Why he’s only a boy at heart… a perpetual adolescent, really quite pleasant in his way, Gregory thought in amazement.
“I’d like to say a few more words, but not until the end of the meeting,” Sciss replied, returning to his seat.
The Chief Inspector removed his eyeglasses. His eyes were tired.
“Good. Farquart, please, if you have anything else to say.”
Farquart answered without much enthusiasm.
“Truthfully, not very much. I’ve gone over this whole ‘series,’ as Dr. Sciss calls it, in the usual way, and I think at least some of the rumors must have been true. It seems to me that the case is fairly simple — the perpetrator wanted to steal a corpse but was frightened away in Shaltam and the other places. He finally succeeded in Treakhill, but since he was still an amateur he took a naked body. It looks like he didn’t realize how hard it would be to transport a body in that condition, as opposed to a fully clothed body, which is much less conspicuous. He must finally have realized this because he changed his tactics, making a definite effort to get clothing for the bodies. Also, the bodies he took the first few times weren’t exactly the best available — I’m thinking about what Dr. Sciss called the search for bodies ‘in good condition.’ For example, there was another body in the mortuary at Treakhill — a young man’s body — in much better condition than the one that disappeared. That’s about all…
“Of course there’s still the question of motive,” Farquart continued after a moment. “I see the following possibilities: necrophilia, some other kind of insanity, or some kind of… scientist. I think we should find out what Dr. Sorensen has to say about it.”
“I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist,” the doctor sputtered in a gruff voice, “but you can absolutely rule out the possibility of necrophilia. Necrophiliacs are always feebleminded, retarded cretins who couldn’t possibly plan anything as complicated as this. In my opinion you can also rule out any other kind of insanity. Nothing was left to chance in any of these incidents. There’s too much precision, not a single slipup of any kind. Madmen don’t operate so methodically.”
“Paranoia?” Gregory suggested in a low voice. The doctor glanced at him indifferently. For a moment he seemed to be trying the feel of the word on his tongue, then he pursed his thin, froglike lips.
“No! At least,” he added, weakening the categorical character of his objection, “I don’t think it’s very likely. Insanity, gentlemen, is not a catchall for every human action that involves motives we don’t understand. Insanity has its own structure, its own internal logic. Of course in the final analysis it’s possible that the culprit could be a psychopath — yes, it’s possible, I suppose — but it’s only one of many possibilities.”
“A psychopath with a talent for mathematics,” Sciss commented almost involuntarily.
“How do you meant that?”
Sorensen turned to Sciss with a foolish but distinctly offensive sneer.
“I mean a psychopath who decided to have his fun by making sure that the product of the distance and the time between consecutive incidents, multiplied by the temperature differential, would be a constant.”
Sorensen stroked his knee nervously, then began drumming on it with his fingers.
“Yes, yes I know… you can multiply and divide almost anything by something else — the length of canes by the width of hats — and come up with all kinds of constants and variables.”
“Are you trying to make fun of mathematics?” Sciss began. It was clear that he was about to say something nasty.
“Excuse me, Doctor, but I would very much like to hear your opinion about the third possible motive.” Sheppard was glaring at Sorensen again.
“That the culprit is a scientist who steals bodies? No, absolutely not! Never in the world! The whole idea is ridiculous. The only scientists who steal cadavers for their experiments are in third-rate movies. Why steal a cadaver when it’s easy enough to get one from any morgue, or even to buy one from the next of kin. Besides, scientists don’t work alone anymore, and even if one had stolen a cadaver, although God alone knows why he would, he wouldn’t be able to hide it from his colleagues and co-workers. You can safely eliminate that as a motive.”
“In your opinion then,” Sheppard said, “do we have anything to go on?” The Chief Inspector’s ascetic face was expressionless. Gregory caught himself staring almost impertinently at his superior, as if studying a painting. Is he really like that, he wondered, is all this no more than a dull routine for him?
