The Strange Attractor

by Cory, Desmond

  “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 —”

  He stopped and Jackson saw that his face had become suddenly frozen, his lips drawn right back in a rictus of almost frightening intensity. Everyone was silent. Even Pontin, whose mouth had also opened, didn’t speak. Jackson then turned his head to follow the direction of Dobie’s petrified gaze, which was obviously riveted on the Medusa-head of the figure on the bed, on the snake-tendrils of fine black hair that wriggled out from it across the pillow. “Grab him, somebody,” Pontin said, and Jackson got an arm round Dobie’s waist just in time to check the impact of his fall.

  A white circle spinning on a black screen. A sound as of trickling water. A soothing coolness.

  Dobie opened his eyes.

  “Come on, Johnno,” Kate said. “Time to go home.”

  He didn’t think he had ever felt so tired.

  There were stairs, a long flight of them, with Kate’s arm helping to push him up them. There was the glow of an electric fire. After a while he stopped shivering. There was coffee, which he drank, and a white pill, which he swallowed. He found then that he was sitting on what felt like a well-sprung bed and Kate was untying his shoelaces, taking off his shoes. “… First it was Jane. Then it was Jenny. I don’t care what they say.”

  “They’re confused,” Kate said. “You can’t blame them. So am I.”

  “Do they know what happened? Exactly?”

  “How do you mean?” She pushed his chest gently and he flopped back on to the mattress like a tipped-over teddy-bear. “Get your feet up.”

  “I mean how was she…?”

  “Oh. That. She was hit on the head with a typewriter, it was all very… quick.”

  “A typewriter. What typewriter?”

  “The one that was on the table in the bedroom. I’m afraid you may find some of the keys are out of alignment.”

  “I’m out of alignment,” Dobie said.

  “Yes, you are. For the time being.”

  “She d
idn’t have any clothes on at all, did she? And Jane did. She had on a black, a black… Oh Jesus.”

  Kate pulled a blanket over him and stooped to tuck the edges in. “You try and get some sleep. Don’t ask yourself too many questions now because the answers won’t add up.”

  “I can’t even get the questions to add up.”

  “No,” Kate said. “Perhaps they will later.”

  One o’clock in the morning. The ambulance men had been and gone, taking Jenny with them, and Pontin had departed not long afterwards. Constable Pritchett had arrived from Central with a Thermosful of cocoa and, though Jackson could have done with something rather stronger in the way of stimulants, the general atmosphere in Dobie’s flat had become a good deal more congenial and relaxed. It was late but the routine was perfectly familiar and Jackson, Box and Evans were carrying it out with the practised ease of old hands.

  “They say Mr Corder’s in Birmingham. On business. They’re not sure if they can locate him,” Box said, cradling the telephone and wiping his hands on his handkerchief. Mercury powder gets everywhere. “There’s a daughter somewhere in Cardiff. They’re checking the address.”

  “Leave all that to Central, Foxy. This is a murder case, not like the other shenanigans. Have some cocoa.”

  “One thing’s for sure,” Box said, reaching across for the Thermos flask. “He couldn’t have been in two places at the same time.”

  “Been a gay day an’ all,” Sergeant Evans said. “Can’t remember nothing like it of recent years.”

  “I can,” Box said. “DI Connors.”

  Jackson said nothing. The sad case of Detective-Inspector Connors was indeed a salutary warning to one and all, and Jackson had reminded himself of it a good deal earlier in the evening. Connors, having been brought to the verge of promotion by the successful prosecution of a subtle and vicious wife-murderer, had been taken considerably aback by the unexpected reappearance upon the scene of the wife in question, the body in the case (which had been discovered in a state of advanced dismemberment) having therefore clearly originally belonged to someone altogether, or anyway distinctively, different. “… That’s right,” Jackson said eventually. “You can’t be too careful. We got to get a positive identification of the victim before we go much further. I mean, we’ve only got his word for it that it’s his wife. Maybe the Supe’s right and he’s an outright nutter.”

  “Prints all over the shop,” Evans said. “No doubt about that. Like, if she’s his wife, that’d account for it.”

  “You done that bag yet?”

  “Course I have. Same dabs. And of course Mr Dobie’s, where the silly bugger went and picked it up.”

  Jackson nodded. “Check it out then, Foxy.”

  Box set down his mug of cocoa and reached for the bag. “Got an airline tag on it all right. Jennifer Dobie and the address. CDG… What’s that?”

  “Charles de Gaulle. Paris. I seen all that myself. Get on with it.”

  Box unzipped the bag and ferreted inside. “Passport…” He glanced inside, flipped it on to the table. “Photograph checks. So it looks as if it’s her, right enough. Ticket. Yes, she kept the boarding card… Date of flight’s been changed. 25th to 24th, that’s today. Right. Time of arrival’s the same, though. 2045. Quarter to nine.”

  “Fits in about right,” Jackson said. “Assuming the plane got in on time. She’d have got through pretty quickly if that’s all the baggage she had. Picked up a taxi… How far’s the airport from here?”

  “Can’t be more’n fifteen minutes,” Evans said.

  “Say she got here about nine ten or nine fifteen and got under the shower right away, which she might well have done if she’d got a bit wet at the airport… And say she was in there about five minutes… Looks as though Kate Coyle got it about right. As usual. So then Mr Dobie, of course…” Jackson stopped to stare at the brown manila envelope that Box had just extracted from the handbag. “What you got there?”

