‘We could have got home in time for lunch,’ Henry pointed out.
‘Would you have preferred that?’ I asked him.
He grinned at me. ‘Not by a mile! School’s out!’ Henry raised his pint and glanced around the bar. Mrs Bell, unfortunately, was not present. I had thought of a whole host more questions to ask her. ‘What’s for the afternoon?’
He had to wait while I chewed and swallowed a mouthful of steak pie. ‘It’s too easy to assume that Clarence went in the direction of the cottages,’ I said at last. ‘But maybe he didn’t. Nobody seems to have seen him there. He may have headed more towards the other road, the one we’ve just used. There’s a house there with outbuildings. It’s set back among trees and you hardly see it from the road, but there’s a signboard. I took a look as we passed and it says something about bodywork. I’d like to call in, perhaps ask him about some repairs to the rusty bits on my car, and see whether Clarence reacts to the place. After that, we might work the dogs for a few more minutes, to ram home this morning’s lessons, before we head for home and a hot bath.’
‘I can live with that,’ Henry said. ‘Do I have time for another pint?’ Considering his age, the strength of his bladder was amazing.
I glanced at my watch. ‘You may as well,’ I said, ‘but I won’t join you. And don’t take too long. I’m assuming that the bodyworker reopens for business at two, if not earlier.’
It was a few minutes after two when I slowed to turn off the road. ‘Let me get him talking,’ I said. ‘Then take Clarence out on the lead and see if he reacts. OK?’
‘I think that that’s within my capabilities,’ Henry said.
The house turned out to be modest but well-maintained, backed by substantial outbuildings which had begun life as stone farm buildings but had been re-roofed and converted to light industrial use. On a chain in a corner of the yard, hating me with her eyes, was an enormous German shepherd, obviously a guard dog and, from the row of teats, equally obviously a bitch. She rumbled at me without bothering to move, as though she knew exactly the length of her chain and was perfectly confident of her ability to have my leg off if I approached within range.
Other noises led me to a pair of large doors with an inset wicket standing open. Inside, a stockily built man in overalls was spraying blue cellulose onto a Jaguar which was heavily masked. He seemed to be making a good job of it. Beyond, a Porsche stood with one wing removed. The firm, it seemed, attracted a good class of business.
After a few seconds, the change of light seemed to register with him. He glanced in my direction but went on with his work. I retreated into the open air. He joined me a minute or two later, lighting a cigarette. He had pushed his goggles up onto his forehead. His face, now that I could see it, was round and mild.
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Mr Yates?’ That had been the name on the signboard.
‘That’s me all right.’
‘If I brought in a rusty estate car, for you to price repairs and a respray, when would you have time to take on the work?’
He thought about it. ‘Early in the New Year. But, like you said, you’d better let me have a look at it in case it’s too far gone. How bad is it?’
‘Not good. I’ll bring it in,’ I said.
‘Don’t wait too long or I may be too busy to touch it. I get a lot of work in when the roads are icy. I count on it. I have to.’
There was nothing more to say. I found Henry sitting in the Land Rover. ‘Surely I gave you enough time—?’ I began.
‘I tried,’ Henry said quickly. ‘God knows I tried. But Clarence wasn’t coming out of the car for anybody. He was terrified.’
Mr Yates, now that his work had been interrupted, was enjoying his cigarette outside the wicket. I opened the back of the Land Rover. Clarence, who was loose in the back, shrank into the far corner. I invited Mr Yates across and asked his opinion about Angus’s tailgate latch, which was far from secure. Yates glanced at Clarence and at the cockers in their travelling box without interest and suggested that the local garage could do a cheaper job on the latch. Clarence studied him for a second or two and then came forward to proffer a pale shadow of his usual greeting. Mr Yates gave him a quick pat and turned away.
I thought it over while we gave the little dogs ten more minutes of practical work along the bottom of the valley. In the Land Rover on the way home I said, ‘We shouldn’t lend too much weight to Clarence’s reaction. At the moment he’s nervous about any people and places that he associates with his home territory. I think we can assume that Mr Yates didn’t take his cutting disc to Clarence’s tail. But did you see that guard dog?’
