The Shy Traffickers (Professor Dobie Book 4) Read online

  “Yes, but—”

  “I mean, that’s it, Dobie, you may be a ham-handed twit at times but you do respect my feelings, or you try to. And that bastard never did. He still doesn’t, showing up like … And that’s not the half of it. No, plenty went wrong, believe you me.”

  “Perhaps you weren’t well suited.”

  “Exactly.”

  … More to this, Dobie felt, than met the eye. But then in Kate’s case that which met the eye was – in his opinion, anyway – so instantly agreeable that there seemed to be little point in pursuing these matters any further. Especially as if she didn’t want to expound them in intimate detail, then she wouldn’t. His not to … How did it go? … Be or not to be? … No. That wasn’t it. One should of course bear in mind, Dobie thought, shaking his head sadly, that any guy voluntarily walking out on such an eminently desirable property had to be accounted ipso facto some kind of imbecile, cretin or chateau-bottled cluck. One should perhaps sympathise. Or no, again. One perhaps shouldn’t.

  “For God’s sake, Dobie, don’t just sit there wagging your head about like a palm tree in a hurricane. It’s an irritating habit.”

  And indeed she did seem to be in a somewhat nervy state tonight. Still, that was understandable. “Sorry,” Dobie said. “I didn’t realise I was expected to do something.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Ah.”

  They stared at each other inimically, breathing heavily. This was their normal and mutually recognised practice before heading for the bedroom together, the element of potential altercation adding a touch of spice to subsequent proceedings and usually resolving itself through them in an altogether satisfactory way; tonight, though, there would be a departure from custom. They went on staring at each other in silence until the doorbell rang again, whereupon Kate rose a little tiredly to her feet.

  “I’ll go,” she said.

  This was a reversion to custom in another sense, since she always did. As a practising GP she was not infrequently called out to deal with unexpected emergencies and every now and again the emergencies arrived at her front door instead. And naturally nobody ever called for Dobie. He listened to the sound of her footsteps descending the stairs, the more distant click of the door safety lock going back, to a murmur of muted voices and then to the tap of Kate’s heels coming up the stairs again, followed this time by heavier and very much thumpier footsteps. A few moments later she re-entered the room, closely pursued by two large men in grey suits. One of them Dobie recognised almost at once. “Oh hullo, Jacko,” he said. The other geezer … Yes, he’d seen the other bloke somewhere before. And quite recently. But where?

  “Detective-Inspector Crumb,” Jackson said lugubriously, effecting the needed introduction. “Sorry to intrude upon your evening, Mr Dobie. It’s a professional matter. Not just a sociable call, I mean to say.”

  Dobie was nonetheless prepared to be cordial. “Delighted to meet you, Inspector Bum.”

  “Crumb.”

  “Eh?”

  “Crumb. With a B.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Mr Dobie’s a professor of mathematics, like I told you,” Jackson said, coming hurriedly to the rescue. “At the university here. Also something by way of being an amacher goof. I mean, sloof. You could say he enjoys our confidence. Up to a point.”

  Dobie, who had now remembered where he had seen this Bumb crumb before, perceived an immediate opportunity to test his powers of deduction. Or induction, to be precise. “So how’s the family, Inspector?”

  “I haven’t got a family.”

  “You haven’t?”

  “No. Unless you mean my old grandma out at Beccles.”

  A bit of a facer, this. “So you’re not interested in second-hand prams?”

  “No. Not at all. Are you?”

  “No. Well, no. Not really. But then I’ve never been to Eccles, either.”

