by Desmond Cory
“It’s a great thing you were, old sport. Might have had a chance of another pop at me if you hadn’t helped me make a fast getaway.”
Dobie hadn’t thought of that.
Perhaps he’s been over-impulsive, after all.
7
But then, so had Kate. She should never have agreed to bring that bag along. She knew that now.
The gun, now encased in a wrap of transparent plastic, lay on top of Primrose’s desk. Primrose himself still lay on the floor, his unprepossessing features occasionally illuminated by the bright glare of a flash-lamp as the Scene-of-Crime photographer did his stuff, what time the bulkier form of Detective-Sergeant Evans wandered hither and sometimes thither, spraying grey powder on everything in sight and bending cautiously over to inspect the result. Dim Smith and Crumb had departed a few moments previously but Jackson was still there, standing by the desk and regarding the plastic-swathed gun with a lugubrious, not to say mournful expression. “What the hell were you doing with it, Kate?” Now that the Special Branch had departed he could, he felt, address her more informally. “I mean, it is yours, I take it?”
“Of course it’s not mine. It’s Kevin’s. My husband’s. And I was going to give it back to him, that’s what I was doing with it. And all the rest of the stuff in that bloody bag.”
“But then what—”
“The guy wasn’t shot with that gun. He couldn’t’ve been. It’s been in the bag all the time. Until that Special Branch wanker got hold of it, that is.”
Jackson transferred his gaze to Primrose’s nasty-looking Beretta, which had earlier been discovered in the top drawer of his desk to the accompaniment of Evans’ grunt of satisfaction. “Well, he wasn’t shot with that one, either. At least it don’t look like it’s been fired. Besides …” He didn’t continue. “You sure you’ve never handled the thing at all?”
“I didn’t say I’d never handled it. I got it out to look at it, sure, but that was yesterday.”
“To look at it?”
“To see if it was loaded, chiefly.”
“And was it?”
“It was. And is.”
She had of course realised that she had got herself into an embarrassing situation and for once, moreover, Dobie couldn’t well be held to blame for it. Kevin, on the other hand … But this was the second time, Kate thought, she’d been caught at least in nominal charge of an unlicensed firearm and unless the matter could be conveniently swept under the carpet she was all too likely to incur the coroner’s disapproval yet again. “Where is Kevin, anyway? He was supposed to meet me here.”
“He was here. So was Dobie.”
“… Dobie?”
“You know, there’s something about—”
“I don’t believe … What was Dobie doing …?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that there’s something about—”
“And what are you doing here, if it comes to that? How come you were right here on the spot when that chap got shot? I just don’t understand what’s going on.”
“I’m here in the line of duty, Kate, as I shouldn’t have to tell you. But when it comes to understanding what’s going on, you can join the club. You say you’ve never seen the deader before?”
“Not to my knowledge. Who is he?”
“Name of Primrose. Or that’s the name he goes by nowadays. One of the London boys. In with the Stainers.”
“Oh Jesus,” Kate said. “Then how would I know him? I don’t know any of that crowd and I don’t want to.” She surveyed the corpse with a markedly increased disfavour. “A gang killing, then. Wouldn’t you say?”
“In the ordinary way, that’d be the most likely theorem. But … you heard what the DI said. That Crumb geezer. He’s got the bee in his bunnit it was you what dunnit.” Jackson paused, struck no doubt by the euphony of his somewhat eccentric phraseology. “I’ll have to ask you to come round to the station with us and make a statement formal-like. I know it’s all a bit—”
“For God’s sake, I thought he was going to arrest me.”
“Yes, well, that was in the heat of the moment, like. All the same …”
“I’ll want to call my solicitor,” Kate said mutinously. “That’s if he insists on playing silly-buggers.”
“It hasn’t come to that yet, I hope,” Jacko said. “You can call anyone you like, Kate, except of course … Mr Dobie …”
Dobie? … Getting himself mixed up in yet another sordid criminal case? Kate was in total accord with Jackson on that issue, at least. That, at all costs, was to be prevented. If possible. “Have no fears on that score, Jacko.” She spoke nonetheless a little abstractedly. Something about the corpse had just struck her attention. “You notice anything odd about that bloke?”
“He’s wearing carpet slippers,” Jackson said promptly. “Still, after a long hard day in the office—”
“No. The entry wound.”
