The Shy Traffickers (Professor Dobie Book 4)

by Desmond Cory

  He had in fact been greatly occupied lately with a new algorithm presenting a large number of interesting possibilities, one of which had occurred to him while in the act of depositing that other unwanted interloper, Kate’s husband, outside Cardiff Central railway station. Doubtless Kate would be pleased to learn in due course of Kevin Coyle’s hurried departure for parts unknown, but in the meantime it would be fascinating to see … As he had, also recently, installed within the computer’s sophisticated entrails a splendid new symbolic manipulation programme, the practical limitations of which he had yet to discover but which would quite certainly make hay of the latest series of finite dimensional representations that had been coming his way from MIT. Bill Campbell … Yes, probably even that indecipherable sheet of e-mail … He picked it up and studied it for a moment before tossing it into his intolerably overloaded pending tray. No time for that nonsense now. He swiftly put the computer into top gear and once again drove off to the accompaniment of a smell of steaming rubber, this time symbolically represented by a smear of figures across the top of the monitor screen.

  … While back in the I room a call had just come through for Detective-Inspector Crumb, who reckoned it was probably from Dim Smith, hot on the trail. Pontin and that Doctor Missus hadn’t been doing much for the past five minutes other than glower hotly at one another, Pontin proving to be slightly the more successful glowerer of the two, but as the entertainment value of their encounter had clearly descended to the zilch level Crumb was prepared to welcome the interruption. Things would be very different, he promised himself, when the Special Branch took over the interrogation; the only puzzling aspect of the matter, after all, was the question of motivation, to use the proper technical jargon … It wasn’t on the face of it clear why the woman should have done it, but since it was obvious at least to him that she had done it, well … The reasons no doubt would emerge in due course. It was even possible that Dim Smith had already managed to uncover … “Hullo?” he said, breathing deeply into the telephone receiver. “Crumb here.”

  “’Ullo cocker.”

  Not Dim Smith, then. He recognised the voice at once. “Oh God, I mean … Hullo, Olly …”

  “Lissen. We got to get together on this one.”

  “On what one?”

  “This … Primrose bizness.”

  Crumb started breathing more deeply than ever. “Look, I can’t talk about that now. I’m not in a position—”

  “Preciate that but that’s why we got to get together. Soon’s you can make it. I’m at the Angel.”

  “Islington?”

  “I’m ’ere in Cardiff, mate. The ’otel. You got to get round for a bit of a chinwag, right? I’ll be in the bar.”

  “The bar … Olly, I got nothing for you. Not just yet.”

  “I got some info for you. Okay?”

  “You mean you … About the …?”

  “Just get on your bike, Crumbo. ’Less you’d rather read about it in the Snipe tomorrow morning.”

  Crumb thought that on the whole he wouldn’t. “Where’s the hotel you …?”

  “Right by the Arms Park. Football ground.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Crumb said.

  “I’ll keep yer seat warm.”

  Crumb hung up. Yes, Olly could do that if anyone could …

  The Scene-of-Crime boys had meantime transferred their attention from Primrose’s office to EXT BDG, as Foxy’s notebook had it. Not, of course, en masse. Foxy didn’t always manage to live up to his nickname but at least he knew enough not to indulge the team’s propensities for galumphing about in the Stygian gloom, trampling all the evidence underfoot. Once the area had been roped off and Edgar Wallace appointed as watchdog, he conducted the search himself by torchlight, with Dim Smith silently supervising from the shadows. He knew, of course, what he was looking for and it didn’t take him very long to find it, gleaming faintly in the angled torch-beam. He eased it cautiously into an evidence bag and carried his find at once to Dim Smith, panting like a golden retriever. Dim Smith peered at it through his trendy shades, not without inward elation.

  Ah, Dim Smith thought. Gotcha.

  “Nine millimetre, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yessir,” Foxy said.

  Dim Smith turned and directed his shades towards the unlit second-floor window directly across the street. “Forty yards or thereabouts. Uzi for an easy.” He shook his head. “Easy for an Uzi, I mean.” Even brief contact with Detective-Inspector Jackson could often work horrors with one’s syntax. “And good cover here amongst these trees. Yes, I rather fancy this one’ll stick.”

  “We might pick up a footprint or two come daylight,” Foxy said. “Ground’s pretty dry, though. Wouldn’t bank on it.”

  “Gilding the lily anyway, ducky. We know she was here, hell, we picked her up right on this spot.” He gazed down again at the cartridge case, still glittering away in the torchlight inside its transparent plastic sheath. “Gun still smoking in her hand. Or pretty nearly.”

  Foxy was feeling more than a little discomfited, though he didn’t show it. His face was in the darkness, anyway. But Kate Coyle … Really it was very hard to credit it. “Not exactly a woman’s weapon, sir, is it? I mean … An Uzi pistol, that’s a lot of gun. A lot of punch, like. Hard to handle.” Floundering a little. It wasn’t a strong defence and he knew it. Besides, it wasn’t his job to defend suspects; very much the opposite, in fact. But all the same … Kate Coyle? … It didn’t seem possible … But there it was. You never could tell with women.

