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

  ‘Oh, well,’ Dobie said airily. ‘I worked that part of it out all right. That’s where the wooden implement comes into it, you see.’

  But really insufferable. ‘Not the original wooden whistle that wooden whistle? Look, Dobie, it’s all very well your developing these theories—’

  ‘Not a wooden whistle, no. But in a way you’re not far off. There’s certainly a connection.’

  A pity, Kate thought, I don’t have a wooden implement to hand right now. Or indeed an implement of any suitable material. Hard and bumpy.

  ‘On the other hand,’ Dobie said, blithely unconscious of his lady friend’s homicidal inclinations, ‘it can’t be true that everyone at the Centre has a whatdyacallum … an alibi. No, I take that to be an incidental difficulty of the kind one often runs into when one tries to match mathematically established certainties against heuristic evidence. Schrodinger ran into that problem back in the ’30s, you know, when he propounded the so-called Dead Cat paradox and hybrid-state theory. I think George Campbell and I have managed to demolish that one between us, but of course the difficulty persists and always will. I think Jackson will find that as the evidence he has accumulated is empirical, merely—’

  ‘He isn’t dealing with a dead cat. It’s a dead girl he’s worried about. It’s different.’

  ‘Yes, but the principle is very much the same. You just have to shake the evidence around until something falls out and then everything’ll fit together again.’

  He made, Kate thought, his much-vaunted mathematical method seem pretty much tantamount to hitting a malfunctioning television set a few smart blows with a heavy hammer. But then her thoughts had already been inclined in that direction. Just a few smart blows on top of that smart-alec skull of his … Just a few … bang! BANG! BANG! There, she felt better already. ‘You want to know what I think? I think you’re crackers. Completely meshuggah.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Dobie said, looking at his wristwatch, ‘I can’t sit here nattering away with you all day. It’s time I was running along.’

  ‘Why? Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m entertaining another lady to tea and cakes. At David Lumley’s.’

  ‘Are you, by God,’ Kate said.

  No. Not a hammer. A Colt .45 would be infinitely preferable. With expanding bullets. You’d push it up his earhole, press the trigger, and KERR-RAASSHHHH! Oh yes! He he he!

  That would be nice …

  In the Cathays Park shop, the A-team had been called to panic stations. At least, that wasn’t what it said on the invitation cards, but Foxy and Edgar Wallace weren’t deceived. There were long faces in the I Room under the masks of professional aplomb and looking at the arrivals and departures board on the far wall didn’t do much to alleviate the air of general concern. But Jackson was doing that, anyway. ‘We got to account,’ he said, ‘for the girl’s movements. Somehow. That’s obvious. Maybe it doesn’t take long to kill a girl. And maybe it doesn’t take very much longer to screw her first – with or without consent. But then nobody seems to have set eyes on her from the time she must have left the school’ – Jacko rapped the arrivals board authoritatively with bony knuckles – ‘until the time Kate Coyle and Mr Dobie picked her up from the roadside. Three to six o’clock. Something like three hours. So it don’t make sense to suppose that she was walking along and someone jumped her. No. Chances are she was with someone. Somewhere. Number one question of course is who? We don’t know. No one’s telling. That’s significant. So that brings us to number two question. Where?’

  ‘We don’t know that, either,’ Box said. ‘That’s significant, too.’

  ‘An’ if we could find out where she was,’ Wallace said thoughtfully, ‘that might give us a clue as to who she was with. Like.’

  ‘In any case you’ve followed my reasoning closely.’ Which in itself might be taken to show there was something pretty seriously wrong with it, Jackson thought. ‘And as certain items of evidence seemed to indickitate that the girl might somehow have got herself inside that Centre place during the period in question, we’ve just carried out a highly intensive enquiry in which Foxy here and some of the boys from Central have been through the joint with a … What is that thing you go through places with, Foxy?’

  ‘A fine-toothed comb, you mean?’

  ‘That’s it. A fine-toothed comb. With results that we now see clearly … that we now see demonstrated on this here board, not counting that bit in the bottom corner which seems to be last month’s lunch menu. With results that … Well. Frankly. Disappointing. Or in a word … Napoo.’ He gave the arrivals indickitator a much more vindictive (and possibly significant) wallop. ‘Eighty-seven interviews. All aimed at finding out who could have been even briefly with Beverley Sutro at any times between four and six o’clock. Answer is apparently that nobody could’ve. Which isn’t exactly the answer we expected or wanted.’

