by Desmond Cory
This caused Olly to step back a further pace but had no effect whatsoever on Dobie, who continued to stare up at the sky with an air of profound melancholy. “And that there window, miss, is where the victim was standing when he got himself perforated. I can move over a bit and stand in front of it, like, if you want to take a photograph.”
“I don’t have a camera.”
“Oh.” Foxy manfully hid his disappointment. “I thought as you’d be sure to—”
“I do the words, you see. And anyway that window looks to be a bit too high up for—”
Dobie said suddenly and a little startlingly,
“How could anyone know he’d be standing there?”
“Eh?” Foxy, duly startled. “Who? What?”
“Not a normal sort of thing to do, is it? Stand at an office window? You’d expect him to be sitting at his desk or something like that. Kate couldn’t have known that he’d be standing there, could she?”
“I wouldn’t care to speculate as to that, sir. I suppose not. But then by the same token, nor could anyone else.”
“So it couldn’t have been a premeditated crime, now could it? Since it must have been pure chance—”
“Not necessarily,” Olly said. “She might’ve shouted out to him. Called him to the window.”
“That’s hardly very—”
“Or someone might have told him to stand by the window. So as maybe to look out for something. Or someone. Like someone bringing along a bag of something or other. Right?”
“I’m sure,” Foxy said, “Detective-Inspector Jackson will have borne all these possibilities in mind. But I don’t think anyone shouted out to him. We’d have heard.”
“Who’s we?”
“The surveillance team, miss.”
“You mean Peter Crumb’s lot?”
“Ah.” Foxy surveyed her thoughtfully. “You know him then, do you? … Well, yes, the Specials were in on it, too. But of course, the case as such rests with the local constabulary.” Pontin, he thought, would certainly wish that point to be emphasised. “If you’d care to have a word with our Press Officer at Central, he may be able to comment on the points you’ve mentioned. Or there again, he may not.”
“In view of the mess you’re making of it,” Dobie said with unusual acerbity, “he probably won’t. I mean, the way you’ve gone and dragged Kate into it is quite unforgiveable, especially in view of the fact that I’m currently engaged in carrying out some extremely complex calculations—”
“No one’s dragged her into it, sir.” Foxy was stung. “She was caught standing right where we are now with the murder weapon in her bag and that’s all there is to it. Stands to reason we got to investigate and if she hadn’t gone and done a bunk, chances are we’d have got to the bottom of things by now. Not the brainiest of things to do, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
That had to be the point.
Where was she? …
“Is that really how you worked it, Dobie?”
“Worked what?”
“How you got the guy to come to the window?”
“Me? Why should I have done a thing like that?”
“C’mon now,” Ollie said, wheedlingly. “You don’t have to put on a front with me. We’re partners now, remember?”
“Well, I’m not so sure about that. Why did you tell Foxy you were a journalist? It might just occur to him to check up on it, you know, and then—”
“So wot? I am a journalist.”
“But you told me you were working for the van den Buggers.”
“I’m not working for the van den or any other buggers. I’m on the Snipe. Like I told you.” That, at least, was how Olly viewed the matter. But she was becoming now, it had to be admitted, the least bit befuddled. Not, of course, anything like as befuddled as Dobie appeared to be, but perhaps considerably more, well … disconcerted. Nothing seemed to disconcert Dobie very notably, and while one might expect someone in his line of business to be reasonably unflappable, nothing about this weird affair seemed to be working out on the lines that one would have expected. She hadn’t, for instance, expected him to be on casually hobnobbing terms with junior members of the local constabulary; it didn’t seem right, somehow. Even if Constable Pox or whatever his name was hadn’t yet latched on to the startling disclosures front-paged in that morning’s Daily Snipe precisely, and of course the police are notoriously the last to know about these things … Even if Peter Crumb’s conspiracy theory, the Dobie Conspiracy? – the Coyle Conspiracy? – the Primrose Plot?.. or whatever … Even if Peter Crumb’s idea … “And I’m not working for the Hog, either. At least, I don’t think so.” Though it would be nice, of course, to be sure of it. Befuddled. That was the word for it. It had to be all Dobie’s fault. He had that effect on people.