  You certainly never could tell with Olly. That was for sure.

  “… A hit?”

  Crumb said, in tones of nicely modulated stupefaction.

  “Yep.”

  … Modulated, because he wasn’t much surprised. In one way, it was exactly what you’d have expected, given the nature of Primrose’s business and business associates. It was logical, sort of. But on the other hand …

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I got my sources,” Olly said smugly.

  “Such as?”

  “Okay. I’ll tell you. I got to see this guy Dobie. One of the real hard—”

  “Dobie?”

  “You know him?”

  “I’ve … You telling me he engineers contracts?”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t believe it. I’ve met him. He’s crazy as a coot.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. They get that way. When they’re not that way to start with.”

  This was undeniable. “But … he’s a professor and all.”

  “Got himself a good front,” Olly said. “I don’t buy it. Nor does the Snipe. I’m gonna expose that gonzo, see if I don’t.”

  “Great. Only snag is, he didn’t do it.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “He was there all right, that’s true enough. But he was walking down the street outside when it happened and there’s a police surveillance team and a video film to prove it. Hell, we know who did it, the only thing is …” Crumb paused, struck by a sudden idea. “Jesus, though. They’re in on it together. That has to be it.”

  “Who? In on what?”

  “That doctor bimbo. The one he’s shacking up with. She’s the one who did the shooting while he was getting himself an alibi. Hey, she’d’ve got away with it, too, likely as not, if I hadn’t been on the spot to nab her. That’s what it is. They’re a team.”

  “Sounds cool,” Ollie said admiringly. “Yeah. Real cool. Fits in with what he told me, too. He said an associate of his had taken on the job and I couldn’t quite figure how that could be, on account of … But now I caught the pitch. And I like it. So,” she added as an afterthought, “does the Snipe. That Bonnie-and-Clyde angle always goes down well.”

  “But who’s paying them off?”

  “… You just get yourself a warrant and take a look round that clinic place of theirs. Chances are you’ll find something interesting. Maybe …” (inspiration striking her when most ne
eded, as it often did to investigative and highly imaginative journalists) “… could be there’s a tie-up with the Hog.”

  “The Hog? … Who’s the Hog?”

  “I thought you might know.”

  “New one on me. That from your source again?”

  “Yeah, sort of a casual … Just somefing he let slip. Could be a London connection … I’ll get my people on to it right away.”

  Crumb shook his head. “You’ve lost me there, Olly. But it don’t much matter. Not now the whole thing’s started to make some sense.”

  “Okay, so you owe me, Crumb boy, and don’t you forget it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Crumb said. “We’ll nail them to the ground on this one. Nothing surer.”

  “Before you do that, I want an interview with this doctor person.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  “C’mon, you can fix it …”

  “Dunno that I can. Or not right away. She’s being held for questioning. And she’ll be charged all right, no doubt about it.”

  “Just ten, fifteen minutes. You can get me in as her lawyer’s clerk, something like that. I wanna talk to her, that’s all. Woman-to-woman angle. Okay?”

  “Look,” Crumb said. “I’ll ring you back.”

  “Yeah, but gimme half an hour. I’ll be on the line to London. Story to file. And they’ll be holding for the follow-up so you best not let me down, china, I wouldn’t want nothing to spoil our good relationship.”

  “Well, not to worry,” Crumb said. “She won’t go away.”

  He was wrong about that, as things turned out.

  “… What the hell do you mean, she’s gone away? …” Pontin’s stupefaction wasn’t modulated at all. Not in the slightest. His shrill intonations were those of an overweight Macduff deprived at a stroke of all his little chickens and their dam.

  “Look,” Jackson said despairingly, “it’s not my fault, sir.”

  “But how how how how how—”

  “PC Watson, sir. Took her in a cuppa char and some nosh.” Jackson was speaking slowly and carefully. “And she wasn’t there. It, er … seems she went and walked out on us, sir.”

  “Walked out on us? But but but but—”

  “Just like that,” Jackson said, rudely interrupting Pontin’s spirited impersonation of a man in imperfect control of a turbocharged motor-bike. “Like, no one was told to stop her, see? I mean, goodness, the boys are used to seeing Kate Coyle walk in and out of here in the normal execration of her duties, so to speak. No one thought twice about it. Looks like she’s been gone about … ten minutes now. Sir.”

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  “I dunno, sir. Maybe there was some kind of … misunderstanding—”

  “Misunderstanding my arse, Jackson, she’s done a bunk.”

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t put that interpolation—”

  “Get her back here, Jackson. Get her back, man. My God, things have come to a pretty pass when … Get out there and find her, just as soon as you like. People can’t be allowed to … It’s just plain ridiculous.”