Gregory mused in this vein during the oppressive, unpleasant silence that followed the Chief Inspector’s question. Again a far-off engine resounded in the darkness beyond the window: the deep rumble moved upward, then grew silent. The panes shook.
“A psychopath or nothing,” said Dr. Sciss all of a sudden. He smiled and, indeed, seemed to be in a good mood. “As Dr. Sorensen so intelligently pointed out, psychopathic behavior is usually very distinctive — it is characterized by impulsiveness, stupidity, and errors due to an attention span limited by emotional disorder. Thus, we are left with nothing. Ergo, gentlemen, it is quite obvious that these incidents couldn’t possibly have taken place.”
“You’re joking, I suppose,” Sorensen growled.
“Gentlemen,” Sheppard interrupted. “The amazing thing is that the press has been very easy on us so far, probably because of the war in the Near East. For the time being we haven’t had to worry about public opinion, but we’re going to hear plenty of criticism of the Yard before long. And so, at least as far as its formal aspects are concerned, the investigation must be expedited. I want to know exactly what has been done already and, in particular, what steps have been taken to recover the bodies.”
“That’s all the lieutenant’s responsibility,” said Farquart. “We gave him full powers two weeks ago, and since then he’s been completely on his own.”
Gregory nodded his assent, pretending not to have heard the criticism implicit in Farquart’s words.
“Starting with the third incident,” he said, “we began to take extreme measures. Immediately after a missing body was reported, we closed off the whole area within a radius of fifty miles, using all the local forces, highway and airport patrols, plus two squads of radio cars from the London tactical headquarters at Chichester. We set up roadblocks at every intersection, railroad grade crossing, tollgate, highway exit, and dead-end street… but nothing came of it. By coincidence we happened to pick up five people who were wanted on various other charges, but as far as our own problem is concerned we didn’t accomplish anything. Of course it’s not easy to close off an area that big, and from the practical standpoint you can never set up a net that’s one hundred percent tight — it’s always possible for someone to slip through. After the second and third incidents the perpetrator probably left the area before our roadblocks were even set up, since he had six hours the first time and about five hours the next. I’m assuming, of course, that he also managed to dispose of his car. In the most recent incident, however, the disappearance took place between 3:00 and 4:50 in the morning, so he didn’t have more than an hour and three quarters for his escape. It was a typical March night… gale winds and snow after an evening of thick fog, and all the roads were impassable until noon of the next day. Of course the perpetrator might have used a tractor or a snowplow to make his getaway, but it would have been hard, and I know this from my own experience because we had an awful time getting our patrol cars out of the snow, both the ones from the local stations and the ones from the Greater London C.I.D. reserve that responded to our alert.”
“So you maintain that no car could have left the Lewes vicinity until noon of the next day?”
“Right.”
“What about sledges?”
“Technically it would have been possible, but not in the amount of time he had to work with. After all, a sledge can’t travel at more than a mile or two an hour, especially in a storm like the one they had that night. Even with the best
horses he wouldn’t have been able to get out of the closed-off area by noon.”
“If you say so, Lieutenant, but a moment ago you told us that this kind of net isn’t completely secure,” Sheppard said gently. “In fact, an absolutely secure cordon is only an ideal we aspire to.”
“Besides,” Farquart commented, “he could have put the corpse in a bag and carried it through the fields on foot.”
“Impossible,” said Gregory. He wanted to remain silent but his cheeks were burning. He could hardly keep himself from jumping to his feet.
“No vehicles left the closed-off zone after six in the morning. I can vouch for that,” he declared. “Maybe an infantryman could have gotten through the snow but not with a load as heavy as an adult body. He would have dumped it…”
“Maybe he did dump it,” Sorensen observed.
“I thought of that, but we combed the whole area — there was a thaw the next day which made the job easier — and we didn’t find a thing.”
