by Rebecca Tope
‘I’m surprised anybody’s even heard of them – I hadn’t until a week or two ago, when Mr Angell explained about them.’
‘Well, my dear, you’re not exactly part of the farming community, are you?’
The old familiar Galton was back, showing his nasty side, patronising and arrogant. She pushed her mug away and got up. ‘I don’t know what to do now,’ she said quietly, almost to herself. ‘Where do I start?’
‘You believe me then?’ Again he scrutinised her closely.
‘I suppose I’ve got to, though I don’t know why I should. You said you’d shoot them, you’ve got a gun – and now they’ve disappeared. It’s all too much of a coincidence. And yet—’
‘And yet it wasn’t me. I might be a loud-mouthed bully, but I don’t tell lies. Even my ex-wife would tell you that.’
She wasn’t interested in his marital status, she discovered. He did nothing for her, not a flicker of attraction could be discerned, as she met his eyes. He was a puzzle, affluent and yet an obvious manual worker; nicely spoken and yet unsophisticated. Was he the latest generation in a long line of lords of the manor, accustomed to respect and forgiveness from the locals, however outrageous his behaviour? He ought to have a gang of teenage sons at his heels, a wife fielding the phonecalls and pursuing some part-time career of her own. Instead it seemed he lived in the house alone, somehow keeping it clean and tidy while also running his vast flock of sheep. Across the yard was a huge barn, piled to the roof with massive bales of hay, each one a good three metres long and one wide. A tractor with a contraption at the front boasting long metal prongs stood close to the barn.
There must be a hundred places where two dead dogs could be hidden. There was even a JCB on a bank some distance away, apparently halfway through digging a new ditch. It would take less than a minute to dig a grave for Freddy and Basil, if necessary. And yet she found herself believing him, if only because he would want to proclaim the execution of the dogs, if it had indeed been carried out. He would be defiant and self-confident about it.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Well – could you let me know if you see them? Or hear anything about them?’
‘If I see them loose on my land, I will shoot them,’ he said calmly. ‘Now I ought to get myself some food. And I suppose you’ll have to contact Cedric and Babs and tell them what’s happened.’
It hadn’t even occurred to her. She stared at him in horror. ‘No – I can’t do that.’
‘Why not? They must have left you a number where you can reach them.’
‘Yes – their son’s in Hong Kong. But what would I say? It would only spoil their holiday for no good reason. I always think bad news can wait,’ she added quietly.
‘Well, it’s not my business.’ He turned away from her as if losing interest.
She forgot she’d locked the car and spent a few seconds wrenching in vain at the handle. Then she felt foolish, and hoped Galton wasn’t watching.
‘So what now?’ she asked Hepzie.
She drove back, her mind almost blank. How did you begin to search for stolen dogs? Already they could be in the middle of Birmingham, confined in a cellar before being shipped to some sadistic buyer who might want them for dog fighting or vivisection. What possible course of action was open to her?
Just before she turned down the drive for Hawkhill, she saw in the road ahead a man with two large dogs on short leashes. For a crazy second, she persuaded herself they were Freddy and Basil, until she looked again and realised they were bigger and of a totally different hue.
The man was familiar, but she couldn’t place him. Perhaps it was only that he had the animals, which were more or less what she had been hoping to find, that drew her attention to him. In any case, she braked and waited for him to come closer. He did not change his pace, walking with stiff legs, his arms out in front of him as he controlled the large beasts. They were fawn-coloured, short-haired and their shoulders were level with the man’s hips.
Thea wound down her window, and restrained her own dog, which was eagerly trying to jump out for a frolic with these potential new friends. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Haven’t I seen you before?’ Before she’d finished the question, she remembered. This was the man she had met on the footpath on Sunday afternoon, just after her charges had escaped. The man who told her they were highly likely to be shot. Somebody had mentioned his name to her – Lister! This was Lister, who turned out to be a dog-owner himself.
