by Desmond Cory
“Yes, I think you can be quite sure as to that.” A paternally beatific expression appeared on Stainer’s otherwise unbecoming face, an expression redolent of a brotherly love for all mankind and for Professor Dobie in particular. “Once the word goes out … If he shows his face in this country again he’s a deader, and if I were him I wouldn’t feel any too safe in foreign parts, either, since I’ve so many friends and acquaintances who’re anxious to oblige me in these little matters. So as far as you and your friend are concerned, it looks like things are coming to a happy ending, just the way they should. But … I’ll say it again, professor. You’re a clever man but I still think you’re a bit of an innocent. That’s to be expected, of course. You being an academic.”
“I’m not sure that I will be very much longer,” Dobie said gloomily. “After all this.”
“Really? Well, a man of your obvious brain-power … I’d be happy to offer you a directorate with Codron, if that would interest you. A seat on the board. Professor John Dobie … It’d look good on the company letterhead, don’t you see? We’ve got a couple of lords and such already, but titles these days don’t count for much. While a man of your intellectual eminence … Above all if you do get that prize …”
“Prize? What prize?”
“You didn’t know you were highly fancied for a Nobel prize this year?”
Dobie started blinking again, this time very rapidly. He did this sometimes when he wished to stop himself from laughing. “Oh no. No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s a fact. I keep my ear to the ground, you know, on these political issues and I promise you you’re on very short odds to get an award. Ask any of my betting-shop managers if you don’t believe me … and get a bit of lolly down yourself, if you’re wise. Though of course, if you decide to join the Codron Corporation, the lolly won’t be an issue. We’re high flyers, you know, when it comes to head-hunting.”
“Yes. That’s what worries me. Mine wouldn’t look too good up there on the end of a pole.
“Ho-ho-ho,” Stainer said, laughing heartily.
16
A long, hot day it had been and Dobie stood in need of refreshment. This he knew to be readily available in the friendly local hostelry at the far end of Ludlow Road and thither he repaired. “Been a long, hot day,” the barman remarked.
“It has indeed.”
Whisky was Dobie’s normal tipple but, this being something of a special occasion, he opted for a half of best bitter. He would have opted for his usual pint but he hadn’t eaten for something like thirty-six hours and Dobie was above all else a prudent man. He liked to think so, anyway.
Glug glug.
Well, that hadn’t lasted very long. And there were times when prudence might go by the board, as on that memorable occasion when he had built a hotel on Park Lane and Kate, despite his very reasonable offer of a cut-price dirty weekend in the penthouse suite, had obstinately refused to land on it. “The same again, please,” Dobie said.
… Wondering it it could conceivably be true about the Nobel prize. He knew what a Nobel prize was, of course. You went to Stockholm and they let you make a speech. Dobie loved making speeches. Kate would enjoy it, too. The going-to-Stockholm bit, not the speech. And Dobie’s credit, Katewise, would stand sorely in need of restoration in the aftermath of today’s events. A point he’d do well to bear in mind.
Stainer had certainly seemed to be (among other things) a well-informed sort of a bloke. Except on the subject of ballistics. And besides … Bill Campbell, as Dobie now realised, had been seeking to convey to him the same intelligence. A nomination, then. Not an abomination. And as for the hubble hubble … well, yes, he was well aware that the Hubble telescope had come up with some altogether remarkable findings, observations that might have indeed appeared to suggest … But that was really none of Dobie’s concern. He was a theoretical mathematician and the worlds of theory and praxis are totally separate. The Dobie paradox couldn’t be proved. Its own nature made that impossible. And if the MIT crowd had succeeded in proving it – thereby confirming, of course, its paradoxical status – then Dobie was … Dobie felt … He didn’t really know what he felt. Like Francis Crick, perhaps, on being asked to shake hands with his own clone. Of course he could be held to be ultimately responsible for it, but …
And maybe one day soon he’d have to hold himself ultimately responsible for Kevin Coyle’s death, if Stainer took the tit-for-tat business to its logical extreme. Dobie hadn’t ever wanted that. It was a matter of one thing having irrevocably led to another, as with the equations he’d used to formulate the paradox. You couldn’t foresee the results. Dai Dymond, in formulating his own equations, had probably thought that you could.
A bad mistake …
Dobie’s tummy rumbled ominously.
