The Shy Traffickers (Professor Dobie Book 4)

by Desmond Cory

  Therefore what?

  Therefore it was back to square one. Do not pass GO. Do not collect two hundred nicker. The computer was inexorable on that point. All the equations led it into that most feared of impasses, a paralogism. There it was on the monitor screen,

  PARALOGISM

  … and there was no way past it that Dobie could perceive.

  A dead end …

  Feeling the need for a little physical, as opposed to mental, exercise, Dobie rose and shambled briskly down the stairs to Kate’s study. At one time, he supposed, it might have been called a tiring-room but it was where she kept most of her books, anyway. On a lower shelf the formidable stuff, Glaister and Simpson and Sidney Smith, Buchanan on Toxicology, Lucas on Forensic Chemistry, Materia Medica and all that crap, with somewhat lighter reading on the upper shelves. Nothing on Greek philosophy, of course. Nothing on Aristotelian logic. The woman was a virtual illiterate. If only, he thought, the computer could handle library references, that would be … But then he’d never thought he’d need such a hideously RAM-consuming luxury. There again, if he had just one little beady-eyed Research Assistant, never mind four, someone who … someone who could …

  He paused, struck by a sudden idea. Standing on tiptoe with your tongue protruding from the corner of your mouth while reaching for a row of books some six inches above your outstretched fingertips is not, perhaps, the best moment in which to be struck by sudden ideas and Dobie was well aware of it; he managed, however, to recover his balance without bringing the whole of the top shelf down on top of himself and, slightly surprised at his own dexterity, sat down heavily in Kate’s best armchair to consider the implications of his latest spiffing wheeze. He did have a Research Assistant, after all, if his/her services could be procured; all that he had to consider, therefore, was how best to achieve this end. He didn’t have to spend too much time in his deliberations. Straightforward blackmail, he decided, would work a treat. He’d set about it right away.

  The message that broke into the text showing on the ADG monitor screen was both puzzling and peremptory. Moreover, it couldn’t be shifted, despite her several efforts to chase it away. It said,

  CAPELLA REPLY CAPELLA REPLY URGENT URGENT URGENT

  Some of the geeks on the hook-up were getting downright unmannerly, Columbella thought testily. But she couldn’t see that she had any immediate option other than to obey.

  OK OK WHERE’S THE FIRE?

  The monitor screen blinked briefly.

  THIS IS STRANGE ATTRACTOR & I NEED YOUR HELP WITH SOME RESEARCH

  So did Columbella.

  HOW DID YOU TRACE ME?

  NEVER MIND THAT NOW I NEED ACCESS TO LIB REFS VIA YOUR LINKUP OK?

  Oh really now, Columbella thought. The cheek of some people … Positively undiluted …

  DEFINITELY NOT OK GET LOST JACK I’M BUSY

  IN THAT CASE I SHALL POLLUTE YOUR TERMINAL TO CRO FILES WITH DEADLY SOURCE-SEEKING CHIP-CONSUMING VIRUS WHICH WILL RESTRICT YOUR FUTURE ACTIVITIES A GREAT DEAL MORE THAN SOMEWHAT

  Columbella stared at the screen in a horror-struck silence. The threat was indeed a hideous one. Olly would tear her limb from limb if the mainstay of her career as an investigative crime reporter … No, that just couldn’t happen …

  YOU WOULDN’T DO THAT TO ME, WOULD YOU?

  OH YES I WOULD

  This Strange Attractor blighter was rotten to the core, as was obvious. But she clearly had no choice but to submit to his loathsome embraces, oh what a swine! He’d sit there chewing up her chips without the slightest show of remorse if she attempted resistance.

  OK SO WHAT DO YOU WANT?

  I HAVE A PARALOGISM

  the blighter diffidently confessed.

