The Dobie Paradox: british mystery novel: where nothing is as it seems

by Desmond Cory

  ‘So Beverley didn’t play hockey?’

  ‘No. She was sadly lacking in team spirit, according to Miss Midwinter. The Head. Sort of a … loner.’

  ‘Isn’t that a difficult thing to be? In a girls’ boarding school?’

  ‘It’s difficult to get any privacy. But that’s not the same thing at all.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  Dobie turned his head, looking now across the moorland and the shaded hills towards the distant shapes of the Caerphilly mountains. Beyond those mountains, the Rhondda, the mining valleys; he’d been working in Cardiff for twenty years now but the Rhondda was another world again, as different to his own as that of a girls’ school or of the Rehabilitation Centre. Somewhere over there was Aberfan … Of course you had to see things in perspective. Things like the death of a schoolgirl. You had to keep a sense of proportion. But even so …

  They usually feel they’d like to try it again, Kate had said. Talking about the usual middle-class adultery rituals, things of no interest to anyone except the persons concerned and sometimes not very interesting even to them. But it wasn’t so long since Dobie had heard Jackson say very much the same thing about murderers. They like to do it again, too. And that wasn’t a very nice thought. Especially when you thought also of likely future targets and then thought of your present companion, trudging up and down this lonely road every weekday on her way to and from school. Right now they were sitting not very far from the spot where he’d picked up Beverley Sutro on the point of death, though of course Elspeth couldn’t have known that; that was why her presence there in her blue skirt and parka had given him something of a shock.

  And thinking about her blue parka, Dobie remembered what it was he’d meant to tell Foxy Boxy about but had at that moment forgotten about. It might not, after all, be very important. Just two or three small blood-stained leaves that Kate had brushed from the girl’s blood-clotted hair-roots and which had now to be lying on the back seat of her car. Probably not important, no. But certainly odd …

  ‘Not so bad for me,’ Elspeth said, breaking abruptly into Dobie’s train of thought. ‘I live at home, if you call … Otherwise I wouldn’t really get any time off at all. Saturday afternoons and that’d be it. Still, we’ll be breaking up in two weeks’ time. Easter holidays. Big fat deal. Not a lot to choose, when you think about it, between a boarding school and …’

  She nodded towards the high wall on the far side of the road and the buildings beyond. ‘Funny,’ Dobie said. ‘Kate said very much the same thing. But I don’t remember my own school as having been all that bad. Maybe it’s more fun for boys.’

  ‘You betcha. Is Kate the doctor lady?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s awfully attractive, isn’t she? I couldn’t believe she was a doctor at first. Perhaps not pretty, exactly. But very sexy.’

  Dobie blinked. ‘Well, there’s really no reason why a doctor shouldn’t be sexy. They nearly always are on the TV.’

  ‘The ones here certainly aren’t. Popeye is about the best of the bunch but of course he’s terribly old. He must be at least thirty if he’s a day. And Ram, well, he’s exotic all right but I don’t care for beardies.’

  Dobie wondered what her attitude might be to extremely bushy moustaches. ‘Who’s Ram?’

  ‘Ram Singh? He’s an Indian. Sikh.’

  ‘Why, what’s the matter with him?’

  ‘Not sick. A Sikh. He wears a turban all the time and he’s not allowed to shave. You know?’

  ‘You mean he’s a Sikh-iatrist?’

  Elspeth laughed a good deal at this witty rejoinder. Dobie was also pleased with it. He didn’t make many amusing remarks as a rule, or at any rate, not on purpose. ‘That’s very good, Dobie. I’ll try it on Dad.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. What about the whatchamaycallum? The inmates? Most of them are nearer your age group, as far as I can see.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘No one there you fancy?’

  ‘There might be if I ever got to see any of them. But I don’t. No way. They’re supposed to be prisoners, after all, and I know they call it an open prison but it isn’t really. Anyway, I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m thinking about sex all the time. I mean, there are other things in life.’

  ‘Yes. Like hockey.’

  Elspeth’s gaze grew distant. ‘I hope sex is better than hockey, that’s all. Else I’ll probably want to shoot myself.’

