The Strange Attractor Read Online Free PDF Page B

taking another puff at his Superking, he saw an echoing drift of smoke rise from the chimney of the crematorium, dark smoke sliding away effortlessly downwind.
    The sky was otherwise almost free of cloud and the sunlight was etching a gently-moving dapple of tree-leaf shadow around his feet. He had now walked three times the length of the path running from the car park to the cemetery and his shoes, he noticed, had got a little dusty. He turned and looked towards the entrance of the funeral parlour, where a few dark-suited figures were now emerging. Not very many. Only four or five. Dickie Bird was one of them, walking alongside a fatter fair-haired chap; no doubt a colleague. The Corder contingent. Dr Coyle was the last figure to emerge; she stood still for a moment, giving the impression of blinking in the sharp sunlight, then turned away in the opposite direction to the others, walking not towards the car park but down the path upon which Dobie himself was standing. Half-way along it, however, she paused and sat down on a convenient wooden bench. She seemed, as Dobie cautiously approached, to be lost in thought, but looked up sharply enough as he came to a final halt beside her.
    “You were at the inquest.”
    “Yes,” Dobie said. “I was.”
    “Who are you?”
    Her own approach seemed to be pleasingly direct. “My name’s Dobie. John Dobie. May I… ?”
    “Why not?”
    Thus encouraged, Dobie seated himself beside her. “He was one of my students.”
    “Oh. I see.”
    “Until last year.”
    “I’m afraid I don’t remember your name.”
    “It’s Dobie.”
    “My memory’s bad but it’s not that bad. I meant, I don’t remember his ever mentioning it.”
    “No special reason why he should have done.” At close range, her voice lost its finishing-school tone, seemed huskier and much less self-assured. It sounded better that way. There was even the faintest trace of a Kaird’f accent somewhere underneath. “He only came to my lectures. That was all.”
    “I suppose you’re used to speaking to lots of people. You don’t get nervous or anything. Me, I’m petrified.”
    “So am I, sometimes. Though it’s usually all right once you get started. And you did very well, I thought. It wasn’t such a very big audience but it’s never easy.”
    “It was kind of you to come. My name’s Kate Coyle.”
    “I know. Are you really what he said? A police pathologist?”
    “I’m a part-time police pathologist. I do night duty and I stand in for Paddy Oates when he’s away. Because I need the money. Why do you ask?”
    “I just wondered… Well, if there was anything…?”
    “I didn’t do the autopsy. But no, there wasn’t anything that would explain it.”
    “No medical reason for it?”
    “Or any other that I can see.”
    She looked different, too, squinting sideways into the bright sunlight. Already it had brought a faint flush to her otherwise rather pallid cheeks. She looked a great deal younger than in the courtroom, more like her true age which Dobie guessed to be somewhere in the middle thirties. Yet still somehow a little worn round the edges. An interesting face, when you looked at it closely.
    “I don’t think the coroner felt that I did very well. He got quite narky about that bloody gun. Said I should have reported it. The trouble is, he’s right. I should have.”
    “But otherwise, you’re satisfied with the verdict?”
    “It seems an odd word to use. But he shot himself all right. Was he a… a particularly bright student? Or something?”
    “He was, yes. And yet,” Dobie said, “for the last five days I’ve been trying to remember what he looked like. And I can’t.”
    “What he looked like?… Dark-haired. Scruffy. Pathetic.”
    “That describes ninety per cent of them. You know, I get to see an awful lot of students, but I hardly ever get to know them.”
    “Well, I understand that,” Kate said. “But then why are you…?”
    “I don’t know. Perhaps I feel a little