“A journalist? Really? Then I seem to have been labouring under a misapprehension.” Dobie, plodding up the stairs, paused to shake his head sadly. “Rather as was the case with Melinda.”
“With what?”
“Or was it Melanie? … The young lady who lives up here. On the next floor. You’ll be meeting her in a moment. You see, when I called on her yesterday I mistakenly supposed—”
“But why are you calling on her again?”
“Ah. To get my wallet back.”
“To get …” Olly gave it up. Somehow she was being persuaded to ask all the wrong sort of questions and that had to be why she was getting all these completely fatuous answers. She was supposed to be after a story, dammit. Delving into the tortuous mind of a callous contract killer in order to provide her millions of readers with an authentic psychologically-based shudder. “Look, setting all that aside for the moment … how does it feel? I mean, how do you think about it? Doing, er … what you do?”
Dobie went on pausing, considering the matter. A good question, really. How does one think about mathematics? “Well, I suppose one has a mathematical mind or one hasn’t. And if you have that sort of a mind, you never ask yourself that question. You just do it, that’s all.”
“I didn’t mean the planning. I meant the execution. I mean, what do you really feel when you …” Kill people, she had been about to say. But she’d no doubt be wise to phrase the question a little more tactfully. “What do you feel about … death?”
This girl did rather jump from one thing to another, Dobie thought. Though to move from mathematics to metaphysics might after all be regarded as a logical step by some. “… Death. Er. Yes. Well. Mathematically speaking, and in terms of a very loose analogy, you might say it’s like drawing a losing ticket in a lottery where there aren’t any winning tickets. So it all works out even in the end. I mean, it may seem to be unfair sometimes, but it isn’t really. If you see what I mean.”
Olly didn’t. “I don’t.”
“No. Well, if you can call to mind the thermodynamic characteristics of a high-entropy state within a hermetically closed system, in other words an equilibrium of exhaustion—”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?” What did they teach these kids nowadays, Dobie wondered. “It’s … It’s like a game of Monopoly.”
“Ah,” Ollie said.
“Though in fact …” Dobie decided to come clean. “… I haven’t completely solved that problem yet. However, I hope to do so shortly.”
A game of Monopoly? … Well, yes, something might be made of that, Olly reflected. Dobie the Dice Man. A HUMAN LIFE depending on his every throw. If that was really how he looked at it. She stared after his retreating back as he resumed his stumping march up the stairs. Of course it didn’t really matter much if he looked at it that way or not, it made for a quote and that was the main thing. He sure as hell wasn’t making it easy for her.
Mounting the stairs in immediate pursuit of those unbrushed and dingy Hush Puppies, (Dobie not having bothered, of course, to change his shoes), Olly found herself gazing down a narrow blue-carpeted passageway at the far end of which another, narrower staircase gave obvious access to the top fl
oor of the building. Its entrance area had however been roped off and another Scene-of-Crime notice had been placed on the bottom step of the flight, prohibiting any further progress in that direction. Dobie, however, had turned aside and appeared to be now pressing his thumb firmly against the bell-push of the grey-painted door to the right of the passageway. This, however, appeared not to be working. Events proved appearances to be once again deceptive, for the door opened within the space of about fifteen seconds to reveal the unquestionably female figure of what, or who, had to be Melanie. Or Melinda. “Owwwww it’s you,” this Melinda said.
“Yes,” Dobie said, by way of confirmation.
