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

by Desmond Cory

  Jackson wasn’t prepared to dispute Dobie’s figures; he was supposed to be good at counting, after all. Instead, he stirred the contents of his mug, using the fork with which Dobie had kindly provided him – no doubt under the impression that it was a coffee spoon – and said, ‘Who’s Miss Daly?’

  ‘The Registrar. She’s a sort of … you know … well-developed young lady. More to the point,’ Dobie said, returning to it with a visible effort, ‘she kept this notepad on her desk. In full view, I mean. Anyone could have taken a sheet or two from it, with her permission. Or without it, for that matter, if she wasn’t there.’

  Jackson sipped at his coffee thoughtfully and looked around him, extending the aura of his approval to Kate’s tastefully appointed kitchen. ‘Nice cosy little kitchen, this.’

  ‘Yes. I think so, too. But—’

  ‘Warm,’ Jackson said, ‘and quiet. And peaceful.’

  A blood-curdling shriek expressive of unutterable misery and anguish rent the air. Jackson leapt to his feet, his normally rubicund features turned on the instant to a whiter shade of pale. ‘What was that?’

  ‘One of Kate’s patients, I rather think.’

  ‘Ah,’ Jackson said.

  He sat down again.

  He drank more coffee.

  ‘Fact of the matter is,’ he said, his jaded nerves having in the interim calmed down somewhat, ‘it doesn’t prove that the kid was there last Saturday afternoon. It doesn’t even prove she was there a couple of weeks ago, like you said. All it does is establish what’s called an infrarence, like. Having said that—’

  ‘But look at this.’

  Dobie produced an envelope from his pocket. The contents of the envelope, when shaken out on to the table, Jackson thought to be deeply disappointing; in his schooldays he had been able to perform much better conjuring tricks than that, notably one where you tied a knot in a handkerchief … ‘What’s this, then? A leaf?’

  Three small leaves, in fact, attached to their parent twig. ‘I found it on the back seat,’ Dobie said proudly, ‘of my car.’

  ‘A leaf. Yes. Very nice. Well, Mr Dobie—’

  ‘Kate’s car, really. But anyway … where I put the girl. That’s where she was lying. On top of it, in fact, that’s why it’s got … sort of crumpled. It was sticking to the wound on top of her head – I noticed it when I picked her up but I didn’t think anything of it at the time.’

  ‘Don’t know that I think anything of it now. A piece of paper is one thing but a leaf—’

  ‘With blood on it.’

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘Can’t be anything else. That’s why it stuck to her, you see.’

  Jackson poked at the leaf-stem cautiously with the tip of one finger. ‘Well, it would have done, wouldn’t it?’ But his expression had become very thoughtful. He could, on occasion, be sceptical, but he wasn’t stupid. ‘Leaves,’ he said. ‘Trees. There aren’t any, not where it happened. Not on that stretch of the road. Just open moorland, right? No trees until you get right down into the valley. Plenty there, of course.’

  ‘And quite a number in the grounds of the Centre. There’s an arboretum, in fact. Going back to the days when the place was a country house, or so I’d imagine.’ Dobie replenished the coffee mugs. ‘I mean, trees take a long time to grow, don’t they? Anyway, the thing you’re at this moment attempting to dismember is in fact a linden leaf. Tilia platyphyllos. The large-leafed lime. I’m sure of that because I looked it up. Besides … there’s a whole avenue of them at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at one time I used to walk down that avenue at least twice every day. That’s how come I’m able to recognize the thing, you see. They’re quite famous, the lime trees at Trinity.’

  ‘Yes. Very beautiful, I’m sure. But—’

  ‘But it isn’t all that common a tree in this part of the world. I doubt if you’d find another for miles around …. Oh, maybe at Dyffryn or in some other of the botanical gardens. But not in the woods at Tongwynlais.’

  Jackson was now staring at the elephant on his mug as though it had just done something that it shouldn’t. Red trousers and all. ‘But there’s one in the grounds at the Centre. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

  ‘I am telling you. In fact, there are two.’