  “There I would agree with you, sir. It’s these Special Branch people as have cocked it all up for us, sir, with us not knowing what’s going on, so to speak, and with Foxy and Edgar still hoarse de combat, as it were, working on the scene of crime—”

  “Don’t want excuses, Jackson. I want action.”

  Lummy, Jackson thought, effecting a discreet withdrawal. Haven’t we had enough of that already? What with … A rum go, though, altogether. What did Kate think she was playing at? Cops and robbers? … Pontin’s agitation was excusable this time, you had to admit it. Ridiculous was just what it was. She should have known better. You couldn’t just go walking out of … Halfway through an interrogation … You just didn’t do that sort of thing. It was highly improper …

  But still and all. She might have gone, but she wouldn’t have gone very far. Not in the time available. And with a general alert out, they could be bringing her back to the shop any moment now. The sooner the better. If only to save Pontin from an incipient cardiac malfunction. How long had it really been, then? Since she’d hopped it?

  Jackson looked down at his wrist-watch …

  Half an hour at least. Oh golly.

  So at that moment – coincidentally – did Dobie.

  Half past ten?

  Extraordinary …

  He was vaguely aware that something had disturbed the miasma of concentration that normally cocooned him when travelling, mounted on the computer’s Pegasean wings, through strange seas of thought and this was especially annoying since he was almost sure he had discovered an infallible means of winning at Monopoly. A pity. But … Yes, the telephone was ringing. That was it. Sighing, Dobie rose and went to answer it. There was only one person it was likely to be. “… Kate?”

  “Oh my God, Dobie, I’m in such a hell of a mess …”

  It didn’t sound like Kate at all, though the voice was perfectly recognisable. “Why, what’s gone wrong, Kate?”

  “Everything. I can’t explain it all now but … can you come round and pick me up? As soon as you can?”

  Ah. The car had broken down. What else? … Dobie felt somewhat relieved. “Yes. Of course I can. Right away. I won’t be—”

  “Dobie! …”

  Her voice rising to a near-scream. Dobie was alarmed. “What is it?”

  “Don’t hang up till I’ve told you where I am.”

  “Oh. Right. Yes. I mean no. Where are you?”

  “I’m in a callbox halfway up Park Place. Near the Students’ Union. You know the one?”

  “Yes. All right. But why don’t you—”

  Dobie paused, because now it was Kate herself who had hung up. All very perplexing, he thought. And very untypical. From where she was, she only had to walk a couple of hundred yards to find a taxi rank. But Dobie, ever the preux chevalier, could not very well have turned down so insistent an appeal. He could figure out the means of beating her at Monopoly some other time. Come to think of it, he almost always beat her, anyway.

  And Kate, for her part, was almost always punctual. This time, very notably so; she was dashing out of the shadows and clambering into the car even before he’d reached down for the hand-brake. “Okay, Dobie. Let’s get out of here. Some place where we can talk.”

  “Can’t we talk on the way home?”

  “No. We can’t go home.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s what I want to tell you about.”

  “… Can’t you tell me right here?”

  “No. It’s too near the cop shop, they’ll be … Just drive, Dobie, let’s get somewhere else …”

  Dobie was getting to be an old hand at this sort of thing. Obediently, he burned rubber again. “What about my place?”

  “What?”

  “My flat. The old one. I think I’ve got the key.”

  “Hey, that’s not a bad idea. They’ll think of it, but they won’t think of it right away. Let’s go there.”

  Dobie took the sharp left turn that would take them back to the city centre and thence, unless his calculations were amiss, onto the Llandaff Road. “Who won’t think of it? And what if they do? We’ve got a perfect right—”

  “It’s the fuzz,” Kate wailed. “They’re after me. Or if they’re not, they will be bloody soon. I’m a jail-breaker. Sort of.”

  “Kate, what the hell have you been up to?”

  “They think I murdered someone.”

  “But why would they suppose a silly thing like that?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Kate said.

  She did.

  Her narrative, which admittedly at times verged on the incoherent, occupied the greater part of Dobie’s attention throughout the whole of his drive out to Radyr. At times, he noticed, it took on the same despairing tone that had characterised the recent utterances of Detective-Inspector Jackson; Kate was well aware that Dobie, however unquestioned his loyalty, was far from being an ideal adjutant
where enterprises of pith and moment were concerned. He, too, had had a difficult day, by his own unexacting standards, and his overall resemblance to such men of action as Captain Hornblower, RN, never very marked, seemed tonight to be practically non-existent. He did, however, have the key to his own flat, which on entry proved to be, though clearly disused, reasonably dry and well-aired. She sat heavily down in the nearest convenient armchair and closed her eyes while Dobie prowled round in his usual ineffective way, opening and shutting things.

  “… What it all boils down to is I have to find Kevin, damn the man, and find him quick. He got me into this mess and now he’s the only one who can get me out of it.”