  Crumb nodded several times very, very slowly. “Much as I’m enjoying our little conversation, Professor, I’m afraid our business here is really with Dr Coyle. And as it’s by nature of being somewhat private—”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Kate said, a trifle over-brusquely. “Let’s all sit down and get it over and done with. If it’s about that p.m. I did last week, I don’t understand why—”

  “No, no,” Jackson said, waving his hand about in disclaimer. “No problem there, none at all. No, this is another matter altogether, rather an urgent matter, too, which is why …” They all sat down, except of course for Dobie, who was sitting down already. “In fact it’s about one of your patients we want some inflammation about.” A faint shade of perplexity appeared upon his face. The intricacies of English grammar were always something of a mystery to Jackson. “That’s to say which … About which …”

  “I can’t disclose any confidential information about any of my patients, Jacko. You know that already.”

  “I know all that, doctor, give me credit, but your hypocritic oath doesn’t come into it, all we really want to know is who he is or at least what name he’s given you. Okay? … Now this is a fairly tall well-built bloke, late thirties, came into your clinic round about four o’clock this afternoon—”

  “Six minutes past four,” Crumb said. “Exactly.”

  “Yes, probably wanted treatment for his hand because he had it wrapped up in a great big bandage. Got him now? … So if you’d just be good enough to look out his medical card—”

  “I don’t have to. I know who he is.”

  “You do?”

  “I ought to. He’s my husband.”

  This pronouncement seemed to induce, at least in Jackson, some considerable surprise and even consternation. He stared at her in silence for several seconds. “Your husband …?”

  “Or my ex-husband, if you like. Unless you want to be technical. I mean, we’ve been separated for years, but we’re not divorced.”

  “But Kate …” Jackson, in his agitation, had become forgetful of protocol. “I thought your husband—”

  “Look, I can see you’re surprised but so was I. I hadn’t so much as seen him for years and years and then this afternoon … he walks in on me, just like that … But why are you … Oh God, don’t tell me he’s in trouble again …?”

  The other one, the Crumb-with-a-bee, had meantime taken from his pocket some kind of state-of-the-art electronic-cum-digital notebook and was clearly prepared to start stabbing away at it purposefully. “Let’s just get the details down then, shall we?” He fixed Kate with an intense regard. “Name?”

  “Kate,” Dobie said, anxious to be helpful.

  “Not her name, you … His.”

  “Coyle. Kevin Christopher Coyle. And you stay out of this, Dobie.”

  “Yes,” Jackson said. “We’ll do without the extrapolations, Mr Dobie, if you don’t mind. They only confuse the issue.”

  “But what is the issue?”

  “That,” Crumb said patiently, “is what we’re trying to find out. In trouble again, you said just now … Am I to take it your husband has a police record?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t mean that kind of trouble.”

  “Then what sort of trouble had you in mind?”

  “Just trouble in general,” Kate said. “If there’s any going, Kevin tends to find it. Or anyway, he always used to.”

  “It might help if you could be more specific.”

  “Well, he got struck off, by way of example. Before we split up. That wasn’t the cause of it, mind, but it sure as hell didn’t help.”

  Crumb looked bewildered. “Struck off? Split up?” Some axe or chain-saw serial murderer, he appeared to have surmised, had to have been at work. He pressed several wrong buttons in his agitation.

  “Yes. Off the medical register. So after that he couldn’t practise as a doctor and that was inconvenient because at that time we had a partnership. Here. In this clinic.”

  “Ah.” Crumb started to press other small buttons with remarkable rapidity. “He’s a do
ctor, too. I follow you now.”

  “Not any more he isn’t. Or not in this country. That’s why he went abroad, you see, to work some place where people mightn’t be so fussy. In the Emirates, in fact. To begin with.”

  “… Where?”

  “The Arabian Gulf. You know … With one of the oil companies, I think. But I lost touch with him pretty quickly. Well, almost at once, in fact.” Kate shrugged. “As he never wrote. And if he had, I probably wouldn’t have replied.”

  “It wasn’t a friendly separation, then?”

  “We didn’t quarrel about it, if that’s what you mean. There wasn’t time for anything like that, he … he upped sticks and left, just like that. But when he told me he was going I certainly didn’t raise any objection. I was pretty busy at the time, right? … trying to save the practice.”

