The Strange Attractor (2 page)

But whatever Jenny was going through, it wasn’t like that at all.

Ceasing to muse sadly upon the dear departed days of his full and entertaining sex life, Dobie pushed open the door of his flat – yes, still the same small flat – and went in. At once he heard his wife’s voice upraised in song, cheerfully trilling some outdated number vaguely to be associated with Fred Astaire and Ginger what’s-her-name. Off key, of course.
That
was one of the things. She was always
singing
. This time her voice was emanating from the bedroom. Dobie plonked down his briefcase where it always went, on the small table in the narrow hallway, and peered round the half-open door. “Oh, it’s you,” he said.

Jenny had short black hair and she was sitting in front of the dressing-table mirror, brushing it. She seemed disposed to treat this remark with a merited contempt. “Who else would it be?”

“I mean, you’re not out,” Dobie explained. “You’re in.”

“Looks like it,” Jenny said. “How’d the exams go?”

“I was lecturing today.”

“Ah.”

Dobie found her quite often in the bedroom. It was arguably the nicest room in the flat, or anyway the only one with any kind of a view. The view was of the carport outside and of a few sheltering trees, but it was better than nothing. And there were French windows, open now to the summer air, giving on to a balcony from where you got exactly the same view, this being a ground-floor flat. “Well, I’m going out this evening,” Jenny said. “Jane phoned. So you can get on with your marking.”

“Ah,” Dobie said.

Papers to mark. Quite so. He went back to pick up his briefcase and went through the sitting-room to his study. So-called. Not a sparkling conversation, that, but characteristic.

To be fair, he hadn’t married Jenny because of her conversational prowess. These days it was difficult to remember why he
had
married her, really. Or why she’d married him. Though in his case no doubt a normal concupiscence had played its part. A holiday affair, you could say, that had got out of hand. Dobie wasn’t very good at taking holidays and there it was. Last year he’d tried one of those package things on the Côte d’Azur and after the usual never-agains he’d run into Jenny or more exactly into Jenny’s bikini and had changed his mind. Jenny had been the travel agency courier and, Dobie’s French being rudimentary, had been useful to him in all kinds of ways. Of course nearly
all
the women at the hotel had worn bikinis round the pool but Jenny had been twenty years younger than they were and you couldn’t really… Quite. She was also twenty years younger than he was but that hadn’t seemed to matter at the time. Or now, for that matter.
That
wasn’t the problem. Or he didn’t think so.

Dobie seated himself in his revolving chair and stared for a while at Eddie. Eddie was good at problems.
Some private problem, then? One has to suppose so.
Obviously Cantwell had had a few. Dobie found it difficult, though, to imagine the kind of problems that might cause a promising young lad of twenty-something to pick up a gun and fire it the wrong way round. Smith and Wesson’s cure for insomnia. Yes. Most amusing.

He still couldn’t remember what Cantwell looked like. Or
had
looked like. And that was annoying. He addressed himself to Eddie’s keyboard and rattled out the necessary instructions. Eddie hurriedly searched for Cantwell and found him almost at once.

CANTWELL SJ 21043

ELEC ENG 1986

SUPERVISOR DJ MARRYAT

The record was on file, anyway. Dobie typed

CHECK FINAL C/A FIGURES

and waited for Eddie to come up with the goods. Eddie barely hesitated.

MATHS 92

ENG DRAWING 74

MECH TECH 70

PHYSICS 84

ELEC ENG 68

APP THERMO 65

ELEC MACHINERY 71

Eddie didn’t need to supply the average figure; Dobie could work that out in his head and almost as fast. It was pretty commendable. That 92 for Maths would have been on Wain’s marking but even so. Anyone coming up with a final year 92 had to be a mathematician of a kind; someone whose cerebral processes might be different to Dobie’s own but in no way radically dissimilar. Of course, they were now. It was puzzling.

Feeling the need for a caffeine stimulant, Dobie switched off Eddie and switched on the electric kettle in the kitchen instead. Jenny, as was evident, had taken her lunch in the kitchen and the table was strewn with cracker crumbs and liberally anointed with smears of peanut butter. Jenny was
addicted
to peanut butter. Dobie, who was fast becoming addicted to clearing up after her, did so while the kettle boiled. Afterwards and bearing his steaming mug he wandered back into the bedroom, where Jenny was donning various of her glad rags preparatory to going out. Somewhere.

“It seems,” Dobie said, “one of my ex-students has committed suicide.”

“Really?” Jenny said, adjusting the fit of her skirt in the wardrobe mirror. “How awful.”

“Shot himself. Or so they tell me.”

“That’s awful,” Jenny said again, in so abstracted a tone that Dobie wasn’t sure if she were alluding to the fatality or to her hemline. “Did I know him?”

“I don’t think so. Name of Cantwell. He graduated last year.”

“Don’t remember.”

“To be honest,” Dobie said, “nor do I.”

He placed his coffee mug on the side table where Jenny did a very occasional spot of typing and sat down alongside. The bed would have been more comfortable but was now monopolised by Jenny’s discarded clothing. “He’d have been quite young, I suppose,” Jenny said. “Terrible for his parents. But there’s not much you can do about it, is there?”

“No. There isn’t.”

“Well, I won’t be late. Eight o’clockish.”

