by V Clifford
Molly disappeared down the overgrown verge at the edge of the drive, which was unusual, and after a few minutes of her being out of sight, Viv called on her but her voice was absorbed by the dense bank of conifers on the left. Up to the right, through a copse of ancient oaks, she could see a single light burning in the tower. Perhaps the new tenants kept one on all night. She shivered and called again for Moll, but there was no sign of her trotting back up the drive. Viv stepped into her wellies and shrugged a jacket on before wandering out into the cold night air. An owl screeched in the distance and the Ardoch Burn was audible in the background. It was all too pastoral for her liking. She’d hardly gone fifty paces when she spotted Moll tucking into something, no doubt unmentionable, at the bottom of the track. Concerned about what she might wake up to if she didn’t stop her, Viv bolted towards her. Before she reached her, a bulky, masked figure stepped out from the trees and tripped her up. She flew head over heels through the air and landed hard, with palms outstretched onto the muddy gravel. It took a second to recover herself, by which time the attacker had her pinned to the ground with one knee pressing into the small of her back. She yelped as he slammed a leather-gloved hand over her mouth. Moll, having finished snacking, started barking at the assailant. He struck out as Moll growled and bared her teeth.
Viv, no slacker in the fighting department, struggled to employ her usual tactics with his significant weight pressing down on her. She struggled and squirmed, eventually knocking her knuckles back into his face to connect with the bridge of his nose. As he yelped, he let go with one of his hands, giving her the chance to roll out from beneath him. Still on her knees, she aimed her elbow at his groin, only useful if she’d got the gender right. Her use of the knuckle punch was text book, but he jumped clear of her elbow. She thrust the heel of her hand back over her shoulder and jammed it hard beneath his chin, ramming it upwards until she heard a crunching sound. He squealed again and loosened his grip on Viv’s mouth, just enough for her to sink her teeth into his bare wrist. He hissed through gritted teeth and Viv screamed a scream that should have woken the dead, but didn’t. Still determined to keep a grip of her he grabbed a handful of her hair and held his arm across her throat. Moll, beside herself with distress, continued jumping and snapping as he kicked out at her. Viv, incensed that he’d dare to hurt Moll, with a surge of energy kicked her heel back into his shins and stamped on the arch of his foot. Suddenly, as if the attacker realized that his attempt was failing, he released Viv, pushed her hard onto her knees, and took off towards the old bridge leading to the village.
Viv stayed on the ground, catching her breath, with Moll jumping all over her like a crazy thing. ‘It’s okay, Moll. It’s okay. Good girl. Good girl.’
With her heart racing, Viv got back to her feet, and stared in the direction of the attacker’s footsteps. She stood, with hands on hips, and strained to listen for the echo of running steps or rustling, but heard neither since the wind was getting up and its gusts through the trees drowned all other noise. She about turned and walked back to the cottage, trembling as adrenaline pumped around her system. The dog weaved so close to Viv’s legs she almost tripped her up. Viv collapsed onto the sofa and petted Moll. The wind buffeted against the windows and odd creaks made Viv tell herself not to get over-imaginative.
‘What the hell was that about?’ She grimaced. All day she’d assumed Mac was the target, but this was a good reason to believe otherwise. Was that falling stone aimed at her? The broken window didn’t seem to be for either of them in particular, so it could also easily have been intended for her. The attack just now certainly hadn’t targeted anyone else. Had they given the dog something that would distract her on the drive, knowing that Viv would go in search of her? Had her attacker known where she was at every step of her day? How could he? And more importantly why would he? Viv could think of many enemies who would go to these sorts of lengths in town, but not in the country, the twilight zone.
She locked up, double-checking each window and door with Moll by her side. Then slowly, listening for anything else to worry about, they took the stairs to bed. Viv stripped off and soaked her hands in a basin of warm water, picking the tiny bits of gravel out with tweezers, before returning to the bedroom where Molly was lying on the bed. Sal, a no-dogs-on-beds kind of woman, would have freaked out if she’d encountered the scene. Moll curled up on the white damask bed linen, with Viv’s arm around her neck.