‘The Alsatian? I did indeed. He ranked high on my list of Dogs To Be Avoided.’
‘It wasn’t a he, it was a she,’ I said. ‘Knowing Clarence’s propensities, how does this grab you? Clarence sneaks off on the prowl, looking for food or nooky. That hairy monster is in season—’
‘Is she?’ Henry asked.
‘I wasn’t going close enough to look,’ I admitted. ‘Anyway, we’re talking about nearly a fortnight ago. Let’s suppose it. Clarence makes a beeline for the source of the irresistible aroma. He realizes his error and turns to flee, but too late; the bitch makes a grab and catches him by the tail, almost or completely severing it. Mr Yates rescues him, which is why Clarence took him for a friend. Yates completes the severing of the tail either because the partial severance is causing Clarence so much pain; or else he doesn’t want Clarence to go home showing tooth-marks belonging to his beloved but dangerous guard dog—’
‘Because,’ Henry broke in triumphantly, ‘the dog is on its last warning and after another complaint the sheriff would certainly order it to be destroyed. The courts are inclined to get hot under the collar about savage dogs at the moment. Yes, it’s possible.’
‘We seem to be finding too many faintly possible suspects,’ I said. ‘This may be the first one with any claim to probability.’
*
We were in time to help finish the day’s work, which included preparing our day’s harvest of rabbits for the freezer. After the usual communal refreshment, Isobel and Henry left for home and I had the promised hot bath.
Beth served up one of the superb game pies which tended to be a feature of our winters – with the game-dealer paying less than a pound per bird, it made sense to keep back as many as we could eat. Hannah, looking more nubile than ever in what I thought must be a new dress, had been shown how to prepare a game pie, and could hardly wait to demonstrate her new accomplishment to her father. I felt sorry for Charlie. I had no doubt that he would be hounded to produce a steady stream of pheasants so that she could show off her new-found skill. Nothing drains the element of enjoyment out of a sport like being forced to perform.
Warm and replete, I was dozing in front of the sitting-room fire when I heard the unmistakable rattles of my own car arriving at the front door. I stayed where I was. Angus was both able and permitted to make his own way inside. I heard him come into the hall and speak to Beth through the kitchen door.
‘I’m in the sitting room,’ I called.
Angus came in, pretending to glower. ‘Who cares where you are?’ he demanded. ‘It’s Beth I come to see.’
‘It’s the whisky you come to see,’ I told him. ‘Help yourself. Pour me a can of Guinness while you’re at it. How’s the wild-fowling going?’
Angus busied himself at the cabinet. ‘No’ bad,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’ve put them under the geese a few times. They’ve got at least one apiece and they’re fine pleased. But they’re an elderly group.’ Angus put a glass down beside me, yawned and took a chair. He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed with satisfaction. ‘For the moment, they’ve taken a scunner to getting up and squishing over the mud before dawn. Truth to tell, so’ve I. Am I getting old?’
‘Of course you are,’ I said. ‘I’ve been telling you so ever since we were in the Falklands.’
‘Shame!’ Beth said, closing the door
behind her. ‘Angus is ageless, like the best sort of antique.’ She joined Angus on the couch.
‘And just as full of worms. You only try to reassure him because he butters you up,’ I told her.
‘She says it because it’s true,’ said Angus. ‘Not about the worms, I’m cured of that.’
‘And,’ said Beth, ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a drink, if you two are boozing again. I’ll have a spritzer.’
‘Help yourself,’ I suggested.
‘Oh no!’ Beth said, dropping onto the couch. ‘I’m everything else around here, allowing for a little pardonable exaggeration, but I draw the line at barmaid. I do not pour my own drinks.’
‘And I’m a guest,’ said Angus. ‘Who did we say was getting old?’ he added as I dragged myself tiredly to my feet.
In hurt silence I mixed the requisite white wine (from a cardboard container) with soda and gave the concoction to Beth. Somebody seemed to be missing. ‘Where’s Hannah?’ I asked.
