The Dobie Paradox: british mystery novel: where nothing is as it seems Read online

  ‘There was a problem last Saturday, though,’ Dobie said. ‘That’s really what I’ve come about.’

  Miss Mgono looked perplexed. ‘There was a little trouble on the Tongwynlais relay, yes. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does it always happens over the weekend. The Director of the Centre was rather annoyed about it.’

  ‘Morris Train?’

  ‘Mr Train, yes. He sent Kathleen Daly in right away to check with us – she runs the shop for him as best she can but she’s only trained as a programmer and I’m not really a comp technician either – so there wasn’t much we could do about it. It looked as if one of the digits in the access code had been accidentally erased but as my boss wasn’t here I couldn’t get at the coding lists … But anyway I’m told they’ve re-established the relay now so probably my diagnosis was wrong in the first place …’ Under the folds of the lab jacket, her shoulders heaved mountainously in a colossal shrug; Dobie wasn’t sure what it signified. Probably indifference. ‘It’s happened before. Glitches, the boss calls them. They don’t amount to errors. Errors, they’re more … serious. Obviously.’

  ‘Why wasn’t your boss here then?’

  ‘Because he leaves at five o’clock on Saturdays. So do I, when I’m not on evening duty. But that night I was. Miss Daly must have looked in at around … six o’clock, I suppose. Of course Mr Train was on the phone a good deal earlier, but he spoke to Mr Lacey. To my Director. Not to me.’

  Merrick was showing some signs of impatience, ‘What’s all this about, Dobie?’

  ‘No, no.’ Dobie gestured ineffectually. ‘It’s all very much as I’d supposed. There was an erasure in the access code. I know because I re-set it. On the Monday.’

  ‘You did? How did you manage that?’

  ‘I hacked it in. Worked the usual combinations until one of them clicked … It wasn’t so difficult. As you say, the set-up’s rather primitive. But the point is, there was an erasure. And accidental erasures …’ Dobie turned towards Miss Mgono again. ‘You don’t get many of them, do you? As a rule?’

  ‘No. Hardly ever.’ Miss Mgono might have blushed becomingly, had her coloration permitted it. Instead she shuffled her size ten plimsolls about uneasily. ‘It’s an expression we use, though, or let’s say it has been used … to save someone or other his job when there’s been a goof-up. In other departments, that is. Not in this one.’

  ‘Suppose,’ Dobie said, ‘that some item on the file were intentionally erased … then a digit of the access code might have been accidentally caught up in the erasure. Right?’

  ‘That could happen,’ Merrick agreed. ‘If you had an inexperienced operator and a … It’s a weakness in the system, certainly, but not one you can very well guard against. Not without going back to square one and designing a virus-proof signal pattern. Of course, we’re now able to build in a trip acronym that’ll stop people from hacking in the way you did, but once they are in it’s hard to see how you can check them from making unauthorized erasures and addenda without at the same time preventing—’

  ‘Exactly, exactly,’ Dobie said. As he knew from past experience, it was also difficult on these occasions to prevent Merrick from dropping into his accustomed lecture-hall stride and droning on for ever. ‘But what we have to do now, you see, is find the erasure and see what’s been entered in its place, if anything has. That, so to speak, is the object of the present exercise.’

  Merrick stared at him. ‘I say, that’s a tall order, Dobie.’

  ‘Well, let’s look on it as a challenge,’ Dobie said.

  Kate, meantime, was having a tiring morning. She was well aware that the waiting room of her clinic, being warm and cosy, served as a convenient gossip-retailing centre for a goodish many of her female clientele (and not a few of the male) who seemed indeed to be on her panel for no other reason, their overall state of health being uniformly excellent. Today that ethos seemed even to have percolated through to the consulting-room, where patient after patient – their morbid appetites whetted, no doubt, by the reports now appearing not only in the local but also in several organs of the national press – clearly didn’t want attention paid to their chilblains and tummyaches but rather detailed information about

  TEENAGE GIRL’S NAKED BODY

  Found By Lady Doctor

  – from, so to speak, the horse’s mouth. ‘It’s strange,’ Kate said, ‘that the older people get, the more ghoulish their interest becomes in that sort of thing. It casts a rather disconcerting light on human nature.’