“It looks a bit … messy …”
“Yes, but from where I’m standing I can’t see any exit. So the bullet has to be still lodged in his skull. That’s unusual.”
“Maybe not for a long-distance wound. The bullet’d be partly spent, wouldn’t it? We had one like that up the valleys a few years back. The Coal-Tip Murder, the papers called it. Had our charley all right but we couldn’t prove it. Hope this doesn’t turn out to be another of those —”
“You sure you wouldn’t like me to …? I can get my medical bag from the car in a jiffy.” Kate’s professional enthusiasm was getting the better of her. Faced with a brand-new cadaver, she couldn’t wait to get her hands on it. Jackson, though, shook his head firmly. “No, Crumb’s right about that, Kate. Paddy’ll be along in a few minutes’ time and we ought to handle this one by the book. I don’t know what Pontin would say if … or rather I do. And it wouldn’t be what you might call very complimentary.”
Though there wouldn’t, he reflected sadly, be too many compliments coming his way from the Super or from any other sources, a right mess this whole caboodle had turned out to be. And he couldn’t very easily blame Dobie for it, either. All the same … there was something about Dobie that made his mere appearance on any given scene an inevitable precursor of …
What? … Jackson sighed to himself. Well … of trouble, what else? … Yes, well, of plenty else. Confusion and mystification and ultimate chaos, to name but three. He sighed again.
It simply wasn’t fair …
And Pontin was most certainly not disposed to be complimentary. Neither did he view these latest developments with that air of stoic resignation recommended by Marcus Aurelius (among others). Indeed Pontin had never even heard of Marcus Aurelius. His immediate reactions might, however, (Jackson thought), have been quite fairly compared to those of the Emperor Nero when informed of the death of his favourite gee-gee. He was, to coin a phrase, beside himself and this, despite his efforts to maintain an air of outward calm, was fully apparent. “Wuff wuffa woof woof woffa wuff wuff wuff,” he remarked, sending out sprays of saliva in every which direction. “Huffa huffa someone’s guts for bloody garters, so I will. See if I don’t.”
“Yessir, yessir,” Jackson hurriedly agreed.
“Hooja-hooja hoojin charge there now?”
“Detective-Sergeant Fox is, sir. I understand—”
“Never mind what you understand, Jackson, I want that place sealed off and searched from top to bottom. Turn up so much as a sniff of drugs around the place and I’ll have that bugger sent down if it’s the last thing I do. When I think of all the expenditure of time and energy, being short-staffed as we are—”
“Sir, we can’t do that, sir.”
“And just why not?”
“You can’t put dead people on the witness stand, sir, nor in the dock neither. It’s against the law. Make a right meal of it, defence counsel would.”
“I’m not talking about witnesses, Jackson, I’m talking about … But still, you may have a point there. Of sorts. This character’s out of our way already, is that
what you’re saying?”
“That expresses it rather more cogentually, yessir.”
“And have we got any witnesses, while we’re on the subject?”
“We’re all witnesses, sir, in a sense. I mean, we had the place under surveillance when it happened. We got a video film and all. Only—”
“There you go. That’s what I mean. Goes and gets himself done in with the whole bloody place clanking with coppers. It looks bad, Jackson, it looks bad. Reflects on the image of the Force.”
“We do have an independent witness. In a way.”
“Whozat? In what way?”
“Kate Coyle, sir.”
“Dr Coyle? What did she see?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Yes. Well. Don’t you feel, Jackson, that that may have a somewhat negative bearing on such evidence as she may choose to put forward? I mean, one normally expects of a witness—”
“The point is, she was carrying a gun, sir, and the Special Branch people seem to think she … might have done it. Shot this geezer. Maybe by accident. It isn’t clear.”
“And what does she say?”
“She says she didn’t, sir.”
“Ah.” Pontin sucked his lower lip. “Smart girl, that. Gives nothing away. Maybe she got sound legal advice before she did it. Indicates malice aforethought. Significant, that.”
“Dr Coyle wouldn’t have done a thing like that, sir. She wouldn’t … The idea’s ridiculous. Known her for years.”
“Who knows what unseen horrors may not lurk at the back of a woman’s mind, Jackson? I’ve had a few cases in my time … However. Has she made a statement?”
