The Strange Attractor

by Cory, Desmond

  This wasn’t evident from Dobie’s outward appearance. According to the mathematical theories he had earlier advanced to Kate, things only behave in an ordered way between certain limits. Pushed past those limits, they cease to· be predictable; thus under the stress of aerial bombardment, for example, born cowards may perform deeds of outright heroism while brave men crack up completely. Dobie, in accordance with this prediction, was being unpredictable. He was, apart from a certain jumpiness, behaving in exactly the same way as he had before, and Box was finding this a little unnerving.

  “… Exactly fifteen thousand francs, sir. You’ll get a receipt for it in due course, naturally. But you made no mention of it in your statement.”

  “I didn’t know about it,” Dobie said. Placid as you like. “I’d no idea she had it. I don’t know how she got it and I don’t know what she planned to do with it. Probably it has something to do with her work at the agency.”

  “Well, perhaps the French police will be able to help us there. We do know she was on the Cardiff flight last night and we know she took a taxi to your place and got there at ten past nine.” Sometimes you could get your charley to loosen up by seeming to take him into your confidence. He knew a trick or two, did foxy Boxy. “It was a radio taxi, luckily enough. So it was all logged. She got a bit wet, though, or so the taxi driver says. So it’s natural she’d want to take a nice hot shower as soon as she got back home. Only why should she want to undress in the bathroom? That’s where her clothes were.”

  “She always did,” Dobie said. “She didn’t like getting undressed in front of me. “

  Box, on to him like a flash. “But you weren’t there, sir.”

  “She didn’t like getting undressed in front of me even when I wasn’t there.”

  Box sighed heavily. Exactly the same as before. A decidedly difficult witness.

  “Sort of an old-fashioned girl, was she?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “What would you say then, sir? Can’t you tell me anything else about her?”

  Dobie thought about this for several seconds.

  “Well,” he said. “She was very fond of peanut butter.”

  “… A very difficult witness. No doubt about it.”

  “The Super thinks he’s mental,” Jackson said. “What’s your opinion?”

  “I dunno. I just can’t get on his wavelength,” Box said. “But he couldn’t have done his old lady in. We’re agreed on that much, aren’t we?”

  “I’ll tell you what bothers me. Let’s suppose the Corder woman did die in the way that he’s described, no matter how unlikely that may seem. Someone coshed her and pitched her into the drink. Tide took her across the bay and beached her on the turn early in the morning. That part of it makes sense, after a fashion.”

  “But then she couldn’t have turned up dead on his bed, in the way he says.”

  “No. I’d’ve said it was his wife there all the time and the shock of finding her there turned his head somehow. Having the other business on his mind, so to speak. It’s pretty wild but it’s the only obvious explanation. Okay. But he also said the woman on the bed was wearing undies. Black undies, right?”

  “In fact she wasn’t. Just come out of the shower—”

  “But this is what they took off the Corder woman when they got her to the morgue. The stuff that’s gone to the lab. Here you go.” Jackson selected a flimsy from the paper mountain before him. “Navy blue Aquascutum raincoat. Cerise cotton blouse. Sort of a red colour, that is. It’s what caught old Matthias’ eye when he was walking along the shore this morning. Black Jaeger slacks. Black flowered satin bra and matching briefs. Also a couple of rings but they’re not to the point. No shoes, but she’d have lost those washing around in the sea. D’you see what I’m getting at?”

  “Not quite,” Box said.

  “She was wearing black underclothes, damn it. But how the hell could he have known that? He couldn’t, could he? Unless… “

  “Ah,” Box said. “Yes. Don’t tell me. I’ve got it.”

  It wouldn’t be true to say that Pontin’s remarks about making funny faces had rankled. Jackson was too used to Pontin’s little ways. What was certain was that Dobie’s detailed statement, such as it was, constituted an altogether unsatisfactory basis for the kind of investigation that was now under way; it was difficult to check on, no matter how many minions of the law might be devoted to that task, because there was so little to get hold of. You had to go for the facts, such as they were. When (exactly) Jenny had died, what (exactly) Jane had been wearing. Dobie might or might not be, as Pontin claimed, non compos mentis but you can’t bring a case to court by guessing at what might or mightn’t be going on inside somebody’s head. Above all, inside a college professor’s head. An odd crowd, that lot.