  ‘You certainly look whacked out,’ Dobie said.

  ‘I expect I do.’ She was demolishing a plateful of lasagna, however, with her usual exuberant appetite. Today they were lunching together, as was frequently their wont, at Luigi’s Trattoria on the City Road, a noisy, convivial, and reasonably priced establishment much in favour with the local car dealers and others of that ilk. The Italian cuisine was in fact prepared by a Bangladeshi from Rhiwbina but was none the worse, Dobie considered, for that. ‘And how,’ Kate asked, ‘was your morning?’

  ‘Fairly active. I was looking at a computer installation with Gwyn Merrick. He’s not the liveliest guy in the world but he does know a lot about computer systems, especially the ones he helped set up himself.’

  ‘I see.’ Kate was rather relieved to hear this. It would appear that Dobie was reverting to his normal sphere of arcane and incomprehensible activities, instead of unduly concerning himself with TEENAGE GIRL’S et cetera. Maybe that letter from Frankenstein or whatever his name was had done the trick. Kate would have appreciated some such diversion herself earlier that morning, after the first fifteen minutes of Eileen Lewis’s monologue. Or harangue. ‘On top of all the others, along comes Eileen Lewis. You remember her?’

  ‘The chatty one?’

  ‘That’s her. The others only wanted to hear about it. Eileen, she wanted to tell me about it. All about it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘From A to Z. Anything Jacko doesn’t have on file, he’s only got to ask our Eileen. She’ll tell him. She’s got it all worked out. Wages of sin, in her opinion. Sins of the father visited on the children. Though principally of the mother, in this case. Preached me a sermon she did. John Knox has nothing on Eileen when she has the bit between her teeth, I can tell you.’

  John Knox? Another of her patients, Dobie supposed. ‘D’you think there’s anything in it?’

  ‘Of course not. Poisonous rubbish, as usual. And a lot of racism mixed up in it because the woman went and married an Italian. Eileen Lewis disapproves of Italians. They all go round with stilettos and mandarins, as she calls them, and they have unhygienic habits. So of course the kid … Look, I don’t know how I got into all this. I’m still steamed up about it, that’s why.’

  Dobie was now peering cautiously downwards at the tomato-soaked inside of his pasta. ‘That sort of crude racism really annoys me, too. And he’s only the stepfather, anyway. I mean the wop.’

  ‘Eileen Lewis,’ Kate said vehemently, ‘is the voice of the people, you realize that? The voice of the popular press – as they call it. You don’t want to get mixed up with all that again, do you?’

  Dobie considered the matter. The truth was that he really didn’t give too much of a damn about that side of things, not any more … but then it isn’t always politic to tell the truth, least of all to the woman you’re living with. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a very politic sort of person. ‘Kate,’ he said. What was that outdated but expressive military phrase? Ah yes, ‘I couldn’t care less.’

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not too highly regarded by the University Senate these days, anyway, because … Oh, they have their reasons. But they can’t actually give me the boot. Though I wouldn’t, mind you, be specially worried if they did.’

  ‘This business could be the last straw, Dobie.’

  ‘I never liked camels, anyhow. And maybe I’ve been one for a bit too long already.’

  ‘A camel?’

&
nbsp; ‘Sticking my head in the sand.’

  ‘That’s what ostriches do, you git. Not camels. You’re sure about this?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘OK.’ Kate sighed. ‘Then you’d better tell me what you’ve really been up to this morning.’

  8

  Detective Superintendent Pontin came into the Investigations Room like the Flying Scotsman entering Euston Station, his arms working vigorously away like pistons, his eyes flashing irascible warning signals from side to side. It couldn’t be said that the scene they now detected was one of indescribable confusion since, apart from the considerable bulk of Detective Constable Wallace (sprawled out across, rather than on, a wooden chair directly behind the telephone console), the room was empty. ‘What’s,’ Pontin wanted to know, ‘going on in here?’