“Your reasoning is hardly as faultless as you think,” Sciss unexpectedly broke into the conversation. “First of all, you didn’t find the dead cat, but if you had really conducted a careful search you would have—”
“Excuse me,” said Gregory, “but we were looking for a human corpse, not for a dead cat.”
“Exactly! But there are so many places to hide a corpse in such a large area that you might just as well conclude that it isn’t there.”
“The perpetrator could have buried the body,” Farquart added.
“He snatched it just to bury it?” Gregory asked with an innocent air. Farquart snorted.
“Maybe he buried it when he saw he couldn’t get away.”
“But how did he know he couldn’t get away? After all, we weren’t announcing the roadblocks on the radio,” Gregory retorted. “That is… unless he has a contact in the department, or unless he’s a police officer…”
“That’s not a bad thought,” Sciss smiled. “But in any case, gentlemen, you haven’t exhausted all the possibilities. What about a helicopter?”
“What nonsense!” said Dr. Sorensen contemptuously.
“Why? There aren’t any helicopters in England?”
“The doctor apparently believes that it’s easier to suspect a psychopath than a helicopter,” said Gregory, smiling complacently.
“What about all the carcasses?” Sorensen added.
There wasn’t a sound from Sciss, who seemed to be absorbed in his lecture notes.
“The search for the bodies must be continued,” Sheppard went on. “We have to plan a much more comprehensive operation, including ports and dockyards. Some kind of surveillance of ships and cargoes. Do any of you have anything else to say? Any new ideas? Any theories? Anything at all? Please don’t be afraid to be outspoken, even too outspoken.”
“In my opinion, it’s not possible —” Gregory and Farquart began at the same time. They looked at each other and stopped.
“I’m listening.”
No one spoke. The telephone jangled. The Chief Inspector disconnected it and watched the men seated before him. A cloud of bluish tobacco smoke rose around the lamp. For a moment, silence reigned.
“In that case, I…” Sciss said. He was meticulously folding his manuscript and putting it into the briefcase. “… I have applied the constant which I explained to you earlier in order to determine the sequence and location of these phenomena in advance.”
He stood up, moved over to the map, and, using a red pencil, marked off an area encompassing part of the counties of Sussex and Kent.
“If the next incident takes place between tomorrow morning and the end of next week, it will occur in this sector, which is bounded on the north by the suburbs of East Wickham, Croydon, and Surbiton, on the west by Horsham, on the south by a strip of the Channel coast, and on the east by Ashford.”
“A pretty big area,” Farquart said dubiously.
“Not really, since we can exclude an interior sector in which incidents have already taken place. The phenomenon is characterized by its movement outward, so the only area actually involved is a circular strip no more than twenty-one miles wide. It includes eighteen hospitals and about one hundred sixty small cemeteries. That’s all.”
“And you… you’re sure there will be an incident in this area?” asked Sorensen.
“No,” Sciss replied, after hesitating for a rather long moment, “I’m not sure. But supposing it doesn’t take place… or, rather, that if it doesn’t take place…”
Something curious was happening to the scientist. Everyone watched in amazement as he began shaking and his voice started to crack like an adolescent boy’s. Suddenly Sciss burst out laughing. He roared with laughter as if delighted by some private thought, totally oblivious to the deadly silence with which his uncontrollable hilarity was greeted.
Sciss picked up his briefcase from under the armchair, nodded his head in a slight bow, and, his shoulders still heaving spasmodically, walked out of the office, taking quick, inordinately long steps.
2
A strong wind scattered the clouds, and the yellowish glow of the setting sun became visible above the rooftops. The street lights dimmed, the snow darkened and blended into the sidewalks and gutters. His hands in his coat pockets, Gregory walked quickly, not looking into any of the doorways he passed.
Hesitating for a moment at an intersection, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, shivering in the cold, damp air. Finally, angered by his own indecisiveness, he turned to the left.