More relieved than she ought to be that Sal wasn’t there to object, Viv lay in the dark with perceived enemies running before her eyes, as if her mind had become a cine-camera. It was difficult to narrow down those who would want to hurt her. Moll kept turning and scraping as if nesting. Then she stretched out, pushing her paws against Viv’s side. Unable to settle, she jumped off the bed and scratched at the door. Viv sighed, but not entirely familiar with this dog’s habits, thought it prudent to find out what she wanted. The dog trotted down stairs and pawed at the back door. Viv wasn’t keen to open up, never mind let her out again, so she tried to comfort her in the conservatory. A gale was blowing, hammering rain against the roof, but Molly was having none of it and continued to scrape at the door. As Viv went to fetch boots and a jacket, she heard the dog vomit.
‘Oh, my God. What have they done to you?’ she mouthed in panic.
The dog continued to vomit, thankfully each time on a hard surface.
Viv remembered that Sal had left an emergency number. After going through the whole press this and press that thing she was becoming frantic, so that when a real vet answered Viv didn’t allow him to finish his introduction. ‘I have a dog who is continually vomiting. I think someone has tried to poison her.’
‘What do the contents look like?’
Horrified, ‘I’ll go and see.’ Viv put the phone down and scooped up some of the vomit in a piece of kitchen towel. ‘It looks like, hard pieces of rabbit poo . . .’
‘Well, that’s good. It means the dog has brought them up before digestion. Could they be raisins or currants?’
‘Yes. Yes, they could.’ Viv pressed one between her thumb and forefinger. I think that’s exactly what they are. What shall I do? Shall I bring her into the surgery?’
‘The dog should be okay since . . . what’s your address and the dog’s name?’
Viv could hear him clicking on a keyboard. ‘Molly. I’m looking after her for Sal Chapman.’
‘Okay. I’m familiar with Molly, but let me just get her records up.’
Clicking again. Meantime Moll was off into the corner vomiting again.
‘She’s being sick again.’
‘I think you’d better bring her in. If nothing else I can give her something to rehydrate her. Oh, and bring some of whatever she’s throwing up with you.’
‘Where exactly is the surgery?’
‘Not far. Take the left turning past the info centre and keep left as if you’re driving back on yourself. It’s sign-posted. See you in five minutes.’
‘Sure.’
Maybe this country thing wasn’t so bad after all. In town chances of them knowing you and where you lived would be minimal. Viv put the kitchen roll loaded with yuck into a poly bag, swung a lead round Moll’s neck, and ran out through the wind and torrential rain to the car. The dog resisted getting in. Viv wasn’t taking any chances, so she lifted her onto the passenger seat and drove off. The sound of the engine and the splash of the tyres cut through the silence of the main street. When she turned into the tiny car park she was heartened to see the lights on and the door ajar.
The vet greeted Viv. ‘Lucky I was here. I had to do a two-hourly check on a dog that had surgery this afternoon. Otherwise I’d have been in Dunblane.’ He took Moll and she trotted amiably with him into a little room, where he lifted her onto a table and took her temperature. ‘Her temperature is up. Let’s have a look at the remains.’
Viv, screwing up her face, laid out the contents of the poly bag. ‘I think someone left some meat or something with those in
it. She wouldn’t come back and she’s not like that.’
‘If her choice is between you and a steak, rest assured, it would take a mighty well-trained dog to choose you. However lovely you are.’
Was he coming on to her? She looked down at herself. Her jacket was flapping open exposing damp pjs clinging to her chest. She folded her jacket closer and said abruptly, ‘Whatever it takes, make sure the dog’s okay.’
He prodded Molly’s belly and concluded that whatever had been in there wasn’t there now. He gave her an injection to settle her gut. ‘It’s a good thing that she was sick so quickly. You wouldn’t have wanted those,’ he pointed to the raisins, ‘to have gone into her system − those on their own are toxic to dogs. You’ll have to keep an eye on her, but I’m guessing she’ll be all right now that they’re out. I’ll give you something to pop into her water bowl.’ He handed her a sachet. ‘For the next twenty-four hours make sure she only drinks that.’
Viv lifted Moll off the table and didn’t want to put her down. Mortified, she felt her eyes welling up, but managed to contain her emotion by flashing her credit card at him.
‘Sal, er, Dr Chapman has an account. So we’ll sort that out later.’