  “And since you’re still here practising, I take it you succeeded.”

  “After a fashion.”

  “And all this happened … when?”

  “Eight years ago. A little over.”

  “And you’ve seen nothing of him in all that time?”

  “Seen nothing, heard nothing. Other than very indirectly.”

  “… Then he suddenly showed up today.”

  “Yes.”

  “Unexpectedly.”

  “Yes.”

  “A bit odd, isn’t it?”

  “Very.”

  Crumb looked nonplussed. So did Dobie.

  “Well, did he give any sort of … reason for it?”

  “No. Not really. Except he told me he planned to leave for the States very shortly and … he thought he’d like to see me before he left. That’s all there was to it.”

  “He didn’t propose any kind of a reunion?”

  “He asked me if I’d like to go with him, yes. But he wasn’t serious. He couldn’t have been.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “He must’ve known there’d be no way I’d chuck up the practice and leave, just like that. That’d be totally irresponsible. Besides,” Kate said, “I’ve formed another attachment.”

  “Yes. Yes. I see. That’s, ah … to Mr Dobie here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did your husband know about that?”

  “He certainly seemed to. But anyone could have told him. It’s been going on for some while now … and we haven’t made any effort to keep it a secret. Why should we?”

  “You didn’t ever consider getting a divorce? In the circumstances I’d’ve thought—”

  “No,” Kate said. “I’m supposed to be some kind of a Catholic and so is he. Kevin, I mean. Look, what’s all this got to do with … What’s all this about?”

  “We’re police officers conducting a routine inquiry. That’s all.”

  “Ah, come on, there has to be more to it than that.”

  Jackson cleared his throat rather more noisily than usual. “This officer’s from the Special Branch, Dr Coyle. I should perhaps have made that clear to you.”

  “Okay, but I don’t see—”

  “I’ll tell you this much,” Crumb said. “Immediately before he went to see you, your husband kept what we have to assume was an appointment with a gentleman in whom the Branch are taking a very particular interest. A business appointment of some kind. You wouldn’t know anything about that, I suppose?”

  “No. I’ve told you, I didn’t even know he was in Cardiff.”

  “He didn’t mention the matter to you at any point in the conversation?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Except …”

  Crumb looked up. “Yes?”

  “… You’re interested in this other gentleman because of some kind of criminal connection?”

  “As I’m a policeman, that seems to be a reasonable inference. Though I ought to add that the gentleman in question has never to my knowledge been charged with a criminal offence.”

  “Well,” Kate said. “We were talking about that bandaged hand of his, you see, and he said it was an accident, he caught it in a car door or something, but then he said that … he said he thought someone was trying to kill him.”

  “Really? … And he wasn’t joking?”

  “I thought at the time he was exaggerating and I still do. But joking … No, I didn’t think he was joking. I suppose I just didn’t find it particularly surprising. But why don’t you ask him about it?”

  “That mightn’t be advisable at the present stage. However, if you could give us his present address—”

  “I don’t have it. He didn’t leave it.”

  Crumb seemed unperturbed. “He left something else, though, I think.”

  “Something else?”

  “He was carrying a bag when he came into your clinic. He didn’t have it when he left.”

  “Oh, his bag, yes, that’s right. He asked me to look after it for him. Said he was tired of toting the thing around.”

  “So he’ll be coming back to pick it up.”

  “Yes. But he didn’t say when.”

  Crumb raised his eyes from his magic box, shut it and put it away in his pocket. “Might we see it?”

  “No.”

  “… No?”

  “No way. That’s my husband’s personal property, he asked me to look after it for him, I said I would and so I will. You don’t get to see it without a warrant. Sorry.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t proposing to take it away, no, not for a moment. But it might assist us in our inquiries if we could just … No. I see. Well, you’re within your rights, of course.”

  “Yes, I am, and you’re going way outside yours.”