The meeting had ended — in fact, dissolved — immediately after Sciss’s dramatic exit. Nothing had been accomplished. Sheppard hadn’t even decided who was going to take over the case. Since he had only seen him five or six times before, Gregory hardly knew the Chief Inspector. Of course he was aware of all the usual methods for bringing oneself to the attention of a superior officer, but he had never resorted to such tactics during his short career as a detective; now, though, he was beginning to regret this, because his relatively low rank reduced his chances of being put in charge of the investigation.
Sheppard had stopped Gregory just as he was leaving the conference room and asked him how he would conduct the investigation. Gregory had answered that he didn’t know. The truth, of course, but honest answers usually don’t pay. Sheppard would probably regard Gregory’s response as a sign that he wasn’t too smart, or that he had a poor attitude.
And what had Farquart told the Chief about him, he wondered. Surely nothing very impressive. Gregory tried to reassure himself with the thought that he was just overrating Farquart by worrying this way, since Farquart’s opinion really wasn’t worth anything.
His thoughts wandered from Farquart’s rather dull personality to Sciss. Now there was a character! Gregory had heard a lot about him.
During the war Sciss had been in the Operations Section, working close to the chief of staff, and from all accounts he had some pretty solid achievements to his credit. About a year after the war, though, he’d been fired. The story was that he’d insulted some VIP — it might have been Field Marshal Alexander — and the story was certainly believable. Sciss was well-known for his ability to antagonize everyone around him. It was also said that Sciss was standoffish, nasty, absolutely devoid of tact, and as unmercifully frank as a child in telling other people his opinions of them.
Remembering his own dismay at the meeting because he hadn’t been able to counter Sciss’s seemingly perfect logic, Gregory could well understand the animosity which the scientist seemed to inspire wherever he went. At the same time, though, he respected the intellectual powers of this strange man, whose tiny head made him resemble a bird. “I’ll have to get busy on this,” he said to himself, bringing his deliberations to an end, but without any clear sense of what “get busy” actually meant.
The day faded quickly, so quickly that the displays in the shop windows were soon being lit up for the evening. The street narrowed. Gregory found himself in a district of the city
which hadn’t been rebuilt since the Middle Ages. It was jammed with dark, clumsy old buildings, most of them sheltering brand-new modern shops that sparkled unnaturally like transparent glass boxes.
Gregory turned into an arcade, amazed that the thin layer of windswept snow at its entrance still hadn’t been trampled. A woman in a red hat stood nearby looking at some smiling wax manikins dressed in evening gowns. Beyond her, where some square white floodlights brightened the concrete walk, the arcade curved slightly.
Walking slowly, hardly conscious of his surroundings and whereabouts, Gregory brooded about Sciss’s laugh. What exactly had it meant, he wondered. It had to be significant. Despite appearances, Sciss didn’t just do things for effect, although he was certainly arrogant enough, and consequently it followed that Sciss must have had a good reason for laughing, even if he was the only one who knew it.
Farther up the deserted arcade a man was walking toward Gregory — a tall, lean man, whose head was nodding as if he were talking to himself. Gregory was too busy with his own thoughts to pay much attention to him, but he kept him in sight out of the corner of his eye. The man drew nearer. Three shops turned off their lights for the night and the arcade suddenly became darker. The windows of a fourth shop were covered with whitewash because of a renovation in progress, and the only lights still visible were a few glittering displays in the direction from which the man was approaching.
Gregory looked up. The man’s pace slowed, but he kept coming, albeit hesitantly. Suddenly they stood facing each other, no more than a few paces apart. Still engrossed in his thoughts, Gregory stared at the tall male figure before him without really seeing his face. He took a step; the man did the same.
“What does he want?” Gregory wondered. The two men scowled at each other. In the shadows the man’s broad face was hidden; he was wearing his hat pushed down on his forehead, his coat was somewhat too short, and his belt was all askew, with its end twisted loosely around the buckle. There was certainly something wrong with the buckle, Gregory thought, but he had enough problems without worrying about that too. He moved as if to walk past the stranger but found his path blocked.
The Investigation Page 3