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ Wallace informed him, raising smartly to his feet.

  ‘What do you mean, nothing? Where the hell has Jackson got to?’

  ‘He’s in his office, sir. Co-ordinating the enquiry.’

  ‘And what the hell’s that object?’

  Pontin gestured towards what might have passed for the station’s arrivals-and-departures indicator, had such a device been designed by a raving lunatic and its schedules arranged by a one-eyed Mesopotamian mule-driver. It occupied most of the space on the far wall normally taken up by the departmental notice-board, which had been taken down and stacked in a far corner.

  ‘That’s where we’re collating the results of our enquiries, sir. Looks a bit of a mess with all them squiggles on it an’ all, but that’s —’

  ‘We? We? We?’ Pontin cried, in involuntary emulation of the fifth little piggy of his childhood days. ‘Who’s we, may I make so bold as to ask?’

  ‘Me an’ the Inspector, sir. He’s the collator an’ I’m the chalker-upper. A bit of organized teamwork, you might call it.’

  ‘No, I mightn’t. A bit of a bloody fuck-up is what I’d call it, I’ve never seen such a shambles in all my life.’ Crimson sparks glowed in the depths of Pontin’s otherwise somewhat murky pupils. ‘I think I’ll be having a short natter with Detective Inspector Jackson, that’s if he can manage to spare the time.’

  In fact Jackson couldn’t, but then neither could he very well say so. Not with Pontin in one of his President Kennedy moods. ‘Well, sir, the present phase of the investigation seems to be just about finished, or will be as soon as we’ve simulated the results.’ Desimulated? Assimulated? ‘Got them all worked out, so to speak. We’ve got an investigations board in the Operations Room with the details all filled in, like, all in discord with contemporary recommended practice.’

  ‘I know. I’ve seen it. And where do you get this Operations Room twaddle? This is a police station, I’ve been given to understand, not Guy’s bloody Hospital. It’s always been the I Room since I’ve been here and that’s how it’s going to remain while I’m in charge. Get that clear in your mind by way of starters, Jackson.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Which brings me to the gravamen of the case or the gritty nitty. I’ve allowed you a considerable latitude in the conducting of this investigation, a great deal of latitude, and what do I find you’ve been and gone and done? No, don’t tell me, Jackson. I’ll tell you. You’ve pulled in no less than six detective constables from Central, no less than six of Cardiff’s best, I say, and you’ve set them off on as ridiculous a wild-horse chase as I’ve ever come across. Any damned fool can see—’

  ‘Goose, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘People chase wild gooses, sir, I mean geese. Not wild horses. I don’t know why.’

  ‘But policemen chase criminals, Jackson, wild horses and geeses don’t come into it.’ Pontin had become dangerously suave, as though about to order the invasion of the Bay of Pigs and the destruction of umpteen Russian missile sites. ‘What I want to know is why you’ve seen fit to go and chase criminals in one of Her Majesty’s open prisons. I’ll grant you that in one sense it’s a logical place to look for them, but generally we wait for them to come out before we start stomping them again. I would have thought that by now you’d have grasped that elementary principle of policing practice.’

  ‘The boys have only been conducting interviews, sir, and I’m sure that fact has been depreciated.’

  ‘To what end, Jackson? To what practical purpose?’

  ‘To see how many people in the place you’re talking about can come up with hard and fast alibis, sir.’

  ‘I see. And how many interviews have the boys, as you call them, conducted?’

  ‘Eighty-seven, sir. They’ve interviewed everybody there, without exception.’

  ‘And how many hard and fast alibis have they established?’

  ‘You’re not going to believe this, sir.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I am.’

  ‘Well, er, eighty-seven. To be exact.’

  Pontin breathed slowly and heavily, as though recently emerged from a strenuous encounter with Marilyn Monroe. ‘Are you saying that they’ve all got alibis?’

