by Desmond Cory
“Ah. So wot abaht this Cardiff tip-off?” Ms Bohun was ever a trier. “You run a check on this Primrose geezer?”
“Yes.” Ms Watkins’ face betrayed no enthusiasm, it being ill-adapted to that purpose. “The tip-off’s good as far as it goes. Stainer’s bunch are moving in on the territory all right. Primrose seems to be—”
“Wot’s in it for them?”
“I dunno. I don’t even know what’s in it for us. I mean, it’s all straightforward thuggery and violence so far, gang warfare stuff. Not much for our readership there. Nothing kinky.”
“It’s the drug scene, innit?”
“Oh sure. But that’s awfully dated, don’t you agree? Of course, there might be a murder or two if we get lucky.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Bound to be. Unless the Dymond crowd decide to cut and run. Seems they lost their hard boy a few months back, see? There was some kind of a caper in a sanatorium or some place like that. Ivor Halliday, his name was.”
“Rings a bell,” Olly said thoughtfully.
“The fuzz swept it all under the carpet but,” Columbella said, consulting her notepad, “it looks like Halliday and his girl friend both get rubbed out by some local tearaway name of Dobie.”
“Say it again?”
“Dobie.”
A second bell rang in the inner fastnesses of Ms. Bohun’s mind. Ding, ding, ding. “Name’s certainly familiar.”
“We ran the story at the time. Angle being, guy’s apparently the local hit merchant but at the same time he’s a University professor. Some cover, hey? Same like Moriarty.”
Olly clicked her tongue. “You mean Macavity. I saw that show, too.”
“I do not so. Macavity’s a fucking cat. Moriarty …” Columbella paused, the intellectual enlightenment of her immediate superiors being in no way part of her professional concern. But then Olly was only a journalist, after all, and as such was no more in touch with the real world than a sitting Member of Parliament; to Olly, nothing could ever be said to have happened unless and until you could read about it in the Snipe’s smudgy newsprint. While the simplest of computer programming operations would of course be way beyond her comprehension. “But we’re moving away from the topic in hand, I rather feel.”
“Yes and no. Look, Peter Crumb was screwing me again the other night and—”
“We’re moving away further yet.”
“No, we’re not. Because he reckons this Primrose is down on someone’s hit list.”
This intelligence appeared to give Columbella food for thought. She tapped her teeth with the end of a half-chewed-up pencil, considering the matter.
“You told me the guy was under police surveillance.”
“So he is. Special Branch. Pete’s running the team. So I got to suppose he knows what he’s talking about.”
“Well, okay. But no one’s likely to knock the guy off with a whole crowd of fuzz around to watch him do it, see what I mean?”
She had a point there. Not, as things turned out, a good one. But life’s like that. Columbella was a computer whizz, not a bloody clairvoyant. “But,” she said, removing her finger (metaphorically) from the PAUSE button, “we could run an interview col without too much trouble. Ask him how it feels to be a big drug dealer who’s got himself on a hit list. Could be some good copy there if you make up some interesting answers, like you usually do.”
It’s sometimes difficult, of course, to phrase such questions as these tactfully, but considerations of that kind didn’t bother Ms Bohun in the slightest and that wasn’t why she shook her head decidedly. “No can do.”
“Why not?”
“By the same toking, dick’ead. Fuzz are goin’ to spot me, ain’t they? An’ put two and two together. They’ll know we must’ve ’ad a tip-off an’ they’ll guess we got it from Crumbo an’ there you go. Bang goes a dam’ good contact.”
“When you say a dam’ good—”
“I mean a contact I don’t want to lose if I can help it. How many crime reporters d’you know who have an in with the Special Branch?”
“More of a bit of in-and-out in your case, isn’t it? Not that I’m criticising. This is a hard profession for women, we both know that.”
