The Strange Attractor (15 page)

“… But,” Corder said, a little wistfully, “if the Min. of Health takes it up, as they’re almost bound to, it’d probably get me a peerage. You know, Jane had her heart set on that. I don’t know that I’m so very keen. It’s not as though I had a son or someone who would… But there you are.” He paused for a space. “Shit. Sometimes you wonder.”

“What kind of stuff did Cantwell have access to?”

“
I
don’t know. Ask Roger Michaels about it. My security bloke.
He
’ll have all the details if you’re interested. But you didn’t come here to talk about my business problems, did you?”

“No. Not really.”

“Let’s take another little drink to it, then.”

With all that liquid refreshment sloshing around inside him, Dobie didn’t fancy getting straight back into his car and driving off. Not with the minatory figure of a hefty police constable still guarding the front gate. A little fresh air and exercise was first of all indicated. Accordingly, Dobie turned sharp left on leaving, entering thus the Pantmawr garden, and began to walk up and down on the lawn. It was an extensive lawn but very patchy, the grass clearly finding the salt sea air not much to its liking. At some fifty yards’ distance from the house it indeed gave up the struggle completely, yielding to a rough sandy shingle which degenerated in turn into the shale and loose rocks that marked the edge of the sea-cliff; not a very precipitous cliff, but steep enough for a low protective wall to have been built along it. On this stone wall Dobie saw that Wendy was seated, shoulders slightly hunched, gazing out to sea. He wasn’t sure that she’d be in a mood to appreciate company, but as his unwary approach had not gone unremarked he couldn’t very well sheer away without at least the appearance of discourtesy. He continued his approach, therefore, and sat down beside her. Like many middle-aged men, Dobie felt a certain unease when conversing with the grown-up children of old friends; you never knew whether to include them, so to speak, within the aura of that friendship or to treat them as independent entities, and fiercely independent entities at that. He even felt a little uneasy about Wendy
qua
entity; there had always been something a bit tomboyish about her which probably had something to do with what Alec had said. A daughter instead of a son. Girls are all too often aware of these things.

Anyway, a minute or so had gone by and neither of them had so far said anything. It was Wendy, in fact, who broke the silence first. “… I just can’t think of anything to say.”

“No,” Dobie said, shifting his position slightly. “There isn’t anything, really.”

“It’s even worse for you than it is for Dad. I mean you hadn’t been married all that long, had you?”

“Not long. But I wouldn’t say it makes it any worse.”

“I didn’t really know her very well. I met her a few times
here
, of course, at Mum’s coffee mornings and things like that. She seemed very nice. Maybe,” Wendy said, “a little bit
young
for you.”

Dobie wondered if a certain bitchiness of disposition was an inherited quality or latent in the species.
With women, I suppose it usually is
. It might have been Jane talking. “I didn’t really know her very well, either.”

“Maybe you’d rather not talk about it.”

“I’d rather not
have
to talk about it. But with you, it’s all right.”

“I know what you mean,” Wendy said. “Yes. It’s so
awful
.”

A tear rolled slowly down her left cheek. Dobie, suddenly reminded of that time with Kate in the cemetery, how many weeks ago?… reached for his handkerchief again. But Wendy shook her head.

“I liked her but I didn’t like Mum.
That
’s what’s awful. And it’s no use Dad telling me not to worry about it, it’s just the same with him. They didn’t get on. I know it and
he
knows it but he won’t admit it. Parents are just
stupid
about things like that.”

“That’s what my students tell me sometimes. But quite often they’re mistaken. When you’re that age,” Dobie said, “it’s quite easy to mistake the nature of a relationship. I suppose at
any
age, for that matter.”

“Well, I think I know more about it than you do.”

“People
are
stupid,” Dobie said. “I’m not denying that.”

But that’s not what makes them unhappy, he thought, walking away. It should do. But it doesn’t. No one worries much about being stupid. It’s always other people’s stupidity that worries them. And makes them feel miserable. That wasn’t logical. Though in another way it was. It was logical and it was illogical. That wasn’t possible. Not possible for him to start driving, either. Not like this. He’d just go on walking for a little while longer…

Black coffee again. The balance of polar opposites, Dobie thought. Whisky and black coffee. Logical and illogical. Jane and Jenny. Ghetto-blasters and hearing aids. No end to the series. He drank black coffee and groaned as Kate at once poured him out another steaming cupful.

“Go on. Drink the rest of it up. And then you can sleep it off. You should be dam’ well ashamed of yourself but you know that already.”

“Bollocks. I’m as chirpy as a cricket. Hey, listen. Kate?”

“
Now
what?”

“About the keys.”

“What keys?”

“Keys to this place. This room. Has anyone else got them? Because someone’s been
in
there, you see.”

“With designs on your virtue?… Wasn’t me. Maybe the neighbour’s cat.”

“No. I’m not joking. You always keep this room locked, don’t you?”

“
And
the front door.
And
the clinic. I’m careful about that. I have to be.”

“All the same, someone took Sammy’s hat and raincoat and then brought them back. With this note in the raincoat pocket.”

Kate took it and read it much as Corder had done. “I don’t get it.”

“That’s the note that was on Jane Corder’s door when I arrived that night. And that’s the hat and raincoat the man who killed her was wearing. I wasn’t going to tell you about it because I thought you might be worried… But… I do have to know about the keys.”