‘You remember me, I’m sure,’ he said, watching her dawning recognition with a brief smile. ‘I heard what happened when you let those dogs go. Told you, didn’t I?’
He was not a pleasant person, Thea concluded, as she had on the previous occasion. He took pleasure in other people’s misfortune and in having his own dire predictions come true. His dogs danced impatiently at the end of their leather leads, until he jerked them viciously and swore at them to keep still.
‘Rhodesian ridgebacks, aren’t they? My uncle had one, when I was little. I was always quite scared of it.’
He smiled again, with a secret satisfaction. ‘Most people are,’ he agreed. ‘It’s the ridge that does it. They look as if their hackles are up.’
‘But really they’re quite docile,’ she supplied, expecting him to say something to this effect.
‘Strong,’ he amended.
‘I can see they’re a handful. They look as if they’re not really used to walking on a lead.’
‘They’ve got their own compound at home, big enough for a good run. But now and then I take them out like this. Teaches them who’s boss.’ Again he jerked at the lead in his left hand, making the dog yelp.
‘A girl and a boy,’ Thea observed. ‘Brother and sister?’
‘Nope. A breeding pair. Worth a bit, I can tell you. The pups go for close to a grand, if they’re good specimens. We’ve had two litters already.’
‘Very nice,’ said Thea, unable to repress a shudder at the idea of keeping dogs for purely commercial reasons. The man showed no signs of affection or even pride in his handsome beasts.
‘So – did you find the runaways?’ A glitter in his eye suggested that he knew exactly what had happened since their last meeting and was merely playing with her.
‘They came home,’ she said shortly. Some instinct kept her from splurging her latest trouble. After all, he had been a lot less than helpful the last time. To admit that they’d gone again seemed to be inviting scorn.
But he wasn’t going to be brushed off. ‘And they’ve behaved since then, have they? Henry Galton let them off, did he? Thanks to that police bloke, is the way I heard it. You were lucky there.’
It was like being poked in the ribs with a bony finger, over and over again. He was trying to get a response from her that she had no intention of giving. What was it with this man, anyway?
‘Can’t stop any longer,’ she said, engaging the car’s gears. ‘Sorry.’
The Rhodesian ridgebacks had ignored her throughout. Although they pulled restlessly at their leads, they had a cowed manner that suggested lives passed in unhappy conditions, without play or treats. It was wrong to keep animals like that – just as the Angells were wrong to make theirs spend all day attached to chains. Was there a brotherhood of unkindness to dogs around here, she wondered, giving Hepzie a quick close hug as she drove one-handed down to Hawkhill.
Any lingering hope she might have that Freddy and Basil would have miraculously returned was dashed. The yard was as silent as before. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked the spaniel, glumly. ‘Call the police,’ was the only answer that occurred to her own question.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
From habit, and a feeling that this would be the least embarrassing of a range of unappealing options, she called Phil’s mobile. He did not answer it, so she left an incoherent message, trying to inject urgency without panic and probably failing utterly.
It was not yet four o’clock – too early to start the rounds of animal feeding, and a reasonably good time to take Hepzie
for the walk she’d planned that morning. But she was not in the mood. The rain had stopped hours ago, but it was still a grey uninviting day, with an uncomfortable wind blowing. She went into the house, to be greeted by a sarcastic, ‘How many eggs make five – huh? Five fours are twenty. See if I care.’
‘Shut up, Ignatius,’ she grumbled, while unable to resist a grin at this new piece of showing off. See if I care was rather good, in its way. She thought she could detect Cedric Angell’s intonation coming through in the mimicry. If not him, then his son Martin with the bizarre sense of humour sounded very like his dad. By the end of her stay, she suspected she’d be able to make a good stab at understanding whichever member of the Angell family had taught the parrot its repertoire. A film buff, given to issuing orders, it seemed. But where did the bit about eggs fit in? This way lies madness, Thea told herself with a shake. Perhaps that was the plan all along. Ignatius’s tutor had merely wanted to drive everybody in Hawkhill mad. Just the thing, in fact, that a clever teenage boy would enjoy.