Ms Bohun breathed heavily through her nose. In an ideal world the cheeky little scrubber wouldn’t be in the bloody profession at all, but unfortunately the Managing Editor regarded her as indispensable and he was right. She was. Besides, perhaps she wasn’t altogether to be blamed, could be you got that way if you spent all your time screwing computers instead of … Ah, skip it. If that was what turned her on, she could bloody well get back to it. Because after all none of this crime stuff had any real meaning to her, it was all virtual-reality programming up on the monitor screen. She wasn’t a true investigative journalist at all, not really. “Right now it’s this Dobie character who’s excitin’ my interest, Columbella. Better get back on yer bike and see what you can dig up out of the bin. Took out one of Dymond’s ironmongers, diddy? So ’e must be ’ot stuff.”
“That’s what the cuttings say.”
“A contract man, then. Made a thorough job of it, too, as I seem to recall. Knocked off the charley’s girl friend as well, isn’t that wot you said? Must be a real pro.”
“Uh-huh. Just your type, Olly.”
“These real killers, they don’t grow on bushes.”
“They certainly don’t.”
Ms Bohun scratched the tip of her nose thoughtfully, aware that her last statement had been of the over-obvious. Of course they didn’t grow on bushes, they was natural born like everyone else, according at least to certain extremely trendy American film directors. But there again, you couldn’t be over-obvious, not if you worked on the Snipe. “I’ve got a feeling I may need some real expert backing-up on this one. Such as this Dobie geezer can clearly provide.”
“Advice about what?”
“About how these hit boys go to work out there in the provinces. About how come this Primrose got his name on the list. That sort of thing.”
“Yes. Good meaty stuff for a cold wet Saturday. Only thing is,” Columbella pointed out, “he may have gone and taken on the Primrose contract himself, for all we know. Him being the local expert, so to speak.”
“So wot if he has? We all got to scrape along somehow and I don’t suppose he picks up much of the folding stuff as a university professor. You got to be broad-minded about these things.”
“I try to be,” Columbella said.
She even tried to be broad-minded about the Special Branch. But it was difficult. She picked up her (unused) notebook and tittuped away, leaving Olly to frown down at the papers in the filing trays. Peter Crumb, she thought, would have to do a whole lot better, and in more ways than one. Why hadn’t he told her about this Dobie character? Hired killers were meat and drink to Olly, as to all her readers. A grave omission, then, on Crumb’s part.
Something would have to be done about it.
Yes, but what?
Dobie’s pace had meantime slowed to the dromedary-like amble with which he normally circumnavigated the outer reaches of Roath Park, not only because of the excessive heat of the day (the raincoat, he now realised, had been a serious mistake) but because he found such a mode of locomotion more congenial when he was, for one reason or another, deep in thought, giving him sufficient time, for instance, to recognise and avoid the murky waters of Roath Lake which on one occasion, being in abstracted mood, he had walked straight into. The solution to the knotty problem then engaging his attention had in fact occurred to him while finally sinking, in a waterlogged sort of way, below the surface and had only been rescued for posterity by the timely intervention of a stout gentleman with a dextrously wielded boathook. The topic of his present meditation was, however, not of a mathematical nature – or at least, not directly. He had recently been offered a lucrative consultative appointment in a place called The Hog or something like that … apparently in Holland … and he was wondering whether or not he shoul
d take it up.
Unlike some ten per cent of his fellow-countrymen at that present juncture, Dobie was not, in point of fact, unemployed. Indeed no. The question of whether he was usefully employed was another matter. Certainly that is a question that can always not unreasonably be asked of a Professor of Mathematics, but it could be applied to Dobie – or so he felt – with particular cogency as, though currently on the faculty of a moderately distinguished if inalienably provincial British university, his role within that faculty had become – as his colleagues in the English Department would no doubt have put it – unclear. Or characterised by a certain unclarity. Teaching, no, he wasn’t doing very much actual teaching.
Not much research, either. Administration.
“Oh my God,” the Rector had said. “Don’t even think of it.”
“But,” his Head of Department had argued, “since there doesn’t seem to be anything else —”
“No, no, don’t think about it at all. Perhaps if we sit very still he’ll just sniff at our shoes and then go quietly away.”
