by Desmond Cory
“I want to know where she is. That’s all.”
“You want to … Why?”
“I want to talk to her,” Olly said. “Woman to woman. Hear her story. The Snipe can see she gets an even break. Okay?”
Dobie wiggled his finger in his ear for a while and then gave it up. Clearly there was something wrong with his hearing that morning. The Snipe can see she gets an even break … What was that supposed to mean? … He was feeling, however, desperate. Ready to clutch at straws. “Yes, but … Yes, but—”
“I have to get to her before the police, though, because once they’ve collared her again … And you know where she is? Don’t you?”
“But that’s the whole trouble,” Dobie wailed. “I don’t.”
“Of course you do. You got to.”
“Well, I don’t. I know where she went last night but she’s not there now and I thought by now she’d have phoned me but she hasn’t and I’m getting quite seriously worried about it, I can tell you.” All this on a single breath. Olly smiled serenely. “Oh, I don’t think anything worries you very much, Mr Dobie.”
“Well, you’re wrong. I don’t understand anything and that’s what worries me. I can’t even see how you come in … or who you … I don’t even know your name, for heaven’s sake.”
“I thought I … Oh well, I’m sorry. I’m Olly Bohun.”
“Moon?”
“No. Bohun. B-O-H-U-N.”
“That doesn’t spell Boon. That spells, BO-HUN.”
“Yes, but it’s pronounced Boon.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? … It is. That’s all.”
Dobie sighed. “All right if I call you Molly?”
“I don’t care if you …” Olly stopped, compressing her lips tightly. Quite apart from his being a murderous bastard, this gink was going to drive her right off her rocker if she wasn’t careful. “Olly. O-double L-Y … Short for Olivia. Like in de Havilland. Got it?”
“Not quite. What have aeroplanes got to do with it?”
“To do with what?”
“Bolivia?”
“I didn’t say Bolivia, I said … Olly! … Olly! … OLLY!”
“Okay, okay! Don’t get so excited! …”
“I’m not excited! I’m calm as anything! I’m merely … merely …”
“There. You see? … I can mop it up in no time, in fact I’m always spilling … It didn’t go over your skirt, did it, Wally?”
“No, no,” Olly said, palpitating as he advanced upon her clutching a dishcloth. It was true! … He only had to reach out towards you and you … He had the power! … Charisma! … Or did that mean something else? … Hypnotic power! … The guy was a … SVENGALI!!! … Unless, of course, she’d gone off her rocker already. Either way she wasn’t about to let him start chewing up her ankle, no way Pepito. “It’s okay. Just an itsy-bitsy splashikins. Honest.”
Withdrawing the appendage from his grasp. Not, it had to be admitted, without a certain twinge of maidenly regret. “Hey, let’s get back on the track, Jack, okay? … Dr Coyle … You really don’t know where she is?”
“That’s it,” Dobie said, sitting down heavily again. “I’ve got to find her because … she’s got herself into a hell of a mess.”
“So where would she have gone?”
“She could have gone anywhere.”
“Maybe she’s returned to the scene of the crime. They say they often do.”
“Who say? Who do?”
“I do.”
“You do?”
“… Don’t start out on that routine, Mr Dobie.”
“No. Sorry. You know, you sounded quite like Kate then? And anyway … it’s not a bad idea …”
“No harm in running out there to take a look …”
“No, and if Jacko’s there maybe he’ll have some news. I mean, they may have found out she didn’t do it.”
“Come on, Mr Dobie. Who are you kidding? You don’t have to try and fool me, like, we’re partners now.”
“We are?”
“Sure.”
“Well, okay,” Dobie said. “If you say so.”
10
He sped backwards down the street, his feet blurred by his nigh-incredible velocity, body flickering from side to side as he hurled himself up the steps and popped like a jack-rabbit in through the door which instantly closed behind him. Or opened, according to how you looked at it. As a demonstration of the infamous Dobie Paradox the video film, currently on rewind, might have seemed to inspire something rather less than instant conviction; Pontin, however, was unmistakably riveted by it. He leaned forwards in his chair, a blob of saliva emerging from his wide-open mouth and dribbling down his chin. “Who was that? … Who was that? …”
Jackson was staring with no less studied a determination at the image on the screen, which was now that of the unoffending façade of a residence block. “Er, that was Mr Dobie, sir. As I believe. Or Professor Dobie, I should probably say.”