  And Dobie, it had to be admitted, was odder than most.

  In Dobie’s flat, everything was somehow different. The police had tidied up scrupulously after their examination, but that in a way was the trouble; it was too tidy. It was no longer a flat but a scene-of-crime, a museum exhibit. An exhibit that Dobie didn’t much want to see. He stood, therefore, at his sitting-room window, looking out across the street, at the blocks of flats opposite and at the shadowy hills beyond Radyr, just visible between them. Saturday afternoon. Everything was quiet. Except for the thump of pop music, echoing from the open windows of a neighbouring flat; an unidentifiable disco number, a high-pitched female voice yowling plaintively, repetitively into an inattentive emptiness. Every now and again a car passed by. Behind the hills the sky was almost clear of cloud but devoid of colour, washed out by last night’s rain. Within the flat the heat of summer had returned, heavy and a shade oppressive, and Dobie thought that he could hear, behind the emphatic beat of the music and the anguished wails of Sinitta or whoever it was, a quieter yet equally insistent female voice carolling tunelessly away in another room somewhere. Nearer, yet infinitely further away. Odd to think how the grating inaccuracy of that other voice had come close, at times, to driving him round the twist. But then there seemed to be quite a few things that he’d do best not to think about. Or not yet, anyway.

  Mathematics is basically a frame of mind. A habit of economy of thought. What he had to acquire now, and very quickly, was a habit of economy of emotion. To discard all those feelings that he didn’t really feel and concentrate his mind upon the genuine element in his loss, as he might have done if his arm, say, had been amputated. Because in one way it wasn’t as bad as that. In another way, it was worse. Something you had, in any case, to come to terms with. Because there was no workable alternative.

  Kate also seemed to have a habit of economy. Economy of movement. She had been sitting behind him for the past ten minutes without moving, without saying anything, motionless yet apparently quite relaxed. In the end Dobie turned away from the window and sat down opposite her and for a few moments longer they stared at each other in silence.

  “You look like shit,” Kate said.

  “That’s the way I feel. Three hours they had me in that police station,” Dobie said. “Three hours and a bit. It was tiring.”

  “You should have had your lawyer along. Don’t you have one?”

  “It’d be just one more person I’d have to explain it all to and I’m tired of it. Like I said.”

  “Well, who’s your doctor?”

  “I don’t have one. I’m never ill. You know,” Dobie said, “I told them everything that happened, every damned thing, and I don’t think they believed a word of it. I’m not sure that I can blame them.”

  “Perhaps they believe a bit more now than they did last night. Did they tell you they found Jane Corder?”

  Dobie closed his eyes for a moment. “They didn’t tell me anything about that.”

  “Washed up on the beach. This morning.”

  “It happened like I said it did,” Dobie said.

  “Would you like me to make you some tea? Or coffee? Or maybe pour you something out of a bottle?�
��

  “Not unless you’d like something.”

  “You haven’t killed anybody.”

  “Of course not. Why would I have?”

  “Jackson can’t see any reason why you should have. That’s probably why you’re not still at the station. Detained in custody. I shan’t tell him anything.”

  “About what?”

  “About Jenny. You told me she was having an affair.”

  “Even if she were,” Dobie said, “that wouldn’t be a reason for me to —”

  “Some people might think so. Pontin might. But that isn’t the real point.”

  “What is the real point?”

  “… That if you didn’t kill her, someone else did.”

  Dobie looked again towards the window. “Someone else did,” he agreed.

  “You must have some idea who she was seeing.”

  “I haven’t,” Dobie said. “At one time I thought I might have, but it turned out I was wrong. You see… I didn’t really want to know. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes. And I suppose that makes you feel guiltier than ever.”