  ‘Not so much better,’ Dobie said, ‘as different.’

  ‘I expect I’ll find out soon enough. Of course everyone talks about it at school, but it’s nearly always stories about what other girls have been up to, I mean gossip really. Not a lot of real hot tips from the horse’s mouth.’

  ‘Do they tell stories like that about Beverley?’

  ‘They won’t any more,’ Elspeth said, almost absently. Then looked up sharply. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.’

  ‘I know,’ Dobie said.

  Jackson, back at the ranch. And Box also.

  ‘We’ve got a case, then,’ Foxy said.

  ‘Let’s say that foul play is suspected.’

  ‘May as well call it murder and have done with it.’

  ‘You know Paddy,’ Jackson said. ‘He’ll never do that. Death was brought about by violent means and that’s as far as he’ll ever go.’

  ‘And Dr Coyle?’

  ‘She didn’t think it was a hit-and-run, either.’

  ‘Might have been made to look like one.’

  ‘Maybe. Hard to tell, as we never got to see the body in sitchoo. Pity it was moved, in a way … not that she could’ve done anything else. After all, the kid was still alive at that stage.’

  ‘And then,’ Foxy said, ‘there’s the rape issue.’

  ‘Doesn’t fit in, does it? But whether it was an H-and-R or not, Charley had a car. Gives us something to work on.’

  ‘I suppose it stands to reason.’

  ‘Course it does. Nasty cold rainy afternoon like that, where else could they have gone? I mean, you’ve seen the place. Open country for miles around. Nowhere he could have taken her for a spot of hoo-ha. Not even any buildings or barns or anything like that. No, he had a car all right. All we got to do is find it.’

  ‘Question is, did they meet somewhere? Or was it just a pickup?’

  ‘Maybe some of her school friends can tell us that. Or at least tell us if she was dating anyone regular or not. You’d think kids nowadays have too much sense to get themselves picked up by strangers, but …’ Jackson took out his notebook and opened it; stared at it for a few moments unseeingly. ‘I’ll go round to the school tomorrow morning and see if I can pick up a few bits and pieces. We’ll have to have something to show Pontin when he gets back.’

  Box frowned and shook his head, regretting the intrusion of this discordant element into what, up to then, had been an amicable discussion between colleagues. ‘Pity this should come along right now. The old fart’s been in a good mood lately.’

  ‘Because we got Dai Dymond put to rights is why. Well, maybe we all need bringing back to earth. The tabloids ought to do the trick when they get hold of this one.’

  Box nodded glumly. Detective Superintendent Pontin was a man who appreciated the value of media coverage and liked nothing better than seeing his name favourably mentioned in the organs of the popular press. There could be little doubt that the said organs would be immensely stimulated by certain features of the Beverley Sutro case and Pontin, on his return from the Smoke, would unquestionably be taking the case under his personal wing, issuing handouts, holding press conferences, giving interviews on Crimewatch, and generally making life difficult for his underlings and for Jackson and Box in particular. It was widely known that Pontin had achieved promotion largely in consequence of a sudden flurry of activity amongst his immediate superiors some five years back, when several CID high-ups had resigned, pending enquiries into charges of corruption. Pontin had emerged with h
is reputation unblemished. Nobody had ever for a moment supposed Pontin to be corrupt. He was far too stupid.

  ‘He could have made a clear ten thousand on that bit of nonsense, y’know,’ Jackson said. ‘That’s what DD’s shyster offered him, under the table, to get the charges dropped. But he thought it was some kind of a racing tip. Wasn’t about to tell him, now, was I? So he went out and put his shirt on Money For Nothing at fifteen to one and lost the bloody lot.’ Both men snickered uncharitably for some little while. ‘All the same, some of these lawyer blokes are going a whole lot too far. I wouldn’t at all mind putting that one away, for a start.’

  ‘Micky Mannering, was it?’

  ‘Who else?’

  Box clicked his tongue. ‘Too fly, that boyo.’

  ‘I know. But I still say Pontin’s being too eupeptic these days. A nasty bugger, is Dymond. Just because he didn’t sit there in the dock singing “We’ll Meet Again”, it don’t mean he hasn’t got plans. There’ll be a kickback coming along soon or I miss my guess.’

