by Granger, Ann
Muriel straightened up and spoke more briskly. Hamlet turned his head towards her. ‘It was after that day that I took to wearing that yellow suit, trousers and jacket, that you’ve seen me in, whenever I walk my dog. Gervase probably hadn’t even noticed me, and I wanted to be sure that another motorist would.’
Carter spoke. ‘You say you didn’t tell the vet it was Gervase Crown’s car that struck your dog. You also think Gervase might not have seen you. But word got round even so, didn’t it? That he was responsible?’
‘Oh, yes, word got round,’ Muriel nodded. ‘Pretty damn quick!’
‘Did you tell Mrs Trenton?’ Jess asked.
‘Poppy? Yes, I did, but later, and it wasn’t Poppy who told Sebastian Crown about the whole business. She said she didn’t and I believe her, because she always had a soft spot for Gervase on account he had a lonely childhood.’ Muriel snorted. ‘I could tell you something about lonely childhoods! But I’ve never made mine an excuse for anything. I fancy the way Sebastian got to hear about Warwick was that the vet told him. I think the vet heard about the smash Gervase had the same day, about the same time, and he put two and two together. Sebastian had made his fortune out of what he liked to call canine health products. That meant everything from conditioning shampoos to pills for bad breath. So he, Sebastian, was very thick with local vets and dog breeders, that sort of person. Sebastian was pally with anyone he thought might be of use to him.’
Muriel paused and Hamlet, having decided he’d maintained a state of alertness for long enough, uttered a gusty sigh and settled down with his nose on his paws. Carter and Jess waited.
‘I’d never been of use to Sebastian. He didn’t like me because I’d befriended his wife … and because he’d guessed I knew his nasty secret.’
‘You mean by that, you knew that he beat his wife?’ Jess asked for the benefit of the tape recorder.
Muriel jerked her head. ‘Just so. But now Gervase was in trouble and Sebastian needed me on side. He came to see me here at Mullions. He sat there, where you’re sitting.’ Muriel pointed at Carter. ‘There, in Father’s chair. My father was dead and gone by then, had died about two years earlier.’
‘Muriel,’ Jess asked suddenly, as a thought occurred to her. ‘How did your father die?’
The question did not appear to surprise Muriel. ‘He fell in the river while out fishing. I found him floating face down. Silly old fool must have had a giddy turn. I told the coroner he used to get them. Accidental death, that’s what he ruled. I took Father’s ashes down to the river where he used to fish, and scattered them on the water, right there where he tumbled in.’
‘That was a nice idea,’ Carter told her. He glanced at Jess meaningfully as he said it. They had both had the same thought, but after all this time there would be no point in reopening the inquiry into the sudden death of an elderly fisherman, found floating by his devoted daughter.
‘I didn’t do it to be nice!’ snapped Muriel. ‘I did it because I couldn’t afford a stone in the churchyard. And that’s it, you see. I don’t have any money, never had any and Sebastian knew it. He offered me a large sum in compensation for the loss of my pet. That’s how he put it. He also offered a lifetime’s supply of any canine health products produced by his company that I might need for any future pets. He then had the effrontery, the sheer brass neck, to remind me how fond I’d been of Amanda, and how it was Amanda’s son who was in trouble now, charged with being drunk at the wheel of a motor vehicle and causing the crash. Gervase couldn’t deny he was drunk; he’d been well over the limit. So the expensive legal team Sebastian had got on to it were trying to make a case that, even fuddled with booze, Gervase hadn’t been driving recklessly; the other drivers had. They had a very slim chance of getting away with that! But they wouldn’t get away with it at all if I stood up and told them about my being forced into a blackberry bush and poor Warwick. Plus, I might be able to sue Gervase for my loss and my injuries. I was a mass of scratches from those brambles. So what Sebastian really meant when he talked about compensation – what he proposed paying me for – wasn’t the loss of my dog, it was my silence. He didn’t want me to go to the police and report how wildly Gervase had been driving just before the crash. Plus he didn’t want the whole business rehashed if I decided to sue.’