“Dobie? … Dobie? … Dobie? …” This, in a series of porcine squeals on a progressively rising inflection, the last being pitched on so high a level as almost to be inaudible to the human ear. Detective-Inspector Jackson’s, for instance. Jackson at once emitted an equally incomprehensible babbling sound. “Wellsiryouseesiritslikethissir …” His voice tailing off into silence, however, as he observed his superior officer making wild grasping gestures at his balding pate, as one desirous of tearing his hair out by the roots but defeated by the absence of that commodity. “What’s,” Pontin wanted to know, “Dobie doing there? He’s in on it, by God. That Special feller’s right. They’re in on it together. No other possible explanation will hold water.”
“Water, sir?” Jackson was puzzled. “I take the view, sir, that Dobie’s presence on the scene is something of an irreverence, if so I might put it.”
“Don’tcha believe it. I certainly don’t. Those lads from the Specials are pretty smart cookies, you know, I’m fully prepared to learn something from ’em once in a while. And I’ll tell you something else, Jackson, if we don’t get to lay our hands on that there Kate Coyle before they do I’ll be having someone’s bollocks for breakfast and I’m looking at you, Jackson, in a very pointed manner.”
“We got an all-stations alert out, sir, for the both of them. I’m fully conf—”
“Both of ’em? Dobie as well? Don’t tell me he’s gone and done a bunk? Not that I’d be in any way—”
“No, I meant Doctor Coyle, sir, that’s the other Doctor—”
“Don’t start out on that caper again, for Crissake, just get that projector thingummy working if you’d be so good. Not that I’m much of a believer in all these miracles of modern techno-wotsit, it’s still the bobby on the beat who has to dig ’em in the ribs with a truncheon and get ’em to move along down the car and it doesn’t do to forget that, Jackson, not for a moment.”
“No, sir,” Jackson said, ever the diplomat. He pressed button B and got the show on the road. Pontin leaned forwards, respiring deeply. On the screen the other Dr Coyle emerged from the front door of the building, glanced briefly up towards the sky, down towards his black-shod feet and then sauntered off along the pavement, headed seemingly towards the garage. Before he had covered more than twenty paces Dobie also emerged at a far sedater pace than previously and, without glancing in any direction in particular, turned in the opposite direction to Coyle and wandered off, gazing the while fixedly into the middle distance. “His car’s further up the street,” Jackson commented. “He’s gone the wrong way. But that doesn’t mean anything. He always does.”
On the sound-track, a sharp, echoing crack. “Freeze!” Pontin honked abruptly. Jackson, familiar with this injunction from the days of Starsky and what’s-his-name, obediently froze, thereby reducing Pontin once again to a state bordering on apoplexy. “Not you, you fffff … You fffff … The fffff …”
“Ah, the film, yessir.” Jackson, telepathically prescient, hurriedly pressed the STILL key, caus
ing Dobie, on one side of the screen, to pause with one leg raised in the air like an undecided poodle while Kevin Coyle, on the other, was conversely caught in mid-crouch, an attitude which he appeared to be prepared to maintain for minutes on end and which was thus found by Jackson to be irresistibly reminiscent of Nick Faldo lining up a putt. Pontin also appeared to have been stalactitified in his forwards-leaning posture, his facial expression changing, however, to one of obvious perplexity and chagrin. “… Is that all?”
“Yessir. You see, sir, at the moment the shot—”
“I can’t see a bloody thing, Jackson, except for those two twits cluttering up the pavement. And that other fellow leaning on the … Who’s he, then?”
“That’s Primrose’s personal assistant, sir. Name of Guffin.”
“Where’s that Coyle woman supposed to be, then?”