  ‘Big Ivor’s out of town, they tell me.’

  ‘Never any shortage of villains these days,’ Jackson said. ‘At least the geezer who did that girl in won’t be a professional. We’ll wrap him up quick and pop him in the post. No point in waiting for the lab reports. You get out there and find that car, Foxy. There’ll be blood on the seat cushions as like as not. Do us nicely, a few old blood stains would.’

  4

  If Jacko was in a somewhat nervous state in consequence of recent events, then so was Dobie.

  Dobie was, as the saying goes, at a loose end, and had been for some little time now. It wasn’t his fault. He had returned to Cardiff after an enlivening stint on a secondment in Cyprus to find that no specific teaching duties had been timetabled for him and that his presence at the Department of Mathematics wasn’t – his HoD assured him – required. This was partly because someone else in the Department of Mathematics had calculated (in consequence of a minor and altogether excusable slip in his Hoolean algebra) that an academic year lasts for eighteen months, but more importantly because Bill Traynor, the HoD in question, had decided that Dobie could do with a nice long holiday away from the Department, or more precisely that the Department could do with a nice long holiday away from Professor Dobie.

  This wasn’t because, or only because, Dobie’s name (and worse, his photograph – in academic dress) had last summer been largely featured in the tabloid press in near-libellous connection with the murder of the young lady to whom he had been married at the time. Traynor, unlike Detective Superintendent Pontin, had no great relish for newspaper publicity of the lurid kind, nor for that matter had the Rector of the University, but that wasn’t it. Since then, matters had gone from bad to worse.

  While lurking in his Cypriot backwater, Dobie had in a cowardly and underhand manner committed a publication. The evidence was incontrovertible. In black and white, so to speak. It lay on Traynor’s desk at this very moment. Not only a publication, but a joint publication. With an American. The offence, as one of Traynor’s literary colleagues assured him, was rank; it smelled to heaven; and other people thought so, too. Indeed, for a fortnight it seemed that Traynor’s telephone would never stop ringing. All manner of influential and academically distinguished personalities appeared to be taking a polite interest in the matter. The Maclennan Professor of Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University, for instance. ‘What in fuck’s name,’ the Maclennan Professor etc. had courteously enquired, ‘does this bloody Dobie of yours think he’s up to? He’s making a right sodding charley of himself with all this cock about the Lorenz effect, look, I’ve been into that these past fifteen years, mate, and believe me he doesn’t seem to know the first thing about it. Bringing your place into disrepute, that’s what he’s doing.’

  ‘Oh come now,’ Traynor said. ‘I’ll admit that certain of the paper’s conclusions are a little far-reaching—’

  ‘Sheer bloody fantasy, in my opinion. Balls from start to finish. Give the bastard the push if I were you.’

  ‘I think you’re as well aware as I am that University regulations don’t permit—’

  But the Maclennan Professor etc. had rung off. Traynor picked up the publication for the umpteenth time and stared at it hopelessly. Part of the trouble was that he didn’t really understand it – not any of it – and he suspected darkly that the Maclennan Professor didn’t, either.

  And Kate, of course … Not a clue. She could see that Dobie was worried about it, though. ‘But what exactly is it that you’ve said? I realize it has to be all very technical—’

  ‘All the paper does,’ Dobie said tiredly, ‘is establish the various sets of conditions under which the twin propositions compounding a mathematical paradox can themselves be maintained to be paradoxical.’ He spoke tiredly because he’d just got back from Cyprus and he’d found the flight more than a little fatiguing. ‘And all I did was set out the theoretical basis. George Campbell did the computations, and no one’s going to refute them because they’re irrefutable. That’s the trouble.’

  ‘So why all the fuss?’

  ‘Well, it’s bad news and good news. On the one hand, if George is right, as he obviously is, conventional quantum mechanics theory will have to go back to square one. On the other hand, using the new equations we can go a whole lot further towards developing an integrated field theory – perhaps all the way, though we don’t make that claim. Or not yet.’