  THAT’S TOUGH BUT YOU OUGHT TO SEE A SPECIALIST

  SEND ME YOUR UNCODED LIB REFS FOR PARALOGISMS > GUNS/BULLETS/BALLISTICS AND VIRUS WILL REMAIN SAFELY IN TESTTUBE

  There was a pause while Columbella considered the magnitude of the assignment. Or, given the terms posed, its minitude. Library references establishing a direct connection between guns and one of the abstruser concepts of Greek philosophy were hardly likely to be numerous. Indeed, might even be non-existent. In which case …

  GIVE ME 10 MINUTES THEN

  Dobie acceded to this reasonable request and sat back to await further developments. These were shortly forthcoming. In less than half the stipulated period of time the computer emitted a sinister chuckle and began to spout forth the anticipated printout.

  NO LIB REFS REPORTED UNDER TECHNICAL AND PHILOSOPHY HEADINGS BUT IN GENERAL SECTION (ACADEMIC) D L SAYERS HAS THE FOLLOWING

  Aristotle’s fifth type of discovery is particularly interesting. He calls it “discovery through bad reasoning by the other party” (paralogism), but I think he really means to describe the “discovery by bluff”. Thus, the detective shows the suspect a weapon saying, “If you are not the murderer, how do you come to be in possession of this weapon?” The suspect replies, “But that is not the weapon with which the crime was committed.” “Indeed?” says the detective, “and how do you know?”

  DO I CARRY ON SEARCH?

  Dobie shook his head absent-mindedly, then used the keyboard again,

  NO

  and saw the screen blank out immediately. His mind seemed to have done much the same thing, because in one way the reference was remarkably apposite and in another way it wasn’t. Yes, there was a loophole there, he was sure of it. In one way he could see the loophole and in another way he couldn’t.

  He could see, for instance, that if you happened to be carrying a gun in a handbag at the time when the crime in question was committed, then you could be reasonably certain that it wasn’t the weapon employed. Kate was certain that it wasn’t, for precisely that reason. But the police were equally certain that her gun was the weapon employed, because they were putting their trust in empirically established evidence rather than relying on that damned Second Law of Thermodynamics. The paralogism lay in that discrepancy, and so of course did the loophole. It was there all right.

  But Dobie couldn’t find it.

  … Supposing, though, you posed the question in a different way. Not how do you know? but How don’t you know? … Putting it in terms of a mathematical equation, same like the Heisenbergian quarternions you might use in establishing the uncertainty principle in traditional atomic physics. Well, it could be done. Why not? Dobie leaned fowards and notated one of the more familiar equations of Leibnizian physics,

  ds = -32t -40

  dt

  The computer gurgled approvingly. This, in its view, was the stuff to give the troops. When Dobie typed in the instruction, INSTALL and pressed the RETURN key, it accepted the order unhesitatingly and sent to the screen the encouraging message,

  OK …

  Dobie stared at it unbelievingly. This just wasn’t possible.

  It couldn’t be that simple.

  But it was.

  And by a strange coincidence, Columbella was also at that moment staring at her monitor screen in disbelief. She’d reckoned that this Strange Attractor bonzo wasn’t the only geek who could run a trace; she was pretty good at that sort of thing herself. The only trouble was that, having sent her electronic bloodhounds scurrying through the labyrinthine rabbit-warrens of the CRO files and out again along the faintly-marked track of a recent inexplicable invasion of them, they had finally managed to bring to bay a totally incredible quarry.

  NET SOURCE NUMBER IS LISTED AS INTCODE + 67 839 04 04 02 PROFESSOR JOHN DOBIE

  REGION : CARDIFF

  Oh no! It couldn’t be Dobie!

  But it was …

  Olly, like the Rector, was in deeply despondent mood. Her failure rankled, it really did. Rankled like anything. Crumb, although he had certain glad tidings to impart, was also glum. He and Olly were both Londoners, after all, and both therefore a ready prey to that peculiar sense of disorientation which often affects true metropolitans when exiled in the provinces. And this wasn’t even England, for
crying out loud. The Queen Street pedestrian precinct was in fact that evening at its late-summer best, with the tables of the pavement cafés in comfortable disarray under their gaily-coloured canopies and with the usual hordes of up-from-the-Valleys shoppers sauntering around with their usual air of nothing-very-much-to-do and lots-of-time-to-do-it-in. Only the bearded street musician who was making a plaintive moan from a nearby street corner aroused any kind of an answering chord in Peter Crumb’s unreceptive heart, causing him to recollect the friendly tunnels of the Charing Cross tube station and the weird echoing noises that at almost all hours of the day or night emanated therefrom. He made, however, no observation to this effect. Instead he said,

  “You’re wasting your time here, Olly. And so am I, if it comes to that. This is a real duff caper if ever there was one.”

