"Yes, yes," he drowned out the falcon, "now I can state that it was exactly as I believed. After an a.n.a.lysis of the murder weapon there is no doubt. I would like to show you a few pictures."

Tapir nodded to Bramstoke to turn off the lights. On the white screen that mechanically glided down from the ceiling, something that resembled a field plowed by a slightly intoxicated farmer was projected. Anna had been through this before and did not expect to understand what she was looking at.

"This is Vulture's neck," Tapir explained. "Note the structure of the fabric ... Fascinating, isn't it?"

With a long pointer Tapir indicated a new, linear pattern that mostly resembled an unsuccessful batch of spaghetti.

"This type of pliability, let me call it elegance, is very seldom seen," Tapir maintained, putting his long experience as a forensic physician behind the words. "A single stroke, without a doubt from behind, an unbroken movement from above. Whoever executed the stroke was standing; Vulture was sitting down. I am quite certain that he was not moved to the chair afterward. The rigidity of the limbs, especially in the knees, is unambiguous. I repeat, exactly as I have already said, that technique may very well have replaced force. But ... there must be two arms, at least."

"Excuse me, but what do you mean?" asked Falcon. "Are you saying that you're ... ruling out snakes?"

"In my job," Tapir snorted, "we do not talk in terms of stuffed animals. This is about science. If you are asking whether a snake could stand up on the floor and at the same time, coiled around the handle of the sword, swing the blade with such precision, I would judge it to be highly improbable. There may possibly be a boa who somehow could have managed it, but ... a snake of normal size ... no, it's not likely."

Bloodhound growled quietly. Everyone around the table was thinking about Emanuelle Cobra, and trying to imagine how it might have been done. But, as Tapir had just said, it was difficult, not to say impossible, to picture it.

Theodore Tapir continued to instruct the gathering for ten minutes about cutting surfaces and textile singularities, the roughness of fibers and the possibility of establishing individual differences. Oblivious to the other stuffed animals' boredom with these scientific subtleties, he finally got to the point.

"And now to the question of time."

Bloodhound sat up. Falcon stopped taking notes. Tapir made a theatrical pause so that everyone would notice the silence spreading, and then asked Bramstoke to operate the projector. As Tapir talked, his a.s.sistant clicked new enlargements onto the white screen.

"I don't need to go over the background, you all know how it is. From midnight until the Afternoon Weather the temperature increases by one degree per hour. Then the temperature falls again in a corresponding manner. We divide a single degree into sixty units. By studying the humidity structure in Vulture's open wounds, as you see here, we can determine the time of the decapitation with great precision. What causes problems is the air-conditioning in the Nova Park offices. Next picture, Bramstoke. Here. You see what's happening with the humidity? Yesterday we put a fabric corresponding to Vulture's on his office chair, and then we followed the change in the textile. Here you see the development. Then it was a matter of extrapolating this process from the natural circadian temperature, without resorting to simple subtraction. The pictures that Bramstoke is showing now are simulations of how we think it might have appeared. This entire process thus depicts the gaping wound that is Vulture's neck opening from the cut that exposed the fibers, until we arrived at the office and could interrupt the process by closing the body hermetically according to our customary procedure. Fascinating, isn't it?"

"And?" growled Bloodhound.

"And I can with more than ninety percent certainty say that the temperature was higher than sixty-eight degrees outside when Vulture lost his head. Not much, that I admit, at the most a tenth of a sixtieth. But that makes the margin limited, I would say."

Theodore Tapir looked as though he expected some type of prize after this run-through, and Bloodhound growled with approval, even if still not impressed.

When they left the police station at place St.-Fargeau, Pedersen noted in a low voice that Tapir's observation had not changed anything. Oleg Earwig and Oswald Vulture had started their meeting when the breeze died out and the Morning Weather began. Cobra had a clear recollection that the meeting lasted half an hour rather than an hour, and this time frame had been confirmed by the goat in reception. Cobra had also consistently stated that Vulture was alive when Earwig left.

"Tapir said nothing new," Pedersen repeated.

"He never does," Anna said. "It's only on TV that medical examiners decide murder cases."

3.2.

I have to go downstairs and do some shooting," said Falcon. "I'm sorry. I know the superintendent told us to leave right away to talk to the toad, but we'll still make it, won't we?" have to go downstairs and do some shooting," said Falcon. "I'm sorry. I know the superintendent told us to leave right away to talk to the toad, but we'll still make it, won't we?"

Anna concealed her smile.

"Again? You have to shoot again?"

"Yes, I really have to."

Falcon was not pleased. He unlocked the topmost drawer and took out the pistol and holster. He was one of the few police officers at WE who stored his weapon in accordance with regulations.

"I thought you pa.s.sed the first time. Larry's going to be out of his mind if he sees we haven't left. C'mon, I'll talk with him."

"It won't take more than half an hour," said Falcon, running toward the stairs.

There was a shooting range in the bas.e.m.e.nt below the police station at rue de Cadix, and in order to carry a service weapon, the police officers had to pa.s.s an annual shooting test. Falcon had unique qualities as a police officer; for him, this test was a major challenge.