  “Feels like money,” Box said. He opened the flap of the envelope and let a wad of paper notes slide out on to the table. “Looks like money.” A big fat wad of hundred-franc banknotes, held together by a rubber band. “It is money. Froggy money at that.”

  “Bloody hell,” Jackson said. “How much have you got there?”

  “I’ll tell you that,” Box said, “when I’ve counted it.”

  Six o’clock in the morning.

  The rains had long since ceased and the skies had partially cleared, though the build-up of cloud to the east was heavy enough to delay the first effect of the sunrise. The sea, sulking, lapped lugubriously at the sand and rocks lying directly beneath the sea-cliffs west of Porthkerry Park, brightening up a little, however, as the tide began to turn and shining rivulets of foam traced out long tentacles between the shallow rock-pools. These and the wet rib-patterns forming on the sodden sand shone brighter and brighter as the sun rose higher and the cloudbanks beyond the Severn Bridge became touched with glowing colour. Mr Jonas Matthias, pensioner and early riser, seemed to detect an unexpected echo of that colour among the jumble of rocks to his left as he strolled, overcoated and gumbooted, across the sands. He changed direction accordingly.

  The Home Office expert attendant on the autopsy was Professor Sir Guy Bunter-Coke (better known to junior female members of his staff as Hunter-Poke); when Kate had slit and snipped and probed and forcepped for some forty-five minutes under his kindly supervision and had subsequently refused a dinner invitation for the following Tuesday, Hunter-Poke took his leave and departed, bearing with him various intimate organs subject to more detailed forensic examination. Kate went to the changing-room to scrub her hands and strip off her whites; she wasn’t especially surprised when Jackson came in while she was doing this. “Get any sleep, Inspector?”

  “Not very much,” Jackson said. Certainly, his eyes were red behind the rimless lenses.

  “Nor did I. And I’ve got my clinic at ten. You won’t get my report till this evening so it’s no good your breathing down my neck.”

  “I’m afraid they’re bringing in another one for you,” Jackson said. “Fished her out of the sea early this morning. We reckon it’s that Mrs Corder but we’re not quite sure.”

  Kate closed her eyes for a moment as she reached for a towel. “… Drowned?”

  “That’s for you to decide. But I don’t think so. Dead before she was pushed in, that’s my opinion.”

  He watched the neat white hands drying themselves with what seemed to him unnecessary thoroughness.

  “Is Paddy Oates still away?”

  He nodded. “For another week yet. Sorry.”

  “I’ll look at her this afternoon, then. If that’s all right.”

  “By then we should have a definite ID. You know, the Superintendent’s not too happy with your time-of-death estimate on this one. You haven’t come across anything to make you change your mind?”

  “Nothing,” Kate said. She dropped the towel into the disposal bin and looked at her wrist-watch.

  “Blue light test?”

  “Negative. No sexual activities within the last forty-eight hours. I’ve got to go.”

  She went. Jackson fell into step beside her. Paris, he thought, couldn’t be all he’d heard it cracked up to be. “We’re going to need a full statement from your friend Professor Dobie. Should I send a car round for him?”

  “All right,” Kate said. “But not too soon. Can you give him till twelve o’clock?”

  “I don’t see why not. What sort of shape is he in?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “He was still asleep when I left.”

  Throughout the rest of the morning the Barry CID prosecuted their inquiries, aided and abetted by umpteen drafted-in members of the uniformed branch. Patiently and unobtrusively, the spiders of the police force extended their web, with varying degrees, as always, of success. The taxi driver who had taken Jenny from the airport to Dobie’s flat was found and questioned, and Interpol were politely requested to check on
her movements while in Paris, referring in the first instance to the Agence Azur, the travel agency for which, apparently, she worked. A similar check was inaugurated on Jane Corder’s movements throughout the previous day and it was discovered that she had lunched with a Mrs Pretty, co-organiser of a local charitable organisation, at the Cwm Tiddy and had subsequently driven into Cardiff to effect some small purchases at David Morgan; from there she had presumably driven home since her further movements remained, at least for the time being, unaccounted for. Alec Corder had been contacted at a Birmingham hotel and a woman PC had visited Corder Acoustics to advise Wendy of her mother’s death, though not (as was considered at this stage tactful) of the surrounding circumstances, while a whole team of conscientious plodders had conducted routine house-to-house inquiries of the occupants of the blocks of flats adjacent to Dobie’s, as of the very few houses in proximity to the Corder residence. The typed reports on these investigations already formed a pile five inches high on the Incident Room desk, and Dobie’s own lengthy and detailed statement would no doubt be added to them when Superintendent Pontin had finished reading it. This he was doing with incredulity and in the company of Detective-Inspector Jackson, whose eyes were now redder than ever.

  “He’s sitting there making funny faces at you, Jackson. You realise that?”

  “Box is with him in the I Room now, sir. But I don’t think he’s going to add anything very material to what we got there.”

  Pontin threw the pages of typescript across the desk. This was not the first sign of mild irritation that he had displayed. “I’ve never seen such a load of codswallop. Contradicts himself all the bloody time. Hasn’t he got a legal adviser? – someone who can get him to talk sense?”

  “Says he doesn’t want one, sir.”

  “He wants an alienist, if you ask me.”