The Shy Traffickers (Professor Dobie Book 4) Page 22

  There was an Arab-looking character and there was a much bigger Russian-looking character and even if that was what they weren’t, Guffin still didn’t go a whole bundle on either of them. He didn’t like the way they were staring at him, like at a chunk of prime beef about to be slapped down on the butcher’s block. Maybe he was being over-imaginative, though.

  No. He wasn’t.

  “So you didn’t see this Coyle woman at any time?”

  “… Who?”

  Stainer sighed patiently. “The woman who shot him?”

  “Oh. No, I didn’t. Coyle … That was the other bloke’s name, though. I saw him all right. Did him over and showed him in. Of course, I stayed outside the room meself. I always did when the talk was going to be confidential like.”

  “Did him over? Surely—”

  “No, no, frisked him, what I meant.”

  Stainer seemed to be running out of patient sighs. He clicked his tongue instead. “Can’t you speak the English language, Guffin, or at any rate some reasonable approximation thereto? I realise that the circles in which you move—”

  “Yeah, you know, doncha ever watch the telly? … Searched him, then. Made sure he didn’t have no deadly weapon concealed about his person. Fussy about that, old Primrose was. ’Cept in the case of ladies where I’d just take a gander at their handbags. Sort of a routine we went through, you might say.”

  “Ah. And did he have a concealed weapon?”

  “Who?”

  “The man who … Coyle. Kevin Coyle. The man we’re talking about, for God’s sake.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Ah,” Stainer said again, this time with greater emphasis. Glancing as he spoke towards the Arab-looking type, whom Guffin now thought he had placed as a South Wales Cypriot born, very conceivably, in Australia, which was where Stainer was supposed to come from, after all. The Arab looked mournful and nodded. The Russian just went on looking mournful, which being a Russian (if he was) he wouldn’t have found difficult. Guffin, for that matter, was beginning to look a bit mournful, too. “What else,” Stainer asked, “would have been routine, as you call it?”

  “About the office, you mean?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I’d have to sweep it morning and afternoon.”

  “Sweep it?” Stainer would not have suspected his employee of such a passion for cleanliness. “With a broom? Wouldn’t a vacuum cleaner—”

  “No, no, with one of them electronic thingummies. Case of bugs.”

  “Oh, I see. A security measure.”

  “Right.”

  “Did Primrose suspect that he was under police surveillance?”

  “I dunno. Was he? … He never said nothing to me about that. But he probably wouldn’t have even if he … ’Cos he never said much to me at the best of times. Fly bird all the same, old Primrose,” he added ruminatively. “Don’t think the fuzz would’ve given him too much cause for concern. Nothing incriminating on the premises, see, nothing like that.”

  “The samples?”

  “What? … Oh, them, he’d always have me send them out soon as he got them. Round to old Doc Beeching for testing. And the reports, they’d come back in code. You got to know all this.”

  “Yes, but it’s nice to be reassured. Seeing that the Specials are turning the place inside out right now. The samples are one thing … but the consignment is quite another …”

  “Yeah,” Guffin said. “The guy had to be talking big money.”

  “Did Primrose tell you that?”

  “Nope. But I could tell. On account of he was getting so … nervous, like.”

  “Nervous?” Stainer clearly disapproved of this.

  “Yeah, well, uptight. Had me book him an hour with Mel that afternoon and he didn’t use to ask for her all that often. Only when he … you know … felt the need for a little express relief. Always took Mel, mind, never went any place else as I’m aware of. In fact he didn’t ever go out at all, if he could avoid it.”

  “A cautious fellow altogether. But then we tend to be, in our line of business.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Guffin hastily agreed. “That’s understandable.”

  “But someone snuffed him all the same. And we don’t like that.”

  “Yeah. I mean, no. I mean—”

  “But putting our personal feelings on the matter to one side, there’s still the issue of that consignment to be considered. Street value, I’m told, of half a million sterling. I think you’ll concede that it’s a sum that merits consideration.”