  ‘So it would appear.’

  ‘Well, perhaps that’s not so very surprising, Jackson, in view of the fact that they’re all supposed to be doing porridge.’

  ‘Not all of them, sir. There’s the doctors and the kitchen staff and the, er … male nurses …’

  ‘Jackson, you’re wasting my time as well as that of all those other buggers, to say nothing of untold sums of the taxpayers’ money. What got you off on this bloody ridiculous caper? The girl was killed outside the Goddam institute, all those guys are inside and dam’ well supposed to be that way. What kind of a bee have you got stuck in that bonnet of yours this time?’

  Oh God, Jackson thought, let him not find out about Dobie. Don’t let him ever even suspect that it was Dobie. ‘It’s just a matter, sir, of deliminating the impossible, so that you’re left with …’ Something or other. Oh God, just don’t let him ever find out … ‘In other words, once you’ve explored every avenue, so to speak …’

  ‘Jackson.’ Pontin’s voice was rising now to a vibrant falsetto. ‘Do you realize I’ve had four telephone calls from the Director of the Centre complaining of what he calls an unwarrantable intrusion upon the privacy of the inmates? And a very irate call from someone called Dr Ram who considers himself to be a victim of racial discrimination and who intends, he says, to take the matter up with his member of Parliament, whoever that is? Are you aware that the CDI at Central has received a similar number of calls from interested persons, some of them of a frankly abusive nature? How do you think it looks, Jackson, to the general public when the press get hold of incidents of this kind? I fully intend to get to the bottom of this matter, oh, ho, I promise you I will, and when I do …’

  ‘Will you ’ark,’ the Duty Sergeant said gloomily, ‘at them two in there soundin’ off. Argue argue argue. No wonder bugger-all work gets done round yurr.’

  ‘Don’t reckon as they’re like to come to blows, do you, Sarge?’ Wallace, ecstatic at the prospect.

  ‘Duw, boy, no such luck,’ the Sergeant said. ‘Just the usual thrust an’ parry of intellectual rapier-work, same like in the House of Commons.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what we have got, sir. We got a preliminary report in from Forensic and it seems there are clear indications the girl was struck on the kipper with some sort of a kind of a wooden implement. Leastways, they say that under microscopical examination they found a lickle prickle of wood on the edge of the head wound. A saliva, they call it.’

  ‘A saliva of wood? What kind of a lead is that?’

  ‘It enables us to deliminate certain other possibilities, sir. We know she wasn’t hit on the bonce with a flatiron, for a start.’

  Pontin tried for a moment to visualize a wooden flatiron, but failed in the attempt. No, Jackson probably had a good point there. ‘Or, for that matter, a cavalry sabre.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. You take my point. It means we needn’t go round looking for someone carrying a cavalry sabre
around with him. Or, for that matter, a flatiron.’

  ‘That’s true. That’s very true. Yes, I’d say you were on to an altogether more profitable line of enquiry there. You push ahead on that one, Jackson, never mind all these Indian doctors and junkies they’ve got stashed away in that loony bin. Just find some immigrant or other who’s got a car and a wooden implement and pull the bugger in. Well, don’t just stand there. Get creaking.’

  ‘Don’t you mean crackling, sir?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A wooden implement? Well, I could have told him that.’ Dobie, being insufferable again.

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t prove it. The way I proved the other thing.’

  ‘Dobie, you haven’t proved anything. In fact, if I were you I’d keep out of Jacko’s way for a bit. He’s hopping mad at you as it is.’

  ‘He is? Why?’

  ‘Because he and a whole lot of other cops wasted something like the whole morning … It’s obvious that she wasn’t beaten up like that at the Centre. When everyone there was either locked up in their rooms or doing something with somebody else or else just wasn’t there …’ Kate’s voice was growing squeaky with exasperation. ‘Apart from the fact that the girl couldn’t have got in there in the first place. Which I’d’ve thought made the whole thing what you’d call academic anyway.’