So she made herself more tea, and sat down in the living room for a think. It had been an eventful day, by any standards, leaving her with plenty to worry about. Her sister’s decline into hysteria demanded some attention, and the missing dogs even more so. The latter emerged as clear favourite, if only because she was being paid to take care of them and her conspicuous failure was impossible to evade. Emily’s condition was too far beyond her power to address. There was nothing she could do about it, other than perhaps make a supportive phonecall.
But the dogs! What on earth could have happened to them? Could she believe in the innocence of Galton, the blindingly obvious suspect in their abduction? If so, who had taken them?
She tried to trace a logical path through everything that had happened since Basil and Freddy ran off on Sunday. That man Lister had come into view less than five minutes later. She recalled his purposeful walk, his eyes on her face, narrowed in thought. She had supposed him to be wondering who she was, but on reflection he had seemed more as if concentrating on a plan. He had been pleased to see her – and almost gleeful in his prognostications as to what would happen to the runaways.
Now she knew he owned two large dogs, her view of him had changed. And cogs began to turn, meshing together with the smooth inevitability of a water tight theory. If Freddy and Basil had not killed the sheep, then something else had. Something big and fierce and canine. A pair of semi-trained Rhodesian ridgebacks, for example.
It made unnervingly good sense. Perhaps Lister’s dogs had somehow broken out, and he was anxiously searching for them when three other loose dogs surged past him after a rabbit. Knowing the terrible possibilities of sheep worrying and the likely execution of his prize breeding stock, he immediately hatched the cunning plot of throwing suspicion elsewhere. It must have seemed like a godsend. Without any reference to his own beasts, he warned Thea of what would happen, sowing the seeds in her mind, before nipping briskly over to Galton’s and sowing the same seeds again.
Precisely when the slaughter happened, and how the ridgebacks were retrieved and washed clean of any evidence, was unclear. And why he so blatantly revealed their existence to Thea now, by walking them along the stretch of road almost outside Hawkhill, was equally incomprehensible. Unless – of course – he had got Freddy and Basil locked up somewhere, and wanted to give himself an alibi by appearing to have been calmly walking his own dogs at more or less the time they went missing. He would call Galton, tell him the murderers were safely behind bars, ready for execution at any time to suit his, Galton’s, convenience.
It looked perfect at first glance, but closer inspection revealed some holes. The timing would have to be extremely neat, not only on Sunday but today, with amazing luck at every turn to enable such a plan to work. The mere fact that Lister was not a likable person didn’t justify accusations of such iniquity as she had been contemplating. On the other hand, was it so extraordinary for someone to try to save the reputation of their own dogs at the expense of a neighbour’s? Quite possibly there was a long history of antagonism between the Angells and the Listers which could account for the man’s behaviour. Perhaps he had been deliberately watching for a chance to get Cedric and his dogs into trouble.
The key lay with Galton, she realised. He must have believed Lister initially, and would be very likely to cooperate now, if indeed Lister had Freddy and Basil shut away somewhere. Or would he? Since their encounter that afternoon, the relationship had shifted. Each knew the other to be a real human being, with real feelings and preoccupations. She liked him more than she did before, and thought it was the same for him. He had ended by trying to recover his earlier prejudices, but she wasn’t sure it had been effective. Would he be even half so inclined to shoot the dogs now he knew more about the person who would carry the blame?
She should phone him and try to avert any action on Lister’s part. She should sow some counter propaganda against the ridgebacks.
And she would have done, if she hadn’t been interrupted before she could locate the man’s phone number.
* * *
It was Ariadne, her eyes staring, shoulders slumped, car slewed crookedly across the yard. She came into the house without knocking, and accosted Thea in the kitchen. ‘It’s Peter!’ she cried, without preamble. ‘They’ve arrested him.’
Thea saw the naked suffering, the desperate search for consolation and put her arms out to her friend. ‘Hey, hey,’ she crooned. ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. When did it happen?’