Muriel fell silent, her expression stony. ‘Mullions is an old house. It needs a lot doing to it now and it needed a lot doing to it back then. At the time it was the roof that was leaking. I had buckets all over the place up there in the attics. So I took the money. Perhaps it was a little for Amanda’s sake, too, making my silence a kind of gift to her, wherever she was by then. I never knew what became of her,’ Muriel finished sadly.
‘I understand that Gervase Crown saw his mother not long ago, and that she’s well,’ Jess told her impulsively.
Muriel brightened and looked at her with gratitude. ‘Is she? I’m glad to hear it.’ Her expression darkened again. ‘But it was the wrong thing to do, wasn’t it, to take the money? I should have told the police. It was blood money, poor Warwick’s blood. And then, of course, that wretched young man went on to smash up another car, this time with poor young Petra Stapleton in it. I shall always feel it was partly my fault.’
‘You weren’t responsible for that crash!’ Carter exclaimed.
Muriel contradicted him. ‘You’re wrong. I did my little bit to pave the way to it when I took that money and kept quiet. It encouraged Gervase to think he’d always get away with it, that he could drive round the countryside causing mayhem and that money would always talk. That’s why I had to put things right, you see.’
‘Perhaps, Miss Pickering,’ Carter suggested, ‘you’d like to continue this at a police station?’
‘Are you arresting me?’ asked Muriel with a sort of detached interest.
‘Yes, I’m arresting you for threatening Inspector Campbell with a pitchfork and attempting to prevent her removing possible evidence. As for arresting you for anything else, you’ve made vague references but given me no details, so we’ll talk about that in official surroundings.’
‘I shouldn’t have taken Sebastian’s money, should I?’ muttered Muriel.
Carter hesitated before he replied. ‘Of course, you should have come forward as a witness at the time of the first crash when your dog was killed. But you were very shocked and distressed at the time, and it’s hardly a criminal offence. I really don’t think you should blame yourself for accepting the payment Sebastian Crown made you. You weren’t thinking straight.’
‘Good of you to say so,’ Muriel told him, ‘not that it makes any difference to how I feel. I’ll tell you the rest, at a police station if you like. I’ll have to sign a statement, won’t I?’
They all got to their feet and Hamlet stood up too. Muriel nodded towards the dog. ‘We’ll have to stop by Ivy Lodge on the way so that I can leave Hamlet with Poppy. We’ll have to take his bed and bowl and a bag of dog biscuit, if you don’t mind. I have an understanding with Poppy about any dog I might have. If ever I’m ill, or drop off the twig, can’t look after my animals, Poppy will take my dog. I walked over to the farm earlier to make a similar arragement with Ray Preston about the hens and the old cockerel. I told Ray I might be going away for a bit.’ She glowered at Jess. ‘I knew you’d come, sooner or later. Snooping around like you do, you were bound to ferret it all out.’
The image that had been haunting Alfie’s subconscious mind was that of the rat, scuttling along the inner wall of the garage. He had dreamed of it the night before. In his dream, the rat had grown to monstrous size and reared up to stand on two legs. It had also worn a waistcoat and a bow tie. In the way of dreams, this had made perfect sense at the time. In this form, it had stood at the end of his bed, watching him with its beady eyes. He could glimpse its razor-sharp front teeth. It had not made any threatening move but it had been worse, somehow, to have it just stand there, clad in its waistcoat and tie, watching. He had not known – in his dream – what it intend
ed and so could not make any countermove. All he could do was cower down between the pillow and duvet and keep his eyes fixed on the rat. He knew that if he ever took his eyes off it, then, and only then, would it make its move.
He had awoken sweating, his heart thumping in his thin chest. He’d reached out to switch on the bedside lamp and had succeeded in knocking it over. It had fallen to the floor. He’d rolled out of bed in a blind panic and found it, terrified it would be broken and he’d have to brave the darkness between his bed and the wall switch by the door. But when his searching fingers found the lamp and he pressed the switch, a dim light flooded the room and he gave a deep sigh of relief. The rat was gone. But he left the lamp on for the rest of the night.
It was not that Alfie was afraid of rats. He rather liked the type he encountered in the wild. They were feral creatures and he was himself something of a feral human. When setting his rabbit snares he often met a rat scuttling through the undergrowth. He always ignored it and it ignored him, because neither was interested in the other’s business. In his experience, that type of rat was not aggressive unless cornered and Alfie took care never to corner one.
