He rubbed himself down briskly, almost scraping himself with the towel to get the filthy canal water off him. He stood up and looked about. 'Can you find my pants?'
'Young man,' said the old lady with the dog, who had just reached them. She stood looking at them sternly, and was about to rebuke them when Dirk interrupted.
'A thousand apologies, dear lady,' he said, 'for any offence my friend may inadvertently have caused you. Please,' he added, drawing a slim bunch of anemones from Richard's bottom, 'accept these with my compliments.'
The lady dashed them out of Dirk's hand with her stick, and hurried off, horror-struck, yanking her dog after her.
'That wasn't very nice of you,' said Richard, pulling on his clothes underneath the towel that was now draped strategically around him.
'I don't think she's a very nice woman,' replied Dirk, 'she's always down here, yanking her poor dog around and telling people off. Enjoy your swim?'
'Not much, no,' said Richard, giving his hair a quick rub. 'I hadn't realised how filthy it would be in there. And cold. Here,' he said, handing the towel back to Dirk, 'thanks. Do you always carry a towel around in your briefcase?'
'Do you always go swimming in the afternoons?'
'No, I usually go in the mornings, to the swimming pool on Highbury Fields, just to wake myself up, get the brain going. It just occurred to me I hadn't been this morning.'
'And, er - that was why you just dived into the canal?'
'Well, yes. I just thought that getting a bit of exercise would probably help me deal with all this.'
'Not a little disproportionate, then, to strip off and jump into the canal.'
'No,' he said, 'it may not have been wise given the state of the water, but it was perfectly -'
'You were perfectly satisfied with your own reasons for doing what you did.'
'Yes -'
'And it was nothing to do with my aunt, then?'
Richard's eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'What on earth are you talking about?' he said.
'I'll tell you,' said Dirk. He went and sat on a nearby bench and opened his case again. He folded the towel away into it and took out instead a small Sony tape recorder. He beckoned Richard over and then pushed the Play button. Dirk's own voice floated from the tiny speaker in a lilting sing-song voice. It said, 'In a minute I will click my fingers and you will wake and forget all of this except for the instructions I shall now give you.
'In a little while we will go for a walk along the canal, and when you hear me say the words 'my old maiden aunt who lived in Winnipeg' -'
Dirk suddenly grabbed Richard's arm to restrain him.
The tape continued, 'You will take off all your clothes and dive into the canal. You will find that you are unable to swim, but you will not panic or sink, you will simply tread water until I throw you the lifebelt…'
Dirk stopped the tape and looked round at Richard's face which for the second time that day was pale with shock.
'I would be interested to know exactly what it was that possessed you to climb into Miss Way's flat last night,' said Dirk, 'and why.'
Richard didn't respond - he was continuing to stare at the tape recorder in some confusion. Then he said in a shaking voice, 'There was a message from Gordon on Susan's tape. He phoned from the car. The tape's in my flat. Dirk, I'm suddenly very frightened by all this.'
CHAPTER 21
Dirk watched the police officer on duty outside Richard's house from behind a van parked a few yards away. He had been stopping and questioning everyone who tried to enter the small side alley down which Richard's door was situated, including, Dirk was pleased to note, other policemen if he didn't immediately recognise them. Another police car pulled up and Dirk started to move.
A police officer climbed out of the car carrying a saw and walked towards the doorway. Dirk briskly matched his pace with him, a step or two behind, striding authoritatively.
'It's all right, he's with me,' said Dirk, sweeping past at the exact moment that the one police officer stopped the other.
And he was inside and climbing the stairs.
The officer with the saw followed him in.
'Er, excuse me, sir,' he called up after Dirk.
Dirk had just reached the point where the sofa obstructed the stairway. He stopped and twisted round.
'Stay here,' he said, 'guard this sofa. Do not let anyone touch it, and I mean anyone. Understood?'
The officer seemed flummoxed for a moment.
'I've had orders to saw it up,' he said.
'Countermanded,' barked Dirk. 'Watch it like a hawk. I shall want a full report.'
He turned back and climbed up over the thing. A moment or two later he emerged into a large open area. This was the lower of the two floors that comprised Richard's flat.
'Have you searched that?' snapped Dirk at another officer who was sitting at Richard's dining table looking through some notes. The officer looked up in surprise and started to stand up. Dirk was pointing at the wastepaper basket.
'Er, yes -'
'Search it again. Keep searching it. Who's here?'
'Er, well -'
'I haven't got all day.'
'Detective Inspector Mason just left, with -'
'Good, I'm having him pulled off. I'll be upstairs if I'm needed, but I don't want any interruptions unless it's very important.
Understood?'
'Er, who -'
'I don't see you searching the wastepaper basket.'
'Er, right, sir. I'll -'
'I want it deep-searched. You understand?'
'Er -'
'Get cracking.' Dirk swept on upstairs and into Richard's workroom.
The tape was lying exactly where Richard had told him it would be, on the long desk on which the six Macintoshes sat. Dirk was about to pocket it when his curiosity was caught by the image of Richard's sofa slowly twisting and turning on the big Macintosh screen, and he sat down at the keyboard.
He explored the program Richard had written for a short while, but quickly realised that in its present form it was less than selfexplanatory and he learned little. He managed at last to get the sofa unstuck and move it back down the stairs, but he realised that he had had to turn part of the wall off in order to do it. With a grunt of irritation he gave up.
Another computer he looked at was displaying a steady sine wave.
Around the edges of the screen were the small images of other waveforms which could be selected and added to the main one or used to modify it in other ways. He quickly discovered that this enabled you to build up very complex waveforms from simple ones and he played with this for a while. He added a simple sine wave to itself, which had the effect of doubling the height of the peaks and troughs of the wave. Then he slid one of the