  ‘It is a prison, after all. Maybe a funny kind of a—’

  ‘Just what the Super said. And I’ll admit it looks like we got to strike out the dickies right away, though first off I thought that was the most likely … However, I shouldn’t prejudice the issue. Turns out in any case they’re all tucked up in their cosy little cells and under television surveillance, whatever that means except for five of ’em who’re undergoing – what’s this word …?’

  Wallace peered at it hazily. ‘Yeah, what the geezer said was therapy but I wasn’t too sure how to spell it.’

  ‘Who’re undergoing what the geezer said and are all in the consultation rooms with the doctors. So that lot are all in the clear and so for that matter are the medical staff, except for this doctor – Hodson, is it? – who says he left his room around three o’clock for a jimmy riddle, took him about three minutes he says so we can hardly clap the handcuffs on him without a bit more than that to go on. Picture’s no better with the male nurses, warders, whatever you call ’em. Eight on duty at that time, none of ’em saw or heard anything suspicious and as they always work in couples, same like with bobbies on the beat, they can all vouch for each other, so to speak. And do. Kitchen and laundry staff – all off duty, it seems. Gone into Cardiff or anyway, not on the premises. Same with Mrs Train. The Director’s wife. She got back about half-past six, right?’

  ‘Porter checked the car in and out,’ Foxy said. ‘Same with the other one. The Datsun.’

  ‘Eh?’ Jackson studied the board once again. ‘Oh yes. That Miss Daly. Went out at five thirty, which is really almost … And up to then she was with the Director, right? Trying to sort out some trouble with one of the computers … And then it wouldn’t do to forget the gate porter himself, would it? Seems he had someone with him all the afternoon, though I’m not sure if he was supposed to. No, it’s all very … Like I said. Disappointing. But at least we know where it leaves us.’

  ‘In the shit.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it that way myself but yes, that about sums it up. After all, interviewing people is all very well but we can’t discount the possibility of deliberate collision between them of one kind or another. Say, two of the warders covering up for each other. But Foxy did the verbals with them and he seems to be pretty satisfied there was nothing like that going on … Right, Foxy?’

  ‘Ye-es.’ Box sounded dubious. ‘But what they all said was that there wasn’t any way the girl could have got into the Centre in the first place and if I found any way of smuggling in a bit of fluff I was to be sure to let them know. And I can’t say as I have. We thought maybe over the wall somewhere, in view of the trainers she was wearing, but Crawford walked the whole way round and he says it isn’t on. Not because the walls aren’t climbable but because what you’ve got all round them now is a sea of mud. She couldn’t’ve done it without leaving tracks. No one could’ve. And there aren’t any.’

  A short silence, broken by an unpleasant gurgling noise. This was Wallace, giving notice of his desire to speak. ‘Bit like Puzzle Corner, innit? Like they used to have in the kiddy magazines. There was on
e where you had to get a fox and a goose and a bag of corn across a river but I misremember—’

  But Jackson had had enough of geese, wild or otherwise, for the time being and this intervention, too, went unregarded. ‘All right, but are you sure your boys got to see everyone, Foxy? Nobody got missed out?’

  ‘We talked to everyone who was there between four and six p.m., yes, and to quite a few who weren’t. Everyone except that other kid, the nice one.’

  ‘Elspeth.’

  ‘Elspeth, ’cos she was at school while the boys were doing the rounds … and anyway I’d talked to her already, the day before, and she wasn’t there, either. She was playing hockey and she didn’t get back home till six o’clock. Mind you—’

  ‘She isn’t a suspect, anyway. Given the nature of the case.’

  ‘No, but all the same … Maybe we should give the kids at that school a bit more of a going over. The teachers, too.’

  ‘Yes.’ Pontin would just love that idea, Jackson thought.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cos I reckon that’s where the girl must have been all that time. Hidden away somewhere. That’s why no one saw her. Be much easier, surely, for her to meet a boyfriend in the school than to go lolloping off to the Centre, of all places. There’d be empty classrooms on a Saturday, that sort of thing. Makes much better sense—’

  ‘Where’d he put the car?’