But city rats, they were another matter. Gaz was, in Alfie’s judgement, a city rat and he, Alfie, was about to corner him. No wonder he was nervous.
He stood at the entry to the garage and peered into the dim interior. There was an old Volkswagen Beetle, stripped of its wheels and propped up on blocks, but he couldn’t see anyone working at it. He moved cautiously into the gloom and as his eyes adjusted was able to see more clearly. Gaz was there, in his office, his head visible through the glass. He was talking on a mobile phone. Alfie waited until he’d finished before making his approach.
He had not seen the dog. The first he’d known of it was a low menacing growl over to his left. He froze in his steps and turned his head in the direction of the sound. Something stirred in the shadows. He could smell it now, a rank smell of an animal kept out of doors. It had scrambled to its feet from an improvised bed made, incongruously, of an old satin quilt thrown on the floor. It was of mixed breed, mostly of pit bull type, and its brindle coat had camouflaged it well against the wall. Alfie was relieved to see it was chained up; and his first reaction to that was to calculate how long the chain was, and whether he could reach the door of Gaz’s office without moving into the dog’s orbit.
‘Hello, old chap,’ he said placatingly. ‘It’s all right.’
As he had caught the dog’s scent, so the dog had caught Alfie’s. It hesitated. Alfie, too, had the smell of something that roamed outdoors in the wild. The dog was unsure for a moment or two. It didn’t know quite how to place the intruder.
‘I’ve come to see your boss,’ Alfie informed the dog in as cheerful a tone as he could muster. He didn’t smile because a suspicious dog could misinterpret a show of teeth. He didn’t hold its eye, which would be a challenge, but allowed his gaze to wander vaguely around it without ever losing sight of it completely. He didn’t move. He knew better than that. As long as he stayed absolutely still, the dog would remain uncertain. If he turned to flee, it would leap at him immediately. It might be chained, but the chain was fairly long. More than likely it would grab Alfie, if only by his jeans’ leg, at best to cause him to stumble before the material ripped; in the worst-case scenario to bring him down. If that were to happen it would maul him and even if Gaz heard and came to the rescue – and Alfie couldn’t be sure about that – he would be at least horribly scarred, possibly have whole chunks of his ears or face torn off.
But he couldn’t just stand here. He was in the same situation here as he’d been in his dream, vis-à-vis the rat. He couldn’t move but that meant he couldn’t retreat.
The dog moved. It padded up to him. Alfie held his breath. The dog sniffed at him. Then it sat down on its haunches and waited. Stand-off.
But Gaz had observed the situation from within his glass-panelled office. He’d finished his mobile call. He opened the door of his sanctum and called out sharply, ‘OK, Oscar! Stay!’
Then he turned to Alfie and asked curtly, ‘What do you want?’
‘Can I come in?’ asked Alfie. Inside the office the dog wouldn’t be able to reach him. It had settled down in response to its owner’s order, but it still watched him with its evil little bronze-coloured eyes.
‘Scared of the dog?’ asked Gaz with an unlovely grin.
‘Yes,’ confessed Alfie.
Gaz assessed him. ‘You done the right thing, anyway,’ he said suddenly. ‘If you’d done the wrong thing, Oscar would’ve had you by now.’
‘He’s a great dog,’ said Alfie. Dog-owners, whoever they were, liked people to admire their pets. ‘He’s – er – in good nick.’
‘Yeah …’ agreed Gaz in suddenly sentimental tone. ‘He’s a good old brute. I brought him in because of the rats. He caught several of the blighters. The rest can smell him and they’ve cleared out for a while. They’ll come back, like they always do. But not while Oscar’s here. OK, come on in, then.’
With relief, Alfie entered the office and Gaz closed the door. Sanctuary. Except, of course, that in here Alfie was closeted with another type of beast of uncertain temperament. The expression ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ did not occur to him, but it would have described his situation well. Moreover, when he left, no matter how, he’d have to pass by Oscar again.
‘Well?’ asked Gaz impatiently. ‘I’m a busy man. Get on with it.’