Ariadne slumped into a kitchen chair, and held tightly to Thea’s hands. ‘Just now. They wouldn’t let me go with him. He hasn’t got a lawyer or anything – what’s he going to do?’
‘He’ll be fine, honestly. Come on, take a deep breath and we’ll talk it through.’ She thought of making some more tea, but Ariadne didn’t seem ready to release her grip. Confusedly, she understood that this was about more than the fact of the arrest. The fear was too acute. Ariadne was afraid of losing Peter on a more elemental level. Of finding him to be flawed, perhaps, or even of being guilty of some unforgiveable act – like murdering his own brother.
‘Oh, Thea. You can’t imagine how much I love him. It’s like an illness, almost. I can’t think about anything else. I just want him to be happy – and with me.’
‘I know,’ Thea murmured. ‘It’ll all be all right, you see.’
‘Yes. It has to be, hasn’t it. It isn’t as if he’s committed any crime. He hasn’t you know.’ She stared up at Thea’s face, her eyes blurred with panicky tears. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ said Thea stoutly. And she did. If Emily’s story was accurate, then nobody could place Peter Clarke as the uncontrolled attacker. ‘Of course he couldn’t have done such a thing.’
Ariadne’s grip loosened. ‘They said they wanted to check his alibi again,’ she reported. ‘We heard today that they’ve found a will where Sam left everything to Peter. Oh, Thea – what a horrible mess. This is much worse than last time. I think they’re convinced that he did it. How could he? His brother’s head was totally smashed, the brains all splurging out. It must have been a maniac to do that.’ A few more deep breaths had calmed her down to a point where she could speak coherently, and force her thoughts into some kind of order.
‘The alibi – what’s wrong with it?’
‘That’s really why I came to you. It’s all down to your sister. What time exactly did she leave here?’
Thea gritted her teeth. ‘I can’t say exactly. It was dark, because it was raining so heavily, so I thought it must be nearly nine. But actually it can’t have been as late as that. It might only have been eight. It never occurred to me to check a clock, you see. And it sounds as if she might only have been driving for ten minutes or so before – well, before she saw what she did.’
Ariadne groaned. ‘So they think Peter could have had time to do the awful deed and still get to the vicarage in Cirencester for nine.’
‘Sure
ly not.’ Thea’s mind struggled to function. ‘That’s stupid. He’d have had to wash the blood off, change his clothes – and act normally. Can anybody be that good at acting?’
‘Not him. He’s not a liar, Thea. I know he’s not.’
Thea was still lost in the same thoughts as before. ‘He’d also need to drive at a hundred miles an hour and have a clean suit lying on the bed ready. And he’d have had to get over his homicidal frenzy enough to fit into a room full of church bods.’
Ariadne giggled wildly. ‘Precisely,’ she said. ‘God, Thea, I’d forgotten how wonderful you are. I don’t know how you do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Think so clearly, and put it all into words. You’re so honest, as well. No evasions or euphemisms.’
‘Oh, well,’ sighed Thea. ‘I suppose I’m used to it.’
‘So what should I do? I feel totally helpless.’
‘Not a lot you can do.’ Thea let an image of Peter Clarke form in her mind, along with the unwelcome comments Phil had made about him on Monday. ‘Nobody’s going to take any notice of you, because they think you’re blinded by passion.’ She said the words ironically, but there was plainly a lot of truth behind them.
‘I am,’ said Ariadne mournfully. ‘My wits have all gone to jelly. It’s all the worse for knowing what a fool I’ve turned into, and not being able to help it.’
‘It sounds naïve, but I honestly think that if he’s innocent, they’ll let him go, no harm done.’
‘If?’
‘You know what I mean. In a way it’s turning out lucky that it was my sister who was first on the scene. At least it gives you direct access to the chief witness.’
‘Does it? Where is she then?’
‘Well, actually – um – she’s in a bit of a state, according to her husband. I guess it’s because our father died so recently. Everything happening at once. She’s overwhelmed.’