‘She’s bathing Sam and putting him to bed for me.’
I hid my surprise. Here was a change indeed! If Beth had come to trust Hannah with our first-born it would make life easier. I was prepared to trust Beth’s judgement.
‘What the clients fancy,’ Angus said, ‘is a nice, gentle day tomorrow, decoying the cushies. Friday they’ll make the effort and come to the foreshore for the last time, Saturday it’s our pheasants, and then they’re away home to a life of ease. And what I’d like is for you to take them to the cushies while I go across and see how you’ve left a’thing at the shoot.’
‘That’s what you’d like, is it?’ In point of fact, I would enjoy a day of rest from wrestling Angus’s Land Rover up and down the hills and humping bags of feed with Henry; but catching Angus in a supplicant mood was too good a chance to miss.
‘Och, come on,’ Angus said. ‘You know fine you’re the one as has kept up wi’ all the farmers around here.’
I made him beg a little more and then haggled over my share of the fee, but I yielded in the end and gave him an account of our activities.
‘It’s a pity yon bloody fox slipped out,’ he said, ‘but maybe it’s given him a distaste for the place. Are you any nearer finding out who docked Clarence’s tail?’
‘A few possibilities. Too many, in fact. Did you know that Strachan, who beats for us sometimes, was snaring rabbits right under your nose.’
‘Never!’ Angus said, with so much emphasis that I thought he, like Roberts, had probably known it all along. ‘What’s that to do wi’ Clarence?’
‘Probably nothing. If you’re going to let him get away with it, you might as well make him your occasional, unpaid underkeeper. He needs to be kept occupied when he’s not offshore. He told me that Bob Roberts has a grudge against Clarence. Apparently Clarence inseminated Roberts’s beloved setter, which took mastitis and died. Hardly Clarence’s fault, you might think, but who knows which way a bereaved owner’s mind will work. Don’t let on to Roberts that we got it from Strachan, by the way. There’s no point making bad blood between any more of our beating team.’
Angus nodded. ‘Any others?’ he asked.
‘There’s a couple named Bassett in the same group of cottages. I’m told that they’re passionately anti-blood sports, but they spend their days in their health-food shop in Dundee.’
‘When it’s quiet in the shop,’ Angus said, ‘one or the other of them will nip back home to put in time preparing some more of their herbal medicines. I’ve seen ’em. They walk on the farmland, whiles, complete wi’ gloves and sticks, and if they cross wi’ me they call me names. But that breaks no bones. They’re piss and wind, the pair of them. Just as well, though, that Saturdays are their busy day in the shop. All the same, their cough remedy’s no’ half bad! Who else?’
‘The hottest prospect seems to be a man named Yates, who runs a spraying and panel-beating business from a house on the Foleyknowe road. He has a German shepherd bitch that could take the tail off a dinosaur, let alone a spaniel, and Clarence flatly refused to get out of the car there. He may have tried it on once too often.’
Angus gave a quick yelp of laughter. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree there,’ he said. ‘I found old Irma for Ewan Yates. Don’t let him know that I told you, it’s his one dark secret, but she’s the softest old creature you’ll ever meet. That’s what Ewan wanted, a dog that looked and acted tough enough to keep away any villains but one that he and his missis – who’s nervous of dogs – could handle. Anyway, she’s hardly a tooth left in her head, poor old Irma. They feed her on bread and milk with a little beef gravy now and again. If Clarence went round annoying her, the most she could have given him would have been a nasty suck.’
I was loath to see a viable theory go down the tube. ‘You’re sure about that?’ I asked.
‘If you don’t believe me, give her a good kick in the slats next time you’re passing. Now, your car’s outside. Do you want to swap back for the day? You’ll need the Land Rover on Friday if you’re doing the snares again.’
Chapter Six
Over the phone, several of my farming contacts in Fife had assured me that their stubbles were ‘blue with pigeon’, but this assurance must always be taken with a whole barrowload of salt because the sight of a woodpigeon equates in a farmer’s mind with whole swarms of locusts. Also, fields that may have held even a thousand pigeon one day may be picked clean and deserted the next.
