Mad Dogs and Scotsmen (Three Oaks Book 7)

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘We invested a lot of borrowed money in building work to meet the quarantine standards,’ I reminded her. ‘If we lose a dog from quarantine and he stays lost, or there’s an outbreak of rabies, they’ll take another good look at us and maybe notice a few corners that were cut. The approval of our late car as a carrying vehicle, for instance. That was supposed to be temporary.’

  ‘All right,’ Beth said. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  I terminated the call with an easier mind. Beth’s best is very good indeed. It occurred to me that I had forgotten to mention the unconscious man, but no matter. He was outside the scope of our problems.

  Inspector Tirrell, meantime, had thought up some new questions. ‘Mr Cochrane’s attaché case was put under the floor to make room for the large crate. What happened then?’

  I led the Inspector through the procedure for loading an animal out of quarantine, which would have been followed by the two kennel-maids. ‘One of them went back to her work,’ I finished, ‘while the other brought the car to the door, ready for me to drive away.’

  ‘And omitted to lock it,’ said Tirrell.

  ‘She expected us to come out immediately,’ I said. ‘And it might not have made any difference. The modern car thief can get inside any car within fifteen seconds.’

  Tirrell looked at me sadly. ‘You may get away with that argument or you may not,’ he said. ‘Luckily for you, that isn’t my concern. One man on his own couldn’t lift the two crates out of the car complete with dog?’

  ‘Not a hope,’ I said. ‘It takes two strong men. And you can’t even lift out that size of carrying box with a heavy dog inside because it’s such an awkward lift and the sides of the crate get in the way of your elbows.’

  ‘So whoever brought your car here would have had to lever open both containers and release the dog before he could empty the back of the car and start the search which seems to have ended with the theft of Mr Cochrane’s case?’

  ‘That’s it in a nutshell,’ I said. ‘Perhaps he used the phone from the case to summon somebody to collect him. A confederate, or even a taxi.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Tirrell snapped his mouth shut on the word rather than bandy theories with one who was not in very good odour with the police, but I thought that I saw him make a mental note to follow up the suggestion. There was no time to pump him. An ambulance turned up, closely followed by another Range Rover, this one carrying the Detective Superintendent from the previous night and several subordinates. The lengthy process of waiting around to be asked questions which had already been asked and answered began all over again.

  I whistled for Jove several times. I still had his kangaroo in my pocket. At least if he turned up we might be able to fill the time with a few simple retrieving exercises. But the only response was from an old and grubby terrier which came out of the trees, hopeful of being taken for walkies.

  Chapter Four

  The Superintendent, a hatchet-faced man by the name of Easton, finished with us eventually. If he thought it suspicious that I should arrive so early on the scene of both attacks he seemed to accept my contention that I had had a good reason for being there as I had each time been invited to the scene by the police – and that I could account for every moment of my time for several days past.

  He seemed less incisive than he had the previous evening. I guessed that he was uncertain whether to demand full control of this secondary case. If the unconscious man either died or recovered and solved the murder for him, then the case was his. In any other event, a mere assault was the province of the humbler Tirrell.

  I managed a quick word with Tirrell before Henry and I slipped away. He had been waiting, with more patience than I would have shown, for his superior to go away and get on with his murder case, leaving Tirrell to tidy up such minor matters as the theft of my car and the assault on the man – whose name, from the card, was Donald something. (Tirrell’s thumb had hidden the surname from my inquisitive eyes.)

  ‘Has another car been stolen around here?’ I asked him.

  Tirrell nodded, in understanding rather than as an affirmative. ‘Not so far as I know. I wondered the same thing. Whoever was responsible could have walked far enough before taking another car; but we’ve had no report from anywhere in Fife. It may not have been missed yet or he may have been picked up. Perhaps he even lives near here. Time may tell but it does seem probable that we’re looking for more than one person. The ground’s too hard and there have been too many comings and goings for us to read the traces.’