  ‘Maybe round back of the school somewhere. I agree it’s a bit odd no one seems to have seen it, but we know for a fact at least two cars went down that road after five o’clock that day because the porter checked them out. Mrs Train’s and Miss Daly’s. And of course Dr Coyle and Mr Dobie … But so far we’ve had no reports of any cars being sighted on the road, none at all. That’s not unusual, of course. On a night like that one was …’

  Jackson was studying the squiggles on the board once again. ‘Mrs Train left at three o’clock, I see. Well before the … But the Daly woman, she left at five thirty. I suppose she can’t confirm …?’

  ‘No. She can’t. That was when it was getting dark and the rain was starting to come down like … She’s pretty sure she’d have seen the girl if she’d been lying on the road, but as according to Dr Coyle she wasn’t …’

  ‘It’s all like that, isn’t it?’ Jackson said despondently.

  Puzzle Corner. Dobie might be into solving these elaborate conundrums, but Jackson wasn’t. That isn’t what policemen are for. On the one hand an enormous indicator board covered in negative evidence, backed up by Heaven knows how many scribbled notebooks the contents of which were even now being translated by the police secretariat into Heaven knew how many sheaves of typewritten flimsies … On the other, two or three battered and bloodied leaves on a fresh-cut twig and one single sheet of torn-off notepaper. No contest, really. Unless of course Dobie …

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Big Ivor,’ Foxy said abruptly. ‘No one seems to have seen him around lately, either. And in the ordinary way … if you was to show me a nice girl with a broken arm and a few front teeth missing, well, my thoughts would just wander naturally in that direction.’

  ‘So would mine,’ Jackson said. ‘And my feet would just wander naturally in the other.’ This was a joke, but not altogether. ‘But you can’t be … No way the girl could have been seeing Ivor. Micky Mannering reckons she’s really his daughter and so do most of the grasses I’ve talked to. Or if she did … he wouldn’t have … Surely …?’

  ‘Wouldn’t put it past him,’ Foxy said glumly. ‘And then have … beaten her up like that?’

  ‘Might not have meant to do her in. It’s second nature to him. And he has gone missing. I saw Bronwen Bates the other day and she was asking after him. Odd, that.’

  Wallace cleared his throat again, with similarly revolting results. ‘Heard he’d got another bit of tail on the books since some while back. Maybe nothin’ in it, though. It’s been pretty quiet down at the docks of late.’

  ‘Bronwen’d probably like to be sure he isn’t coming back. And wouldn’t we all? No, he’s probably drifted up to the Smoke with the rest of Dai Dymond’s crowd, maybe looking for an in with the Stainers … We could put out a query to Central, though. Maybe we should. Yes,’ Jackson said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we should. Rather than stand round here gossiping like a lot of old charwomen.’

  ‘There’s unkind,’ Wallace said reproachfully.

  ‘Well, we’re not going to take matters much further tonight. That’s plain as a … one of them whatsits.’

  ‘Pikestaff,’ Foxy said.

  ‘Oh, belt up. And close the door behind you. Meeting concluded.’

  That didn’t mean, however, that the day’s work was over. Far from it. Jackson took his own little notebook from his inside pocket and stumped over to the armchair in the corner to sit down and have a bit of a think. Something it isn’t easy to do when you’ve got a high-powered team of trained investigators sounding off all around you. Making disgusting kkhhhrrr’hhhh’cch noises and things like that. Now everything – for the moment – was quiet and peaceful Jackson reckoned he could turn things over in his mind and maybe even get a spot of kip-time in without anyone noticing.

  In the shit, though, Foxy had said. That was putting it pretty crudely, of course. But that was all right. That’s what policemen are for. That’s where they’re supposed to be. Up to their oxters in the doodlums, stirring it about. Puzzle Corner, indeed. Lindum trees, forsooth. All it took was a good sniff at Ivor the ’Orrible to bring you up against reality – the policeman’s lot. Not that Ivor had done young Beverley in; Jackson didn’t think that for a moment. Since interviewing Micky Mannering he’d done a bit more homework with some of his old oppos, including Inspector Price of the old Vice Squad who had cause to know Ivor (and Irene Jones) better than most.