… He should of course have eaten something in the course of the day. Another mistake. It wasn’t altogether unusual for him to give scant consideration to the needs of the inner man when he was in hot pursuit of some evasive proposition or whatever, but when that very charming young lady had put forward the alternative proposition of kidneys on toast, he should really have … Though now he came to think about it, he had proposed it. And her reactions, as he recalled them, had been somewhat odd. Perhaps he’d got the lines crossed there again, somehow. He knew he made rather a habit of that sort of thing …
“… No dice, Crumbo, I’m pulling out. If old man Stainer says the story’s dead, then the story’s dead. Sooner it than me.”
“Listen, Olly, you can’t leave now …”
“Oh can I not just. I’ll tell you, that Dobie character—”
“Never mind Dobie. Forget about Dobie. What I’m trying to tell you, there’s been a development.”
“I don’t care if there’s been an earthquake, I’m still getting back to town.”
“Could be worse than an earthquake.”
“What?”
“Could be worse. No, listen, will you? … That Jackson, he’s just done gone pull in that Guffin geezer, you know? … the bloke who doofered for Primrose …”
“You’re the one needs to listen, china. I keep telling you, the whole thing’s dead. Kaput. Finito. Got the message?”
“He’s finito. Or dam’ nearly. Dead of fright. One of his oppos has gone down with a virus and he’s in a right panic. You got to see him to believe it.”
“But what’s so—”
“One of them African viruses, right? Straight out the jungle …”
“You mean … them when your arms and legs fall off and you die in hijjus agony?”
“You draw a graphic picture of it as always, Olly.”
“And it’s … contagious?”
“I’m not about to find out. We got him in an isolation cell till they can rush him off to hospital. His pal’s there already. But look, if you get here quick I can fix you an interview, you can say you’re his solicitor’s seck or something …”
“An interview? … You mean, me go in there and … You can’t even be joking. Oh my God!
“Wassa matter?”
“A virus, Columbella was saying something about a virus when I cut her off, it’s got to be true …”
“Well, if you were to go round to the hospital and institute a few inquiries … though of course they’ll try to hush it up …”
“No one withholds the truth from the Snipe.”
“What I reckoned. Only you’d best be quick.”
“Yeah, right.” Olly’s normal high spirits had now returned. There was nothing Manderson enjoyed more than a good fast-spreading epidemic. “Hang up now, I’m on my way.”
A tall well-dressed bespectacled stranger was standing outside the entrance to the clinic. Dobie gazed benevolently at him through the haze induced by his third pint of bitter and almost at once identified him as Detective-Inspector Jackson, a stalwart of the South Wales Constabulary. “Wotcha doin’ here, Jacko?”
“Waiting for you,” Jackson said.
“Ah. Right. Co
me on in and sit down while I have a pee.”
They walked upstairs to Dobie’s hideaway and Jackson obediently sat himself down therein and waited patiently a while longer while potential Nobel prizewinner Professor Dobie relieved himself at considerable length in the next door toilet. Well, it takes all sorts, Jackson reflected. Eventually the toilet was flushed with a noise like that of the Victoria Falls cascading onto a very large tin tray and Dobie reappeared, still beaming benevolently. “There. That’s better.”
“I imagine it would be,” Jackson said. “Been sinking a few, have we?”
“A few more than is my wont. It’s as well to guard against dehydration in this hot weather. Is Kate all right?”
“Well, we got her out all right. And round to the hospital. They’ll keep her under observation for a bit but they seem to think she’ll be okay. They may even let her go tomorrow. Not so Guffin. He’ll go down for a good long sentence.” Jackson stretched his legs out across the floor in a satisfied sort of way, as though mentally putting on his carpet slippers. “So will that little Pollymalasian tart. Got them bang to rights, we did. Cupboard there stuffed to the brim with coke, if the abduction charge weren’t enough. So was Kate, of course.”
“What?”
“Stuffed to the brim with coke, I mean. That and nembutal. What you might call a heady mixture.”
“But Kate never touches the stuff.”
“Cocaine, Mr Dobie. Not Coca-Cola.”
“She never touches that stuff, either.”
