by Desmond Cory
Would he?
In fact Dobie’s mind wasn’t at that moment dwelling on refrigerators at all. He was enjoying yet another sustaining cup of coffee. This time, with Detective-Inspector Jackson.
… who looked as though he could use a good deal of sustainment. He looked considerably tireder even than Peter Crumb, and also a great deal more worried. Dobie, as an old oppo, naturally felt some concern, but didn’t feel that he could offer Jacko much in the way of relief. Other, of course, than a delicious cup of Maxwell House. “… It’s no good, Jacko. I just can’t tell you.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“Either way my lips are … what’s the word? … Sealed? Yes. Sealed. Rather an odd expression, that, when you—”
“I’m sorry you’re taking this line, Mr Dobie, because if you go on like this I’m going to have to pull you in.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Ho yes I can. Because you’re refusing to offer resistance to a police officer in the execution of his duties, that’s what.”
“But you know Pontin goes ape at the sight of me.”
“So he does.” Jackson sighed, deflated. “You’re right. I can’t do that. And anyway I wouldn’t want to do that. But you’re … sort of forcing my hand, like.”
“No, I’m not. You can’t ask me any questions at the station that you can’t ask me here.”
This also was true. “But you’re not answering my questions, Mr Dobie.”
“Look, Kate wants to find her husband, that’s all. When she walked out on you she didn’t know he’d gone and left town … but she still wants to find him if she can because she thinks he can back up her story, I mean it’s all very simple really.”
Jackson sank some coffee with strange gurgling sounds, molto agitato. “And has he left town?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I’m not sure I ought to tell you that, either.”
“… You’re not being very helpful, Mr Dobie.”
“No,” Dobie admitted. “I suppose not. But—”
“You know what Kate’s story is, I suppose.”
“She says she didn’t shoot anyone. And that,” Dobie said, “is good enough for me.”
“It’d be good enough for me, in the ordinary way. Only thing is that if she didn’t, then who did?”
“Someone else,” Dobie said.
“Yes. Only that’s impossible,” Jacko said. “That’s the facer.”
“There’s got to be—”
“And we got these two downtowners from the Special Branch coming down on us all the time like two tons of bricks from the back of a lorry. They don’t like her story one little bit. What’s more, I don’t know as I can blame them.”
Dobie stared at him for a moment. What was going on? Et tu, Jacko? “… Oh come on, Jacko, you’ve known Kate for years. A whole lot longer than I have, even. You know damned well she’d never shoot anybody. Least of all someone she’s never even met, it’s … Whyever should she?”
Jackson was growing more and more despondent. “Don’t ask me, Mr Dobie. I can’t make head nor tail of it and that’s a fact. And she saved my life, more or less, that time when she … and that’s another fact. I’ll just have to ask to be taken off the case and that’s all there is to it.”
“No, don’t do that, Jacko. I agree it’s all a bit perplexing, but we can crack it.”
“We? Who’s we? … Look, the one thing she made clear to me is she don’t want you to be pulled into it. And that’s about the last thing I want, too, so we see eye to eye on that one. What with those bloody Specials sticking their noses in … I don’t like to talk this way about my colleagues but those blokes are nutters. The way they go about things, you wouldn’t believe it. They don’t know our little local customs, for a start, but that’s not the whole of it. Not by a long chalk.”
“But they can’t insist on pulling Kate in, can they?”
“I wish I could see some way of holding them off but I can’t. What’s her story after all? … She was just walking along, she says, clutching this bag, minding her own business, okay? … Then this Primrose fink gets shot and the SB nab her with a gun in her bag, full magazine with one round missing, cartridge case on the ground right where she was standing, clear view through the trees of the office window not much over forty yards away … Her prints all over the gun, no one else’s … and Paddy Oates has picked a nine-millimetre Parabellum bullet out of Primrose’s skull. We found a pistol in the office desk and for a moment I thought that, well, just maybe … but the bloke from Forensic is certain sure the pistol hasn’t been fired of late and anyway it’s the wrong calibre. Besides the shot had to have come from outside because we all heard it and if it had been fired inside the building we couldn’t have done … so I hope you’re beginning to get the picture now, Mr Dobie?”
