The Big Over Easy

27. Perplexity, complexity

They hadn’t been wasting time back at the NCD offices. It was Ashley who had come up with the first good lead. He had put a name to the man in the photograph, the one in Humpty’s still-untraced Ford Zephyr.

“Who?” asked Jack.

“Thomas Timothy Thomm. DI Drood down at Missing Persons found him. I did you a printout of his record — but on acetate so you could still look at your desk while reading it.”

“Very… thoughtful of you, Ashley.”

It seemed that Thomm was the son of the Reading Philharmonic’s premier flautist. Unable to stop an unexplained compulsion to steal pigs, he was sent at age sixteen to a young offender’s institute to “straighten him out.” It achieved the opposite, and after being in and out of jail for a number of offenses, he was eventually sentenced to fifteen years for armed robbery. He had been released on parole two years previously.

“Looks like he’s prime NCD jurisdiction,” murmured Jack.

“They should have sent him through to me. Where is he now?”

“That’s the thing,” observed Ashley. “He’s not been seen at all for over a year. Didn’t turn up for parole meetings — there is an outstanding arrest warrant, and his parents have put him on the Missing Persons register. I’m trying to contact his parole officer and see what else I can learn.”

“More questions!” said Jack in exasperation. “It’s about time we had some bloody answers!”

Baker had been in town making inquiries but had drawn a blank. No one had seen Humpty for over a year, leading some wag in Humpty’s old local to remark that he was surprised to find that Humpty was still alive to be murdered. Baker questioned him further, but it seemed that the man was only reflecting Humpty’s slightly downmarket business reputation. “Shady” was the word the man used, although neither he nor anyone else could say who had actually fallen foul of him. Indeed, everyone Baker met commented on how much he was liked. Humpty’s womanizing was well known, but Baker didn’t find out much more.

“Out of sight for over a year?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Baker. “Apart from his neighbors around Grimm’s Road, no one’s seen anything of him at all.”

“In hiding?” murmured Jack, half to himself.

“It would explain the drab office at Grimm’s Road. No one would expect to see him at that end of town. But if he’s in hiding, why pop up blind drunk at the Spongg Charity Benefit?”

“Prometheus said he thought Humpty was saying good-bye to him the last time they met. Perhaps Humpty knew he wasn’t long for this world. He offered all his shares to Grundy for ten million. Sounds pretty last-ditch to me. Anything on Bessie Brooks?”

“Still nothing. She withdrew two hundred pounds in cash last night from the city center, so she’s still in the area.”

“I’ll release her name and picture to the press.”

“Sir?”

It was Gretel. Jack walked into the filing room that she was using as her office. The small room was awash with papers, faxes and financial reports.

“What news?”

She put her pen down and leaned back in her chair. “Complex, sir, very complex.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s about gold.”

“Gold?” queried Jack “What is it?”

“It’s a yellow-colored precious metal. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

“Old joke, Gretel. What about it?”

“Well, eighteen months ago Mr. Dumpty comes into a large quantity of bullion. No assay marks, the finest available.”

She held up a receipt.

“He sells it to buy shares in Spongg’s. He does the same thing a week later, then a week after that. He claims it is scrap and it requires no documentation. As he sells more and more, the markets in London get suspicious — they start to offer him a lower price, as they think it might be stolen. He eventually finds a ready market in Wozbekistan, Malvonia, Woppistania and a few other tattered remnants of the former Soviet Union where no questions are asked. Except there’s a problem. They can’t give him the hard currency he needs. He swaps it for copper, scrap, béarnaise sauce, strawberries, anything that can be sold in the West and realize its value. If you turn up his passport, I think you’ll find he has enough frequent-flier miles to go to Jupiter. He’s been all around the world selling gold, solely to purchase Spongg shares. Every time he had some cash, he went to Pewter.”

“How much gold has he sold?” asked Jack.

“About two and a half million pounds’ worth.”

“That’s a lot of gold. Where do you think he got it?”

“How about another illegal spinning-straw-into-gold den?” suggested Baker.

“Not since we banged up… what was his name again?”

“Rumplestiltskin?”

“Right. But check he’s still inside, just to make sure. Any other gold missing?”

Gretel shook her head. “That’s the problem. Nothing of this volume has been stolen recently, but muse on this: The first batch of Spongg shares was bought four days after the woodcutters’ murder.”

“So you’re saying the woodcutters found some gold, were murdered, then Dumpty — he might not be the actual killer — starts to sell it himself?”

“It’s a possibility,” observed Gretel.

“Hmm,” murmured Jack. “It wouldn’t be the first time that anyone was killed over a piece of yellow metal. Good work, Gretel. I owe you several large drinks for this. See if you can find out where he got the gold from. Missing bullion consignments — anything. Go back fifty years if you have to.”