Anna stayed behind in her seat, watching her nervous colleague as her telephone rang. She picked up the receiver.

"This is Lynx."

"Anna? It's Charlie."

It took a few moments before she made the connection. Charlie, down at tech, whom yesterday she'd asked to help her with information on the tipster.

"Charlie? Have you-?"

"Yep," he said. "It wasn't even difficult. But I don't know if this will make you any happier. The call you asked about came from a phone booth. Rue de Montyon, almost at the corner of rue le Brun."

"All three? Two to Bloodhound and one to Falcon?"

"Exactly. They were made later during the Afternoon Weather. The second one came shortly after the first. The third, the one to Falcon, was a little later, less than ten minutes. I would say about ten minutes before the Lunch Breeze."

"Charlie, thanks a lot," said Anna and hung up.

Rue de Montyon. That was a blue street, and she knew exactly where the phone booth at the corner of rue le Brun was. So the mysterious tipster had not phoned from Nova Park. Anna Lynx thought about this. It was no more than ten minutes from Bourg Villette to rue de Montyon. If you ran, perhaps you could make it in an even shorter time. But was that likely? That someone happened to see the body on the sixty-second floor and then took the elevator down to Boulevard de la Villette and ran like a lunatic to a phone booth?

Considering the tight time frame, one alternative would be to suspect Cobra of being the tipster. She must be involved in some way. But why would Cobra want the police there? And in that case, why run off to a phone booth? Anna had brooded a great deal about Cobra, but what she could not put together was that the secretary so obviously put herself in a bad situation by being at the office when the police arrived.

Trying to secure clues in the phone booth itself was fruitless. If the tipster left any behind, it would be impossible to determine which were his in particular. She could of course take a swing past rue de Montyon a little later-there were police animals with improbable luck, but up to now she had not been one of them. Falcon ecu kept her waiting, which indicated that the shooting exercise was not going according to plan. Anna Lynx returned to the reports she had started yesterday, but the going was sluggish. Animals came and went around her, they shouted and laughed, talked loudly in telephones and across tables; it was hard to concentrate. Over and over again her thoughts kept returning to her friend Cow h.e.l.lwig. Why wouldn't she listen to reason?

After an unfocused quarter of an hour, Anna Lynx turned on her computer and logged in to the Ministry of Finance database. If the report writing was not going well, the time was better used checking the blocks around the tipster's phone booth via the building registry. There was an ongoing debate about the authorities' coordination of data registries, but during the last year the protests had been confined to occasional articles.

Police work, she thought. Randomly skimming through lists of names of tenants and condominium owners without knowing what you were looking for. Falcon ecu would consider what she was doing wasted time; he didn't believe in intuition.

Anna Lynx scrolled through stuffed animals who lived in the blocks around rue de Montyon and rue le Brun. Slowly she let one name after another scroll up and off the screen, life stories she knew nothing about, and after a few minutes she inevitably started to get tired. It was just when she raised her paw to rub her eyes that it suddenly showed up: Claude Siamese.

She jerked back from the keyboard as if she'd burned herself. Leaned back in the chair and stared at the screen.

Claude Siamese. At 42 rue de Montyon, fifth floor.

If Anna Lynx had been given the task of compiling a list of the hundred stuffed animals with the heaviest criminal involvement in Mollisan Town, Claude Siamese would have been on that list. If she were to rank the twenty most dangerous animals in Tourquai, Claude Siamese would be at the top. He'd been involved in everything: prost.i.tution, drugs, a.s.sault, blackmail. He had served a few short sentences at King's Cross but never been convicted of any major offenses. Everyone in the legal system knew that the city would be a better place if Claude Siamese were arrested and thrown into prison. Yet they couldn't arrest him. There was no evidence. There were no witnesses. There was, Bloodhound a.s.serted, no justice.

"Excuse me, but what are you doing?"

Falcon's question startled Anna and she lost her balance. A reflex caused her to take hold of the desk. Falcon smiled.

"You scared me!"

"I'm sorry. That wasn't the idea. What are you doing?"

"How'd it go?"

"They probably won't be calling me when they need sharpshooters," Falcon sighed. "But I pa.s.sed."

"Good." Anna pointed at the computer. "I'm checking the thing with the tipster a little more."

"Who?"

"The stuffed animal who called you and said that Vulture was dead. The tipster."

"Cobra," said Falcon.

"You think?"

"Depends on what you mean by think. I realize that Cobra didn't do it, not after what Tapir said this morning. But that doesn't mean she didn't have anything to do with it."

"Then I'm going to make it a little harder." Anna smiled. "The call came from a phone booth on rue de Montyon. Do you think that little piece of latex slithered there, called, and slithered back again?"

"A phone booth?" said Falcon. "Hmm. Yes, compared to you, Anna, I don't have much to offer where investigations are concerned, but I still think it might be her. I don't know. She doesn't act rationally. She goes in to her boss, he's sitting at the desk without a head. She runs out, confused and contrite, and she can't handle the situation. She has to call someone, she calls the police, but she doesn't want to end up in a lengthy interrogation where she has to give her name and have her life turned upside down. So she calls anonymously."

