deal. But he hadn’t been seeing things.
“It happened, Kreeper.”
She sighed and stared at him. “I’ll leave you to think about it for a few days. My report doesn’t have to be with Briggs until Monday next. If you change your mind,” she announced with the closest thing she had to a kindly smile, “you know where to find me.”
And she walked off, leaving Jack staring stupidly at the door mirror he had just broken off. Perhaps Kreeper was partly right. Perhaps he had been overdoing it recently. But it didn’t matter. He’d get Dorian Gray to explain the nature of his “special” guarantee and be back on the active list. He was just annoyed that his reality had been questioned twice in twenty-four hours, when no one had even suggested he was anything but genuine flesh-and-blood for over a decade. He turned and headed back toward the NCD offices, deep in thought.
“How did you get along with Virginia Kreeper?” asked Mary a few minutes later.
“Like two peas in a pod,” replied Jack sullenly, sitting down heavily on his chair, unable to shift thoughts of clean platters, beanstalks and Madeleine from his head.
“So she’s going to give you a clean bill of health?”
“Not exactly. I’ve got to visit Dorian Gray again. Did you speak to the officer investigating Stanley Cripps’s death?”
“Yes,” she replied, “I told him about Goldilocks and the ‘It’s full of holes’ message, and he was very interested. Goldilocks hadn’t come forward after the blast, and he would be wanting to speak to her once we find her.”
“It won’t be the first time a reporter has committed the sin of omission,” mused Jack, dialing Dorian’s number only to receive the “disconnected” tone.
“I’ve found several links between these explosions,” said Ashley, waving the folder.
“You have?” said Jack excitedly. “What are they?”
“They all happened to humans—except the one in the Nullarbor Plain, which happened to sand.”
“Inspired. Anything else?”
“They all occurred on the planet Earth, the addresses all had an A in them, they all happened during the day except Obscurity, none of them occurred in Antarctica, each was within a thousand miles of human habitation, all of them—”
“Any useful links? Like something Katzenberg, Prong and Cripps had in common.”
“Aside from them all being killed in unexplained explosions?”
“Yes.”
Ashley consulted his list for a moment. “No. Not a single one. By the way,” he continued, “I’m still waiting for Bart-Mart to get back to me, and Goldy’s car hasn’t been reported abandoned or anything.”
“Thanks.”
“And Agatha Diesel dropped in to say hello while you were both out.”
“Did she?” said Jack, making a face. “What did she want?”
“It was most odd,” said Ashley thoughtfully. “She said she wanted to talk to you about a charity benefit in aid of distressed gentlefolk she was planning, but I think she just wants you to put your—” He stopped, looked at Mary, gave a shrug and then placed a single sucker digit on Jack’s forehead.
“Yes, you’re probably right,” agreed Jack after a moment, “and most graphically realized, too.” He pushed away Ashley’s digit, which detached with a faint pop. “And please, don’t do that mind-merging stuff on me, okay?”
“Sorry. Do you find it intrusive?”
“Not at all—it’s just that I can see what you’re thinking in the background.”
“Oops,” gulped Ashley, flicking a look toward Mary, who thankfully wasn’t paying much attention. “Right you are, then.”
The phone rang.
“Spratt, NCD…”
It was Briggs, so Jack just carried on talking.
“…isn’t in right now, but if you’d like to leave a message when you hear the tone, please do so…. Beeeeep.”
“That old pretending-to-be-an-answering-machine stuff doesn’t fool me, Spratt,” said Briggs angrily.
“Sorry, sir.”
“What are you doing in the office?”
“I was with the quack for my psychiatric evaluation, sir. I just popped in to brief Mary about the Rumpelstiltskin parole hearing.”
“Hmm. Well, put her on.”
He handed the phone to Mary, who listened for a moment and then said, “Yes, sir, I was very impressed you didn’t fall for the answering-machine gag.”
She looked up at Jack, who made a sign for her to call him and then crept out the door. Briggs had been known to walk around the building on a cell phone pretending he was in his office, and Jack had just about had his fill of threshold guardians for the day.
Jack walked down to his car and noticed that the door mirror had mended itself in his absence. He drove out of the garage, meaning to visit Dorian Gray and have a word with him in person. He’d called him several times, but had continued to get the “number disconnected” tone.