  My question had only been a step towards what I really wanted to know. ‘What steps are being taken about the missing dog?’

  ‘All officers have been warned not to approach stray dogs but to report them immediately. The SSPCA and certain trained officers will take it from there.’

  I felt an uneasiness in my bowels. This sounded very close to my worst fears. ‘The trained officers being marksmen?’ I asked.

  He avoided my eye. ‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ he said.

  ‘Surely to God you could at least fix it so that I’ll be advised immediately?’ I asked. ‘I want at least a chance of recovering the animal undamaged. He’s valuable and, after all, quarantine is only precautionary. There’s no indication whatever that he has rabies and every indication that he doesn’t. His owner works for a firm that makes rabies vaccinations, for God’s sake! He’d be the last person to take his own dog to the East without immunizing him.’

  ‘I could try to see that you’re notified but I couldn’t promise,’ he said. There was a pause before he added, ‘I’m sympathetic. I have a dog of my own.’

  He sounded sincere but that was not enough. ‘I’m getting the word put around all the dog-walkers and countrymen,’ I told him. ‘My chances of getting news may be at least as good as yours. But I’m not going to pass the word along so that some trigger-happy cop can be given his first chance at a live target.’

  Tirrell’s face darkened. ‘You have a duty—’

  ‘Bugger my duty!’ I said briskly. ‘I’ve spent half my life answering the call of duty and what’s it got me? Permanent disability, occasional blackouts and a miserly pension. Now I’m dealing in realistic practicalities, not in what some bobby decides was meant by what some civil servant, who wouldn’t know a dog if it bit him, drafted in Whitehall or the Scottish Office. Get me an assurance that I can take charge of any hot search and I’ll guarantee – almost guarantee – to locate the dog and to recover him unharmed. By tranquillizer dart if necessary, but I don’t think it’ll come to that. He knows me well and I trained him. He’ll come to my call.’

  Tirrell’s mouth screwed up in a silent whistle. ‘I said that I’d try and I’ll do that,’ he said. ‘If I hear first, I’ll let you know. But let me remind you that if you learn of the dog’s whereabouts and don’t tell us immediately, the consequences could be serious for you.’

  ‘Whatever happens,’ I said, ‘the consequences could be serious for me. When can I have my crate back, and the travelling box? I don’t want them to be abandoned here.’

  ‘Again,’ Tirrell said, ‘I’ll let you know. Tell your insurers that your car can be seen in the police pound at Cupar.’

  He turned away. I got into the car with Henry, drove off and stopped at the main road. ‘Where the hell has Noel Cochrane got to?’ I asked Henry.

  ‘God alone knows,’ Henry said gloomily. ‘He could be floating face down in the Tay for all we can tell. What may or may not be significant is that the police haven’t asked where the hell he’s got to.’

  A van came up behind me and hooted. I moved out and drove slowly towards home. ‘So what do you deduce? That they have his body? That they have him in custody? That they haven’t noticed he’s gone? Or that they know where he is and either don’t care or don’t want us to find out?’

  ‘Any of those,’ Henry said, ‘and one or two more. Let’s stick with things we know for sure.’

  ‘Is there anything we know for sure?’

&
nbsp; ‘Your car will never run again, that’s for sure. So you may as well look for a replacement and let me have mine back. What’s more, I see that Hugh Morris Motors is advertising interest-free credit at the moment. Business must be slow.’

  I found that Henry’s car had speeded up without any conscious intent on my part. ‘Are they indeed?’ I said more cheerfully. What had been an annoyingly bright light had now turned into mildly soothing sunshine. ‘And Hugh himself was very interested in one of the dogs, we just couldn’t agree the price. Now might be the time for some hard bargaining.’

  ‘Go get him, boy,’ said Henry. He folded his arms and leaned back, satisfied.

  *

  It was late afternoon before we got back to Three Oaks. We were immediately set upon for absenting ourselves without adequate reason – and not only by our wives. The kennel-maids, usually half-way respectful to me and in awe of Henry, joined the throng on the gravel outside the front door and let their resentment show with a display of dumb support for the senior ladies. Even Sam, present but reined, seemed to be regarding us with disfavour.