Dobie was looking thoughtful. Oddly enough, this was the first time the name of the victim had been mentioned to him and it rang a faint bell at the back of his mind. Primrose? … Primrose? … Kate hadn’t mentioned the victim’s name. He was sure that she hadn’t. Even though presumably she’d known it. “Yes, but—”
“Apart from the fact that we had the building under surveillance at the time and we’ve got a full and detailed record of every person who went in and out of it. Including you, Mr Dobie. So perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me what in blazes you were up to? Chatting up that little … piece of fluff?”
Dobie was, he was pleased to see, considerably taken aback. “Well, no, I don’t mind telling you that. You see, it was all a … sort of mistake, or perhaps I should say a most extraordinary coincidence. What happened was that I had reason to believe that Kate was calling upon someone called Codron Corp – a foreign gentleman, I should imagine – in order to meet her husband who, as you know, showed up unexpectedly yesterday morning, I think it was, and left that bag with her which you seem to know about and which turned out to have a gun in it, though of course we weren’t aware of that at the time, and as I rather gathered that the purpose of the meeting was to give him back the gun, her husband I mean, not this Codron Corp, I thought it might be a sensible idea to … to … Yes. Where was I?”
Jackson breathed heavily through his nose. He should, of course, have known better. “Mr Dobie …”
“Yes?”
“You’re going to confuse me, Mr Dobie. You always confuse me when you … or when you’re trying to … explain …” Jackson shook his head, like a horse troubled with a bothersome fly. He would probably have swished his tail as well if he’d had one. “Let’s skip all that for now, shall we? Because at least we’re satisfied that you didn’t shoot him, while Kate … Well, Kate has a case to answer. As I’ve tried to explain to you. Right now we’re waiting for a forensic report on that bloody bullet and if it matches up with the gun she had in her bag … well, then the case in question is open and shut, as we say. I don’t see how she can answer it, much as I wish I could, and I don’t see how finding that husband of hers is going to help her, either, in any way.”
“No. But,” Dobie said, “all you’re doing is give me a lot of reasons why she should keep right on running. Wouldn’t you say?”
Mr Dobie might be a duff hand at explanations but he had, Jackson thought, a nasty cogent way of putting things sometimes. “Yes, I suppose that’s true in a way. But if it’s us who’re questioning her, we just might uncover something that would help, me and Foxy being predestinated, like, in her favour. While if she gets catched by anyone else and handed over to the Specials … she’ll be in deep shit, Mr Dobie, they’ll go for the answers they want and they won’t even listen to anything else. See what I mean?”
Dobie was silent for a while, presumably giving this matter serious thought. He might, on the other hand, be way out on cloud nine somewhere … You never could tell with Mr Dobie. Jackson sighed and drank more coffee, unfortunately coordinating or failing to coordinate these two actions in such a way as
to cause him to splutter explosively and subsequently to reach into his pocket for a handkerchief. Dobie remained outwardly unperturbed. “… And why,” Jackson said, mopping up the mess, “does she want to find that husband of hers? That’s what I ask myself.”
“I told you,” Dobie said. “It’s his gun.”
“Hardly the point, is it? He didn’t use it. There may be more to it than meets the …” He surveyed the coffee smears that had got onto his fingers. “… eye. Guy’s been away for years and years and then all of a sudden … up he pops … Bit disconcerting for her, I’d’ve thought, having him show up out of the blue like that. For you, too, of course.”
“Well, yes and no. Kate isn’t easily disconcerted, you know that.”
“Raises another question, though. Why was she carrying that damned bag around? With the gun in it?”