  “I don’t know that I do,” Dobie said. Economy of emotion, that was the ticket. Certain feelings now were luxuries he couldn’t afford, and what Kate was talking about was one of them. “It doesn’t seem to matter very much. Not now.”

  “You shouldn’t stay here, you know.”

  “I think I ought to.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been running away from things for long enough.”

  The sunlight, angling in through the window, formed a pool of brightness around Kate’s neat legs, neat shoes, neatly folded skirt. Her face, still turned towards him, remained in the shadows. “There are things that any sensible person would want to run away from. Things like newspaper people. Journalists. The TV news crowd. All that lot.”

  “Surely they won’t be very interested—”

  “Dobie, for God’s sake be your age. They’ll be camping down outside this place any moment. All the tabloids have their police contacts, you know, it’s a wonder they didn’t catch you when you left the station. And when they do, it’ll be worse than murder, believe you me.”

  Dobie thought that this might well be true. It was a consideration that hadn’t occurred to him until that moment. “But where would I go? There isn’t anywhere—”

  “You can stay in Sammy’s room, if you like. It won’t be so easy for them to find you there. I know it’s not very luxurious, but it’ll do for the time being.”

  “Are you sure that’ll be all right?”

  “It will be as soon as I’ve got it ready. Clean sheets and so on.” She got to her feet. “Pack a few things, get in your car and drive round there now. Don’t hang around any longer than you can help.”

  She turned and was gone, before Dobie could offer to see her to the door. Economy of effort, yes, but when Kate moved she moved. Decisiveness is sometimes contagious; Dobie hurried into his study and got down his own weekend bag from the shelf, shovelled into it his work file, a box of mini-discs and the package from MIT. What else did he need?… Clothes, of course.

  He hesitated for a few moments, his fingers clenched round the handle of his bag. Then he picked it up and went through to the bedroom. Spare suit, a couple of shirts, a few pairs of socks, pyjamas, his dressing-gown. Like going up to town for a conference, really. Nothing to it. His spongebag was in the bathroom. He fetched it. Now. Was that the lot?… Maybe the typewriter would come in useful. He went to fetch…

  Yes. That was really silly.

  He found that he’d started trembling again. Not shivering, but trembling. He couldn’t hold his hands steady. He’d had enough. He grabbed the holdall and walked down the hallway, head up, breathing deeply, slowly. Outside, he felt a little better. He unlocked the door of the Fiesta and got in.

  He had the sensation that several hundred pairs of beady eyes were fixed upon him from behind drawn curtains as he drove away. Yes, that was silly, too.

  But Kate’s reference to the potential marauding activities of the tabloid journalists had disturbed him. Even during the three and a quarter hours he had spent at his friendly local cop shop, he had been aware only of the distressing extent of his personal involvement; it hadn’t occurred to him to see himself as the centre of an enormous palpitating circle of breathless interest and intrigue, a circle within whose outer rim hundreds, if not thousands, of his fellow-citizens would be included. As the key witness, in short, of a Murder Case. As virtually the instigator of a complex problem towards the elucidation of which the most earnest efforts of whole battalions of his country’s police force, supplemented by the eagerly baying hounds of the mass media and by the cooperation of a substantial cross-section of the general public, might well soon be devoted. He hadn’t seen it from that point of view at all.

  This was because he hadn’t seen the problem itself in that sort of a light. It just didn’t look to be that kind of a problem, the kind that might be eventually unravelled through faithful adherence to an established routine; you might as well ask the police, the journalists and the men-in-the-street to determine the square root of minus one. There was something like a strange attractor at work, way way back behind the scene, an entity that would only reveal itself to a different mode of inquiry, to a creative imagination. A mathematical imagination. To an element that the police investigators lacked. If their interrogation methods were anything to go by. They hadn’t believed a word of it, not a word…

  Though here Dobie was doing the bogeys rather less than justice. Foxy Boxy?… No mathematician, he. But the nickname implied, at least, the possession of a certain imagination, if of a limited kind. Low cunning, some might call it.