  “Half a … Gawd, you didn’t pay that, did you?”

  “Of course not. That’s the point. Primrose was meant to be fixing up the deal and I don’t know exactly how far it went. I don’t know, for instance, whether Coyle ever mentioned exactly where it is he’s got this consignment cached. And I’d very much like to know that, for reasons that you’ll find … understandable, right?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “Yes. You see the problem.”

  “He got the wind up, didden he? Gone and done a bunk.”

  “Precisely.”

  Guffin, in his turn, sighed deeply. A simple hewer of wood and drawer of water, he. For disposing of a despised antagonist on a dark night with the aid of a well-aimed blackjack, he was your man. For the more advanced sophistries of philosophical speculation, no, he wasn’t. He had already spent some part of the morning seeking to explain this point to Detective-Inspector Jackson, though not quite in those words, of course. “… I dunno where the bugger’s got to,” he said. “Been through all this already, I have. With the pigs.”

  “But you won’t have told them anything.”

  “Who, me? I should smile. But anyway I don’t know anything. That’s the point.”

  “You’ve seen him,” Stainer said abruptly. “You know what he looks like. You’ve talked to him, even. You’ll have to do a whole lot better than this, young feller-me-lad, you really will.”

  “But he didn’t say nothing to me. And he don’t look like anyone in particular. Just a longhaired sort of a bastard with a dicky hand is what he looks like, creased-up sort of a face like he’d been in a war or two, know what I mean? … Early forties, maybe, and his hand done up in a bandage, looks like anyone else when you get right down to it. Well … a bit like old Primrose himself, if it comes to that. But thinner, mind.”

  Stainer considered the implications of this something less than succinct verbal picture. So did the Arab (or Cypriot). So did the Russian, whose name in fact was Horowitz – Vladimir Horowitz – his parents having intended for him a somewhat different career (and having in this been severely disappointed.) The large blunt-ended fingers of his each hand, however ill-adapted to the purpose of careering blithely up and down piano keyboards, had nonetheless been found by him to be extremely useful in the practice of his profession, which involved the strangulation of those of the mean-spirited citizenry who had excited at one time or another his disapproval (or that of Mr Stainer); he, too, may have been disappointed at the turn the conversation was taking, especially after that encouraging earlier reference to garotting. He now, at any rate, felt it incumbent upon him to offer some meaningful contribution. “Uh. Duh. Duh. Duh,” he said, small flecks of foam appearing at the corners of his mouth. Guffin found this observation in no way soul-enhancing. “Yeah, well,” he said, dimpling winsomely. “Praps it’s time I should be toddling along.”

  “I’ll tell you,” Stainer said, “when to toddle. And when not.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “You say you don’t know where this Coyle character is hanging out. Right. So who does?”

  Guffin, anxious to please, furrowed his brows in deep cogitation. “… I dunno that either.”

  “The Specials reckon they know who does.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Don’t ask me how I know that.” Guffin hadn’t intended to. “I’ve got my pipeline,
see? I know what they’re thinking. And believe you me, the Specials don’t make mistakes.” They had made at least one that Guffin could think of, that of allowing this bugger to walk around unrestrained by a pair of service-issue handcuffs. Seeing no means, however, of expressing this reservation in a tactful way, he let it slide. “They reckon his wife knows where he is. That’s who.”

  “The one who did it?”

  “The woman who did it. Makes sense, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Er, well …”

  “And that being so,” Stainer said, leaning forwards, “I have a little job in mind that I feel may interest you. That is, if you want to go on with your face looking forwards instead of screwed round towards the back.” Horowitz, too, leaned forwards, his face expressive of earnest anticipation. “A little matter in which I don’t wish to appear personally but in which I’d like to have you act as my representative, as it were. Then we may reconsider the question of your future within the organisation, which at the moment gives me some cause for doubt. As does your future anywhere else, if it comes to that.”

  “You know me, sir,” Guffin cried heartily. “Always happy to be of service, that’s my motter.”