Jackson sighed. “They gave her some pretty heavy dosage, see? Trying to get her to talk. But she’ll be all right tomorrow morning, except she’ll likely be carrying a fearful hangover. No worse than the one that you’ll be nursing, though, I shouldn’t suppose.”
“They were drugging her? Good heavens. I never thought of that.”
“Tell you what still puzzles me …”
“Yes?”
“How the hell did you know she was there?”
“By the ellycation of applimentary logic.”
“… Eh?”
“I reckoned it was the place where you’d be least likely to look for her. Or rather I reckoned that they reckoned … least likely or do I mean more likely? … No. I mean yes. Anyway, same like the Purloined Letter principle.”
“Mr Dobie …”
“Yes?”
“You’re drunk as a skunk.”
Dobie’s beatific expression immediately returned. “Yes,” he agreed, nodding contentedly. “That must be why I’m telling you all these fibs.”
“What fibs?”
“It wasn’t elly … lolly … what I said at all. I heard her shouting.”
“You heard her …?”
“Yes. When I chanced to be passing by in the course of my investigations. It wasn’t all that loud because of the soundproofing, I suppose, but hell, I know Kate’s voice all right. I should do. She shouts at me often enough.”
“And that was when?”
“When? Oh … Some time this morning …”
“She’ll do a whole lot more shouting, won’t she? … when she gets back and finds that out.”
“I hadn’t actually thought of telling her.”
“Well, but … why? We could have got her out ten hours earlier if you’d told us at the time.”
“It seemed to me she’d be safer there than anywhere else.”
“Safer?”
“Yes. Because she was trying to find her husband … and her husband strikes me as being a very nasty fellow. A bullet through her head and the case would have been closed for good and all … if you see what I mean.” Dobie closed his eyes for a moment. “That’s why I had to talk to Stainer first. To make sure Coyle will stay out of the country from now on. But the trouble is … he did it the way I said. But I can’t prove it.”
“We can,” Jackson said.
Unexpectedly.
Dobie stared at him. “You can?”
“To our own satisfaction, anyway. Don’t know as it’d stand up in a court of law but it won’t come to that, not now. We got a tape.”
“What sort of a tape?”
“It was in a tape recorder hidden away in Primrose’s desk. He must have set it going when Coyle got there. The Specials found it and sent it with the rest of the stuff to Forensic and we’ve only just now got the report on it. They tend to take their time over things in Forensic.”
“But … have you heard it?”
“Oh yes. That’s why I’m here, to let you know about it. I mean, it bears you out. You hear them talking, you hear Primrose moving away towards the window, and they’re still talking when you hear this muffled sort of a … bang … and then nothing else. As you might expect. Coyle was with him when he was shot and no one else was. So …”
“So you won’t be arresting Kate again when she gets out of hospital?”
“No. Of course not. She’s off the hook.”
“In that case,” Dobie said, “let’s go to the pub round the corner and knock off a few more beers.”
“Well … I’m off duty. Why not?”
The following morning Dobie slept late as any rabbi and was only awakened by the hideous roaring of the telephone bell in his ears. “Owwwwwwww,” Dobie said. Reaching for it.
“Come and pick me up, you wanker.”
“Oh. Right,” Dobie said. Replacing the receiver.
No need for him to ask how Kate was feeling. She was in her usual caustic form, as was obvious.
And waiting for him, moreover, outside the hospital entrance gate, seemingly in foot-tapping mood. She looked a little pale, Dobie thought, but she clambered into the front seat of the car with her normal energy and brio. She had, he noticed, a folded newspaper tucked under her arm. None other than the Daily Snipe. “Oh dear,” Dobie said. “We’re not still in the news, are we?”
“We’re not, no. But this place is.”
“What place?”
“This hospital. Here. Take a dekko.”
Dobie obligingly dekkoed.
ZAIREAN EPIDEMIC BREAKS OUT IN UK
WELSH RUGBY STAR VICTIM
OF WOBBLY VIRUS
HOT ZONE IN CARDIFF HOSPITAL
EVACUATION PLANS NOW UNDER WAY
“NO CAUSE FOR PANIC”
SAYS POLICE SUPERINTENDENT
“It’s unbelievable,” Kate said. “I mean, Rugby star? … He played for Aberavon. It’s preposterous.”
“Yes. I wonder where they get these crazy ideas from.”
“I really can’t imagine,” Kate said.
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