  “Well, I still fink—”

  “Getting nowhere with that Dobie character, that’s got to be obvious. And you won’t get anywhere trying to find that Kate Coyle, either. Because she’s not just disappeared. She’s disappeared for good and all, unless I’m very much mistaken.”

  “I’ve come to the same conclusion,” Olly said.

  “Hardly matters a lot, though, from your point of view. Because you can’t take the story any further. It’s finito.”

  “I wish you’d talk sense, Crumbo. Or if you can’t do that, then just say what you mean.”

  Crumb, a man of sensitivity, thought it possible to detect a touch of acerbity about Olly’s manner. “Look,” he said. “I’ll spell it out for you. George Stainer’s here and he’s taking a personal interest in this little matter. I’ve reason to believe that he’s found Kate Coyle already and I’ve no reason to believe that all he wants is to discuss the state of the economy with her. You know how the Stainers work. An eye for an eye is their motto. She shot Primrose, right … She’s as good as dead. George has got to maintain credibility, after all.”

  Once again he had achieved the incredible. Olly had stopped eating, the cheeseburger she held in her dainty fingers arrested while halfway up to her mouth. “George Stainer’s here …”

  “Right here in Cardiff. I had quite a long chat with him last night and I got to tell you he’s none too happy about the way the Snipe’s playing up this story. Especially the gang-warfare bit. No, he doesn’t like that bit at all.”

  Not, then, in Dobie’s freezer after all. Olly didn’t know if she felt relieved or otherwise. “But you didn’t tell me,” she wailed. “It’s the first I’ve heard—”

  “Well, I’m telling you now.”

  It was of course Olly’s duty as a crusading crime reporter to tell the truth without fear or favour. On the other hand, being pulled out of the river on the end of a boathook played no part whatsoever in her future plans. She’d heard a lot of nasty things about that Stainer person. “And what else did you have to tell him?”

  “Well, that’s very much to the point. It seems he’d be quite interested in establishing a line in to the activities of the Special Branch and in the course of our little chat he put to me … what you might call a proposition. Having to do with financial considerations. Is this all making better sense to you now?”

  “Yes. You’re trying to tell me that you shopped Kate Coyle.”

  “Oh, I didn’t shop her in the ordinary sense. No, no. I only explained to George where the burden of our suspicions lay. And since he runs a considerably more efficient organisation than does that blithering idiot Pontin, I naturally assumed that matters might then be safely left to him. And that’s why from now on I think that you can assume Kate Coyle can be left out of the reckoning. Dobie … Yes, he’ll deal with Dobie too, or so I should think. In due course.”

  Olly had now recovered her aplomb sufficiently to inflict further damage upon the cheeseburger. “You seem,” she said, chewing at the remnants, “to be pretty dam’ pleased with yourself this evening. Trouble with dogs with two tails is they don’t know which one to chase.”

  “Well, it’ll certainly improve my status with the boys in the Branch when they know I’m in with the Stainers. Shouldn’t be surprised if I don’t get promotion and then I can tell that Dim Smith pill where he can put it …” Crumb paused and waved a weary hand towards Olly’s now-empty plastic plate. “But I’ll tell you, Olly, I’ll be glad to get shot of this lot. It’s not my scene, all this … mountain scenery and so forth. Doctors who go round shooting people. Cops like that Jackson twit who don’t seem to be getting anyone’s payola. How do the fuzz here stay alive? is what I ask myself. And why do they bother?”

  “Yeah,” Olly said. “They got a funny way of talking, too. I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

  And now the jury were coming back in. It looked like they’d reached a verdict at last. But only three of them, not twelve. The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men, lining up beside the bed to stare down at her inimically. Just as that other heavenly trio had stared at her the other day – yesterday? the day before? – across the table, Pontin, Jackson and that prat from the Specials, the three wise monkeys, they the judges, she the judged. It hadn’t been fair then and it wasn’t fair now. Kate looked past those staring goblin faces towards the door, half-expecting to see Miss Joyjuice following on with a laden tray, but these men had closed the door behind them and it stayed that way.