  “Good. I want you to find out what she knows. Persuade her to tell you where her husband is. Gently or otherwise. That’s all.”

  Guffin immediately perceived where the difficulty lay. “But how … I don’t know where she is, either.

  “I do,” Stainer said.

  When Dobie returned to Ludlow Road with Olly still attendant on his footsteps he found that the telephone was ringing. It wouldn’t be Kate, of course. Kate wouldn’t be making any such imprudent moves now that the hunt was up. He picked the receiver up with some misgivings and listened for a few moments to the strange cracklings and baying sounds emerging from the auricular. A pack of bloodthirsty beagles, it appeared, was almost upon him, or alternatively the transatlantic satellite was lodging a complaint again. Dobie couldn’t make out what the guy at the other end was saying, but the underlying Californian accent was unmistakeable. “Dobie? … You Dobie? … Hey, Dobie! … Zat Dobie? …” This went on for some little while. “Yes,” Dobie said in the end. “This is me.”

  “Dobie? … Zat you, Dobie? …” Bill Campbell always liked to make sure of the facts. “Hey, you lissen and lissen good! You’re an abomination!”

  “I am?”

  “You got an abomination and a dumbbell! Howzabout that?”

  Bill seemed to be getting quite excited about something, which didn’t make clarity of utterance any easier for him. “I hardly know what to say, Bill. That is Bill, I take it?”

  “Wozzat?”

  “I said—”

  “Dobie? … Hey, Dobie? … Are you there?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m there. I mean here.”

  “No, I can’t either. What’s with this fuggin line? … YOU GOTTA SPEAK UP I CAN’T HEAR YOU.”

  “I CAN’T HEAR YOU EITHER,” Dobie bellowed.

  “… CONGRATULATIONS! …”

  “WHAT?”

  “IT’s (something) (something) (something) ON THE HUBBLE!”

  “WHAT?”

  “A HUBBLE A HUBBLE A HUBBLE!”

  “OH. GOOD.”

  “JUST LIKE WE ALWAYS SAID, RIGHT?”

  “RIGHT. RIGHT. THAT’S GREAT.”

  “SO WE GOT THIS DETERMINATION, HEY, WE’RE OVER THE MOON, MAN!”

  “YES. WELL, LOOK, BILL, I CAN’T—”

  “Click.”

  “WHAT? … Oh …”

  Cut off. As one might have expected. Dobie replaced the receiver and clutched at his throat in a vain attempt to massage his aching tonsils. Olly regarded him with concern. “What was all that in aid of?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Dobie said.

  He was hoping that that bloody surveillance van hadn’t gone and buggered up the telephone system and thrice-hoping that it hadn’t further infected his computer with some kind of Special Branch-inspired virus. He’d have to test it out as soon as possible. Meantime, “Just an old friend of mine,” he explained, “over in Boston. It won’t be anything important. Probably wants me to give a lecture or something like that.”

  “A lecture?”

  “I’ve got to get this other business sorted out first.”

  Dobie was looking thoughtful, all the same. He had in fact been granted many opportunities in the recent past to expound the Dobie Paradox to academic and even, on occasion, to lay audiences; indeed, these days he was rarely asked to lecture on anything else. He didn’t, however, find it easy. The reason why, in its original and highly abstruse mathematical form, it had aroused so much heart-searching and vilification amongst his colleagues was because it didn’t make sense, and this fact had of course to be firmly established right from the beginning. It nonetheless had practical applications. That was the trouble.

