The Strange Attractor (17 page)

Dobie reached over and checked the tape again. “He must have recorded that the day he died, since he says he got sacked the day before…”

“And he was expecting someone round…”

“So he must have made that tape just before whoever it was arrived… but he didn’t put it in your letterbox or even take it out of the machine because…”

“He was dead,” Kate said.

A contemplative silence.

“Can you make sense of it any other way?”

“No,” Kate said. “I can’t.”

“Nor can I.”

“So we’d better call Jackson.”

“Yes,” Dobie said. “I think so.”

That night Jackson had got in some kip at last and he was, in consequence, feeling a good deal more chipper today. But the pile of papers on his tray was higher than ever. Foxy Boxy had moved into his office to help him deal with them, but even their joint efforts barely served to stem the tide. And the telephone kept ringing, which didn’t help. Every cloud, however, had a silver lining. Pontin wasn’t in the office today.
That
helped.

And as the sheaves of paper were quietly disposed of, now and again a snippet of useful information came through. “Seen the B42 from the forensic lab?”

Jackson grunted. “What’s it say?”

“Says there’s nothing wrong with that whisky.”

“What whisky?”

“The whisky that Dobie character says he drank. We got his prints on the tumbler and that cut-glass thing—”

“Decanter.”

“Whatever. But the booze was okay. So his story’s a load of cobblers. But then,” Box said, “we always thought so.” He pushed the report across the desk. Jackson didn’t pick it up but rubbed his forehead instead.

“It got him his alibi, though. Don’t forget that.”

“You’d have thought he could have come up with something a little less…”

“Improbable.”

“Barmy, I was going to say.”

“I haven’t seen my wife and kids,” Jackson said, “these past three days. Nor have you, hardly. What does that make
us
?”

“There have to be easier ways, it’s true.”

“Makes you want to turn to crime,” Jackson said. The telephone rang and he answered it. “Jackson, yes… Who?… Oh
no
… I mean yes, Mr Dobie. We were just talking about
you
…”

Back in Sammy’s room Kate and Dobie looked at each other.

“How long?”

“He said about twenty minutes.”

Kate nodded and Dobie sat down wearily on the foot of the bed. Over by the far wall the tape was turning smoothly, soothingly, not Sammy this time but Oscar Petersen, fingers expertly gliding over piano keys, pulling a simple theme this way and that, worrying it like a terrier. Behind the piano, Barney Kessel’s guitar. And behind the guitar an unheard voice, singing on the cracks between the notes, tumty-
tum
tummy-
tum
-ti-tum. “This was one of them,” Dobie said.

“One of what?”

“One of the songs that Jenny was always singing. ‘One of Those Things’, it’s called. She didn’t know the words, of course. Nor do I.” The track coming to an end in a triumphant ascending ripple, Dobie’s head cocked a little to one side, listening. “It’s funny. I’ve got quite a good ear for a tune. Most mathematicians have, or so I’m told. But I can never… Mind you, it’s catchy, isn’t it? Sticks in the mind.”

“A lot of people have thought so. What the hell are you
on
about, Dobie?”

Oscar started off on another track and Dobie nodded.

“Yes. ‘Night And Day’. That one, too. Talking about mathematics, did you know that the statistical laws of probability relate to coincidence? Using the word, that is, in its technical sense. Which I suppose isn’t really —”

Kate got to her feet. “I think I’ll go downstairs. Catch the doorbell when it rings. I’ve suddenly started liking this room a whole lot less than ever.”

Dobie didn’t reply, or even look up until the door had closed behind her. He wondered, after she’d gone, why she had said that. He was beginning to like this room very much. It was the right size and the right shape to comfort an inner loneliness. It was a good room for reading or for listening to music or for spending long hours stooped over a monitor screen, except that the hours wouldn’t be long because time didn’t seem to have too much meaning here. Maybe Sammy had found that out. It was very likely.

It conformed, in other words, to the statistical laws of probability. From whence you derived the concept of the possible. And hence the idea of certain concrete possibilities. Dobie got up, too, and began to search.

Under the bed, first of all. Not only peering into the shadows there, but probing with his fingertips. He didn’t find anything. The chest of drawers didn’t reveal anything very extraordinary, either; nor did the shelves where the cassette-player stood and where Oscar now played ‘In the Still of the Night’, slow melancholy chords breaking up abruptly into agitated waves like those on the surface of a wind-ruffled sea, though Dobie took down the books that also stood there one by one and leafed through them carefully. The wardrobe… Dobie opened the wardrobe. Sammy’s suits and sports coats and his famous raincoat all hanging in a row, Dobie’s own spare suit alongside. On the top shelf the hat, a baseball cap, a dozen or so pairs of socks. On the bottom shelf… a bit of a mess. Three pairs of shoes and a pair of trainers, these last thrown in indiscriminately. A small pile of six or eight soft-porn magazines and a bigger collection of
New Scientist
weeklies. A peculiar tangle of wires and pulleys that turned out to be a discarded chest-expander. A cardboard box containing a computerised chess set. A plastic bag, bearing a familiar logo, containing moderately heavy objects that clinked. Dobie took it out, opened it. Inside were two one-pound jars of peanut butter.

Jackson made a neat polyurethane packet of Sammy and then slid him carefully into a large brown evidence envelope. “… Egg on my face all right,” he said. “
And
all down the front of my best suit. How we missed out on that, I’ll never know.”