“Are you going to tell Jackson about it? That’s more to the point.”

“No,” Dobie said. “I’m not.”

“Because you think it isn’t important?”

“Because I think it is.”

“God, Dobie, are you
sure
?”

“Am I sure of my facts? Yes. Am I sure that I know what I’m doing? No. Sammy must have had the keys. What happened to them?”

“I’ve got them.”

“He could have had them copied and given them to someone else.”

“Why should he have? Why should anyone want to pinch his raincoat? You say they’re facts but they don’t make any kind of sense.”

“They’re facts for all that. Your clinic’s open every morning, isn’t it? And again in the evenings? Anyone could walk in and out. You wouldn’t know.”

“That’s why Sammy always kept his door locked when he was out at work.” Kate was looking round the room now as though she’d never seen it before. With her little button eyes bright as a bird’s. Hers was a bright face, when you looked at it closely. Not very pretty, no. But bright.

“I’ll tell you something else I learned this morning,” Dobie said. “Alec told me. They gave Sammy the sack.”

“They
sacked
him? I don’t believe it.”

“Alec should know.”

“What for?”

“For stealing. Or that’s what it amounts to.”

“This is crazy,” Kate said. “Stealing
what
?”

“Information. You know. Industrial spinach,” Dobie said. “Design plans and that sort of thing. I’ll try to find out a bit more about it tomorrow.”

“But that man didn’t say anything about it at the inquest.”

“That’s what
I
said. And Alec said they didn’t want it to come out. No point in it, since Sammy was dead.”

“I can see
that
.” The eyes were now two lambent points of fire. God, Dobie thought, she
is
quite pretty when she gets angry. The Irish blood, maybe. “They give him the sack and he shoots himself, yes, that looks kind of bad. So we won’t mention it. But if the coroner bites me in the neck for knowing that he had a gun, that’s my own silly fault. Too bad. If he weren’t a friend of yours,
I
’d shoot the bugger.”

“That wasn’t quite how he put it.”

“I’ll bet it wasn’t.”

“I’ll find out about it, Kate. Really I will.”

“Forget it,” Kate said. “You’ve got troubles of your own.”

“I
want
to find out about it.”

“Well, I
don’t
want you to. I know you mean well but you’re accident-prone.”

“Okay,” Dobie said. “So you’re a doctor. Why don’t we go out for a little stroll together? – so you can keep a watchful eye on me.”

Kate considered this suggestion thoughtfully. “Well… It
is
quite a nice evening.”

Monday morning. And business as usual, at Corder Acoustics. All the staff carrying on regardless.

In keeping with this outdated military philosophy, the desk had a plaque on it which said
MAJOR R.M. MICHAELS MC
. The desk wasn’t as large as Dickie Bird’s and the office wasn’t nearly as imposing, its walls being festooned with papers suspended from bulldog clips and with dilapidated year planners; behind the desk, however, Major Michaels was getting the show on the road with customary zest, barking vigorously into a telephone. “Of course, Mr Corder, if that’s what you wish… No, no problem at all. I’ll do that thing…” He put down the receiver and smiled at Dobie, displaying in the process an alarming number of gleamingly white incisors. “Well, that seems to be all in order, Mr Dobie. Now then. Cantwell, I think you said…”

He swivelled his chair vigorously to the right and then swivelled it back again.

“… What can I tell you?”

“I understand you have a security problem.”

“Well, yes, we have. I have to agree. Hearing aids. Ha!
Bloody hell!
Hearing aids! You can just imagine it.”

“Well, not quite,” Dobie said diffidently. “Not, that’s to say, from your viewpoint.”

“They’re so damned
small
,” Michaels said. “Like,
tiny
. You stick one in your ear and it’s almost invisible, that’s how it’s
supposed
to be, and of course there are other places where you could stick one, if you see what I mean, like where the monkey put the nuts, that’s supposing you wanted to smuggle one out of here. No way of stopping it. Other than to make sure no unauthorised person gets hold of one in the first place.”

“And that’s what you’ve done?”

“That’s what we
try
to do. But then there’s all kinds of technical griff that’d be very useful to any well-informed competitor. Design print-outs, test records, calculations, production forecasts even…”

“Who would want to buy that sort of stuff?”

“Well, I like to think we have the British opposition just about weighed up. We know
them
and they know
us
and no hard feelings. But there’s quite a number of those Common Market chaps I don’t know from a cake of soap and don’t know that I want to frightfully. The Jerries are the worst, of course, but the Frogs and even some of the Swedes are getting pretty hot. It’s all becoming a bit of a nightmare, frankly.”

“Yes,” Dobie said. “I can see that it must be.”

“Specially when you’re dealing with people who may be simply whizzo at hi-tech electronics but otherwise never seem to know if it’s Easter Island they’re on or Maundy Thursday. They just shove papers and things into their overalls and then go buzzing about from place to place like a blue-arsed bee in a bakery. Okay, so it’s just plain carelessness, but what if every once in a while it isn’t?”

Dobie was somewhat taken aback by the Major’s style of conversation, in which the phrases came out in a series of explosions, each concluded with a formidable snap of the teeth, the general effect being that of a man proceeding with undue haste across an exceptionally well-prepared minefield. “Was that,” he asked, “what Sammy Cantwell did?”