  ‘Believe it or not, he was quite fond of the kid. No doubt about it. That’s why he wasn’t so chuffed when Irene hit out with that London character, but as he wasn’t in so good with the MacManuses at the time there wasn’t much he could do about it. Then he got in with Dai and the Bristol boys and I suppose he felt he’d best let bygones be bygones. Oh, he’d have roughed up Irene if he could have got hold of her, no doubt about it, but he’d never have touched the girl. Soft spot he had for her, from all accounts.’

  ‘What I’m wondering,’ Jackson said, ‘is if he knew Irene had sent her back. To that school. In which case—’

  ‘Don’t see how he could have known, unless she wrote and told him, which – to put it mildly – isn’t likely. Of course he knows now. If he reads the papers.’

  ‘And then he’ll be even less chuffed than he was before.’

  ‘So you might suppose. Yes, he’ll be mad all right.’

  ‘How mad?’

  ‘I dunno, Jacko. Killing mad, maybe. You never can tell with duddos like that. He’s half-way to a psycho, anyway, if you ask me.’

  Old Pricey, he’d been shovelling it for years. Fifteen years on the Vice Squad, which is where the money normally is, only he’d never made any because he’d never been on the take. He still knew a damned sight more about psychos than any of those half-arsed shrinks whose views on the present case Foxy and Crawford had been canvassing, he knew more about Ivor and Irene Jones than Micky Mannering did, he might even know more about girls like Beverley Sutro than any of the school teachers even though he lived and worked in a very different world. And yet, Jackson thought, he hadn’t really helped.

  Dobie hadn’t any business at all in Eddie Price’s world. In Dai Dymond’s various rackets, in Ivor Halliday’s brutal little bylines. He just didn’t know what he was meddling with. Coming into even the most casual of contacts with Ivor or, say, Tiny Goodman, or any other of the red-haze merchants in one of their killing mad moods, doing or saying – as he almost invariably did – the wrong thing … It wasn’t a nice thought to take home to bed with you. Not if you liked Dobie. And Jackson did.

  Killing is very simple, for some people. That’s why murder rarely presents
you with any serious problem: means and motive are usually transparently obvious. Proving your case is, of course, another matter. Pricey knew as well as Jackson did that Big Ivor had three big scores on the sheet, together with any amount of GBH, but the only time they’d ever got him inside had been on a breaking-and-entering charge he hadn’t even bothered to get himself cover for … Eighteen months, with remission. It’d make a cat laugh. Yes, but that didn’t alter the fact that murder is about the simplest crime there is. Say, nineteen times out of twenty. It’s the twentieth time that gives you the sleepless nights. The rest are business as usual.

  The twentieth time, Jackson thought, it’s like dropping a stone into a pond. The ripples circle outwards and you go where the ripples take you, further and further afield … From Dame Margaret to the Rehabilitation Centre, from there to Micky Mannering’s West Street office, from there to Irene Jones and Ivor Halliday … not just to the Cardiff of today but to the Cardiff of twenty years back, the days of Aberfan and Vietnam … All right, but usually as the ripples move outwards a clear patch forms in the middle, where the stone went in, and in that clear patch some kind of a picture takes shape. A picture of the deader. That’s the whole point of the exercise. And that was just what wasn’t happening in the present instance. After chasing moving ripples for nearly a week, Jackson could say that he had some idea of what the damned girl had looked like … and that was all. Even the readers of the Echo and the Daily Spook knew that much. That smooth clear patch of water was as smooth and clear as ever … but reflecting nothing. No image. No picture. Niente. It was odd.

  Nobody seemed to have known the kid, that was the trouble. Not even her schoolmates. She’d only been with them a few weeks, after all. She’d only been in the country a few weeks. Before that, Italy. Before that, London. Or someplace else. She might as well have been a foreigner. No relatives around … Her mother wasn’t around. Or Sutro. Or anyone. Even Big Ivor – assuming he was her dad – seemed to have disappeared. Flown the coop. Wherever you turned, you found that blank space staring at you.