  ‘Are there now.’ Jackson shook his head slowly. ‘Well, yes, I can see the imprecations of your testimony. And I’ll have it checked out first thing.’

  ‘Professor Goatcher would be your man. A colleague of mine.’

  ‘You wouldn’t by any chance have contacted him already?’

  ‘Of course. I’m a mathematician, Jacko. I try to avoid putting forward propositions that haven’t been properly tested, and you can take it from me that Jim Goatcher knows his onions. He knows about trees as well, of course. That’s why he’s a consultant to the Welsh Forestry Commission.’

  A smug old bastard at times, Jackson thought. But at least he made a decent cup of coffee. ‘Well, you’ve been getting around a bit, Mr Dobie. And you do seem to be putting it all together very neatly … as far as it goes. Only trouble is, I just don’t see myself arguing it out in front of the Super like you just did, I don’t have your gift for succulent expedition. Look, Pontin doesn’t go much of a bundle on the sort of evidence you’re coming up with, it’s all a bit too Doctor Dickhead for us, see what I mean? You try going into the Criminal Court waving a bit of paper in one hand and a treeleaf in the other, you’ll have some smartass defence lawyer like Micky Mannering tearing your whole case to shreds in no time at all. We got to have a whole lot more than this to work with.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Dobie said, a little testily. ‘But at least we know now where to look for it. Besides … there is another item …’

  ‘Ah yes.’ Jackson looked at the small pile of banknotes neatly secured with an elastic band and stacked up on the far side of the table. ‘That’s evidence right enough. No doubt about it. I’ll give you my receipt for it and I’ll have to ask you to make me a brief written statement explaining how you came by it – and the girl’s note, for what it’s worth. If we can find out where all that lolly came from, well, that could turn out to be quite a long nail in some Charley’s coffin. As for all those other concussions you’ve been drawing, p’raps you won’t mind keeping them under your hat for the time being. Give me a chance to look into all your instigations. You’ve given me quite a lot to think about,’ Jackson handsomely admitted, ‘and that’s the truth of the matter.’

  All very well, Jackson thought, for Professor Dobie to leap from crag to crag of ingenious speculation, like a chamois – or was it a chameleon? – all right if you were one of them intellectual geezers, but not (I’ll repeat that) not if you were a police officer and doing your best to be a practical cop. Of course the lindum-leaf things would go to Forensic and it was always possible that they’d come up with something. The great Ted Greeno (Jackson seemed to remember) had once got a conviction on the strength of a blood-stained ear of corn and the case had been in some ways similar to this one: another battered teenager – Daphne Bacon, wasn’t it? – found on the edge of a field of corn, not yet dead but dying. Way back, though, some time in the early ’50s. Things, Jackson thought, had to have been easier in those days, when murderers had been regarded as evil people and not as the unfortunate victims of social circumstance. Now it was one hell of a job putting them away, even on the hardest of evidence. Even the villains that everyone knew about, Dai Dymond and Big Ivor and Joe McKenna … Well, we slipped DD the dropsy all right, but only through a fluke. And you couldn’t blame it all on the lawyers. The juries played their part, too. Giving geezers the benefit of the doubt is fair enough, but not when there isn’t any. On the whole, you had to say that nowadays the public got the crime rate it deserved.

  And as for the police, well … Routine was still the key to all good police work. Routine was what got things done. Routine was what you stuck to. It was coincidental, in view of Jackson’s present line of thought, that the next visit on his plan
ned itinerary should be to the West Street offices of Mannering, Mannering, and Polegate, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths. That, Jackson reflected sourly as he stumped up a lengthy flight of sumptuously carpeted stairs, had to be why he’d inadvertently and maybe somewhat tactlessly brought Mannering’s name into his conversation with Dobie. Not that it mattered, but … well, smartass lawyer … It wasn’t the kind of remark that a policeman, practical or otherwise, would much care to have quoted back at him. Dobie wouldn’t do that, of course. The greater part of what you said to Dobie went in one ear, as the saying goes, and out the other. Yes, but it was always best to be careful.

