The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [5]
I parked my car, clipped my SO-27 badge into my top pocket and pushed my way through the crowds of pressmen and gawkers. I saw Boswell from a distance and ducked under a police line to reach him.
“Good morning, sir,” I muttered. “I came as soon as I heard.”
He put a finger to his lips and whispered in my ear:
“Ground-floor window. Took less than ten minutes. Nothing else.”
“What?”
Then I saw. Toad News Network’s star reporter Lydia Startright was about to do an interview. The finely coiffured TV journalist finished her introduction and turned to us both. Boswell employed a neat sidestep, jabbed me playfully in the ribs and left me alone under the full glare of the news cameras.
“—of Martin Chuzzlewit, stolen from the Dickens Museum at Gad’s Hill. I have with me Literary Detective Thursday Next. Tell me, Officer, how it was possible for thieves to break in and steal one of literature’s greatest treasures?”
I murmured “bastard!” under my breath to Boswell, who slunk off shaking with mirth. I shifted my weight uneasily. With the enthusiasm for art and literature in the population undiminished, the LiteraTec’s job was becoming increasingly difficult, made worse by a very limited budget.
“The thieves gained entrance through a window on the ground floor and went straight to the manuscript,” I said in my best TV voice. “They were in and out within ten minutes.”
“I understand the museum was monitored by closed-circuit television,” continued Lydia. “Did you capture the thieves on video?”
“Our inquiries are proceeding,” I replied. “You understand that some details must be kept secret for operational purposes.”
Lydia lowered her microphone and cut the camera.
“Do you have anything to give me, Thursday?” she asked. “The parrot stuff I can get from anyone.”
I smiled.
“I’ve only just got here, Lyds. Try me again in a week.”
“Thursday, in a week this will be archive footage. Okay, roll VT.”
The cameraman reshouldered his camera and Lydia resumed her report.
“Do you have any leads?”
“There are several avenues that we are pursuing. We are confident that we can return the manuscript to the museum and arrest the individuals concerned.”
I wished I could share my own optimism. I had spent a lot of time at Gad’s Hill overseeing security arrangements, and I knew it was like the Bank of England. The people who did this were good. Really good. It also made it kind of personal. The interview ended and I ducked under a SpecOps DO NOT CROSS tape to where Boswell was waiting to meet me.
“This is one hell of a mess, Thursday. Turner, fill her in.”
Boswell left us to it and went off to find something to eat.
“If you can see how they pulled this one off,” murmured Paige who was a slightly older and female version of Boswell, “I’ll eat my boots, buckles and all.”
Both Turner and Boswell had been at the Litera Tec department when I turned up there, fresh from the military and a short career at the Swindon Police Department. Few people ever left the Litera Tec division; when you were in London you had pretty much reached the top of your profession. Promotion or death were the usual ways out; the saying was that a LiteraTec job wasn’t for Christmas—it was for life.
“Boswell likes you, Thursday.”
“In what sort of way?” I asked suspiciously.
“In the sort of way that he wants you in my shoes when I leave—I became engaged to a rather nice fellow from SO-3 at the weekend.”
I should have been more enthusiastic, but Turner had been engaged so many times she could have filled every finger and toe—twice.
“SO-3?” I queried, somewhat inquisitively. Being in SpecOps was no guarantee you would know which departments did what—Joe Public were probably better informed. The only SpecOps divisions I knew about for sure below SO-12 were SO-9, who were Antiterrorist, and SO-1,