… And Dobie was indeed thinking of doing just that.
The root of all the trouble, as he well knew, was a revolting little object now known as the Dobie Paradox, first propounded by him some twenty years ago and for fifteen of those years almost totally, and rightly, ignored. Unfortunately it had then been taken up by a bunch of horrible American physicists who, helped along by various other anti-social elements in the more unpronounceable parts of Eastern Europe, had seemingly used it to turn the universe upside down – or more precisely downside up, as the Paradox would have it. This was not a procedure of which University rectors could be expected to approve, and Dobie’s would have none of it. Dobie was, in short, despised and rejected among professors. Especially at Cambridge, whence had emanated a series of pronouncements verging on the libellous.
The Royal Society wasn’t amused, either.
Dobie himself could well understand why his name should be thus held in general reprobation. It is, after all, an unfortunte state of affairs when, as an expert in the field, you are unable to determine whether the universe is expanding inwards, wizzle-like, or on the contrary contracting outwards, (something like a woozle), and rigid interpretation of the Dobie Paradox would suggest both propositions to be equally tenable (or untenable, as the case might be). Some while back, therefore, the authorities at Cambridge (or Qom-bridge) University had issued a notably malevolent fatwa branding Professor Dobie as a heretic, malcontent and notorious evil liver, while other equally esteemed authorities in Vienna, Kiev and elsewhere had taken up – metaphorically speaking, but only just – the cudgels on his behalf … In short, Dobie was these days at the storm-centre of a particularly splendiferous academic row and, being of a mild and unassuming nature, wasn’t enjoying it over-much.
And now this new development. A husband, for heaven’s sake. Whatever next?
“With an oil company somewhere in the Middle East,” Kate had once told him. “We’re not in touch. If we ever were.” This, right at the outset of their relationship, two years … Good Lord, was it that long ago? … Yes. It was. And therefore a little strange, perhaps, that he hadn’t pursued the matter further at any time. He’d just felt that it wouldn’t have been tactful. No one likes to be reminded unnecessarily of one’s failures, marital or otherwise. He certainly didn’t.
But now here the reminder was, in person. The other Dr. Coyle. The skeleton in Kate’s cupboard, fully emerged and sprawled out on one of the kitchen chairs as though he owned the place. Dobie was inclined to resent it. But on what grounds? Perhaps he did own the place. Or a half-share in it, anyway. He and Kate had been partners in the practice, to start with, or so Dobie seemed vaguely to recall. Yes, but surely there’d been …
Oh well. He’d hear all about it, no doubt, when he got back.
“Ah sorry, sorry,” Dobie said, apologising to the magnolia tree that, in his cogitative mood, he’d just walked into. Brought back by the pain in his left shin to some hazy kind of an awareness of his surroundings, he blinked at them with disapproval; he had, he now realised, wandered off the pathway into the green shades of a bosky wood, from the depths of which a young couple, ingeniously intertwined in Laocoon-like coils, were regarding him with even greater disapproval. Dobie decided against apologising to them as well; he had, after all, as much right as they had to be there.
3
When Kate’s husband had at last departed, the first thing she did was hasten to her (and Professor Dobie’s) bedroom and there, seated before the angled dressing-table mirror, subject herself to a thoughtful, rather than a searching, scrutiny. This essentially feminine occupation wasn’t one in which she normally indulged overmuch, but it was, after all, almost ten years since she’d last seen Kevin and she couldn’t help but wonder if he hadn’t been as disconcerted by her present-day aspect as she’d been by his.
It couldn’t, she thought, be said that he’d aged gracefully. Well, aged, hell, he could only be … what was it? … thirty-six? … last September … Hairline had gone right back, though, and there were all those wrinkles round his eyes, out there in the Middle East no doubt the sun played hell with the skin or was it her memory that was at fault? … She didn’t think so. She leaned forwards a little, peering more closely at her reflection in the mirror.