  She didn’t know who they were, but she recognised them. The one with the broken nose who had spoken to her before. The one in the open-neck shirt who looked like an Arab and the one with the huge knobby-fingered hands who’d been waiting by the car when she’d been snatched. No, they weren’t goblins, of course not. They were the heavies. Any casting director could have told you that. And indeed that was the trouble with this whole situation, it all added up to a cliché of the most boring sort. At any moment Bulldog Dobie would come swinging in through the window on the end of a rope, kerrr-rashhhhh! and start laying about him left and right, zap! and pow! and take that, you rotter! only of course he wouldn’t because if Dobie were to try anything like that he’d get tangled up with the rope and swing himself straight into a brick wall and Carl Petersen and Irma-with-the-breakfast-tray would just about pee themselves laughing. The nerd with the broken nose, however, didn’t seem to be finding the situation in any way amusing. On the contrary, he was looking thoroughly cheesed off.

  That wasn’t good.

  “Jus’ don’t know why you’re giving us all this trouble,” he growled, confirming Kate’s estimate of a general lack of sunniness about his outlook. “I’m getting real narked with you an’ that’s a fact. What’s more the boss, he’s getting impatient. Bad enough your knockin’ off old Primrose without your makin’ all these other difficulties for him, I mean you got to … see things from his point of view.”

  “I didn’t knock off Primrose, whatever he thinks. Kevin had nothing to do with it, either, and I don’t know where he is, so it’s no good you’re going on and on about it.” Speaking, as she hoped, with quiet authority. Unfortunately it had all come out a little bit snivelly. Kate’s fortunes, she reckoned, had to be at a particularly low ebb right now.

  “We’re not going on and on about it, that’s the point. That’s just what we ain’t gonna do no more. On account of your time’s running out, see what I mean? The Man says we got to try what he calls more direct means of persuasion, like maybe breakin’ off a couple of your fingers an’ stuffin’ ’em up your chimblypiece. Course, we don’t want to do that, less we have to.”

  Kate had the feeling that here he spoke for himself. The guy with the steam-shovel hands looked as though he’d like nothing better. The Arab had also moved a step or two closer to her with a sinister gleam in his eyes, which, she noted, might with profit have been placed six inches or so farther apart; it was lucky for him they were separated by his nose, as otherwise he might well have been plagued with monocular vision. She further noted that he was grinning unpleasantly and she stared at him in manifest dismay. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “You mean the teef?
… Used to play a bit of Rugby, Mervyn did. Fly-half for Aberavon. Merv the Swerve, they used to call him. Well, that’s how it happened, see? He swerved. So did the full-back. It wasn’t a—”

  “Aberavon?” Kate, a good Cardiffian, was immensely amused. “Aberavon? You call that a Rugby team?”

  “He got himself banned right after that, anyway.”

  “Well, he’s got no cause to worry about his teeth. He doesn’t look much like Shirley Temple in any case. No, it’s that … discoloration …”

  “That what?”

  “Those yellow patches under his eyes …”

  Mervyn, suddenly the centre of attention, bridled becomingly. “Ain’t nothing. Mebbe just a shade liverish, innit?”

  “Liver? Not on your nelly. That’s usually a … Let’s see your tongue.”

  “Wozzis, then?” Recoiling in alarm. “I’m not a—”

  “Come on, man, let’s take a look at it. If you’ve got … Ah! … Ahhh-haaaa! … Yes. Just what I suspected. Oh dear oh dear.”

  A brief pause followed, during which time Guffin himself also leaned forwards to inspect the unsavoury object. Mervyn, in an ill-advised effort to attempt the same thing, had adopted so horrifying a squint as to induce a resemblance to a gargoyle rather than a human being; Guffin, also and understandably recoiling, drew in a sharp breath. “Wossa matter with him, then?”

  “Well, I’m afraid he … But then at this late stage there’s not much to be done about it. No, no, it’s nothing. Not really.”

  Guffin was in no way satisfied by this pronouncement.