I had appointed a rendezvous in mid-morning. The woodpigeon usually wakes at dawn and goes to feed, returning to some convenient roost to rest and digest its meal. This is the pigeon equivalent of breakfast in bed. So, unless one intends to rise before dawn and set out a decoy pattern on uncertain ground, there is little to be gained by starting early.
I used the time to make a quick tour, which told me that, out of all the fields that had been ‘blue with pigeon’, only one large pea stubble was continuing to draw the birds. From the standpoints of both sport and safety, this would be inadequate for the whole party which, when I arrived at the appointed pub car park, proved to comprise seven gentlemen and a lady, all of a certain age and showing signs of wear and tear after their ventures below the high-tide line with Angus. I set off again and they followed on in a Range Rover and an Isuzu Trooper.
En route between the one hopeful field and the rendezvous, I had spotted another large flock feeding on a rape stubble. I established one foursome in hides at the first location with a good supply of cartridges and a broad spread of decoys bobbing convincingly in a light breeze. Before we were out of earshot we could hear battle commence. Fingers crossed, I brought the others to where I had seen the big flock and, on the promise of a few pheasants and some help whenever rabbits or pigeon or foxes plagued him, the farmer made them cautiously welcome. A deep ditch formed ready-made hides for them.
One more quick trip to and fro satisfied me that the pigeon had not immediately removed themselves over the horizons and the customers were getting value for their money. I was free until mid-afternoon, when I would return with a young dog or two and help them to gather their bag, including those birds which managed to fly to some distant tree before falling to the ground, dead. Hunting out those distant fallers always impressed the customers and often resulted in the sale of a dog.
But before driving home and plunging into the work of the kennels, I decided on one more errand. I had passed a butcher’s van or travelling shop belonging to Nairn and Sons, the firm that visited Foleyhill. This one would probably be the van which had called at Three Oaks the day before. I followed it up and found it parked in one of the smaller villages.
I joined a short queue of ladies and even allowed a late-coming housewife to go ahead of me. This gave me time for a good look at the van’s door. There were no stray dogs around to test my theory, but when my turn came I bought a pound of sausages off the harassed-looking driver and loitered until I could watch him slide shut the door. This was no lightweight and its sharp corner passed close by another. Sla
mmed by an angry or hasty hand, the effect would resemble a horizontal guillotine.
I thought it over as I drove home. The scenario was rather more believable than some of the others with which I had been toying. I ran it through in sequence. The van-driver had pulled up and slid open the wide door ready for the customers who, because of the noise from O’Toole’s saw, had not heard him arrive. Clarence, sensing the trays of fresh meat, tried a quick raid in the hope of making off with a pound or two of prime steak. The driver would not even have to make a deliberate attack with the sharp instruments to hand. An attempt to slam the door behind the departing culprit, not intended to do more than exclude him while moving the best meat to a safer position, might very easily have severed an undocked tail, after which the driver, guiltily aware that his own carelessness had invited the raid and that he had damaged a possibly valuable dog, would have disposed of the evidence and said nothing. A splash or two of blood around a butcher’s van might not invite comment.
I wondered whether Clarence’s raid had been successful and, if so, whether he had dropped his booty. I had known dogs so gut-oriented that even the severing of a tail would not have loosened their grip on a chunk of meat, but if Clarence, in pain and shock, had dropped his prize, there might once have been a clue in the form of a choice cut of pork or lamb lying somewhere in the countryside. But, if so, the crows and foxes or domestic animals would have found it long since. It might be worth asking whether any of the cottagers’ pets had gone off their food around that time. I would certainly have to catch Nairn and Sons’ van-driver at Foleyburn next day.
I was still deep in thought when I arrived home, to be met with the news that Clarence had jerked his lead out of Hannah’s hand and made a quick raid on the kitchen, making off with a parcel of meat which was only partly thawed. We barely had time to recapture him and for Isobel to determine that he seemed to have escaped without deep-freezing his intestines, when Angus showed up.
Sting in the Tail Page 11