  Jackson knew Micky Mannering pretty well – rather better than he knew Dobie, in fact. He didn’t think that in the ordinary sense of the word he really knew Dobie at all. And Mannering he’d certainly known a great deal longer. But there again … in a different way he didn’t know Mannering, either. Policemen never really get to know lawyers, no matter how many times they assist or oppose each other in court. It’s better that they don’t, for obvious reasons. Especially obvious, you might say, in Mannering’s case, since there were those who maintained him to be a criminal lawyer in both senses of the expression. If not bent, then pretty damned near it.

  Always polite, though – you had to give him that. Any time you had an appointment with Micky, you could be sure he wouldn’t keep you waiting just because you were a cop. And once you were within his office, you’d find him to be affability itself. The manly handshake, the disarming smile. ‘Haven’t seen you in a goodish while, Inspector. So how are you? And how’s the family?’

  ‘Fair to middling, thanks,’ Jackson said. ‘We’ve no complaints.’

  ‘I should think not. I should rather think not.’ Maintaining an amicable clasp on Jackson’s elbow, Micky escorted him to the sort of plush-upholstered armchair in which you sink out of sight rather than sit down, then returned to his own more stoically cushioned swivel-chair behind an impressive assortment of heavily laden correspondence trays. ‘Be getting your promotion this year, is it, when that silly old buffer Pontin moves on to Hereford? In line to be Assistant Chief Constable there, so they tell me. But of course you’ll know all about that already.’

  Jackson nodded thoughtfully. This, in fact, was the first he’d heard of it but he allowed no shadow of surprise or of joy to cross his placid countenance. Joy, not so much at the possibilities of forthcoming promotion (which he considered to be slim) but at the idea of at last getting shot of that bloody Pontin for once and for all. ‘Well, sir, it may never happen. They move in a mysterious way, the powers that be.’

  ‘They do. They do.’ Micky placed his elbows on the desk and interlaced his fingers in a vaguely judicial pose. ‘The case you’re currently engaged on goes far to prove the point. I need hardly say I’m even more than ordinarily anxious to be of assistance to you in your enquiries, since the victim chances to be the daughter of one of my oldest clients. But then you know that, or you wouldn’t be here. A shocking business altogether. Tea or coffee?’

  ‘I’ve just had some, thanks. To be honest I thought the girl herself was one of your clients.’

  ‘Oh no. I never met her. No, I’m simply enabled under power of attorney to pay her school fees and other incidental expenses, within reason. The present situation is frankly rather … I’ve been trying to contact the girl’s mother by telephone, but without success. Firstly, of course, to notify her of her daughter’s death, but also to take instructions. I take it that the police haven’t …? No. I see. Well, it’s all very difficult. As you know, it’s not the kind of work I normally undertake … but as Mrs Feltrenelli is a client of very long standing …’

  ‘From when she was Irene Jones, I suppose.’

  ‘Ah.’ Micky wrinkled up the corners of his eyes engagingly. ‘You remember.’

  ‘I do indeed. Standing wasn’t exactly her speciality in those days.’

  Micky allowed a spontaneous gleam of carefully rehearsed humour to appear in the murky depths of his still engagingly screwed-up eyes. He had read somewhere about the charm of the Irish. A pity, he sometimes thought, that he couldn’t do the accent very convincingly. ‘Yes, I suppose you’ll have had a look through your files. I’ve had a quick glance through my own, I may as well admit.’

  ‘I remember the Jones girl well enough, anyway,’ Jackson said. ‘A memorable young lady, in her way. And I gather since then she’s done rather well for herself.’

  ‘Financially, yes.’ The gleam taking on for a moment or two something like a genuine lambency. ‘There’s no secret about that. But I understand her latest marriage is running into certain difficulties. She was never really the uxorious type.’

  ‘Really? I thought she always fancied a bit of high life, as we used to call it. All the creature comforts and indemnities.’

  ‘I said, uxorious, Inspector. Not luxurious. Domestic happiness, in other words, seems so far to have eluded her.’

  ‘That’s maybe why she got rid of the kid? Sent her back here?’

  ‘No, I didn’t say that. Nor did I mean to imply it.’