As a practising GP she couldn’t help but be aware of the importance many of her patients attached – and by no means only the women – to a youthful appearance; few people, indeed, over the age of twenty seemed to be totally unaffected by it (Dobie, needless to say, being one of them. That moustache he’d grown a while back … However …) She had as yet (Kate considered) little concern to be worried about her figure, which was fashionably slim and reasonably nicely upholstered; the face, though, might be another matter. Signs of wear and tear were becoming evident. Initially and in the days of her marriage to Kevin distinguished by a somewhat waifish and wide-eyed Audrey Hepburn-like aspect that, in her then opinion, had militated against her pretensions to be taken seriously as a medical adviser, she had cultivated an expression of competent severity that had perhaps … She was, she saw, wearing it now. She wasn’t sure that she really liked it. Not Audrey so much as that other Katie, urging Bogey onwards through the jungle swamps while discouraging him from making further inroads into the booze supply. Well, it had been a bit that way, now she thought about it, with Kevin. Kevin …
A mistake, of course. But that was too easy to say. What was it with Kevin? … Whatever it was, he still had it, that was obvious. Oh, charm maybe, that was what everyone had said, Kev and Kate, such a charming couple … huh! … (snorting to herself at the recollection) … He still had that all right but what the ensuing years had brought out was a certain underlying shiftiness that hadn’t been so evident when he was younger, at least she hadn’t spotted it at the time or if she had, she hadn’t given enough importance to it. Kevin wouldn’t stand his ground and never had, that was what it was, always a lad for the line of least resistance. He was like a reflection in a mirror. Kevin Through The Looking-Glass, forever creating an imaginary world wherein she herself had never somehow been able to play the role expected of her. No. They hadn’t been well suited. That was all there was to it.
And yet he was like Dobie, in a way. Dobie’s ideas didn’t fit the world of reality, either, or didn’t seem to. The difference was, of course, that however weird Dobie’s ideas might be, he stuck to them. Solid as a rock. And he was pretty solid, of course, in other respects as well, but that was … Kate sighed to herself. Perhaps, she thought, I’m fated to be constantly falling for screwballs. There doesn’t seem to be any other explanation.
“… I mean … no letter, no telephone call … nothing. I walk into the clinic and there he is, sitting at the back with a lot of other patients, just looks up at me and smiles … I thought he was a ghost or something. I nearly fainted. Well, no, I didn’t, I’m exaggerating a bit. But I was surprised all right, I really was.”
�
�Not a ghost, though,” Dobie pointed out. “He’s alive, sure enough.”
“Yes. Unfortunately.” Kate looked down and clicked her tongue. “No, I don’t really mean that, either. He has that effect on me. Makes me feel, I don’t know … vicious …”
“Ex-husbands often do. Or so I’m told. I suppose it’s … But there again, he isn’t an ex, is he? Or not exactly.”
“He may become so, with any luck. Someone’s trying to kill him. Or so he maintains.”
“Really?” Dobie looked faintly hopeful. “Is that why he—”
“Oh, it’s a load of cobblers. Like, he exaggerates. Always did.”
“Ah,” Dobie said. “Well, what does he want then? He’s not planning on moving in here, is he?”
“God, no. He’s not that thick. No, he’s off to the States next week. He did ask me, mind you, if I’d like to go with him. He’s thick enough for that.”
Dobie shook his head. “On the contrary. An eminently sensible suggestion. Though perhaps—”
“Anyway, I rejected it with contumely.”
“You what?”
“Told him to get knotted.”
“Oh good. And did he?”
“Not so’s you’d notice it. But he didn’t press the point either. Probably knew I’d’ve clocked him one if he had.”
“Look,” Dobie said. “What was it exactly that went wrong? I mean when you were … I don’t want to make you talk about it if you really don’t want to. But now that he’s showed up like this, perhaps we ought to get it out from under the carpet and take a look at it. Clear the air a little, so to speak.”
“I don’t,” Kate said mutinously, “see any necessity for it. He came like water and like wind he’ll go, or else I’ll bloody well know the reason why.”