  All this disapproval, I could safely assume, was simply anger at our sudden absence. An interruption to my training programme was regarded as my affair and the bathing of the dogs had been completed some time previously; but the dogs’ mealtimes required all hands or prior warning. Apart from the complexity arising from certain dogs requiring special diets, there were several ancillary tasks. The firing of blank cartridges, for instance, so that young dogs would come to associate the sound of shots with good times and not become gun-shy. Similarly, any pup showing signs of travel sickness was usually fed at the back of one car or another. This was one reason why any car of ours quickly degenerated into a mobile slum. The back of Henry’s car was going the same way.

  When Beth and Isobel were running out of words I said, ‘Finding another body doesn’t count as a reasonable excuse?’

  ‘Dead?’ Isobel asked.

  ‘Damn near it,’ said Henry. ‘He’d been hit over the head like the girl and they think he’d been lying there since before dawn. But he was still breathing, after a fashion.’

  ‘Presumably whoever hit him also killed the girl and dumped the car,’ Isobel said.

  ‘A facile assumption but probably true. There’s no guarantee that he’ll come round at all, let alone with any clear memory of who and what and why,’ Henry pointed out.

  ‘And you don’t know who he is?’ said Beth.

  ‘As it happens,’ I told her, ‘I do know who he is.’ (Henry gave me a barbed glance. There had been more interesting topics for discussion in the car.) ‘I’ll tell you all about it at lowsing time. And about our new car. Also about trading Beech for a substantial part of the purchase price. Beech had better be readied for delivery tomorrow and I’ll want the usual pedigree, vaccination certificate and bill of sale.’

  They protested but I was adamant, so we went about our business. Beth had been taking advantage of the fine weather and catching up with the gardening chores while keeping an eye on Sam, who was confined behind a mesh fence to a part of the lawn to which dogs were never admitted. The risk of toxocara canis was a remote one but, with so many potential carriers around, we were taking no chances. Beth, I noticed, was also on guard against Dover, a randy local mongrel who always had designs on any of our bitches who happened to be within a month either way of her season. For this purpose, Beth kept at her side a boy’s catapult and a flowerpot full of round stones. Dover was learning the hard way not to come within fifty yards of her. Beth had a very straight eye.

  While I tried to catch up with my schedule for training the younger dogs, the outstanding work was disposed of with unusual energy. Lowsing time, in Scots, is the time for knocking-off from work. We used the term to designate no particular time on the clock but the moment when all tasks were finished and we could gather in the sitting room for a drink and to discuss the events of the day, our plans for the future and, sometimes, the latest gossip of the neighbourhood.

  Sam had already been transferred to his playpen. He was beginning to outgrow it and I was thinking in terms of high-level latches on all the doors. Henry acted as barman, as he usually did when he joined our conclave. He helped himself to his customary beer. Isobel took a gin and tonic, Beth a small sherry and Henry poured me the Guinness which was supposed to build me up after my illness. Daffy and Hannah were palmed off with shandy, on the grounds that I had no intention of lavishing the hard stuff on female employees, and young ones at that, except on very special occasions.

  ‘We’ve phoned everybody in the world,’ Beth said rapidly. ‘God knows what our next phone bill will look like. But I offered a hundred quid for information leading to the recovery et cetera, so we may be lucky. Now, tell us all about it, complete with gruesome details.’

  I left it to Henry to tell most of the tale although I had to fill in the details of my talk with Inspector Tirrell. When we had finished there was a thoughtful silence. Even Sam, who would usually fill any conversational gap with his own parody of the English language, seemed to be cogitating.

  Beth left the room to check on our dinner, which had been looking after itself on the stove. When she came back, she said, ‘You two will have to be careful. There may be somebody going around knocking on the head anyone who gets in his way. The first question to spring to my mind is, did he mean to kill both of them and didn’t allow enough for the man’s thick skull, or did he just aim for two knockouts and kill the girl by a misjudgment?’