“I told you. She meant to give it him back. Kate doesn’t like having guns around the house. You know that, too.”
“She knows how to handle ’em, though. Did a police small-arms course a while back and didn’t score too badly. Maybe it was her husband she wanted to shoot … Had that idea ever recurred to you?”
“Good God, no. That’s the last thing I’d have … Any more than she’d have wanted to shoot me. Though I suppose there’ve been times when she may have been tempted. She’s …”
“She’s a hot-tempered woman and always was.”
“Yes. But shooting someone, that’s another matter.”
“Look,” Jackson said. “She’s arranged to meet her husband at this office place, right? To give him his gun back. Okay. So she’s walking along and she sees this guy at the office window she thinks is her husband and she feels, well … like you said … tempted … so she pulls out the gun and takes a shot at him, maybe she doesn’t even mean to hit him, just to give him a bit of a frightener, like, but … Well, it’s … possible, isn’t it? I mean it could have happened that way …”
Dobie shook his head. “It could but it didn’t. You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel now, Jacko.”
“Then just tell me how it could have happened any other. I don’t know why you should tell me this, but … did they have any kind of a quarrel? She and the husband? Hard words exchanged, that sort of thing?”
“Kate sounded off a bit, yes. But no more than you’d expect. If you knew her.”
“Well, I do know her and that’s why I asked. Did he …” Jackson hesitated for a moment. “Did he have anything on her, do you think?”
“What do you mean, on her?”
“How did he get her to be so cooperative? Taking the bag back to him and all? Why wouldn’t she just tell him to naff off? That’s what I don’t—”
“I suppose,” Dobie said thoughtfully, “he may have had me on her. And that’s why she didn’t want to tell me anything about it. Well, she didn’t tell me anything about it and so I’m only guessing, but—”
“Sorry, Mr Dobie. You’ve lost me again.”
“Well, it seems that way back he got disbarred or whatever the word is by the British Medical Association and that’s why he had to leave the country. Perhaps he was planning to get her disbarred as well. Or threatening to get her disbarred. Mind you, it’s just an impression—”
“But how could he do that?”
“Because of me.”
“You mean because you … Because she …” Jackson shook his head again, this time in the manner of a weary bison. “But you two have been shacking up for ages. I mean … we all know about it and no one cares a damn, I mean why would we? This isn’t the nineteenth century and even if it were …”
“The BMA might care a damn. They’re old-fashioned about things like that, or so I’m told.”
“You’re saying he was blackmailing her, then.”
“No, I’m not. I’m just discussing possibilities. Like you were.”
“Mr Dobie …”
“What?”
“It’s a motive, that is. For killing him. Which is what we didn’t have before.”
“But she didn’t kill him, Jacko. I thought I’d managed to make that perfectly clear.”
“But …” Jackson had detected a touch of irascibility in Dobie’s tone then; it was, he thought, the tone in which the Professor might have addressed a student who had failed to master Archimedes’ definition 11 or had confused it somehow with definition 12. When in fact if anyone was being thick … Jackson gave it up. Mr Dobie … He was so damned innocent, that was the trouble. Half the time he just didn’t know what he was saying. Not much satisfaction could be gained from the electrocution of that sort of a witness … “Now look here,” he said, attempting not very successfully to match Dobie’s tone of impersonal severity. “I still don’t know why she wants to find her husband or her ex or whatever he is and for some reason I don’t recollect any too clearly all that stuff you’ve just been telling me. I’ve been struck by a sudden attack of magnesia and it’s only guesswork, anyway, like you said. What’s more I seem to have forgotten all about that flat of yours out Radyr way, it’s just gone and slipped my mind so if those buggers from the Branch find out about it – and they will, mark you – it won’t be for a few hours yet. Further’n that I’m not prepared to go and you can tell Kate that the next time you see her … and you better be careful when you do because that Crumb crumb is likely as not to start following you around, just to see where you get to. And that’s all I got to say to you, Mr Dobie. For now.”