“Somewhere amongst those trees on the left of the screen, sir, according to DI Crumb. Not too concise as to the exact location, but possibly slightly to the left of that laburnerum thing. Unless it’s a spruce. In fact I’m not too well informed about all these horror cultural matters but if you can see that rather spiky or you might say knobby object sticking up there like a—”
“Jackson …”
“Yessir,” Jackson said, wisely deciding hurriedly to continue without waiting for any further interpolations. “… Leastwise, that’s where Foxy picked up that cartridge case. DI Crumb would also have been behind them trees at his surveillance point in the forecourt of the garage. On hearing the shot, sir, he proceeded with all haste towards the building then under observance and hence was able to apprehand—”
“I know all that, man. What about that Smith feller?”
“Watching the fire escape, sir. From the corner of the building. In fact you’ll see him appear in a moment—”
“Go on then, Jackson. Let’s see the rest of it.”
Jackson, wondering if he would ever be allowed to finish a sentence again, sighed and once again depressed the doohickey. Kevin Coyle arose cautiously from his full-knees-bend position and departed the scene at a smart rate of knots, while Dobie continued his leisurely progress in a contrary direction. Pontin pointed an accusing finger at the receding image on the screen … “See that? … See that? … He’s in on it, Jackson, you mark my words. No normal person would just … waddle away like that after hearing a gunshot right behind him, would he now?”
“No normal person would, no, sir.”
Pontin, in his turn, sighed windily. “Take your point. Well. The other feller’s scarpered. Ah. Here comes Smith.” As a commentary on the action, this struck Jackson as somewhat over-succinct, but it was accurate enough; here indeed came Dim Smith, almost colliding with Dobie as the professor, having no doubt realised at last that his car lay in another direction to that which he had originally taken, turned to wander vaguely back towards the garage again. Dim Smith, ignoring him, continued to sprint along the pavement, finally mounting the steps and vanishing into the building. “That’s about it, sir,” Jackson said, bringing the peepshow to a halt again. “Can’t say as I find it a great deal of use myself, but it does destabilise the order of events. Not, of course, that anyone’s questioning that.”
“A load of utter codswallop, in my opinion,” Pontin said forcefully. A little over-forcefully, Jackson felt. Certainly the film might be maintained to lack the immediacy of dramatic impact of, say, Jurassic Park, but with a little skilful cutting and editing … Only of course you weren’t supposed to do that. Not with evidence. And besides, the most obvious candidate for the role of Tyrannosaurus Rex wasn’t in the film at all but sitting there right beside him. “Piffle,” Pontin said, clarifying his point. “Just plain amateurish, if that’s the word I want. For God’s sake, where’s the deader? Doesn’t even come into it, far as I can see.”
“That’s on account of these video things not being able to see through brick walls, sir, him being on the other side of one. And behind that second-floor window you see there. Unluckily for him, as it turned out. If he’d been sitting at his desk—”
“And what kind of a surveillance set-up do you call that? When you can’t even see the bloke you’re supposed to be watching?”
“No way we could have got the camera pointing right into his office, sir, unless we had it in a helicopter and hovered about outside all day. Which might have attracted a certain amount of attention, if you see what I mean, what the Special boys weren’t at all anxious to do, because of … Well, because we was supposed to be setting it all up for a drugs bust, sir, keeping a check on who was going in and out the building, that sort of thing. No one expected the ba … the victim was going to be shot, sir.”
“A practical copper’s got to be prepared for any contingency, Jackson, as I never tire of telling you.” It was true. He never did. “It’s what separates the men from the goats, this sort of thing.” Jackson looked sheepish. “The Specials can look after the drugs angle but the murder’s on our manor and I want that Coyle woman pulled in as quick as you like. Slipping through our fingers like that, she’s gone and made us look like a right set of Charlies. Correct that matter, Jackson. Forthwith.”
“Like I said, sir, the alert’s gone out on the network. It can’t be more than a matter of hours or even minutes—”
“Never mind what it’s a matter of, Jackson, never mind the sodding network, you get out there and find the woman or else incur my earnest disapproval. Such are my instructions, Jackson.”
“Yessir.”
“Then for crissake shake the lead out, man.”
