The Strange Attractor (3 page)

“About what?”

Marryat rubbed harder than ever. “About Cantwell’s work. He’s the Head of Section.”

“He’ll be at the inquest, then?”

“I should think it probable.”

“And there’ll be medical evidence and so forth.”

“I believe that’s customary.”

The medical evidence was given by an outwardly rather formidable dark-haired young lady called Dr Coyle and Dobie didn’t understand very much of it. He hadn’t expected to. However, the coroner, a not at all formidable man with a red nose and matching moustache, seemed to be in no way fazed and made copious notes.

Dobie had never attended an inquest before and wasn’t very impressed. The room was small and poorly lit and remarkably sparsely populated. Only eight other persons, including the coroner, appeared to be present and Dobie didn’t recognise any of them. It all compared very unfavourably with the ones he’d seen on the telly, with Lord Peter Wimsey in the box or whatever it was called. It didn’t much matter what it was called because there wasn’t one. Dr Coyle had given her evidence sitting on a hard wooden chair at the table opposite the coroner and having given it was still sitting there, hands folded patiently in her lap. While the coroner went on scribbling away. The whole show was decidedly lacking in zip.

“Dr Coyle,” the coroner said, eventually. “Besides having performed the pathological examination, and I thank you for reporting upon it so cogently… you in fact discovered the body?”

“I did,” Dr Coyle said. In a high, clear and perhaps excessively ladylike voice, suggestive of Meryl Streep in one of her Mayfair-scrubber routines.

“You were in fact personally acquainted with the deceased? And you indeed carried out the formal identification of the body at Detective-Inspector Jackson’s request?”

“Yes, I was. And yes, I did.”

“So what was your exact relationship with Mr Cantwell?”

“I was his landlady.”

Somebody at the back sniffed penetratingly. The coroner put down his pencil. “Would you amplify on that?”

“Certainly. He rented a first-floor bedsitter and kitchenette. He’d lived there these past three years. The other first-floor rooms I use myself. The ground floor is where I have my clinic.”

“This is at 12 Ludlow Road?”

“Yes.”

The coroner drew a sheet of paper from under his notebook and studied it cautiously. “Yes. I have a sketch-map here which makes the layout of the premises fairly clear. Now, as to your discovery of the body… ?”

“I conducted my morning clinic just as usual, finished just after twelve thirty and went upstairs to make some coffee. About ten minutes later I went into Sammy’s, that’s Mr Cantwell’s room—”

“For what purpose?”

“I wanted to steal some sugar.”

“Ah. On nefarious intent.”

“Yes,” Dr Coyle said. She didn’t smile. “I assumed he was out at work, which would normally have been the case. But on entering the room I immediately saw the body lying on the floor, face downwards, close to the work desk. He had a gun in his right hand – an automatic pistol, I believe. There was blood on the rug under his head and clearly visible trauma to the right side of his skull. I made sure that he was dead and then returned to my flat to phone the police. When they arrived, Inspector Jackson asked me to make a fuller examination of the body in my capacity as police pathologist and I did so. I didn’t go back to the room until then.”

“But you had previously been there for a space of…?”

“Not more than three minutes.”

Dr Coyle, in point of fact, was not unattractive. Irish-blue eyes, shiny black hair and a high, rounded forehead. She wore, probably for the occasion, what Dobie imagined to be an executive costume, tailor-made and navy blue in colour. The general severity of her appearance didn’t suggest, as is sometimes the case, that her air of professional competence was a mere facade; no indeed. This chick was on the ball. The coroner seemed to be well aware of this and to be, if anything, faintly on the defensive. “And during this time you made a preliminary examination of the body?”

“I also looked quickly around the room to see if there was any kind of letter or suicide note. But there wasn’t. Not that I could see.”

“I understand the police haven’t found one so I think we can assume that nothing of that nature… But obviously, then, your first impression was that Mr Cantwell had shot himself?”

“Yes. That’s still my opinion.”

“Quite so.”

“I should add that at that time I didn’t touch or disturb anything in the room in any way.”

“I’d rather taken that for granted, Dr Coyle, in view of your experience in these matters. Nothing else struck your notice as being at all unusual?”

“Nothing.”

“The door of the room was unlocked?”

“Yes. It was normally kept locked when Mr Cantwell was out. But on this occasion, of course, he wasn’t.”

“As his landlady, you would have had a spare key?”

“That’s right. I expected to have to use it.”

“But in the event you didn’t have to. Yes. Just to make this point completely clear, you found the door unlocked but closed? Not open or ajar?”

“The door was unlocked but closed.”

“Thank you,” the coroner said. He started writing once again in his notebook. Dobie wondered what all t
hat
had been about. Throughout the interchange his attention had drifted slightly towards the other occupants of the courtroom; he rather thought he had successfully identified the Corder Acoustics rep as a tall technical gent in rimless glasses and the stocky curly-haired bloke in the regrettable suit would almost certainly be here on behalf of the local fuzz. “… You’ve said that you estimate death to have occurred an hour or so previously? At approximately eleven thirty?”

“That’s correct.”

“At which time you were of course conducting your clinic downstairs. We have to take it that you didn’t hear the shot? Or any kind of movement or disturbance?”

“Plenty of movement and disturbance. As in any other clinic. But I didn’t hear the shot, no. Nor did my receptionist or any of the patients in the waiting-room. If I’d heard anything like that, naturally I’d have investigated.”

The coroner seemed to be examining his sketch-map again. “I see that Mr Cantwell’s room is at the opposite end of the house to your consulting room. That may in part account for it.”

