The Strange Attractor (8 page)

Jackson was, like most policemen, a patient man and one, moreover, well accustomed to dealing with amiable (and some not so amiable) lunatics. He had, indeed, only that morning been summoned forth to investigate the case of one Henrietta Byrd, reported missing, possibly kidnapped, from her parents’ home; Henrietta had turned out to be a budgerigar, this somewhat to Jackson’s chagrin. The facts of the Henrietta Byrd affair, however, he had elucidated pretty quickly – as soon, indeed, as the bereaved owner had shown him Henrietta’s cage, forlornly empty; while the facts that this Dobie character was recounting seemed to make very little sense at all. “What it all boils down to, sir, is that you feel you’ve reason to suspect a crime to have been committed, but you’re far from being sure as to its actual
nature
. Does that sum it up fairly?”

“Except that she’s gone. Jane has. Mrs Corder.”

“Ah, but gone
where
, if you see what I mean? I take it there’s a Mr Corder about?”

“Oh yes.”

“So where’s he?”

“I’ve no idea,” Dobie said. “He may be still at his office. Corder Acoustics. In Cardiff.”

Jackson looked at his wrist-watch. “A bit late for that, isn’t it?”

“He does work late most days.”

“But he
lives
here, I suppose?… Well, I expect we can trace him without too much trouble. But maybe we shouldn’t notify him until things are a little clearer. Let’s see now. Last seen wearing. The lady had on a raincoat, I think you said?”

“Navy blue raincoat, yes. The sort with the hood thing you can pull up over your head. I couldn’t see much else but she was wearing dark slacks, I think they were navy blue as well. And shoes, of course. Black shoes.”

“Not boots?”

“No, definitely not boots. Shoes. With flat heels.”

Sober, Jackson had already decided. And even coherent. Up to a point. Going by what Dobie
said
, there had to be at the very least a strong presumption of foul play, but the presumption didn’t seem to be strong enough to justify the pressing of all the alarm bells. Jackson flipped his notebook shut. “I’ll ask you to excuse me for just a moment, sir…”

Detective-Sergeant Box was in the kitchen, gazing gloomily at the floor. Red and ochre tiles, not very revealing. There were marks on it all right, but then there are marks on most kitchen floors. “Find anything?”

“Bit of blood,” Box said, with no very marked relish. “Over by the sink.”

“Says he cut himself trying to get loose.”

“Yes, there’s blood on the knife blade too. No more’n a drop. Wasn’t a stabbing, whatever else may have happened.”

“Puzzle, isn’t it,” Jackson said. It wasn’t a question. He picked up one of the frayed strips of silk that Box had collected and carefully placed on the kitchen table, surveyed it, put it down again. “Check the car?”

“Yes. In the garage. Motor’s warm. The Fiesta, that’s Mr Dobie’s. Checked that, too.”

“Warm?”

“No. Cooled off. Been out in the rain.”

Jackson fingered his lip thoughtfully. When all was said and done… two cars here and only one person. “We’ll have that knife anyway.
And
the whisky decanter. When the hell’s that Evans going to get here?”

“Probably lost his way.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

There wasn’t much more that he could do until the dabs sergeant arrived. Nothing he could reasonably hold Dobie for, either. No body. No blood. No signs of struggle. Nothing. He clumped sadly back to the sitting-room.

“Perhaps you won’t mind coming round to the station in the morning, sir, to make a formal statement. By then perhaps we’ll have got things cleared up here a little. You say you’re a professor at the university?”

“Yes,” Dobie said. This was one of the few things he felt relatively sure about.

“Wonder if that’s what’s behind all this business of tying you up? Them students get up to all manner of larks. You wouldn’t believe.”

“You mean you think all this is some kind of practical joke?”

“I’m not saying it
is
, mind. But it could be. Perverted sense of humour is what they got, some of them.” Jackson shook his head sadly. “Or here’s another line of thought. That whisky you drank, now…”

“Yes, I’d thought of that. Perhaps it was drugged. That could be why I —”

“Well, we’ll be checking on that. Nothing easier. And
if
it was and we can see what kind of drug it is we’re dealing with…”

“You’re thinking in terms of one that might induce hallucinations?”

“I’m thinking out loud is what I’m doing. But these kids get their hands on some very funny stuff these days, there’s no denying it. I’ve come across some cases—”

“
What
kids?” Dobie then began to speak very rapidly. “Unless it was that chap in the raincoat, he could have got here ahead of me and been in the house all the time –
I
wouldn’t have known, see what I mean? The front door wasn’t locked so suppose he got here before I did, read that note, went on in—”

He certainly seems, Jackson thought, to have had a nasty shock. No doubt about that. And that car in the garage wasn’t a hallucination, either. Though, of course… “About that note, sir. What did it say, exactly?”

“The point is it wasn’t addressed specifically to me. Someone else might have read it and thought…” Dobie’s head was aching rather badly now. He closed his eyes for a moment. “It’s over there on that table. You can read it for yourself.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Dobie opened his eyes again. “It isn’t?”

“No, sir. That’s where you
said
you put it but it isn’t there now. Hence my question.”

“It said, ‘Back soon’ – I remember wondering how soon ‘soon’ would be – and then ‘Go in and make yourself at home,’ or something like that. It was typed in red ink and the paper had got a bit damp so the ink was a bit smeary. But not so you couldn’t read it.”

“She was
expecting
you, you said – at eight o’clock?”

“And I got here exactly on time.”

“Then why wasn’t
she
here?”

“I don’t know. The note didn’t say.”

