Rachel's Coming Home

by Gillian Villiers

  It was a Wednesday morning, a week or so after her visit to Philip Milligan’s house, and she was out walking once again, this time with two of the visiting dogs, sensibly on their leads. One was a slightly loopy collie-cross and one a highly strung springer spaniel so leads were definitely a good idea. She let the dogs drag her up the track over the hill to the east, away from Freddy Smith’s land, and then dropped back down to the road to do a circuit home.

  As she approached the road a little white van came around the corner going rather too fast. The brakes squealed as the driver realised how close he was to the verge and the van swerved then righted itself and accelerated away. Rachel shook her head. Some youngster, no doubt. You didn’t often see driving like that out here. She’d have to make sure she kept the dogs close to her on the grass verge, she didn’t want anything to happen to them.

  A moment later she heard another loud screech of brakes and this time, if she wasn’t mistaken, it was followed by a bang. She began to run in the direction the van had been heading, the dogs more than happy to accompany her.

  As she rounded the corner she saw the white van, stationary now and slewed across tarmac. A red car that had obviously been travelling in the opposite direction was stopped so close that Rachel could only assume the two vehicles had hit. She pulled out her mobile and was dialling 999 even as she hurried forward. She gave the location and was able to report that nobody seemed to be hurt. Certainly the two drivers were already climbing out of their cars and launching into a heated exchange.

  ‘Women drivers!’ shouted the man who had been driving the van. He was older than Rachel had expected, a heavy-set man in his fifties. ‘What were you doing on my side of the road? Never look where you’re going.’

  ‘I wasn’t on your side of the road,’ said the woman, far more quietly. She was Rachel’s age or a little older and looked very shaken. ‘And I wasn’t driving too fast, either, which you certainly were.’

  ‘Are you both all right?’ asked Rachel, dropping her phone back into her pocket.

  The man had opened his mouth to launch into another tirade, but paused when he saw her. He glanced quickly up and down the road. ‘Yes, ah, fine, no problem. If this little lady will just move her car out of the way I’ll be getting on.’

  Rachel was close enough now to see that the cars had touched, but only slightly as they had both swerved. The bumper of the red car was dented. Rachel peered inside and was relieved to see that there were no passengers. Likewise in the van, although she could see a cage in the back, which might have held a dog.

  ‘I’ll need to take your name and phone number, contact details,’ said the woman, shaking her head to clear it. ‘My car’s damaged, my insurers will want to contact yours.’

  ‘It should also be reported to the police,’ said Rachel. She was beginning to feel angry on the woman’s behalf. The accident could have been far worse. She was glad she had already called the emergency services, clearly this man had no intention of doing so.

  ‘No need for that,’ said the van driver, just as she had expected.

  ‘I’ll just get my handbag, I think I’ve got a pen in there,’ said the woman, but she didn’t move. Instead she put her hand against the bonnet of the car and swayed slightly.

  Rachel jumped forward. ‘You need to sit down,’ she said, trying to support the woman and not get tangled in the dogs’ leads. The dogs had been trying to make friends with these strangers but now they seemed more interested in whatever was in the van.

  Rachel pulled them over and got the woman to sit on the grass verge. ‘Put your head between your knees,’ she said. She wasn’t sure if the woman was actually going to faint but better to be safe than sorry.

  She turned back to the man who had closed the door of his van and was glaring at her dogs. ‘I need to get going,’ he said. He indicated the woman with a jerk of his head. ‘Can you get her to move her car?’

  ‘Not right now,’ said Rachel firmly. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got one of those traffic triangles in your car, have you? You’re stopped a bit close to this corner and we don’t want the next car that comes round to hit you both.’

  ‘Traffic triangle?’ he said blankly.

  ‘I have,’ said the woman faintly. ‘It’s in the boot.’

  Rachel went to fetch it, still towing the reluctant dogs behind her. Once she had put the sign out to warn any approaching traffic of a hazard ahead she felt a bit calmer. The road in the other direction was straight, so any vehicles would see them and be able to slow in time.