Mary had joined them.

“I spoke to Tom Thomm’s father. Get this: Tom was sponsored for early release… by Humpty.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. What else?”

“He got Tom a job as a lab assistant in Goring two years ago. Six months after that, Tom leaves the job and comes into some cash. Buys his father a new car and his mother a new hip. Then, about a year ago, he vanishes from sight.”

Jack cocked his head to one side and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The date of Thomm’s enrichment matched the date of the woodcutters’ death, and it seemed likely that if Humpty didn’t kill the woodcutter and his wife, then perhaps Tom Thomm did.

He addressed the NCD office.

“Listen up, everyone. We have a definite lead and a time scale that seems to fit. Here it is: Tom Thomm and Dumpty meet two years ago when Humpty is sponsoring him for early release. Dumpty gets Thomm a job, which he keeps until the same time as the woodcutter and his wife are murdered.”

He paused for a moment.

“I’d say almost certainly that Tom Thomm killed the woodcutter and brought the gold to Dumpty to sell.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, Baker?”

“I thought the Russian mafia killed the woodcutter? Chymes’s investigation of the case was well documented in Amazing Crime.”

“Then let’s say Tom stumbles across the gold after the Russian mafia kills the woodcutters and takes it to Humpty. Yes, Ashley?”

“Could Tom Thomm have killed Dumpty?”

“It’s possible, but why? Tom Thomm wouldn’t have been able to sell the gold any more efficiently than Dumpty. Either way, we need to find this Thomm fellow. He’s a strong link in the whole inquiry. Yes, Baker?”

“Rumplestiltskin is still inside,” he said, turning from the Police National Computer terminal. “He didn’t supply the gold.”

“Good. Where was I?”

“Buying Spongg shares?”

“Right. Humpty uses the gold to buy thirty-eight percent of Spongg stock, but for the last year he has been in hiding at Grimm’s Road. On Sunday night he has a voluble argument with a Miss Bessie Brooks, who we can’t find, goes to the Spongg Charity Benefit, gets completely plastered and offers his entire Spongg holding to Solomon Grundy. Grundy turns him down flat, and Humpty tells him that his stock will be worth a lot more ‘this time next year.’ Humpty then blurts out that he will pledge fifty million to rebuild St. Cerebellum’s, is taken home in Randolph Spongg’s own car and six hours later he’s shot dead.”

“He thought the share price would go up,” observed Mary.

“Exactly. Spongg prices are dropping daily, but he’s still buying, so he knows something we don’t. He goes to sit on his wall to sleep off the booze, and someone comes up behind him and shoots from a range of three to four feet with a.44 caliber. What did Mrs. Singh say the time of death was?”

“Between one and three A.M.”

“Right. Humpty collapses stone dead into the backyard of 28, Grimm’s Road, where he is discovered by his landlady at seven-thirty A.M. It was raining, so a lot of evidence has been washed away. The following day his ex-wife confesses to his murder and then kills herself — she didn’t do it but must have thought she had. The twenty-eight-foot-long hair came from Mrs. Grundy, who was having an affair with Humpty. Grundy knew about it and said he didn’t mind, which kind of throws the jealous-husband motive out the window.”

He stopped and looked at them all.

“I don’t think we’re halfway there yet. Any questions?”

“Wee Willie Winkie,” said Gretel.

“A good point. Winkie was Humpty’s next-door neighbor and is violently murdered early this morning. It’s possible he saw something and tried to blackmail them, but we don’t know for sure. Same as this white van that was seen outside Humpty’s and also where we found Winkie. Bear it in mind, but it could be nothing.”

“Don’t Winsum and Loosum’s use white vans?”

“Yes — and half the companies in Berkshire. Any questions?”

There weren’t. They all knew what they had to do.

“One other thing,” said Jack. “A certain DCI named Friedland Chymes wants to take over this investigation and will do almost anything to do so. I want all approaches from him or a member of his staff reported to me. Let’s keep gossip to a minimum, too. Okay, that’s it. Find me Thomm and where Humpty has been living this past year, and we need to speak to Bessie Brooks.”

There was an unseemly rush for the only available chairs. Gretel, as usual, won.

“What do you think about Winkie?” asked Jack.

“I’m not sure,” replied Mary. “If he’d been shot with a.44 caliber, I might be a bit more positive. He might simply have been mugged; the fifty-pound notes could have been his.”

“I agree. Listen: If we can discover Humpty’s plan for raising his share value, we’ll find the motive for killing him.”

“Then why don’t we speak to Spongg again?” suggested Mary. “After all, he stood to gain far more than Humpty ever did from a hike in the share prices.”