Jackson had made a note, too, in his little black notebook. He read through it again.

Poss. burglar (?)

tall medium build

grey belted raincoat + funny hat

heard dragging noise + splash

“An odd business, then,” he said, “and no mistake.”

Dobie sat down heavily in the armchair. His own armchair in his own sitting-room. Home sweet home. Looking round him, he didn’t think much of it. But then right now he was trying not to think too much about anything.

After a while he got up and started to prowl round in slow pantherine circles. He was afraid of dropping off to sleep again and being thus perhaps caught up in some endless Yeatsian cycle… Silly, but there it was. What kind of a drug would knock you out like that, anyway? A Mickey something? Maybe in the morning he’d give a ring to Peter Draycott or any other of the Pharmacology boys who might happen to be still around. On the first day of the summer vacations. What a way to start them.

In the morning, though. Not now. Though in fact it wasn’t really all that late. Just gone ten. Incredible. He hadn’t yet had anything to eat, but his head was paining him and he wasn’t hungry.

What he chiefly needed, he thought, was a cup of black coffee and some aspirin, followed by a restful hour with the Heutling String Quartet. He wended his way, therefore, to the bedroom to get the aspirin bottle, which would, he thought, be reposing in the drawer of Jenny’s night table, where she usually kept it. Switching on the overhead light, he observed with no great sense of surprise that Jane Corder was lying stretched out on top of the bed without very much in the way of clothes on. She appeared to be dead. He felt no great surprise because, naturally, he didn’t believe it. He advanced, nevertheless, upon the bed in order to… you know… investigate.

His investigation revealed that Jane Corder was lying stretched out on top of the bed without very much in the way of clothes on. She appeared to be dead. She
was
dead. “Oh my God,” Dobie said. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Whatever next.” Jane Corder didn’t reply, but he wasn’t really talking to
her
, anyway.

The pain in his head had suddenly become murderous, as though his brains were leaking slowly out through the back of his skull. It couldn’t be Jane. Clearly it couldn’t. But it was. He couldn’t see her clothes anywhere, apart from the (normally) fetching black bra-and-pantie set that was all she was wearing. A large bath towel, however, was lying on the floor at his feet; he picked it up and drew it carefully over the corpse, shrouding her decently from head to feet. He knew that he shouldn’t really have touched anything, but knew also that he couldn’t let her go on lying there like
that
. It wasn’t nice.

He turned and made a bolt for the French window, which fortunately wasn’t locked; he had time, therefore, to get out on to the balcony before being sick. Vomiting had at least the side-effect of seeming, if only temporarily, to ease his headache. When he had finished throwing up he went back to the sitting-room, picked up the telephone and dialled Jane’s number. He thought that with any luck the police would still be there.

They were.

Jackson, Box and the hitherto elusive Sergeant Evans were there within twenty minutes. Half an hour later, Detective-Superintendent Pontin arrived. Not, it must be said, in the best of tempers.

“What we got here then, Jackson?”

“What you might call complications, sir,” Jackson said.

“Just what we don’t need. Now I don’t want any nonsense with this boyo, Jackson, I want a straight-forward confession out of him and that’ll be an end to it. I’ve had enough of naked women in bedrooms and all that multi-cultural rubbish. Girl’s on the books, I take it? Done any previous?”

“Well, no, sir. She’s the wife of a prominent local businessman. Or that’s what I’ve been told.”

“Oh. Right.” Pontin was in no mood thus to be baulked. “What about
him
?”

“Says he’s a university teacher, sir.”

“Christ, now. Drugs, then. That’ll be the story. He’s been pushing heroin, for a monkey.”

“As yet, sir, we’ve no evidence—”

“Don’t tell
me
, Jackson. I been there before. Rushed it down the loo he has, the crafty dodger. What about the body? Any signs of actual physical torture?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, sir, but then we haven’t—”

“Got the murder weapon?”

“Yes, I think so, sir. A typewriter.”

Pontin clicked his tongue. “The murder
weapon
, Jackson, for God’s sake.”

“Yes, sir. A typewriter. Significant blood traces.”

“He hit her over the head with a
typewriter
?”

“That’s my present reading of the case, sir.”

“Good God. What are we coming to? What’s Paddy Gates got to say about it?”

“Paddy’s on holiday, sir. So I called Katie Coyle. That sounds like her arriving now.”

To prevent Dobie from further interfering, however ineffectually, with the progress of police inquiries Jackson had incarcerated him in his study. Pontin found him there, slumped down in his chair at the computer desk; in the grip of some powerful nervous reaction, he was snoring faintly. Pontin shook him briskly by the shoulder, resting his burly frame against the desk; the desk creaked ominously in protest. This complaint Pontin ignored.

“Just a little chat, sir, if you don’t mind, Detective-Superintendent Pontin.”

He fixed Dobie with what would have been a cold and level inquisitorial stare if the light from the Anglepoise above the desk hadn’t been so strong as to make him blink uncontrollably, causing him to resemble a barn owl repressing a sneezing fit. “… Yes, we’ve met before, I rather fancy. Can’t remember what it was I sent you down for, but I never forget a face. And yours is familiar.
Very
familiar.”

What he had in fact for the moment forgotten was Dobie’s name. It was a standing grievance with Pontin that the criminals with whom he customarily dealt never had readily memorable names, like Featherstonehaugh or Pontefract. It didn’t matter. It would come back to him. “Wait a second now. Don’t tell me…
Shoplifting
, that was it, I recall it distinctly. Tacey’s Stores? Ladies’ knickers? In 1982, wasn’t it? I never forget—”