‘It’s about my – it’s about the money for the car I brought in.’
‘You little toad!’ said Gaz, in a blaze of anger that made Alfie cower back. ‘That motor wasn’t just hot; that motor is part of a murder inquiry.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ whimpered Alfie.
‘Yeah, well, the raid went belly-up and now it’s tied into a murder investigation and half the cops in the county are on it. They found the car, knew it for the murdered bloke’s, and if that wasn’t enough, the next thing to go wrong was they picked up the wheelman. I don’t know who fingered him …’
‘Not me!’ yelped Alfie. ‘I don’t even know who he is! I didn’t know what you wanted the car for. It was just a little bit of business for me.’
‘Yeah, well, now we’re all lying low – except you, you dead-brain. If you had any sense, what you haven’t, you’d be keeping away from here. You’d be keeping away from me!’ Gaz glowered at him. ‘I oughta let Oscar have you.’
‘Gaz, I’m really sorry if what you needed the car for didn’t turn out. But I’m skint and you did say …’
‘That was before everything went wrong, wasn’t it?’ Gaz accompanied the interruption with a wave of his hand. ‘I can’t pay you yet. You’ll be flashing the cash around and attracting attention.’
‘I won’t, Gaz, I promise!’ Alfie wailed.
‘Yes, you bleedin’ will! You come back in a couple of months’ time.’
‘Months!’ howled Alfie. His anguished tone penetrated the glass screen and, outside, Oscar sat up and let out a single sharp bark. ‘I’m stony-broke, Gaz. I gotta live with my mum out at Weston because I can’t afford to move out anywhere else and the council won’t help me find a place. It’s not like I had a girlfriend and kids …’
‘Spare me the sob story. All right.’ Gaz moved a hand towards his lapel and Alfie’s hopes soared. But the move suddenly changed direction and gathered momentum. Gaz’s fist smashed into Alfie’s nose and he was pitched backwards on to the floor to land in a sitting position with his back against the door. Warm salty liquid trickled down his cheek and into his mouth: blood.
On the other side of the fragile panel of thin wood, Oscar went into action. He leaped at the door like a battering ram, chain clanking. It shuddered beneath his weight. His hoarse breath sounded terrifying close to Alife’s ear. His violence threatened to demolish the obstacle and gain him entry.
Alfie put a hand to his face and it came away coated in his blood. ‘Whad did you do thad for?’ he managed to say. ‘
You broge my dose …’
‘I’ll do more than break your nose. I’ll break your bloody legs!’ Gaz stooped over him and Alfie cowered back. On the other side of the door, Oscar gave vent to his frustration at not being able to reach his quarry by giving a howl that would not have disgraced the hound of the Baskervilles. ‘Now then, I’ll let you out of here and you go back to that dump of a village and your mum. In two months’ time you come back, right? Just like I said. And if – if, mind you! If everything’s quietened down and the cops aren’t sniffing around here, I’ll pay you a hundred quid.’
‘A hundred?’ Alfie gasped. He didn’t know whether to be grateful at the offer or appalled at the thought that a car in such good condition was going to be worth so little to him.
‘Don’t like the sound of a hundred?’ enquired Gaz.
‘Well, I did think it was worth—’ Alfie was unwise enough to begin.
‘Worth less? You’re right. OK, when you come back, I’ll give you seventy quid.’
Alfie got the message. He scrambled to his feet. ‘You gonna call that dog off first?’ he asked sulkily. He had no handkerchief and was dabbing his sleeve at his smashed nose.
‘I’ll call him off.’ Gaz surveyed Alfie and possibly the youngster’s abject misery suggested some humane gesture. Gaz was not a charitable man, but he did pick up a soiled rag and offer it to his victim. Alfie accepted it.
Gaz opened the door and spoke once more to the dog, ordering it to stay. Alfie hurried past Oscar whose battle-scarred face expressed as much disappointment as a dog’s face could. His bronze eyes promised Alfie, ‘Next time!’
Alfie made his way home, the rag pressed to his face. Passers-by avoided him. Only one elderly woman enquired if he needed help. But after he’d sworn roundly at her, she waved her umbrella threateningly at him and told him he was a disgrace.
