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He pressed the end-call button and handed the mobile back.
“He said he was very sorry to hear about your accident and he’ll call you later. I don’t think he believed me.”
“No, it’s going to take more than my death to put him off, but thanks anyway. What’s your name?”
“Constable Tibbit.”
“Sergeant Mary Mary,” said Mary, shaking Tibbit’s hand,
“pleased to meet you.”
The young officer thought hard for a moment, then said, “Arrange a… symmetry.”
Mary arched an eyebrow. “Pardon?”
He didn’t answer for a moment but again thought hard and finally said in triumph, “Many… martyrs agree.”
“Are you okay?”
“Of course!” replied the young constable brightly. “It’s an anagram. If you take ‘Sergeant Mary Mary’ and rearrange the letters you get ‘Arrange a symmetry’ or ‘Many martyrs agree.’ The trick is to have them make sense. I could have given you ‘My matey arrangers’ or ‘My artery managers,’ but they sort of sound like anagrams, don’t you think?”
“If you say so.”
She had thought that perhaps Tibbit might have been a life raft of normality that she could somehow cling to for sanity, but that hope was fast retreating. It was little wonder he had been allocated to the division.
“It’s a palindrome,” continued the young constable.
“Sorry?”
“Tibbit. Easy to remember. Reads the same backwards as forwards. Tibbit.”
Mary raised an eyebrow. “You mean, like ‘Rats live on no evil star’?”
He nodded his head excitedly. “I prefer the more subtle ones, myself, ma’am, such as ‘A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.’”
Mary sighed. “Sure you’re in the right job?”
Tibbit appeared crestfallen at this, so Mary changed the subject.
“How long have you been here?”
“Six months. I was posted down here for three months, but I think they’ve forgotten about me. I don’t mind,” he added quickly.
“I like it.”
“First name?”
“Otto,” he replied, then added by way of explanation, “Palindrome as well. My sister’s name is Ha
“Such as…?”
“Oh, skiing, vacuum, freest, eczema, gnu, diarrhea, that sort of thing. He also thought that ‘abbreviation’ was too long for its meaning, that ‘monosyllabic’ should have one syllable, ‘dyslexic’ should be renamed ‘O’ and ‘unspeakable’ should be respelt ‘unsfzpxkable.’
“How did he do?”
“Apart from the latter, which has met with limited success, not very well.”
Mary’s eyes narrowed. She feared she was having her leg pulled, but the young man seemed to be sincere.
“Okay. Here’s the deal. You stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours. Get me St. Cerebellum’s number and make Jack a cup of coffee.”
8. The Armony
The Forensic Department in Reading was an independent lab and covered all aspects of forensic technology as well as being an R&D lab for Friedland Chymes’s sometimes eccentric forensic techniques. The department serviced not only the Oxford & Berkshire Constabulary but also the Wiltshire and Hampshire forces, too. Chymes had insisted long ago that they should be close enough for personal visits, which always made for more dramatic stories than sending material off and receiving technical reports in return. It pissed off Inspector Moose in Oxford no end, but that might have been the reason Chymes did it.
The armory and ballistics division was run by George Ski
Jack knocked on the open door. “Hello, George.”
“Come in, Jack,” said Ski
Jack walked over and watched him for a moment. Like Mrs. Singh, Ski
“What do you make of this?” he asked.
“Ah!” said Ski
Ski
“Oh,” he said in a tone that made Jack nervous.
“What?”
He looked at the frame number again.
“Bingo. Jack, meet the weapon that was stolen from Mr. Christian. It could be the murder weapon in the Andersen’s Wood murders. That was one of Friedland’s, wasn’t it?”
“One of the many,” replied Jack with a sigh.
The wood murders had all the characteristics of the sort of drama that Chymes liked to unravel. Mr. Christian had been murdered along with his wife eighteen months earlier in Andersen’s Wood, a large forest to the west of Reading. The only possible motive was co
“This gun was used to kill the Christians?”
“No, this gun belonged to the woodcutter. I can tell you if it was the one used to kill them by comparing the two spent cartridges they found at the scene. Who had it?”
“Humpty Dumpty.”
“As in ‘sat on a wall’?”
“No, as in ‘had a great fall.’ He was found dead this morning.”
“Ah,” replied Ski
“Friedland insisted they were real woodcutters, and Briggs agreed with him. As it turned out, he was right. Thanks, Ski
Jack walked back into the station, stepped into the lift and pressed the button to go down to the basement. The lift, however, was already programmed to go up, so he went on an excursion to the seventh floor. The shotgun puzzled him. Humpty was undeniably shady, but he’d never been violent.