“I brought her in, sir. On Special Branch insistence. She’s in the I Room now.”
“Does she deny that she was carrying a gun?”
“No, sir. She even admits to having handled it. But she says it belonged to her husb—”
“Her prints’ll be on it, then.”
“Well, yes, sir. Bound to be. But—”
“Sounds promising, Jackson. Very promising. After all, they’re not idiots, you know, in the Special Branch.” There might, however, Jackson reflected, be quite a number of idiots in the uniformed branch, present company included, but the point was one that might best be made at a later juncture. After his retirement on a state-assured pension, possibly. “Highly trained and experienced officers, when all’s said and done. We have to accept that they’ve got to know their onions.”
“Sir, I can’t help feeling that in this case our specialised local knowledge, I mean of the people concerned—”
“In the I Room, you said?” Pontin, lumbering to his feet. “Right. I think I might have a word with her. Just because she’s a doctor doesn’t mean she’s in the clear, ho no indeed. Plenty of doctors have turned their hands to crime. Like that fellow with the big moustache, name’s on the tip of my tongue …”
“Crippen, you mean?”
“Yes. That’s him. Drowned all those nice girls in the bath and no one cottoned on to him. Or am I thinking of George Joseph Haigh? Anyway it was all before we developed our modern methods of criminological enquiry. Get ’em down on the floor and give ’em the business end of a good stout pair of policeman’s honky-tonks, that’s when it all comes out, believe you me.”
“Wouldn’t care to do that to Dr Coyle, on account of the feminist movement. And besides, she’d spit in your eye.”
“Ah well,” Pontin said, his good humour partially restored. “We’ll see about that. And right away.”
They trooped noisily into the Interview Room, where Kate was patiently sitting all on her ownsome, and they sat down at the wooden table facing her, looking, she thought, rather like the Three Wise Monkeys. But also very like the members of the MBA tribunal that she could very easily find herself summoned to attend if she couldn’t talk her way out of this present mess. Crumb, as the officer who had made the pinch, had attached himself to the jukebox jury panel and was now surveying her with much the same expression as that with which she herself had regarded Primrose’s corpse. That didn’t bode well for her chances. Pontin’s rubicund features, on the other hand, were wreathed in a welcoming smile. That boded even worse. “Just a few questions, Dr Coyle, as we’d like to put to you if you’ve no objection.”
“Well, I have,” Kate said. “I’ve made a statement and signed it and now I’d like to go home and cook supper. If you’ve no objection.”
Pontin’s smile became even more winning. Or so, at least, he fondly imagined. “Just a few points we’d like clarified, that’s all. To save you all the trouble of coming back here again in the morning.” Kate recoiled before his hideous leer. “About this, er … gun you say you’ve been handling …” Investing this last word with a considerable depth of significance.
“I’ve explained all that,” Kate squeaked. “It’s not my gun at all. It’s my husband’s. I was sort of … looking after it for him. That’s all.”
“With a view to what?”
“What?”
“What purpose did you have in mind? When you … handled it?”
“I was just looking after it. Because he asked me to.”
“You were carrying it round in a bag,” Pontin said accusingly, “according to this officer here. Or leastways—”
“Yes. I was going to give it back to him.”
“Back to him? He never had it. You said you got it from your husband.”
“I meant my husband. Not …” Kate waved her hand vaguely in the direction of Peter Crumb. “Not him. I never gave it to him. He took it.”
“Tripped you up already, have we?” Pontin’s smile now resembled the death rictus of an Ojibway Indian staked out in the desert with a small bonfire burning on his tummy. Even Jackson appeared to be appalled by it. “Now then. Let’s go into this matter in a little further detail. I understand that for the past couple of years or so you’ve been entered upon a certain relationship with …” A small fleck of froth appeared at the corner of his mouth. Even the mention of Dobie’s name was sufficient to have that effect upon him nowadays. “With Per-Per-Professor … Dobie …” There. He’d got it out. “I wonder if you’d care to comment on that?”
“Yes. Dobie’s got nothing to do with it. Nothing whatsoever.”
“But perhaps your husband wouldn’t agree with you there.”
“You’d have to ask him about that.”
“You won’t deny that your involvement with … with … that man is of a sexual nature?”