“It’s his voice all right,” Kate said. Now that she had calmed down a little, her former mood of aggressiveness seemed to have returned. “I can swear to it if you want. You can screw around all you want with voiceprints but you’ll be wasting your time. That’s Sammy.”

“No need for anyone to swear to anything,” Jackson said placatorily. “Though tomorrow I’ll be asking you for a statement as to how exactly you came to find it. A formal statement, that is. And then I’ll have to try and make sure the Superintendent doesn’t get to see it.” He made a soft clucking noise with his tongue, expressive of incredulity and regret. “You know, if you happen across a bloke on the floor with his brains blown out and a gun in his hand you tend not to look too far beyond the obvious. Maybe in books you do. In police work you don’t. I’ll admit I really intended to come back here and take a bit more of a dekko, but I was having a busy day and somehow… Well, they can skin me alive on this one and they probably will, if that’s any consolation to you.”

“You agree it would have made a difference? To the verdict?”

“Of course it would, Mr Dobie. The case’ll have to be reopened. I don’t say that tape makes suicide a complete impossibility, he could have had a sudden change of mind or… But it shifts the odds in favour of murder, instead of the other way round. And if so, somebody fooled us. Fooled us completely. And we don’t like that.”

“Only because you didn’t have all the evidence.”

“Because we didn’t
find
all the evidence. That could have been a worse mistake than you probably think.”

“In what way?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. What worries me is that someone may have thought it too damned
easy
. Setting it up so we’d swallow it hook, line and sinker, as the saying has it.”

“And felt encouraged to do it again?”

“That’s
it
, Mr Dobie. That’s how it happens. It’s like going over the top of a hill, for some people. All of a sudden there’s nothing to stop you.”

Jackson’s remark may not have been intended to provoke a sudden heavy silence, but it did. After a while Dobie started to scratch his kneecap, his fingernails making a rasping noise against the cloth of his trouser-leg like heavy breathing. “Are you saying you can see some kind of connection…?”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t draw
that
conclusion. Not just yet.”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t.” But Kate, who was getting used to Dobie’s little ways, sensed that he had now come to
some
kind of a conclusion or, anyway, decision. “I suppose,” he said, staring moodily at his recently-relinquished knee-joint, “you checked the room for fingerprints? When it happened?”

“We did,” Jackson said. “But maybe not thoroughly enough. Don’t worry on that account, though. Nine o’clock tomorrow morning I’ll have the dabs boys round and this time they won’t miss out a thing, I promise you that.”

“Can they still
get
prints? I mean, it’s been over a week…”

“Oh Lord, yes. On any kind of a decent surface—”

“Glass?”

“What?”

“Is glass any good?”

Dobie had of course to be joking, or so Jackson’s expression suggested. “Glass? That’s just about the best.”

“That’s what I thought.” Dobie picked up the plastic bag from the floor at his feet. “You may like to check on those for a start.”

Jackson opened the bag and peered suspiciously into it. “Where’d these come from?”

“Bottom shelf of the wardrobe. Could you check on them tonight? As a personal favour?”

“What makes you think I owe you any personal favours?”

“I think you owe Sammy Cantwell one.”

Jackson nodded slowly. “I might do at that. Just what is it that you’re holding back on
this
time, Mr Dobie?”

“I’m not holding back on anything,” Dobie said. “Detective-Sergeant Box knows all about it.”

“All about what? Peanut butter?”

“Yes,” Dobie said. “Peanut butter.”

All kinds of nice breakfast things were on Kate’s kitchen table. Corn flakes, toast on a toast rack, unsalted butter, Oxford marmalade, sugar in a bowl, milk in a jug, hot coffee in a pot and on two plates the dissected remnants of two large Scotch kippers. The one notable omission was remedied by Inspector Jackson who, arriving towards the end of the meal, plonked the two unopened jars heftily down on the table. This, prior to turning round a kitchen chair and sitting down on it back to front. The Major, Dobie thought, hadn’t tried out that one.

“The prints on those damned jars of yours,” Jackson said without preamble, “are whose I haven’t much doubt but that you thought they were, Mr Dobie. So what I want to know is, what’s the game? Is it a private fight or can anyone join in?”

“Have some coffee, Inspector.” Kate was in a sunnier mood this morning.

“I won’t, thank you. I’d prefer an answer to my question.”

Not so Jackson.

“I’m not playing any kind of game,” Dobie said a little indistinctly, his mouth being more than half full of buttered toast. “I just wanted to be sure about it. The peanut butter by itself would hardly have convinced you, any more than this jar of marmalade would. It’s very nice, by the way. I can recommend it.”

“Now look,” Jackson said. “The Chief Constable has reopened the Cantwell file all right, so in effect I’m now undertaking a murder inquiry.
Another
murder inquiry, as if I didn’t have enough under my belt already. I’d be obliged if you’d both treat this as a serious matter.”

“I can only tell you what I think,” Dobie said, reaching across the table for another slice. He was breakfasting more energetically than usual; perhaps his change of ambience was conducive to a hearty appetite.

“That might do for a start.”

“Well,
if
it was murder, someone took the trouble to make it look like a suicide.”

“That would seem to be the case, yes.”

“And that
someone
was probably the person Sammy was waiting to see when he recorded that message for Kate.”

“Since that person has never come forward, I agree that’s quite likely.”

“Who was also very probably the person Sammy used to lend his room to, on occasion. That was how he was
helping out
, as he put it. Doing somebody a good turn, he said. That’s what I think he must have meant.”