She threw her jacket over one shoulder, picked up her bag and went out. Dobie heard the click of the front door closing and drank more coffee. The view from where he sat presently included the side elevation of her lemon-yellow Mini parked in the carport beside the rather dustier Fiesta; Dobie watched her enter it, slamming the door behind her, fuss for a moment or two with the driving mirror and then start the motor, reversing the Mini neatly round the corner and out of sight. It looked like a fine summer evening out there. Dobie debated with himself whether or not to go out for a short stroll round the park, deciding in the end against it.

He had papers to mark.

“Who’s Mr Marryat?”

“Oh
him
, then,” said Mrs Hart. She hit the shift key a spiteful wallop and typed another line all in capitals.

“New, isn’t he?”

“That depends on what you mean by
new
.”

“I don’t think I know him,” Dobie said patiently. Mrs Hart was herself an old stager by any manner of reckoning, having been secretary to the Head of Electrical for the past fifteen years or more. That gave her an unofficial ranking of somewhere round Senior Lecturer status; diplomacy, therefore, paid or was anyway prudent.

“Ooooooo,” Mrs Hart said. “Not everyone does.”

“But
you
do, don’t you?”

“He’ll have been here now for a couple of years, all told. He’s one of
those
, you know.”

This expression, so fraught with significance in non-collegiate circles, had other connotations in its present context and Dobie was able to decipher its meaning, though only just. “…industrial?”

“Davies, Parry and Kendrick. Over to Bristol.”

“Arrr.”

“Very up-and-coming firm they are. And we have their Mr Marryat with us on a research readership, that’s how it is.”

“So how would I be able to get hold of him?”

“He shares a room with Dr Mankowitz in the Tower Block. Number 22. Would you care for me to call on the telephone and see if he’s there?”

“No, no,” Dobie said. “Don’t bother. I have to go round there anyway.”

This last was not strictly true, but Dobie was thoroughly familiar with that Law of Premeditated Motion whereby a college lecturer whose whereabouts have been established by telephone will be deemed to have taken the necessary steps to establish himself elsewhere by the time one has arrived at the place where he was before, the application of this law being facilitated by the fact that it is impossible to move from one point to another in a modern college building without surmounting at least three flights of stairs. Dobie arrived outside room 22 in his usual state of mild breathlessness and knocked at the door. “Come in,” somebody said.

The room was full, like all the others in the block, of desks and filing cabinets composed of a shiny plastic material. These had been introduced into staff quarters the previous year to give the correct impression of modern design and hi-tech executive efficiency; since then, however, they – like all the others in the block – had been totally buried under piles of mouldering papers, exam scripts, folders, ashtrays, matchboxes, envelopes, biscuit tins and daily newspapers left open at the racing results and there forgotten. There remained just sufficient space for two metal-backed chairs into which their respective owners might ease themselves, the heaps of decaying matter behind which they then virtually disappeared being thus, so to speak, held at bay and forced to mould themselves around the seated person’s outline. Marryat’s outline was an exceptionally long and thin one – one that gave the accumulated junk a good deal of encouragement. The encroaching jungle seemed to be about to strike, to wipe him out entirely; at any moment he might disappear and civilisation be routed. “Come in,” he said again, this time with a touch of irritation.

“I
am
in,” Dobie said.

Marryat’s visage thereupon came briefly into view, like Paul Gauguin peering out from between the palm leaves. “So you are. So you are. Mr Forbes, I think?”

“No, my name’s Dobie. Mathematics.”

“Ah yes. Professor Dobie. I knew the face was familiar but—” Marryat took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“I wondered,” Dobie said, “if you could spare me a moment. About a student. An ex-student, rather.”

“Oh yes. Of course. Do make yourself at home.”

Dobie cleared a space on the edge of the desk with the casual expertise of long practice, his own overcrowded rabbit-hutch being almost identical to this one, and perched his behind precariously upon it. “Cantwell.”

“Ah, Cantwell.” Marryat put his glasses back on. “Sad business, that.”

“I understand you were his supervisor when he was up.”

“So I was, so I was. A very sad business indeed.”

“And since then he’s been working for Corder Acoustics.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Did you visit him there? I mean, in the normal run of events —”

“Oh yes. Through the settling-in period. Just checking up on how things were going. The usual thing.”

“And how
were
they going?”

“No complaints. In fact, very much the contrary. He seemed to be enjoying his work. And giving every satisfaction, they told me.”

“Doing what?”

“D and R. Design and Research Section.”

“And he liked the job?”

“He certainly seemed to.”

“So what was his problem?”

“Problem?” Marryat scratched the tip of his nose. “Ah. I see what you mean. I haven’t a clue. He may have left a note or something, I understand that’s what they often… Anyway, they’re holding the inquest this afternoon and I expect the facts will come out, it’s to be supposed they will. After all, that’s what inquests are for.”

“Are you attending?”

“Not officially,” Marryat said. “No,
I
shan’t go. I can’t get away and in any case—”

“Why should you?”

“Exactly. You haven’t any… special interest in him, have you?”

“You might say a personal interest.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Say that.”

“Say what?”

“That you had a personal interest.”

“I would have done if you’d asked me but you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Ask me if I had a personal interest.”

Marryat, who was not so used to this kind of a conversation as were Dobie’s more immediate colleagues, took off his glasses once again and began to rub them very hard with a very clean handkerchief. “I didn’t mean if you’d said it to
me
,” he said, knocking over a box file with his elbow. Spilled papers added themselves to the variegated debris on the floor. “It doesn’t really matter what I meant, anyhow. I think I’ve forgotten. Dickie Bird is the chap you ought to see. That’s if you want to see anyone.”