  ‘I really need to get going,’ said the man. He was assessing the two cars and Rachel guessed he was trying to see if he could get past if he reversed his. She wouldn’t put it past him to drive away and leave the two of them. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be enough room, but, just in case he managed it, Rachel took a mental note of his number plate.

  ‘I’ll get my bag in a minute,’ said the woman. Colour was coming back to her face. ‘Sorry about this.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re the one who needs to be sorry,’ said Rachel, and then was distracted by a volley of barks from the back of the van. ‘You’ve got a dog in there,’ she said to the man, unnecessarily.

  ‘Aye. So?’

  ‘Don’t you think you should check it’s all right? You must have had to brake pretty hard.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ he said, making no move to open the door.

  Rachel was standing near the back of the van and peered in through one of the little windows. As far as she was concerned, it was worrying that the dog had only just started to bark. Was it, too, in shock?

  As her eyes adjusted to the gloom she saw a small Westie in the metal dog cage. The dog was shaking and very definitely unhappy. Without another thought she opened the rear door and bent to have a closer look.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted the man, rushing to her side. ‘I’m not having this. Interfering busybody …’

  The dog quietened as she saw Rachel and put her nose to the bars of the cage. The collie-cross rose on her back paws and greeted her through the bars and Rachel put out her fingers, not quite touching, but showing she was friendly. The little dog was a beauty, well groomed and in excellent condition. Not at all what Rachel would have expected from this unpleasant man.

  ‘See, she’s fine, leave her be,’ said the man, trying to pull her back so he could close the door.

  ‘I know that dog,’ said Rachel slowly. She lent closer, trying to see if there was a name tag.

  ‘No you don’t. That’s my dog.’ The man pulled her roughly this time but Rachel was angry now and shook herself free.

  ‘That’s Jinty,’ she said in disbelief. ‘I know her owners. They’re very protective of her. What on earth is she doing here?’

  ‘You’ve made a mistake. She belongs to a friend of mine,’ said the man. Rachel immediately noted that he’d changed his story. He moved forward and the dog shrank back. That was enough for Rachel. The driver of the red car had come to stand behind them and she hastily handed over the leads of the other two dogs. ‘Hold these, will you?’ She reached forward to open the cage. ‘Here, Jinty girl, come on now.’

  At the sound of a familiar voice the little dog crawled forward, almost on her stomach, still eyeing the man fearfully. Rachel whisked her into her arms and held her close. The dog wore no collar but there was no mistaking her beautifully-trimmed coat and gleaming eyes.

  ‘Give her back,’ said the man, making a grab for the animal.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ said the woman, now apparently fully recovered. Rachel took advantage of the distraction to step away and the woman continued. ‘I don’t think that is your dog at all. In fact, I think you have dog-napped her. I happen to know that quite a bit of this has been going on in the area recently. In fact, I’ve been researching it for my job.’ She had found her handbag now and produced a notepad and pen. ‘Now what do you have to say about that?’ she said expectantly.

  For once in her life Rachel was speechless a
nd had never been so glad to see another car as she was when the police car drew up behind her.

  ‘You’re famous,’ said Anthony with something between a grin and a sneer. ‘Quite the local heroine.’

  Rachel groaned. ‘How was I to know she was a journalist? I would have been more circumspect if I’d realised.’

  ‘Excellent publicity for the kennels,’ said her father, massaging his leg just above the plaster. ‘And Mr and Mrs Johnston are delighted, they can’t say enough in your praise.’

  ‘I’m just glad I got Jinty back for them.’ Rachel shuddered. ‘You know they think the man was heading for the ferry at Stranraer? If he’d got across to Ireland they might never have seen her again.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘Just exactly what do you think you’re doing?’ demanded a deep voice that was all too familiar to Anthony.

  He swung round, immediately guilty although he didn’t know why he should be. He and Gemma were just putting up a few posters. The voice belonged to Sergeant MacFarlane, as he had known it would.

