Page 6 of The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next 3)

I drove off slowly into Reading, across the M4, which seemed as busy as it was back home; I used the same road myself when travelling between Swindon and London. It was only when I was approaching the junction at the top of Burghfield Road that I realised there were, at most, only a half-dozen or so different vehicles on the roads. The vehicle that first drew my attention to this strange phenomenon was a large white truck with Dr Spongg's Footcare Products painted on the side. I saw three in under a minute, all with an identical driver dressed in a blue boiler suit and flat cap. The next most obvious vehicle was a red VW Beetle driven by a young lady, then a battered blue Morris Marina with an elderly man at the wheel. By the time I had drawn up outside the scene of Caversham Heights' first murder, I had counted forty-three white trucks, twenty-two red Beetles and sixteen identically battered Morris Marinas, not to mention several green Ford Escorts and a brace of white Chevrolets. It was obviously a limitation within the text and nothing more, so I hurriedly parked, read Mary's notes again to make sure I knew what I had to do, took a deep breath and walked across to the area that had been taped off. A few uniformed police officers were milling around. I showed my warrant card and ducked under the 'Police: do not cross' tape.

The yard was oblong shaped, fifteen foot wide and about twenty foot long, surrounded by a high red brick wall with crumbling mortar. There was a large white SOCO tent over the scene and a forensic pathologist was kneeling next to a well-described corpse dictating notes into a tape recorder.

'Hello!' said a jovial voice close by. I turned to see a large man in a macintosh grinning at me.

'Detective Sergeant Mary,' I told him obediently. 'Transferred here from Basingstoke.'

'You don't have to worry about all that yet.' He smiled. 'The story is with Jack at the moment – he's meeting Officer Tibbit on the street outside. My name's DCI Briggs and I'm your friendly yet long-suffering boss in this little caper. Crusty and prone to outbursts of temper yet secretly supportive, I will have to suspend Jack at least once before the story is over.'

'How do you do?' I spluttered.

'Excellent!' cried Briggs, shaking my hand gratefully. 'Mary told me you're with Jurisfiction. Is that true?'

'Yes.'

'Any news about when the Council of Genres Book Inspectorate will be in?' he asked. 'It would be a help to know.'

'Council of Genres?' I echoed, trying not to let my ignorance show. 'I'm sorry, I've not spent that much time in the BookWorld.'

'An Outlander?' replied Briggs, eyes wide in wonderment. 'Here, in Caversham Heights?'

'Yes,' I admitted, 'I'm—'

'Tell me,' interrupted Briggs, 'what do waves look like when they crash on the shore?'

'Who's an Outlander?' echoed the pathologist, a middle-aged Indian woman who suddenly leaped to her feet and stared at me intently. 'You?'

'Y-es,' I admitted.

'I'm Dr Singh,' explained the pathologist, shaking my hand vigorously. 'I'm matter-of-fact, apparently without humour, like cats and people who like cats, don't suffer fools, yet on occasion I do exhibit a certain warmth. Tell me, do you think I'm anything like a real pathologist?'

'Of course,' I answered, trying to think of her brief appearances in th

e book.

'You see,' she went on, 'I've never seen a real pathologist and I'm really not sure what I'm meant to do.'

'You're doing fine,' I assured her.

'What about me?' asked Briggs. 'Do you think I need to develop more as a character? Am I like all those real people you rub shoulders with, or am I a bit one-dimensional?'

'Well—' I began.

'I knew it!' he cried unhappily. 'It's the hair, isn't it? Do you think it should be shorter? Longer? What about having a bizarre character trait? I've been learning the trombone – that would be unusual, yes?'

'Someone said there was an Outlander in the book—!' interrupted a uniformed officer, one of a pair who had just walked into the yard. 'I'm Unnamed Police Officer #1, this is my colleague, Unnamed Police Officer #2. Can I ask a question about the Outland?'

'Sure.'

'What's the point of alphabet soup?'

'I don't know.'

'Are you sure you're from the Outland?' he asked suspiciously, adding 'Then tell me this: why is there no singular for scampi?

'I'm not sure.'

'You're not from the Outland,' said Unnamed Police Officer #1 sadly. 'You should be ashamed of yourself, lying and raising our hopes like that!'

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