“It’s a sexual relationship, certainly. But—”
Pontin believed in attacking the weakest point of the enemy’s defences, no matter how irrelevant to the issue. He leaned forwards, the better to press home his advantage. “So how would you define this … sexual relationship? I mean, more precisely.”
Kate thought for a moment. “Well … Sporadic.”
“Good God.” Pontin went pale. “The filthy swine.”
“… But occasionally intense.”
“In tents?” He paused, clearly perplexed as to what weird forms of perversion might best be practised under canvas. “Strange. I’d never have thought he was the outdoors type. Of course, I remember when I was in the Boy Scouts—”
“I didn’t say in tents. I said in-tense.”
Jackson also was leaning forwards, anxious to put his oar in. Metaphorically speaking. “Little bit of a misprehension, sir, I think. She means the kind of intents what you loiter with. Though I must say I don’t quite see—”
“All right, never mind all that, Jackson. It’s clear from the doctor’s own admission that she’s been approached by Professor Dud-dud-dud on a number of occasions with sporadic intent and the dirty devil’d go down for a seven-to-ten on that one in any decently organised community. Of course, what with all this promisco-wotsit that’s been creeping in … And it’s hardly the sort of thing that any self-respecting husband’d be prepared to take lying down, in my humble opinion.”
“Maybe not, sir. But no one’s sho
t Professor Dobie. Yet.”
“No. More’s the pity. But if you’re claiming that Dr Coyle here’s gone and shot her husband, all I can say is—”
“We’re not, sir. No, no. Nothing of the kind. No one’s shot him, either.”
“Then why isn’t he here as a witness?”
There was an awestruck silence. Not only had Pontin effected a spirited recovery from a clearly untenable position, but in so doing he had contrived for once in his life to make a perfectly relevant point. It was Crumb who in the end attempted to answer it. “I believe my principal’s out in search of Dr Coyle right now, sir, and as soon as he establishes contact—”
“What are you talking about, man? Dr Coyle’s right here. In front of you.”
“Not that Dr Coyle, sir. The other one.”
“You mean there are two of them?”
“Yessir. Doctor Mister and Doctor Missus, so to speak.”
“Ah! … I’m with you now. I wish,” Pontin cried, directing a glance of withering scorn towards Jackson, “I only wish some of my DI’s could express themselves so clearly and precisely. Right. So which one have we got here?”
“That’s Doctor Missus, sir. Doctor Mister is a man. That’s how you can tell the difference between them.”
“In fact he’s this fellow I’m talking about. Her husband.”
“Exactly so, sir.”
“So here we are back where I started from. No need at all, you see, for all these interruptions. Now. Where was I? … Ah yes.” He fixed Kate once again with a basilisk stare. Nasty little piggy eyes he had, like those (she thought, relapsing unexpectedly into Jacksonese) of a malevolent elovent. “So how did this Doctor Mister of yours react to all this hanky-panky? Eh? That’s what I’d be interested to know.”
“Why?” Kate asked. “It’s none of your damned business.”
In fact she wasn’t completely sure whether it wasn’t or was. The evening’s events had left her considerably confused; she wasn’t used to being confused and this may have been a contributory factor to her show of belligerence. Dobie, on the other hand, very rarely felt any other way than totally confused and had hence reacted to recent developments with notable aplomb. It was true that Kate’s continued absence was causing him some concern but this might, he reflected, have been easily occasioned by an emergency call or by some other demand on her Hippocratic duties and meanwhile he was perfectly capable of himself organising a daring raid on the refrigerator in search of sustenance. It was also true that he profoundly distrusted the refrigerator, which – touchingly loyal to its true owner and benefactor and resenting Dobie as an unwanted and uninvited recent interloper – not only growled viciously at him as he approached but also invariably contrived to shower his trousers with spiky chips of ice whenever he gingerly sought to open the door of the freezer compartment. He therefore preferred, on mature consideration, to withdraw an unopened can of delectable Porky Chunkilunks from the kitchen cupboard and, after a lengthy but eventually victorious struggle with the tin-opener, to retire with its content glutinously smeared over a half-dozen slices of Farmer’s Pride to where, in his own gloomy little room, his faithful computer beckoned. He reckoned that this splendiferous repast, in conjunction with Melanie’s chokky bikkies, would see him through until the morning or until such time as Kate returned and some kind of a hot meal be prepared for his delectation.