Viv hesitated, realising that Sal and this guy could possibly have had more than a professional relationship, so she wouldn’t try to get away with not mentioning any of this. Since it was in the dog’s interest to let her know, Viv conceded that to be upfront was best. She nodded her acceptance and carried Moll to the door, where the dog wriggled to be let down.
Back in the cottage Viv did exactly as the vet had told her, and emptied the sachet into a bowl of clean, luke-warm water before cleaning up the various piles of vomit. Her curses ripened as she followed Moll’s trail round the kitchen and conservatory. They could have killed her. Who would be so cruel? It was one thing trying to get the better of another human being, but to attack a defenceless dog? That was entirely sick.
Once the floor was clean she made her way back up to the bedroom to find Moll already curled up on the duvet. Viv lay on her back, too angry to sleep and wanting to be close to the dog to watch for any developments.
Each creak in the house was amplified. She twitched and turned toward the slightest noise. She tied her hair up away from her ears, the better to hear the most minute movement. Country life was all very well, but there wasn’t a neighbour like Ronnie, whose door she could tap on in an emergency. She watched and imagined that the curtain had moved, and got up to resecure the window. All the lights in the tower were on full blaze and the wind was showing no signs of giving up.
Chapter Nine
After what felt like only a few minutes of turbulent sleep she was woken by the ringtone of her mobile. She fumbled around the books, Swiss army knife, and photographs on the bedside cabinet, but too late, the caller hung up. Bleary eyed she checked the number. It was Jules, the editor that Viv wrote an occasional column for. When Viv had first been persuaded to do undercover work for a colleague of Mac’s, her forays into journalism had been queried. They’d hoped she could be persuaded to take her eye off the story. But Viv knew that whatever ‘they’ said, ‘they’ already knew everything about her, from occupations to inside leg measurement, before they’d asked for her help. All the bumph about ‘national security’ was pure posturing. If she hadn’t been cleared, she wouldn’t be in the frame for any work at all, not even in their canteen.
She’d soon proved that indulging in a spot of investigative journalism was as good a cover as any, because people expected her to be nosey, intrigued, poking around. Since then she’d come up with the goods on more than one occasion. Besides, the buzz she’d got from the work, not to mention the bulging envelope that Ruddy the nameless front man had delivered from his invisible boss, was a heap more than she’d ever received for the odd column for Jules. And yet she was torn, deciding in the end not to ring back. Anyway, Jules was nothing if not persistent. If she needed Viv, there was no way she’d let her off the hook.
Viv padded through to the bathroom. A glance in the mirror made her recoil. Her reflection was like something from the house of horrors. Her attacker had gripped her face so tightly that she had bruises in the shape of his fingers on either side of her mouth. She rubbed them, hoping she’d missed patches of dirt the night before, but they didn’t shift. Through the window, the eastern horizon was beginning to break up, and huge swatches of pink light filtered through the trees at the top of the hill. The gale had finally blown itself out. Viv reached for a dressing gown hanging on the back of the door, slipped into it, and went back into the bedroom to see Moll. She stroked the dog’s ears and tried to chivvy her into a walk, but she showed no interest. She tried again, more enthusiastically, and this time the dog conceded. Together they retraced the steps of the previous night’s debacle. Moll, on the lead, tried to return to the spot where she’d been snacking, but Viv pulled her in the opposite direction. There wasn’t much to see apart from slight indentations in the gravel where she’d been scrapping and had scuffed the ground. Weird. A few trees had taken a beating from the wind and branches lay hither and thither across the drive.
If her hands weren’t so sore, and her pride so dented, she could have convinced herself she’d dreamt the whole thing. But she ached, and the memory of going head over heels was not to be dislodged. In addition she clearly recalled the sheer bulk of the body that had landed on top of her. She was convinced her attacker was a man – he’d smelled blokeish, not quite Lynx but that kind of thing. Whoever he was he’d been fit, with taut muscles and the strength to lift Viv off her feet.
Moll was keen to return to the house so they wandered back inside and Viv put the kettle on, a reassuring habit that gave form to a day that was beginning too early. The light on the answering machine was blinking. Viv pressed Play.