"Sounds completely unbelievable," said Anna.

Falcon nodded. He agreed.

"Besides, look at this," said Anna, moving the computer screen in Falcon's direction. "Claude Siamese lives in the building by the phone booth."

Falcon sat down at the desk.

"Excuse me, but I don't understand. What does this mean?" he asked after a pensive silence.

"No idea," Anna replied.

"No idea?"

"Do you have a theory?"

Falcon thought about that.

"Yes, if you ask straight out like that ... I don't know, of course, but ... one of the animals that hated Vulture hired a hit man from Siamese? When the hit man carried out the deed, he calls Siamese, who in turn tips off the police," Falcon proposed.

"Okay," laughed Anna. "And why would Claude Siamese tip off the police?"

"I don't know, of course, but it may have something to do with the alibi," Falcon continued freely out of his imagination. "Siamese wants the police to find the body as quickly as possible, because the hit man has an alibi for just that point in time ..."

Anna remained sitting, serious and silent. She was staring at Falcon. There was a glimmer of respect in her eyes. He saw that.

"Excuse me, but you don't believe it's like that, do you?" he asked in surprise.

"No," she said, "that was just bulls.h.i.t. I have no idea where Siamese comes into the picture. But that other thing ... that actually doesn't sound too bad. That the reason someone calls several times, that someone is so urgent, is because they have an alibi for just that time of the morning."

They did not leave until the Morning Breeze. They had located the Balder Toad that Oleg Earwig provided as his alibi at a junkyard up in north Tourquai, and they were on their way there. It was Falcon again who drove, and he parked outside the gates of the junkyard a few minutes before the breeze intensified. until the Morning Breeze. They had located the Balder Toad that Oleg Earwig provided as his alibi at a junkyard up in north Tourquai, and they were on their way there. It was Falcon again who drove, and he parked outside the gates of the junkyard a few minutes before the breeze intensified.

"Have you been here before?" he asked.

"Never," Anna replied.

They got out of the car and went up to the wrought-iron gates, which were open.

"I guess we can just go in," said Falcon.

The wrecks of sc.r.a.pped cars towered over them on both sides. It was not a big junkyard, but the pathways between the piles of metal skeletons were many and narrow. On the other side they could see the forest; large trees protectively held out their leafy branches over the dead cars. The police officers could see no building or any animals, so they continued farther into the area. The breeze after the rain caused towers of precariously balanced cowcatchers and hubcaps to screech from friction.

"h.e.l.lo!" Falcon called.

His outburst gave Anna a start. She was about to say something about his carelessness when they heard someone answer. The police officers rounded a pair of burned-out truck cabs and saw a small, dilapidated wooden shed standing next to a thick tree trunk.

"Stop!" a voice was heard at a distance.

Falcon and Anna stopped.

"Who are you?" called the voice.

"We're from the police," Falcon answered in a loud voice. "The inventor Oleg Earwig suggested that we should meet you."

There was silence from the shed. The police officers stood quietly, waiting for something to happen. When no invitation came, Anna took a step forward.

The explosion was unexpected. An old-style shotgun was fired, and a sheaf of buckshot struck the sheet metal a few yards to the right of Falcon.

The police officers threw themselves to the ground-just as the next salvo was fired.

3.3.

The weather was just after lunch when Field Mouse Pedersen arrived at the police station with Goat Croix-Valmer in tow. The choice had been between questioning the receptionist at Nova Park or going down and ordering a pizza with pineapple and honey. The interview took priority.

Bloodhound had never thought that Emanuelle Cobra did it. Instinct, experience, gut feeling, call it what you will: whether she was involved or not he left unsaid-she might be-but she was not the one who cut off the vulture's head. Which Tapir had established this morning.

Earwig remained, and because Bloodhound had not met the inventor in question the superintendent had no perception other than that he hoped it was Earwig who was guilty. Because if it wasn't Earwig ... this investigation would drag on. While waiting for Anna and Falcon, whom he had sent off to check the inventor's alibi, Bloodhound had no desire to start anything new. So he sent Pedersen out after Croix-Valmer. The investigation called for an additional interview with the little goat, and if Bloodhound did it over lunch he would avoid stuffing himself with more unhealthy things.

"This is my lunchtime!" Goat Croix-Valmer protested as Pedersen pushed him down onto the empty chair beside Bloodhound's desk. Goat Croix-Valmer protested as Pedersen pushed him down onto the empty chair beside Bloodhound's desk.

He was dressed in a pair of bright yellow slacks that took attention away from his shoes and shirt.

"Shut up," Bloodhound growled. "And think of all the calories I'm saving you."

"Calories?" Goat repeated. "That's not my problem. If you feel fat you shouldn't think that-"

"Fat!" roared Bloodhound. "Listen up, you cross-st.i.tched little mama's boy, now you shut up and think. I'm a cop. I can lock you up in King's Cross for the rest of your life. I'm the one you want to stay friends with."