  “Don’t get so het up, Ka … Dr Coyle.” Jackson, attempting another tactful intervention. “Any policeman has the right to ask a member of the public to assist him in the circumlocution of his duties, you know that as well as I do.”

  “And any member of the public has the right to refuse, especially when she’s also a member of the medical profession and an officer of the Crown.”

  “That’s all right,” Crumb said, standing up and hitching at the waistband of his trousers. “Dr Coyle’s been most cooperative. I’m extremely grateful.”

  He didn’t, however, look it. He looked peeved.

  “… Not quite what I expected. No, not what I expected at all.”

  “Bit of a surprise to me, too,” Jackson said, “I can assure you. Katie Coyle’s husband, well … Who’d’ve thought it?”

  “You know her well, I suppose.”

  “Of course I know her well. She’s been doing a lot of our path work these past five years. She’s good, what’s more. Leastwise, she hasn’t made any mistakes as I’m aware of, not so far.”

  “But you never knew the husband?”

  “No. Never met him. I remember the … I remember that business she was talking about, though. Quite a big scandal at the time.”

  “What happened, exactly?”

  “One of his patients committed suicide. Turned out he’d been bonking her, which made it worse, of course, and then there was some question of misappropriation of drugs and general … What’s the word? …”

  “Malpractice?”

  “Something like that, yes. And some of his other patients made insinuwhat’sits in the Coroner’s court and … in short, a whole lot of hoo-ha. There was a police investigation all right, old Eddie Price ran it I seem to remember, but they didn’t come up with anything concrete so … he’s not on the books, that’s true enough.”

  Jackson took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow with it. It was confoundedly hot that evening.

  “You reckon the rest of it was true?”

  “The rest of what?”

  “… Of what she said?”

  “Far as I know, yes. Kate’s a pretty truthful person, on the whole.”

  Crumb didn’t seem to be finding the heat at all perturbing. He looked to have passed some little time in a hot climate himself, unless it had all been done with a sun-lamp. He was turning his head from side to side as they walked, taking in the local s
cenery with an air of mild disapproval; indeed he didn’t fancy Cardiff all that rotten, what he’d seen of it. He was wondering if some means couldn’t be contrived of getting Olly out here to share his temporary exile … Wales of course was the Third World as far as she was concerned, if not the Fourth, but …

  “Well,” he said. “I still reckon he has to be our runner. This Coyle character. I’ll get my principal on to him right away. Maybe Interpol have got something on him even if CRO haven’t. You reckon your boys can go on running surveillance on Primrose in the meantime?”

  “I dunno.” Jackson was dubious. “We’re pretty tight stretched at the moment. And when it comes to running a round-the-clock—”

  “Yes, but this is our laddybucks, I’m convinced of it. He’ll be making an appointment with Primrose any time now, if he hasn’t done so already. Forty-eight hours should do it, if you can manage that.”

  “I suppose I could persuade the Super—”

  “And I’ll keep an eye on his hotel, as best I can. It’s only a one-night stint after all. Nothing to it.”

  Within a couple of hours or so Dim Smith would be arriving with the surveillance van, which would certainly make things a whole lot easier still. But Crumb wasn’t about to let Jackson, or any other of the local rozzers, know about that. Those of the Special Branch liked to keep their little professional secrets.

  “If,” Jackson said, “that’s where he is.”

  “Hey, come on, I checked him in myself.”

  “Yes. He went there straight from Kate’s place, you said.”

  “So he did. It’s only a five-minute walk.”

  “Which makes that bag business all the odder,” Jackson said. “Why would he want to leave it with Kate if he was going straight back to the hotel? See what I mean? Whereas if he was planning to do a bit of fast skipping around … switching hotels, say …”

  “Yes, you got a point there. Maybe you’d better get something else and p.d.q.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a warrant.”

  “… You reckon?”

  “Sure. We ought to take a look at that bag, whether the lady’s a Crown court officer or not. She got a little bit too uptight about that one, didn’t you think?”