  ‘We’re putting up posters,’ he said, trying to be polite. Rachel had gone on and on at him about how being polite made life so much easier.

  The policeman folded his arms across his broad chest and shook his head at them.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ said Gemma. She sounded scared.

  ‘I don’t see why there should be,’ said Anthony.

  ‘Yes there is a problem.’ The policeman sighed lugubriously. ‘Have you ever heard of fly-posting? It’s against the law to put up posters on any property that isn’t your own and even on your own property there can be restrictions.’

  ‘But that’s ridic …’ started Anthony, and then thought better of it. ‘That’s really, er, a shame.’ He could feel colour rising to his face and he hated that. They had put up at least twenty posters around Boroughbie and the plan had been to do the same in Moffat the next day.

  ‘I never thought,’ said Gemma, chewing her lip.

  ‘Other people do it,’ said Anthony.

  ‘Yes, and if caught they can receive a hefty fine.’ The man glowered at them. ‘Is that what you want?’

  Anthony balked. He still hadn’t repaid Rachel for the last fine. ‘I suppose we could go and take them all down,’ he offered, hoping he could remember where they had put them.

  ‘We’re really sorry,’ said Gemma. She sounded mortified and that made Anthony feel even worse. He was the one who had got her in to this. It had seemed such a good idea. And the posters were brilliant, they had used a photograph of the kennels around which Gemma had superimposed picture after picture of happy dogs. It was eye-catching and he had been sure it would bring in those much-needed extra few customers.

  ‘I had hoped not to come face to face with you for a while, young man,’ said Sergeant MacFarlane, looking Anthony up and down. He didn’t seem mollified by their offer or apology and Anthony could feel himself losing his temper.

  ‘Look here …’

  ‘What’s all this about?’ said a new voice.

  Anthony had thought his spirits couldn’t plummet any lower, but he was wrong.

  Gemma’s father had appeared out of nowhere. Now he was towering over all of them, looking very angry indeed.

  ‘Hi Dad,’ said Gemma, putting a hand quickly on his arm. ‘It’s nothing. We were just …’ She faltered, which wasn’t surprising under the glare her father was giving her.

  ‘Are you in trouble with the police?’ he demanded. ‘And who is this young man?’ He turned his fierce dark stare to Anthony. ‘Perhaps you can enlighten me?’ he ended, turning to the police officer.

  ‘Certainly,’ said the police officer, his tone noticeably more pleasant. ‘I was just having a chat with these young people, pointing out they shouldn’t be putting up any posters in public places.’ Now he made it sound as though it was a very minor misdemeanour.

  ‘So we’re stopping right now,’ said Gemma quickly, trying to pass the rest of the posters to Anthony. ‘Did you come to give me a lift home? That was really kind but I could have got the bus.’

  ‘I had to come in to town to see the seed merchant. Thought I’d keep an eye out for you. I didn’t expect to see you with a young man and certainly not being accosted by a police officer.’

  ‘We were just having a wee chat,’ said Sergeant MacFarlane and Anthony shot him a grateful smile. Maybe the police weren’t so bad after all.

  ‘Shall we go?’ said Gemma to her father.

  Anthony felt he should do something to help her, but he wasn’t sure what. She seemed desperate to leave.

  ‘Not until you’ve introduced me to your friend.’

  ‘Oh, this is Anthony. I know him from school.’

  ‘Anthony?’ The man frowned. On Gemma the dark eyes were lovely, but on her father they were definitely scary. ‘That wouldn’t be Anthony Collington, would it? From the kennels? I thought I recognised you. I should have known. You’re nothing but trouble, your family. Just keep away from me and my daughter, do you hear me? Just keep away.’

  He took the remaining papers from his daughter’s arms and thrust them at Anthony so suddenly that more than half of them spilt across the pavement. Anthony gathered them as best he could, helped by the sergeant who was now making sympathetic noises. By the time they rose to their feet again Gemma and her father had gone.