  It purported to show, for instance, that the speed of operation of a suitably high-powered supercomputer – currently measured in picoseconds, or trillionths of a second – might under certain circumstance be extended to infinity. In other words, computer operations might be carried out at speeds considerably in excess of the speed of light. Of course, as Dobie would invariably and painfully explain, this didn’t mean that any material particle might then be moving at speeds in excess of that of light; computer operations don’t involve any moving parts. It was the operation itself that would be executed at such unthinkable velocities. But since the speed of an electric wave is identical and indeed indistinguishable from that of a light wave in mathematical terms, Dobie was reluctantly forced to maintain that light can under certain prescribed conditions go a great deal faster than the speed of light. A very great deal faster. Well, infinitely faster, in fact. The calculations appeared to show that such speeds could only be maintained for a period of time precisely equal to the velocity achieved before the circuits burnt out – in other words, a speed of, say, a trillion trillionths of a second could be maintained for just that period and no longer – but since such velocities can only be measured in relation to the speed of light, all such measurements automatically become infinite variables, as must all temporal quanta ipso facto. You cannot then employ before and after as temporal concepts because a computer so operant has to all intents and purposes escaped from temporality. So there you go.

  Of course a substantial amount of work remained to be done on clearing up the details. But as he’d just pointed out, there has to be a time and a place for everything, even when you’ve contrived to reduce such entities to infinitesimal variables. Mindful of his immediate duties as a host, Dobie waved in the direction of his computer and performed the needed introductions. “Oh, by the way. This is my computer.”

  “Your …?”

  “Computer.”

  “Aha. Yes. So I see.”

  But crackers … Olly was still quite seriously miffed. Here she was once again in the lair of Fu Manchu and all he did was roar total incomprehensibilities over the telephone … A whole morning wasted, was what it boiled down to …

  “And this is where I sit and work things out.”

  “The throwing the dice bit?”

  “Sort of.”

  “You do that on a computer?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Hey, that’s cool.”

  “It is?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Well, it’s really just a way of—”

  “And it’ll take messages? Like the one in my office?”

  “It should do,” Dobie said. Cautiously.

  “Maybe from Kate?”

  “Kate? … Kate doesn’t need to send me messages. She lives here.”

  “But she’s not here now, is she?”

  Dobie peered about him. “Er, no.”

  “Look,” Olly said. “Aren’t we supposed to be trying to find her? That’s what our partnership is all about, right? So I can talk to her and get the story straight. We like to get things straight when we work for the Snipe.”

/>   Dobie was at last able to grasp the meaning of this strange expression. Although he’d had a busy morning he had found more time than had Kate to con the front page spread of the Snipe and futhermore to ascertain the extent to which they of the Snipe had put one over those of their chief rival, the Daily Snoop, and indeed those of all the other London tabloids, none of which made mention of Drug Gang Killings or of Glam Death Doctors on the lam. Of course, that happy state of affairs was unlikely to continue. “You know, I don’t think I can find Kate. I’m not very good at that sort of thing. And besides, Kate can look after herself. She always has. I wouldn’t want her to think I was doing the protective-male bit, because she wouldn’t like it. No, no. She’d definitely disapprove.”

  “Oh God,” Olly said. “I think I’ll sit down if you don’t mind.”

  “Please do. Make yourself at home.” Dobie waved her towards the nearest armchair. Despite his outward show of confidence, he was somewhat perplexed. Of course he had to assume (as he always did) that Kate knew what she was doing and of course there could be little doubt now as to the identity of the true killer. That had become obvious, surely, to the meanest intelligence in the course of that morning. Whatever his present visitor might think, he wasn’t concerned with finding Kate but with the rather more onerous task of proving that she wasn’t, after all, the true killer. No, the real puzzle had been posed to him by Melanie and was rather trickier than he might have supposed. Because fountains and flowerpots aren’t at all the same thing …

  Olly, seated now none too comfortably in his favourite springless armchair, was rubbing the uppermost of her crossed knees thoughtfully. “Are you trying to tell me that she runs the outfit? The one who carries out all these operations? Because if so—”

  “Oh, I don’t carry out any operations. Good heavens, no.” Dobie laughed a little queasily. “Kate’s the one you want for that sort of thing.” She was, after all, a qualified medical practitioner. And a pathologist to boot. “Though I suppose you could say she operates mainly on corpses. He-he-he.”

  “I could say that, could I? I can quote you on that one?”

  “Why not?”

  “And what you do is, you set things up?”