“Well, I’m not receivin’ today, see? As a mark a respeck. An’ besides, aincha seen the fuzz? Cor, such goin’s on as you can’t imagine.” Her gaze wandering warily, though also as of habit, further down the passageway to register Olly’s presence a couple of paces or so to Dobie’s rear. “But … Is it? … Nahhhhh! … It can’t be! … It is! … Jooooo-liaaaa! …”
… Julia? … “No, no,” Dobie said weakly. “This is, er … This is …” His ditherings, however, being lost in the echoes of Olly’s answering cry of recognition, which shrilled in his ears like the yell of a bushwhacker hailing an absconding abo across fifteen miles of outback. “Yarooooooo! … Doro-feeeee! …” Locked together like founder members of a two-girl rugby scrum and ignoring him completely, they moved together into the flat, jabbering away at one another in some incomprehensible brogue bearing, Dobie thought, some vague resemblance to Cockney. “Ooooo-owya-bin? …” “Ooooda fort it? …” “I’m like to myself, cor stone me dahn, when I saw you standin’ there …” Feeling almost as much out of place as he might have done at a Germaine Greer Fan Club reunion, Dobie sidled unostentatiously in, closing the door behind him. Whence came, he wondered, this Dorothy stuff? The girl’s name was Mildred, wasn’t it? And then, for that matter …
“You, er … know each other, I take it?”
Olly (or Wally) (or Julie) (or whatever) surprisingly paid some heed to this mild-mannered interruption. “Course we do. We’re old chinas. Used to work together on the New Musical Express, fuck, those were the days, hey Dotty?”
“You betcha ass,” the other one said. “Mind you, I bin tryin’ to better myself since then, wot wiv the recession an’ all.”
“Yeah, hey … Dig the pad …”
“Pretty cool, huh?”
“Yeah, real cool, I love it, that’s some sexy sofa …”
- bouncing up and down on it and giggling like a loony. Dobie stared, open-mouthed. Really those very tight skirts shouldn’t … Ah well. These days you had to be broad-minded. “But, but, but …”
Olly stopped bouncing to stare at him back. “Wossamarrer, Dobie?”
“You said, Dorothy. Her name isn’t Dorothy. Or Dotty. It’s, er … It’s, er …”
“Ah. Still Melanie, izzit then Dot? … See, that’s sort of what you might call a nom de lit.”
“A what?”
“Same like I work under the name of Olivia Bohun. She screws under the name of Melanie, got it? And under almost anything else you fancy, that’s unless she’s … Anyway she’s sort of pseudonymous, if you take my point.”
“You mean … versatile?”
“That’s for sure. Always was. I remember one time up Fetter Lane—”
“But your real name isn’t Olly neither? I mean Nolly either?”
“No, it’s Julie. Julie Jimpson. If it matters.”
“Of course it matters. That explains everything.”
“It does? Such as?”
“Such as why I was getting a little bit confused.”
Melanie, unable (like most women) to let well alone, decided it was time to help out a little. “It’s like, Dorofy ain’t much of a monicker to pass around if you’re on the game, see? I mean, you don’t want the johns going like “Dorofy, Dorofy” all the time, might make me fink of the fucking Wizard of Oz at what we in the trade call the crucial moment.”
Dobie blinked nervously. “Not me it mightn’t.”
“No, well, you’re what we in the trade call a bit of a freako, dearie.” She seemed, however, to be giving some thought to the matter, if the agonised expression on her face could be so interpreted. “All the same … y’know what, Jool? … ’e could be on to somefink there. Like, you reckon ’e’d fancy me wiv pigtails?”
“He could be somewhere over the rainbow for all you care, ducks, once you’re well on the job.” Olly hesitated for a moment. “Metaphorically speaking, of course. Not the moment, though, for branching out, izzit? … not with the cops camped down all along the yellow brick road outside. Bound to cramp up your style a bit, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Yeah. Innit awful? You know about the deaf?”
“The deaf?”
“Upstairs. The guy who … Well, he’s my boss, though I ain’t suppose to say so. He gone and got shot.”
“Uh-huh. That’s why I’m here. We’re here.”
“On account of your bein’ on the crime page now? … Hey, you really done brilliant, you know that, Julie? Betcha makin’ a mint now you’re on the tabs, mind you, I always said you’d get to the top … Course I bin on the crime page, too. That’s why I ’ad to get off the Bayswater beat. It’s okay out ’ere in the sticks but I miss the Pakis. The johns ’ere ain’t so respectful like.” Her large blue eyes veering Dobiewards. “But wot’s ’e got to do wiv it? Rahnd ’ere yesterday ’e was, just when it all ’appened. I ain’t said nuffin to the cops but it struck me as, you know, funny like.”