“Yes, and it’s a very solid building. With thick walls.”

“Now I’m going to forestall Detective-Inspector Jackson’s evidence, Dr Coyle, and ask you if you were able to recognise the gun?”

“I recognised it as being identical or very similar to one that belonged to Mr Cantwell, yes.”

“So you knew that he possessed a gun?”

“He showed it to me once. Also where he kept it. In the chest of drawers, under his shirts.”

Somebody else at the back of the room was also making notes assiduously. An earnest-looking lad in his early twenties, wearing a crumpled sports jacket and a worried expression; a cub reporter from the
Echo
, likely as not. Not much for
him
here, surely? Or for anyone else. Dobie sighed windily. It wasn’t as though he had nothing better to do, what with papers to mark, calculations to be checked, Jenny to worry about… That peculiar business of the blonde wig, for instance.
There
was a mystery for you. What the hell would she be doing with a
blonde wig
?…

“Can you say why he kept a gun?”

“He bought it some six months ago with the idea of protecting the premises. You see, the clinic downstairs has been broken into on three separate occasions lately, presumably by people who hoped to find drugs there. I
do
keep drugs there, of course. Mr Cantwell was worried about my safety because these can be very nasty people. So he got this gun though I think his intention was to threaten these people with it, should the need arise, rather than to use it. I didn’t think it was a good idea and I told him so very emphatically.”

“You knew that the gun was unlicensed?”

“I didn’t know that because I never asked him. But I certainly assumed that he didn’t have a licence for it. I asked him to get rid of it and he later told me that he had. Obviously, that couldn’t have been true.”

Lots of women wore wigs. For all Dobie knew, blonde wigs might be trendy. But why be so secretive about it? Why would she think that
he
cared, one way or another? It was all so… Yes. Well. Dobie wiggled his behind against his uncomfortable seat and tried to concentrate on the court proceedings. It wasn’t easy.

“I understand,” the coroner was saying, “that the police haven’t been able to trace his relatives.”

“No, I couldn’t help them there very much. His parents died some years back, or so he told me, in a car accident. In Australia. There was an uncle in London he used to visit occasionally but I don’t know the address.”

“Did Mr Cantwell receive many letters? To your knowledge?”

“Very few letters. He didn’t write many, either. He didn’t like writing letters. He always said he was numerate, not literate.”

“I’m not sure what that means but we’ll let it pass. Would you say he was a lonely man?”

“Yes, I think I would.”

“Not many visitors?”

“Again, hardly any. To my knowledge. Though I mightn’t know if he had. I have so many professional engagements —”

“Yes, I understand that. Did
you
think of him as a friend, Dr Coyle?”

“Our relationship was perfectly friendly, but I wouldn’t say that I
thought
of him as a friend. If I were a more maternal person I’d say my attitude was… Well…”

“In loco parentis?”

“Not exactly. I suppose I felt sorry for him.”

“Why?”

“I think I’ve explained why. He didn’t have many friends. Nor do I, if it comes to that.”

“Did he have any friends of the opposite sex?”

“None that I know of.”

The coroner gazed upwards at the ceiling. “I suppose I’m really asking you if you can shed any light on what motives he may have had for taking his own life. Because they’re not very evident, on the face of it.”

“I know he had money problems. But I didn’t think they were all that serious.”

“What sort of money problems?”

“He owed me a month’s rent, by way of example. And he’d bought a very expensive computer on hire-purchase. But as I say—”

“Were you pressing him for payment in any way?” The coroner hesitated. “I don’t mean to suggest that if you had, it would have been at all improper.”

“I didn’t press him for payment in any way. He had a good job and he was working very hard and I assumed whatever difficulties he was having were only temporary.”

“So that when you entered the room and discovered the body, it would be fair to say that you were greatly surprised?”

“Surprised and horrified.”

“Horrified. Yes. As would be natural. Thank you, Dr Coyle. I’ll now call upon Detective-Inspector Jackson.”

The tall man in rimless glasses had already risen to his feet. Dobie sighed again and did likewise, not to give evidence but to beat an inconspicuous retreat. He’d had about enough. Cantwell was dead and there an end. The rest was tedium. Surprised and horrified. Who wouldn’t be?

The crinkly-haired geezer, who as it transpired was in fact the famous Dickie Bird, emerged from the courtroom some forty minutes later and readily accepted Dobie’s offer of a lift back to his office. “Got my own car in for servicing, as it happens. So sitting in on this shindig was a bit damned inconvenient, really. Specially as I didn’t have much to say. These your wheels?”

“These are they,” Dobie agreed, opening the door of the Fiesta and clambering in.

“Noticed you in there, of course. In fact I was wondering what you had to do with it.”

“Just an interested observer,” Dobie said. “At least, I started off that way. I got less interested as time went by.”

“I know just what you mean. Who was that boyo whose name you mentioned?”

“Marryat.”

“I think I remember him. And there used to be a… Dr Traynor?”

“He’s the head of my department. Mathematics.”

Bird slid a finger inside his shirt collar, the tightness of which appeared to be troubling him. “Coroner didn’t seem to like that bit about the gun. I don’t know if you noticed.”

“What bit about the gun?”

“It being unlicensed.”

“Oh? My attention may have wandered at that point. I suppose your wife doesn’t ever wear a wig?”

“Eh?… I don’t have one.”

“I didn’t mean
your
wig. A ladies’ wig.”

“No, a
wife
is what I don’t have. I’m not married. Sorry.”