The Strange Attractor (9 page)

“It was the day before yesterday, actually. At the police station.”

“At the… What were you nabbed for?”

“Nothing. I came in to ask you about Sammy Cantwell.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Nothing. That’s where you saw me before.”

Pontin decided to change tack, as was his frequent strategy when dealing with a slippery witness. Leaning in a confidential manner towards his victim, he adopted an altogether more insidious, avuncular tone. “Now see here, Mr um ah. I think I should tell you that we’ve managed to locate the murder weapon. And doubtless there’ll be prints. Oh yes, we’re pretty sure we’ll find plenty of prints. And bearing that in mind, you may feel you’d be well advised to run through your story with me once again. Just for my benefit. Possibly we’ll find that you explained it all to Inspector Jackson a little too hurriedly, see? And there may even be a few little points where you’d like to change your… Just a few little… Wake
up
, will you?”

“Eh?” Dobie said. “Oh yes. I’m sorry. I really have had a very tiring day.”

“I’m quite sure you have and what I want to know
is
, what that lady is doing without any clothes on in your bedroom.”

Dobie yawned. “I think it’s the gas fire. It makes me doze off.”

Pontin began to speak very slowly and distinctly, in a way that reminded Dobie acutely of Jane herself. “I want. To know. What that lady. Is doing. In the bedroom.”

“Oh yes. You mean Jane. She isn’t doing anything. She’s dead.”

“Ah.” Pontin leapt at once upon the cogent point. “Then you admit. That you know. Who she is?”

Dobie, having yawned cavernously again, began to show some signs of making a spirited recovery. “Jane? Of course I know Jane. I’ve known her for years. She’s probably my wife’s best friend.”

“Then what made you. Decide. To kill her. Sir?”

Dobie saw the trap in time. “Beg pardon?” he said.

“Someone.” Pontin executed a chopping motion with his right hand. “Bopter. An accident, perhaps. Was it?”

“Good heavens, no,
I
didn’t kill her. She wasn’t killed
here
, you know.”

“Not here?”

“No. It was over in
her
house, I saw how it happened. Didn’t that other chap tell you? Earlier this… There was this burglar with a hat and a raincoat and then he must have brought her over here and put her in my bedroom but I didn’t see her because I had this headache and it wasn’t until I thought I’d better have an aspirin that I went to get it, you see.”

Throughout this account Pontin had slid himself slowly back along the full length of the desk, his attitude, moreover, undergoing another subtle change. “Yes. Yes,” he said nervously. “I think I’ve got all that. Excuse me one moment.” Keeping his face turned towards Dobie, he trundled himself back towards the door and beckoned hurriedly to the constable outside. “Better keep a pretty close eye on this one, Constable. He could be on to us both at the drop of a hat.”

“Yessir. I will, sir,” the constable said.

“He’s been under a bit of a strain lately, I shouldn’t wonder,” Pontin said, returning to his former position and smiling upon Dobie disarmingly. He was a man who knew his duty and only his glazed-over eyeballs betrayed his inward terror.

“Let’s try again, now, shall we? – from a different angle. At least we know you were on friendly terms with the deceased. You’ve admitted
that
, anyway.”

“Yes. Certainly. So was Jenny.”

“So that gives us a starting point.” Pontin paused. “Who’s Jenny?”

“My wife. She’s in Paris.”

“I see. In
Paris
. So you thought while the cat was away—”

This was a mistake. “What cat?” Dobie said suspiciously. “I haven’t got a cat. Ah. Maybe you’re thinking of
Kate
. No, Kate’s got nothing to do with it. Except of course she was at the inquest.”

Off again, Pontin thought, glancing cautiously round the room to make sure that no hatchets, chain saws, baseball bats or any other death-dealing weapons were to be seen in the immediate vicinity. “We haven’t had an inquest yet. We’ve only just found the body. Who’s this Kate you’re talking about, when she’s at home?”

“She isn’t at home. She’s here. She just
got
here.”

“Ah, she’s
here
, is she? Not in Paris?”

“No, no. That was my wife.”

“Who was?”

“The other one. Jenny. She’s my wife. The other one isn’t. The one in the bedroom. In fact she’s somebody else’s.”

“Good. It helps, you see, once you’ve got the background clear. You say your wife has gone to Paris because of this other woman. Now what I want to know—”

“No, wait, you’ve got that wrong. There
isn’t
another woman.”

“Now I understood you quite distinctly to say—”

“I didn’t say another woman. I said
the
other woman.”

“That’s right. Jenny, you called her.”

“
Now
you’ve got it. Jenny, my wife. My wife
is
the other woman.”

The sound of Pontin’s slow, heavy breathing became clearly audible. “Perhaps,” he said, “we’d do better to resume this conversation when you’re feeling a little less excited. You seem to have a bit of an attitude problem, if I may say so.”

Meanwhile, Kate was carrying out her preliminary examination.

“Fractured skull all right. Death probably instantaneous. Downward blow from the rear, slightly favouring right hand side. A large flat instrument, something like a brick. No cutting edge. Skin’s torn at point of impact but I don’t see any minor abrasions. Some blood loss from ears and nose, but not very much. She died too quickly. Okay so far?”

“We know what she was hit with, doctor. What about time of death?”

“Very recent. I’ll be checking the rectal temperature in a moment but I’d say some time between nine and nine thirty. She must have died just after taking a hot shower so the skin surface would have been fairly warm. Her hair’s still damp, as you noticed. And of course the body’s unusually clean, which is rather a pity. From the pathologist’s viewpoint, that’s to say.”