  ‘There’s no way of knowing,’ I said. ‘And don’t be sexist. You should say “he or she”.’

  ‘Or “they”,’ said Henry. ‘For all we know it was two different people, separately or working in cahoots. The man we found today may even have killed the girl.’

  ‘Mr Cochrane was with us when the girl was killed. I just hope that he didn’t have anything to do with the rest of it,’ Hannah said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I rather like him and I don’t want to be wrong.’

  ‘The portents aren’t very good,’ Henry said, ‘or where has he gone?’

  ‘He may be lying around somewhere else in the Fife countryside with a lump on his head,’ I pointed out.

  Beth gave a shiver. ‘I’m not even going to think about the possibility. Now, tell me, what was that you said about a car? Do we really have a respectable car after all this time?’

  ‘It’s not brand new but it’s immaculate,’ I said. ‘Henry will bear me out.’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ Henry said. ‘Whether a car that carries dogs and gets driven by at least four different people and does a lot of its mileage on estate roads and farm tracks and has dogs sleeping and feeding in the back of it can possibly stay that way is something else again, but you can always hope and pray.’

  ‘At least let’s not get it stolen again,’ Beth said.

  ‘It shouldn’t get stolen,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t have the usual alarms and things that any thief knows how to beat – remember that you can drive around with a burglar alarm honking away these days and nobody pays a blind bit of attention – but the car belonged to some ingenious character who didn’t mean to lose it. He fitted a valve in the fuel line, operated by a contactor fed from an otherwise unused switch on the dashboard. So every time you start up you must press that switch once or the car will conk out a few hundred yards up the road. I’ll show you, but after that you’ll all have to remember. Beth, you’d better call the Agriculture and Fisheries Department in the morning and clear the change of vehicles with them. And two of us can take Beech along tomorrow and bring the car back. No money called for just yet. The cash adjustment’s on interest-free credit.’

  That set Beth off again, worrying about going back into debt, until Henry reassured her that, guided by his advice, I had for once pulled off a business-like stroke.

  We had enough material for the discussion to have lasted for ever, but Sam made it plain that it was high time that he was fed. He was no
sooner in full voice than Henry and Isobel set off for home and Hannah and Daffy both remembered urgent tasks which they wanted to complete before dinner. Sam, I thought, was already pulling his weight. He had a powerful pair of lungs.

  *

  At some seasons the work of the kennels might go on until long after dark, but we were now at the quietest time of the year, when serious competition was finished, the spring litters were still bulging in their dams’ bellies and we were free to do our own things after the evening meal. So when Sam had been given his final toddle in the garden and was bathed and bedded at last, Beth and I settled down in front of the television set in the sitting room.

  Irregular hours meant that we usually missed the few good programmes to come on the television. When the business got into the black, one of our first extravagances had been a video recorder. The taped programme that we had chosen that evening could not have been to her liking, but Hannah was sitting with us. Daffy, we gathered, was monopolizing the communal television in the Portakabin.

  I found it strange that the two girls failed to get on. It was not that they were different but that they were determined to exaggerate their differences, Hannah intellectual and fastidious, Daffy a punk rebel. Each came from a conventional middle-class home and each had come to work for us directly or indirectly because of a rebellion against the mores of their childhood. They should have been allies against the established world. Instead, although they could work together satisfactorily, they avoided each other in their leisure time. Happily, outbursts were rare but sniping was commonplace.

  I would have preferred the science-fiction film which was waiting on tape and would at least have stretched the imagination if adding nothing to worldly culture; but it was Beth’s turn to choose and she was rapt in a tearjerker. I was reading and Hannah was beginning to fidget when we heard a car in the drive.

  ‘Who on earth . . .?’ I began.

  ‘It’s nobody who ever comes here,’ Hannah said. She had the knack of recognizing the sound of many different cars.