As Jackson rose to his feet, with impeccable timing the telephone started to ring. Jackson grunted. “That’ll be for me. Foxy knows I’m here.” Dobie looked across at the kitchen clock as Jackson went away to answer the call; almost two o’clock in the morning … Kate would still be asleep, no doubt, and Dobie was himself feeling more than a little weary. Nothing more tiring, of course, than a grilling by the police, especially when you’re being effectively called over the holes … hauled over the coals by Inspector Jackson. Who had every reason, after all, to be less than chuffed at the way things were going. Of course it was … He hadn’t been … What? … Where was he? … Ah yes. Tired. Very. Dobie allowed his eyelids slowly to droop …
Jackson returned.
“Damn,” he said forcibly, when still only halfway through the door. “Still, it’s no more than was to be expected.”
“What is?” Dobie stared at him, blinking.
“They got a match.”
“A match?” Dobie, fumbling vaguely in his pockets.
“No, a match, that Ferguson, he says they can match the bullet. Fired by Kate’s gun, he says, and no other. No chance of error. So that goes and puts the tin lid on it.” Pulling on his jacket. “It was never more than half a hope but …” Buttoning it up. “I got to get back, Mr Dobie, Pontin’s been blowing his top again and … Thanks for your time, anyway. And the coffee.”
“I haven’t got too much to spare, by the look of it.”
“What, coffee?”
“No. Time.”
“Ah,” Jackson said. “Nor have they, if they want to have Kate picked up in the morning. And she will be, oh she will be. I can promise you that.”
In making this forecast, Jackson was right for once. But just a little mistaken in one point of detail.
And in any case, Kate wasn’t the only one to be concerned as to Kevin Coyle’s whereabouts.
“Let’s keep our eye on the ball, ducks,” Dim Smith was saying. “Pontin and his crowd can cherchez la femme for all they’re worth and that other character, too, that professor guy, though you may be right and you may be wrong on that one and I’m not expressing an opinion because I don’t have to. There’s still a sodding great load of giggle-juice floating round the area somewhere and there lies the whole of our present concern, Crumb boy, the locals can deal with the other thing but the hard stuff is out there somewhere and we’ve got to find it.”
“Well, we’re looking,” Crumb said, somewhat sullenly.
They certainly were. The filing cabinets in Primrose�
�s office all stood open and ransacked, most of their contents spread out over the desk which had similarly yielded up the contents of its sliding drawers; the plastic disc banks had been neatly stacked to one side, ready for removal, and the small wall safe, opened with a colour-coded key earlier abstracted from Primrose’s trousers pocket, completely rifled, the substantial sums of money that had been found therein slipped into evidence bags and carefully labelled and receipted. The resultant combination of imposed order and incidental chaos – a combination that would certainly have appealed to Professor Dobie, that student of the weirder outward manifestations of the physical world – represented a long stint of arduous labour and at the end of it Dim Smith had been glad enough to take what he would have called a smoke-oh, though in point of fact he usually abjured the habit. “… And we’re going to go on looking, that’s what, because so far we ain’t turned up the proverbial sausage.” His manner, in contrast to that of Crumb, was determinedly cheerful. Crumb, observing this, resented it. He felt indeed strongly minded to punch his superior officer on the nose. But he didn’t, of course.
“We got to take the longer view in the Branch. You see that, don’t you, china? This thing is going to have serious repercussions. Very serious. I mean, knowing what we know, you could say that’s obvious.”
“Head Office’ll be having kittens,” Crumb said, still radiating an aura of gloom.
“And so will a lot of other people, you mark my words. There’s a lot of movement going on out here in the sticks and you know what movement does? … It generates heat, that’s what. Some of our friends are getting pretty uptight. Or so I hear. Couldn’t be a worse time for a bump, from that point of view. One thing leads to another. Same like with the Krays.”