But Dobie and his new partner had already and even more effectively got their skates on, to such effect as to have placed them at that very moment in the darkling shades of that laburnerum (or possibly spruce) tree to which Jackson had referred. This is not to say that certain of the lesser lights of Monty Pontin’s Flying Circus had been unmindful, much less neglectful of their duties; Foxy Boxy and Edgar Wallace were keeping a watchful eye on this sylvan glade and, perceiving two unauthorised members of the public entering the area clearly marked by white tapes and a red-stencilled police Scene-of-Crime sign, Foxy, making irritated tut-tutting noises, charged across to remonstrate with them appropriately. “Now then, now then, now then,” Foxy remonstrated, pausing then aghast as he recognised Professor Dobie. “Oh hell, I mean hell-ohhhh, Mr Dobie.”
Dobie, who was peering up into the umbrageous foliage like John Keats in search of a nightingale, turned his head and blinked at him plaintively. It isn’t easy to blink at large plain-clothes police officers plaintively, but Dobie was remarkably good at that sort of thing. “Ummm ahhh? … Are you on duty here, Foxy?”
“I most certainly am and I have to ask you what it is you think you’re doing of, trampling about all over the place without so much as a by-your leave and … and … and …” Foxy had just run into Olly’s limpid gaze and under its impact began to open and close his mouth noiselessly like an oyster afflicted with galloping hiccups. “Who … Who … Who …” Recovering, but only up to a point. Dobie hastened to carry out the needed introduction. “… Er, this is Detective-Constable Box. Miss Bolivia de Havilland, my ah … business associate. Detective-Constable Box, he’s an, er … policeman.”
“Well, be that as it may, Mr Dobie—”
The weather, Dobie had already observed, was showing signs of deterioration that morning. Behind the aforementioned umbrageous foliage he could now detect tracts of hazy dove-grey sky bruised with patches of obscurely threatening cloud, sufficient indication that the British summer was about to return in all its glory.
“You won’t,” Foxy now remarked, “be finding any murder weppings up there today, ho ho. We got the murder wepping already.” He was alluding to an earlier occasion when Dobie had succeeded in discovering, or anyway dislodging, a murder weapon from its hiding-place amongst the branches of a tree, but becoming suddenly aware that references to murder weapons might, in the present instance, be less than tactful he acknowledged his faux pa
s with a curious gulping noise and fell silent. Dobie, however, seemed not to have taken this reference to his lady friend’s possible homicidal inclinations in any way amiss. “And a cartridge case, as I believe.”
“Yes. That’s so. But—”
“Where did you find it?”
“Right here. Which brings me to the point atishoo. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you and this Miss Gloria—”
Olly judged that the time for intervention was ripe. “No, he got that wrong actually.”
“I’m not surprised. Mr Dobie—”
“Olivia Bohun. I’m on the Snipe.”
Unlike Dobie, Box found this reference to be in no way obscure, the Daily Snipe being in fact his preferred breakfast-table reading. Or anyway, he liked looking at the pictures. Some of the pictures. Had he not been on duty that morning, and indeed throughout most of the preceding night, he would unquestionably have noted the appearance of Dobie and Kate on the front-page photogravure and would probably have enjoyed looking at their pictures, too; ignorant though he was of this development, Olly’s confession put a new complexion on the matter. “You’re a journalist, miss?”
“I’m the principal crime correspondent. If you haven’t seen my byline—”
Foxy appeared at the moment to be rather more concerned with Olly’s neckline than with her byline. As a concession to the sultry heat of the morning, or maybe in a further attempt to arouse Dobie’s more Errol-Flynnish instincts, she had unfastened three, or was it four? of the top buttons, the uppermost of those remaining intact being now insecurely poised some six or seven inches above her navel. “All right, miss, no need to show me your credentials.” Detective-Superintendent Pontin, Foxy knew for a fact, coveted few things in life more than what he called “press coverage,” and while Olly at first glance, and indeed at all subsequent glances, appeared to be somewhat inadequately provided for in that respect, any failure on the part of CID officers to cooperate with the Press would, (Foxy knew,) be rewarded with a resounding raspberry and, no doubt, relegation to traffic control duties in Abergavenny. “All Press enquiries,” Pontin had said, “will be dealt with promptly and smilingly.” Right. “In that case,” Foxy said, promptly and smilingly, the effulgence of his beam of welcome causing Olly to step back a pace, “you’ll be examining the scene of the crime as likely as not. Yes. Well. You’re standing on it.”