  “… Strangers on a Train,” Box was, at that very moment, saying. “Good film, that. Jevver see it?”

  Jackson wasn’t much of a one for film-going and levelled on his subordinate a stare of disfavour. His eyes were now so inflamed from continuous concentration upon reading matter that his expression in itself might have guaranteed him a starring role in a Hammer horror movie; hairs seemed to be about to sprout from his otherwise unremarkable features at any moment. “Save the chitchat for later, Foxy, or we”ll never get through.”

  “No, look, there’s these two geezers, see? and they fix it so each one of them does the other one’s murder for him. ’Cause that way they both have alibis. It’s clever. Suppose this Dobie feller was to knock off another bloke’s old lady while the other bloke got rid of his wife for him… See what I mean?”

  Jackson thought that he did, but wasn’t impressed. “A bit far-fetched, though, innit?”

  “I dunno. It says here that Dobie and the Corder woman’s husband were college students together. And it all seems to me like the kind of thing a couple of college kids might dream up, being that way inclined. Ingenious, like. Mind you, that was another one. Rope. They put the body in a chest and sat on it.”

  Jackson looked at his wrist-watch. “Well, you’re due to meet Mr Corder at the city morgue in half an hour’s time. Keep an eye on him when he does the ID and if he tries to sit on top of the corpse, let’s know about it.”

  “You will have your little joke,” Box said unresentfully.

  He himself had thought his suggestion to be a bit far out. Jackson, however, pushed back his chair and didn’t resume his reading until some time after Box had gone.

  Once you’d met Alec Corder, the suggestion seemed further out than ever. Corder wasn’t the kind of man who would readily delegate responsibility, certainly not for so simple a matter as bumping off an unwanted wife or two. As for identifying the victim once the deed was performed, that was like stealing an infant’s sucker. Corder marched unhesitantly up to the besheeted figure on the trolley, the morgue assistant expertly flicked the sheet back, Corder gave a brief but emphatic nod of acknowledgement, the assistant flicked the sheet back again and that was it. Box was fully prepared to wait respectfully for a few moments while Corder turned his fac
e to the wall in manly sorrow, but Corder instead swung abruptly around and was on to him like a rabbit on to a parsnip. “… Right. Who’s in charge of this case? Pontin?”

  “Detective-Superintendent Pontin, yes, sir.”

  “I want to know a great deal more about it than I do right now,” Corder said, snapping an elbow lock on to Box’s right arm and marching him relentlessly out into the hollowly echoing corridor. “And if he’s not prepared to talk to me about it, then I know just the fellow to see and it is the Chief Constable I have in mind. I’d be obliged if you’d make that clear to him.”

  “I’m sure the Superintendent will be pleased to see you, sir, as soon as we’ve received the autopsy report. And if in the meantime you’d care to come round to the station and make a short statement—”

  “One thing I can tell you for a start,” Corder said, steering Box effortlessly round a corner. “There’s no way at all she could have fallen in. She was always scared of the sea. Couldn’t swim a stroke.”

  “We don’t think she was drowned, sir. We’ve every reason to suppose her death wasn’t natural. I don’t think I should say any more than that, at this stage.”

  Corder’s grip on his elbow tightened, though no more than momentarily. “What are you implying, exactly?”

  “All we want at the moment is to establish an identification, sir. I don’t wish to imply anything.”

  “Not your place to do so, no doubt.”

  “That’s it, sir.”

  “Then we’ll see what your Superintendent has to say. You’ve got your identification. That was Jane all right.”

  They left the side entrance and headed for the car park, in this way crossing the path of Dr Caitlin Coyle who was moving in some haste in the obverse direction. Her immediate destination was the autopsy room, where the dissection trolley had already arrived and old Hunter-Poke was already walking abstractedly up and down with his hands interlaced behind his back, a style of locomotion which in his (totally mistaken) opinion accentuated his overall resemblance to the Duke of Edinburgh. “Ah, so here you are. Never a dull moment, eh, m’dear?”