  Rachel and her parents were at the kitchen table going through future bookings when Anthony appeared. He had been very pleased with himself when he went out that morning, but now he looked thunderous.

  ‘Hello, dear, how are you?’ said her mother.

  ‘What’s happened?’ demanded Rachel, and then wished she hadn’t. Her parents didn’t seem to have noticed anything was wrong. She should have let Anthony slide off to his room and gone looking for him later.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ asked their father, turning slowly to examine his son. ‘What is it, my boy?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Anthony, looking desperately from one to the other of them. For all his height and deep voice he looked like nothing so much as a young boy in trouble.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ said Rachel brightly.

  ‘Come and sit down and tell us about it,’ said her father.

  Anthony hesitated and then slumped down onto one of the chairs. He slapped down a pile of papers that he had been holding under his arm. ‘It’s these.’

  Rachel and her parents leant forward to look more closely. They were posters advertising Collington Kennels, bright and quirky and just the sort of thing they needed.

  ‘But they’re brilliant!’ she said, surprised. ‘Did you make them?’

  ‘Yes, with Gemma Smith. That’s what we were doing the other day.’ Anthony looked slightly mollified by her praise.

  ‘What a good idea,’ said his mother. She turned to her husband. ‘Remember we did a few plain posters just after we started, to put up in the local vets practices? But these are so much better.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ asked John, still with his eye on his son.

  Anthony shrugged. ‘We were putting a few up around Boroughbie and apparently you’re … not supposed to. We got told to take them all down.’

  ‘Oh what a shame,’ said Maggie sympathetically.

  ‘You should have discussed it with us first, surely you realise you can’t put up posters just anywhere,’ said Rachel.

  ‘I do now. So I’ll just put the whole lot in the bin, shall I?’ Anthony looked furious again and Rachel wished her tone had been less critical.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said his father pleasantly. ‘They’re excellent, we just need to find the right places to put them. Vets practices, as your mother said, and maybe that notice board at the newsagent’s.’

  Rachel managed to bite her lip and not say anything else critical. The posters were very good and publicity was exactly what they needed to get the bookings up to a reasonable level once again. She wondered who it was that had stopped Anthony putting up the posters, b
ut decided to wait until they were alone before she asked him.

  The opportunity to ask never seemed to arise which she regretted strongly a couple of days later. She picked up a copy of the twice-weekly local gazette on a trip into Boroughbie and was paging through it as she chatted to her mother over coffee when the article caught her eye.

  Local Business Adds to Litter Problem. The Gazette’s ongoing campaign against litter in our towns seems to have made no impression on local business Collington Kennels, whose posters and leaflets were left strewn about the streets …

  ‘Oh no,’ Rachel didn’t need to read further to know this was not the sort of publicity they had been hoping for. She made as if to turn the page so that her mother wouldn’t see the offending article, and then realised there was no chance of keeping it from her parents, who both read the paper from cover to cover. And even if she ‘lost’ the paper, one of their friends was bound to mention it. She pushed the paper over to her mother with a sigh. ‘Look at that. Just what we didn’t need at the moment.’

  She hated to see the way her mother’s face crumbled as she read. Things had been so much better the last few days, her father definitely on the mend and her mother starting to relax. And now this.

  She showed it to Anthony when he came downstairs. He would have to know sometime. For once she felt sorry for him. He had been trying to help, it was such a shame it had turned out so badly.

  ‘But we didn’t leave any litter!’ he said heatedly. ‘I tried to collect everything, really I did. I don’t know where they got that from.’

  ‘Maybe you dropped one or two by accident?’ said his mother placatingly.

  ‘If only the paper hadn’t started this stupid campaign,’ groaned Rachel.

  ‘It’s a very laudable campaign,’ said her mother.

  ‘Gemma had the leaflets in her bag,’ said Anthony, remembering. ‘I should have got them back off her. What was she doing throwing them away?’

  ‘She wouldn’t do it on purpose. She’s such a nice girl.’ Rachel wondered, not for the first time, if her mother ever said anything negative about people.