“Ah.” Dobie hastened to explain. “It seems it was all a mistake. You see, I thought … What do you mean, you ain’t said nuffin to the cops? What cops?”
“One as was round this morning. Tall fair-haired geezer. Name of Box. Any road I din’t let on to ’im as you was ’ere.”
“Very good of you.”
“I ’ad to tell ’im abaht ol’ Primmy though.”
“About who?”
“You know. ’Im. Primrose like ’e called ’imself. Me ’avin’ pulled a trick wiv ’im like I told you. Mind you, that was all I could tell ’im. I mean, din’t amount to much more’n a quickie reelly. ’E din’t speak to me, not ’ardly at all.”
“What time did you, er … finish? When did he leave?”
“Four o’clock near enough.”
“And then what did he do?”
“Ow would I know? … Went upstairs again. Back to ’is office.”
“He didn’t go out?”
“Ooo Primrose? … ’Im? … ’E never went out, not ever, far as I could see. Not since we got ’ere. When we was up in the Smoke, yers, ’e’d take me out to dinner onst in a long while, you know, West End an’ all, ’e might mebbe be chattin’ up some clients, that sort a thing, but soon’s we got to bloody Cardiff ’e’s like, no place worth your dressing up for girl, ain’t the sort a places you’re used to, right? … and I’m like, wot you on abaht, you still got the clients aincha, and he’s like, look, they ain’t got the class dahn ’ere, it’s all the ware’ouse trade but I knew that wasn’t it, nahhhh, ’e was ’avin’ to run with the gloves on ’ere an’ ’e din’t much reckon it.”
The general tone of aggrieved complaint was unmistakeable but the exact nature of the grievance remained largely impenetrable, at least to Dobie. “He didn’t reckon it? Oh? … Why not?”
“Well, it ain’t like Bayswater, see? Or even Brixton, I mean up in town I know if ’e backs me ’e’s got some other gaffer backin’ ’im an’ that’s where ’e gets the knock in, right? No one’s goin’ to pull ’im over on ’is own manor even though there ’ave to be a lotta geezers’d like to try it, yeh, okay, but this ’ere ain’t ’is manor, ’e’s on the push, see? … an’ that’s why ’e’s bin doin’ the rabbit all this time, waitin’ for the ol’ green light.”
Dobie despairingly attempted a wild guess. “You mean he had enemies here so he had to be careful?”
“Wot I said, innit?”
“Wot? … y’know you got a real funny way of talking? I can’t make you out arf the time.”
“You’re not surprised someone’s shot him?”
“Nahhhh. Course not. Not surprised nor sorry neither. Hey, life’s like that, the way I see it. You win some, you lose some. That’s ’ow it goes.”
Melanie maybe wasn’t surprised but Olly certainly was. Dobie had now managed to phrase two perfectly sensible questions in immediate succession, and this had to constitute some kind of a record. Trouble was that, the way she saw it, they weren’t the right questions or anything like it. She was, however, now beginning to feel that she could discern some shadow of a method underlying Dobie’s peculiarly idiosyncratic investigative procedures and hence to be gaining some insight into the weird mentality of a sadistic contract killer. DOBIE DAFT AS A BRUSH was the sub-head that occurred to her. “Look, Dobie …”
“Yum?”
“It’s that girl friend of yours we’re after. All this stuff she’s tellin’ you about, we know it already.”
“We do?”
“Course we do. Anyway, it’s no good asking his girls anything, least of all Dotty. She’s a sweetie but she’s thick as a plate of custard and always was.”
Dobie sighed. He had been hoping for more tea and chokky bikkies but Olly had expressed a preference for coffee and Melanie had retired to the kitchenette to do things with Nescafe and an electric kettle. Since she had to be still within earshot Olly’s last comment had been made sotto voce but Dobie couldn’t disagree with the sentiments expressed. “Funny, you two knowing each other,” he said, stating mildly enough the equally obvious. “I suppose it all has to do with our living in a global village and all that. I was reading about that the other day in the—”