Sal’s voice echoed into the room. ‘You’ll never believe this but I’m still in Houston. There’s apparently some sort of fire at an oil terminal and the runways are all closed. The wind is blowing smoke in the wrong direction. I’m going mad out here surrounded by Stetsons.’
Viv nipped upstairs, found her mobile by the bed, and rang Sal’s mobile, but her voice mail kicked in. Viv went back to the answering machine to check what time the message had been left. Sal must have called when Viv had been driving Mac home last night. With all the shenanigans, it hadn’t occurred to her to check the calls earlier. Struggling with the translation of time zones, she figured that Sal would either be in the air, or in a hotel bed in Texas.
With her tender palms clasped around a cup of industrial strength coffee, Viv sat at the kitchen table and reviewed the events of the last twenty-four hours. What in God’s name was going on? Who could have followed her to Doune? Sal and Mac were the only people she could think of who knew she was coming to the area. Meeting Geraldine in the village yesterday had been a fluke.
Viv recalled the look on Ger’s face when she’d spotted her new man and made a mental note to contact her, but shook the notion out of her head. She had enough on her plate − what with stones toppling, windows breaking, and tyres being slashed, not to mention the attack in the middle of the night. She could let go of whatever was happening between Ger and her beau.
She washed her cup under the tap and stared out as dawn still struggled to rise above the trees at the end of the river park. At first reassured to hear Molly lapping at her water bowl, it didn’t take long for her skin to crawl at the audacity and brutality of whoever had tried to hurt the dog.
She pulled on joggers and a sweat shirt and shouted, ‘Moll, lead!’ She grabbed her fleece and a jacket, and slipped into her boots. Tossing the car keys above her head she caught them, a sign of determination. Today was going to be a day for results.
‘Right, Moll, in the back.’ She opened the Rav’s rear door and the dog leapt in. Viv was impressed at how quickly Moll had recovered. She cuddled the dog, who had grown in her estimation, for just being a dog and with relief that she hadn’t anything worse t
o tell Sal. There was a lot to be said for pairing up with a dog. Moll’s enthusiasm never waned, and she didn’t baulk at Viv with bed-hair and unbrushed teeth. Viv breathed a huge sigh and drove off down the drive.
The views across the Carse on the Thornhill road as the sun rose were spectacular. A low lying mist hovered beneath the hills to the west but it looked as if it would clear and the blue strip above would take control of the sky. There wasn’t much in the way of traffic. She tried the radio. Switched channels, but couldn’t find anything that didn’t feel intrusive. She pushed the off button. Moll had taken up her favourite position, in the back with her nose settled between the two front seats. Viv stroked her muzzle and the dog made suitably grateful noises. It seemed to take less time to get to the lake; daylight and that strange trick of familiarity had shortened the distance. Was perception the leader of the human dance? She decided to leave the car at the entrance to a forest track and walk through the wood so that Moll could get a bit of a run. Bad move. The extending lead kept catching on low branches as Moll swerved off the path to follow interesting scents and after ten or fifteen minutes Viv took Moll back to the Rav, and locked her in leaving a window open by six inches, and jogged back towards the lakeside car park. There wasn’t any sign of life, and Historic Scotland’s boat was tethered to the jetty.
The ticket hut had a window on the front and one on the side. She peered in at the side but the glass had a film of moss over it, which she didn’t want to disturb, but prevented her from reading any of the sheets of paper on the desk. It took another five minutes to jog along the roadside to the hotel. The large car park was almost empty, with only a shabby pick-up and a grey transit van with a decorator’s logo on the side parked by the back door. They were early to work. Or perhaps they hadn’t gone home. Maybe those guys in the bar last night hadn’t been locals and were tradesmen here to do the refurb. Viv reprimanded herself for making assumptions, then softened, given the circumstances. What with Mac in pain, the uncommunicative, recalcitrant boatman, then the ineffectual guy on reception, a girl could become overly critical. But whoa, that there was enough judgement to get her into hell. She reminded herself that everyone she met was fighting a battle that she knew nothing about. Go easy. So when she spotted the receptionist guy struggling to heave a huge black bag into an industrial bin at the back door − to what she supposed were the kitchens − she smiled and said to herself that he wasn’t so bad.