“We picked up her clothes in the bathroom,” Jackson said. “And a bath towel from over by that wardrobe. You’re not surprising me.”

“She wasn’t killed on the bed, of course.”

“No.” Jackson looked down at the scuff marks on the nap of the carpet. “Probably by the door, as she came in. Nine
thirty
, though?… It couldn’t have been later?”

He watched Kate take the transparent evidence bags from her medical case and slip them efficiently over the victim’s hands. Not a very nice job, he couldn’t help thinking, for a woman. Though that was probably old-fashioned prejudice. Pathologists are pathologists, whatever their sex. He looked round as Pontin came in.

“Well?” Pontin said. “Have we reached a verdict?” Kate was now gently lifting one of the victim’s knees, apparently testing its degree of rigidity. “Yes. I’ll do the autopsy tomorrow morning but there shouldn’t be any surprises. Fractured skull is the cause of death. Recently inflicted. A single blow, no other injuries.”

“All right. You can ship her out and we’ll get a formal ID at the morgue, soon as we’ve located the husband. Not much point in asking
him
to do it.” Pontin nodded significantly towards the door. “Screw loose an’ all, if you ask me.”

Jackson adjusted his glasses. “Are we taking him in, sir?”

“No hurry,” Pontin said. “No hurry. We should all get our pictures in the paper if we play this right. Got to give the media time to get on the scene, though, see what I mean? It’s all public relations nowadays. But we’ll finger the bastard in due course, don’t you worry.”

“Might be a good idea to let the doctor here take a look at him, don’t you think?”

Kate was scrutinising the victim’s toes. “I ought to make it clear,” she said, straightening up, “that I know Mr Dobie. Personally.”

“Ah,” Pontin said. “He’s a patient of yours already? Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“No, I met him… He was at an inquest.”

“Ow Gawd, don’t
you
start. Just go and feel his pulse or something, soon as you’re finished up in here.
Now
what is it?”

This last remark was addressed to Sergeant Evans, who had made a diffident entrance a moment before. “Just something I thought you’d want to know, sir. We’re picking up the deader’s prints all over the place – hundreds of them. Along of the owner’s, of course.”

“What, here in the bedroom as well?”

“Everywhere,” Evans said. “And not just new prints neither.”

“Ho ho. So she’s been here before tonight?”

“I’d say she’s been coming here for
weeks
.”

“What about the murder weapon?”

“Yessir.”

“What d’you mean, yessir?”

“That too, sir. All over the keys. Some of Mr Dobie’s on the case and bodywork. No one else’s. Just a smudge or two.”

Pontin looked at Jackson. Jackson looked at Pontin. “We got the bugger bang to rights, then.”

“No, sir.”

“What d’you mean, no sir?”

“There’s a snag, sir,” Jackson said. “According to the doctor’s evidence, he couldn’t have done it.”

“I don’t believe this,” Pontin said.

“He was with me and Detective-Sergeant Box, sir, until half-past nine this evening. Dr Coyle puts the time of death at between nine o’clock and nine thirty. All that time he was ten miles away from here, sir, he was hardly ever out of our sight. Got it all down in my notebook.”

“Jackson?”

“Sir?”

“He’s pulled the wool over your eyes somehow. Take my word for it.
That
’s what he’s done. About as tricky a witness as I ever encountered. But he did it all right. I can see it in his eyes. That shifty expression of his. You must have noticed it yourself.”

“He certainly seems to be in a state of shock. Hardly in a condition, I’d have thought, to tell us anything useful.”

“Hopes to be found unfit to plead, I’ve no doubt. I’m not falling for
that
one. No, we’ll give him time to consider the error of his ways. Better pack him off home.”

“This
is
his home, sir.”

“Oh yes, well… A hotel, then. Or a loony bin. Or something. We can’t have him poking around here on the scene of the crime.”

“We haven’t a car to spare, sir, not right now.”

“Got his own car, hasn’t he?”

“Evans’ll need to check it over, sir. And anyway he shouldn’t drive, not in his present condition.”

Kate was standing back from the bed now and taking off her surgical gloves. “I’m going into Cardiff, Mike, when I’m through here. I can drop him off at the Angel or somewhere and save you the trouble.”

“You’re not quite through here
yet
, Dr Coyle,” Pontin said bristlingly. “This matter of the time of death, now. What’s all this nonsense about—”

He stopped short as Dobie broke into the room, wild-eyed and brandishing a lady’s handbag like something out of
Psycho
. Pontin barely restrained himself from diving incontinently under the bed, which appeared to be high enough to admit his bulk though not, of course, to conceal it. “Now, now, now, sir,” he said. “What’s all this?” He was aware that his phrasing, however classical in tradition, was notably inadequate to the occasion, but at least it had the effect of bringing Dobie to a shuddery halt.

“Thats what
I
want to know,” Dobie said. “What’s
this
doing here?” Flourishing the handbag dramatically aloft. “Out there in the hallway? What’s going
on
?”

Pontin nudged Jackson none too gently in the ribs. “See what I mean? Get him out of here before he buggers up
all
the evidence…”

“This is
Jenny’s
bag. My wife’s.”

Pontin courageously took a short step forwards. The man had clearly to be disarmed, somehow, as a preliminary measure. “Now we don’t want to go into all that again, do we, sir? You were told to sit down quietly and not touch anything and now here you go—”

“But she took it with her. To Paris. I
know
. I saw her off. How can it —”