  Oh yes you did, Jackson thought. Lawyers always seem to leave this almost frightening gap between their words and their meanings. Even so, after half an hour of Dobie … ‘Do you pay her an allowance?’

  ‘A small dress allowance, yes.’

  ‘How small?’

  ‘Ten pounds a month. Ridiculous, really, for a teenage girl nowadays. And paid, moreover, to the Headmistress, though Beverley naturally knows … knew that she could draw on it.’

  ‘Did she have any other source of income?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge. But I suppose she could always have appealed to her mother directly, by telephone or through the post.’

  ‘Because,’ Jackson said, ‘she seems to have died possessed of around two hundred pounds.’

  ‘In cash?’

  ‘In cash.’

  Micky shook his head firmly. ‘She wouldn’t have received a sum like that, or anywhere near it, on my authority.’

  ‘And didn’t?’

  ‘And didn’t.’

  ‘I see. Well, we’d very much like to know where she got all that oscar from and we’ll be trying to trace the notes, though that probably won’t be easy. Naturally,’ Jackson said, ‘the money will be treated as part of the girl’s estate and our legal officer will be handing it on to you in due course. You’ll be getting a formal whatchamaycallit to that effect. Very shortly.’

  ‘Ta very much,’ Micky said, rather surprisingly. ‘Appreciate the courtesy. It’s a substantial sum, no doubt, to a schoolgirl, but I don’t think our Irene will be greatly concerned. However, that’s by the way. What is strange is that the school secretary made no mention of the matter when she phoned me.’

  ‘Could well be she doesn’t know about it.’

  ‘Ah. A secret cache, maybe? Well, I know I’ll get nowhere trying to press you on that one. So I don’t intend to.’ The telephone on the desk rang sharply and he picked up the receiver, tucking it with professional ease under the second of his chins. ‘Yes? … No … Yes, yes, give me just a couple of minutes,’ he said, cradling it again. Jackson watched this performance admiringly, doubting not that the telephone had sounded in response to the small button under the carpet that Micky was wont to press with his foot when it seemed desirable to end a consultancy. We all have our little tricks of the trade, Jackson thought, and Micky Mannering had more than most.

  ‘Irene … Would you say she was now extremely rich?’

  ‘It depends on what your standards are. But yes, I think you might. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because we have to consider the possibility that we might be dealing with a kidnap attempt. Only one that went badly wrong, of course.’

  ‘I imagine the police have to consider every possibility. But I don’t think I can offer any comment … and obviously I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Irene made a few enemies, you know, when she was working the casinos.’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes. That’s why I shouldn’t comment. But of course everyone has enemies … You, me … Everyone.’

  Jackson reached for his briefcase in preparation for his departure. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know who the girl’s father was?’

  ‘Oh, come now, Inspector.’

  ‘Off the record?’

  Micky shook his head regretfully. ‘Well, she was shacking up with Big Ivor at the time, as you’ll recall, so not many people would have cared to attribute paternity elsewhere … Not the gentlest fellow around, was he, when he got his dander up? And it can hardly be claimed that he’s aged gracefully.’ He went on shaking his head, as one amazed at the infinite depths of human turpitude. ‘On the other hand, if you’re indeed considering every possibility, you’ll have a pretty wide field of candidates to choose from. As for our Ivor … that’s one laddybucks you really should have managed to finger by now. No one would weep salt tears if you did – least of all Irene.’

  Jackson shrugged, not very elegantly. ‘He’s had good protection. Up to now. But one of these days we’ll grab his collar, see if we don’t.’

  ‘And while we’re on that subject,’ Micky said, rising courteously, ‘I heard an interesting whisper about Dai Dymond the other day. That’s all it was, mind. A whisper. But I pass it on to you for what it’s worth. A whisper to the effect that a certain ginger-haired friend of ours had best look out.’

  ‘A contract out on him? That doesn’t surprise me.’

  ‘Where do you pick up these regrettable Americanisms, I wonder? From the TV, I suppose. Don’t we all? But, well … yes … Something like that. So the gentlemen who now have him in protective custody might appreciate the warning. Dai’s a vindictive bastard, too.’