  ‘I thought as much,’ Kate said. ‘You’ve been mucking up other people’s nice tidy arrangements and then leaving them to sort out the mess. Yes, I might have known.’

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ Dobie said.

  ‘Whose fault is it, then?’

  ‘God’s, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, there you go. He’s another of you male chauvinists.’

  ‘But you see, He’s been misrepresented. There wasn’t a Big Bang after all, and the universe isn’t expanding. Or blowing up like a balloon. The Doppler—’

  ‘I never thought it was.’

  ‘No, but a lot of people did, and do, and they won’t be any too chuffed to find out that it isn’t. All the Friedmann solutions will have to be thrown out … At least, I suppose you can still argue that the universe is in fact expanding inwards, but they won’t like that, either.’

  ‘No. I can see why they wouldn’t.’ Kate shook her head sadly. Some kind of royal weird was what she’d got herself landed with, somehow … How had that happened? She couldn’t understand that part of it, either. ‘They’d say that in that case it was contracting. And so would I.’

  ‘Oh certainly. Yes. Contracting outwards, yes, why not?’

  ‘Why not? Because—’

  ‘Of course, some of the Russians have been saying it for years. That’s what the USSR’s been doing lately, you see. Expanding inwards or contracting outwards, depending on how you look at it.’

  ‘What what what what Russians?’

  ‘Oh, the Kiev crowd. And Platanov in Moscow. Oh, there’s been quite a lot of back-up coming through from Russia, one way or another.’

  ‘My God, Dobie, now it’s Communist beastly male chauvinism already.’

  Et tu, Kate. No, Dobie couldn’t help but feel a trifle nervous, as a man well might who had (metaphorically speaking) removed the pin from an academic hand grenade and was now holding it neatly tucked away inside his trousers. His paper had, after all, been out for almost four months now and the resultant silence was itself becoming explosive. Apart from the irate telephone calls that Bill Traynor had fielded, there’d been no comment at all. Dobie couldn’t doubt but that in universities and research establishments all over the States and throughout Europe thousands of hands had been raised not in mere dissent but to swat him like a buzzing mosquito … but as yet none had descended. It was odd. The computations employed in his paper were indeed irrefutable, unless the Mack IV computer at MIT could be shown to be at fault; the theoretical basis was another matter. ‘The Dobie Paradox, they c
all it. Very flattering. In fact it isn’t. It’s just the opposite.’

  ‘What’s the opposite of a paradox?’

  ‘Exactly. Well, that’s what it is.’

  Nothing in the mail that morning, either. Only a couple of circulars and a threatening letter from the council about community charges. Yet Dobie, returning to the kitchen clutching these missives and the daily delivery of milk bottles, wasn’t wearing his usual frown of concern. ‘I forgot to tell you. Jackson rang last night.’

  ‘Jacko? What about?’

  ‘He’s asking for the inquest to be postponed. Pending police enquiries. He says he doesn’t think you’ll be called until next week.’

  ‘I could have told him that,’ Kate said, expertly snatching at a slice of toast as it leaped away from the pop-up toaster. ‘Paddy’s good but he’s awfully slow. That’s probably why he’s good. No one’s ever caught him out yet in a mistake – or not to my knowledge, anyway. What’s the time? Nine o’clock? Good Heavens.’

  ‘What it does,’ Dobie said, cautiously adding milk to the powerful brew already in his tea cup, ‘is give you a sense of perspective. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Frankly, no.’

  ‘It’s something I was thinking about yesterday. Seventeen-year-old kids getting raped and murdered next door to some weird kind of institute catering for drug addicts who’re apparently most of them under twenty. I mean, that’s what’s going on in the world today, whether you like it or not. There’s no denying it.’

  Kate sighed. ‘I could have told you that, Dobie-oh.’

  ‘So why am I getting worked up about an exercise in theoretical mathematics? I don’t say it isn’t important because it is. But someone else would have put it forward if I hadn’t. Sooner or later. Platanov or some other of the Russians. Or maybe Mancini. These ideas just sit there, you know, waiting to happen. They’re bound to happen. Murder isn’t. Murder shouldn’t happen. Least of all to a schoolgirl. Things like that … They matter in a different way. That’s what I think.’