‘You’ve seen my car,’ I said. ‘If it was yours, would you spend several hundred quid to make it easier to recover?’
‘I see what you mean, sir,’ he said – politely enough, but the curl of his lip suggested that he might have paid somebody several hundred quid not to recover it.
Daffy returned, slightly breathless, and quoted the letters and digits to Buchan. ‘I left it where it was,’ she said. ‘There was a crash-hat dangling from the handlebar – adjusted to quite a small size, if that’s any help.’
While Buchan phoned the information to his superiors, we began to turn our attention to the mundane trivia of living.
Due to the unpredictability of dogs and clients, we could never be sure who or how many would be present for a meal, so by custom whoever was around and free at the time coped with the need for food. In the process of training dogs for the gun we tended to collect rabbits and pigeon, and gamebirds in season; and vegetables were plentiful around the farms. The freezer was kept stocked with meals prepared by the whole team working as a production line during the occasional slack periods. The large pressure cooker usually held soup in quantity. Hannah, I noticed, was preparing the dogs’ meals while Daffy ladled soup into mugs. I was not sure which smelled the better. I was surprised to see that daylight had faded outside.
Noel suddenly snapped his fingers. ‘You’ve put a thought into my head,’ he said, ‘mentioning Tracker. My mobile phone was in my briefcase. Somebody might have been trying to reach me so I switched the phone on during the taxi ride here. Then I dropped it into my case. But I don’t remember switching it off.’
Henry, who had been unusually silent, looked up from his soup. ‘The battery was freshly charged? How long does it usually last, switched on?’
‘About half a day,’ Noel said. ‘Perhaps a little more if there aren’t many calls. I have a high capacity battery. Cellfone can work out which area you’re in, can’t they?’
Henry always carries the most extraordinary information in his head. ‘As long as your phone’s switched on and within range of a station,’ he said, ‘its signal’s registered in the central computer so that the network knows which base station it’s nearest to. But it isn’t information that they hand out liberally.’
‘I do know that they’ve helped out in kidnap cases,’ said the Constable doubtfully.
‘This is a kidnap case,’ I pointed out.
Henry spared me no more than a pitying glance. ‘If the police approach them through channels,’ he said, ‘the battery will be dead before they get around to it. I used to know the managing director. Where’s your cordless?’ Henry, during his working life, had been a departmental manager in a merchant bank and his range of acquaintances was almost as broad as his knowledge.
‘In the sitting room,’ I said. I began to get up to fetch it.
Henry beat me to a standing position. He is very fleet for his years. ‘I’ll go through there,’ he said, picking up his soup mug.
‘You don’t want us for anything else just now?’ Daffy asked Buchan.
Buchan hesitated and then shook his head. ‘But don’t go away,’ he said. ‘My Inspector’s coming and he’ll want to speak to you.’
‘That’ll be a treat . . . for him!’ Daffy looked at me. ‘We’d better get on with the evening feed.’
My mind was a long way away from the refinements of dog training. ‘Just shovel food into them,’ I said. ‘We’ll worry about their education another day.’
Daffy nodded understandingly. She produced Jove’s rubber kangaroo from an unsuspected pocket. ‘Here. Just in case he turns up.’
The two girls swallowed their soup and went out to feed the dogs. Beth took Sam away. The room went from crowded to merely occupied.
Isobel moved to the stove. ‘I’d better do something about food,’ she said. ‘Luckily ours is still in the fridge at home, so it won’t spoil.’ She looked enquiringly at the Constable.
‘Thank you kindly,’ he said, ‘but I’m off duty at ten and my tea will be on the table. I’ll just wait for HQ to call me back and then I’ll leave you.’
Isobel lit the gas in the grill and looked in the fridge. ‘Mixed grill for seven,’ she said. Except at weekends, when we like to eat in style and make up for all the snacks and sandwiches, we keep things flexible.
‘What about your plane?’ I asked Noel.
He blinked at me for a moment and then at his watch. ‘Oh, bugger my plane!’ he said at last. ‘Pardon my French! Jove is far more important. If I may, I’ll go and use your phone when Mr Kitts has finished.’
Henry came back a minute or two later, sniffed the air appreciatively and said, ‘He’s trying to get hold of the right technician. He’ll call me back.’
‘I won’t keep the line busy, then,’ said Noel. ‘What are our chances?’ he asked Buchan.
The Constable shrugged. ‘We don’t get much joy-riding hereabouts,’ he said. ‘The car isn’t exactly the sort to be stolen for its value nor for use as a get-away car. Frankly, it’s most likely to have been stolen for its contents.’
‘A dog, an attaché case probably full of Mr Cochrane’s dirty socks and an old and clapped-out shotgun that nobody knew was there,’ I said. ‘Not even a radio.’
‘You could have been seen from a distance, putting any or all of them into the car,’ said Buchan.
‘A dog has little cash value without its pedigree,’ said Isobel.
‘It may have a wheen of sentimental value. Folk have been known to fall for a dog from a distance. And shotguns have their uses,’ Buchan said grimly.
‘Shotguns are very rarely stolen for use in crime,’ I said with some heat. The persecution of legitimate gun-holders as an inexpensive sop to public concern was a subject on which I held strong views. ‘There’s a huge black market in guns which have never been legally held.’
‘Not everybody has access to the black market,’ Buchan retorted. ‘It may have been stolen for an act of hatred or revenge.’
‘Do you mean hatred of or revenge against me personally?’ I asked him. ‘I seem to be suffering more than anybody outside this household. Or did you mean in order to shoot somebody?’
‘I hadn’t thought of the first,’ Buchan said. ‘Have you made any enemies?’
‘Who hasn’t?’
Buchan took my question for a statement. ‘True enough. And tell me, Mr Cochrane, what was in your briefcase?’
‘Toothbrush and pyjamas, spongebag, the dirty socks Mr Cunningham mentioned, my mobile phone plus some papers that wouldn’t interest anybody outside the firm.’
‘And the firm is . . .?’
‘Cook and Simpson Pharmaceuticals,’ Noel said. Although it was no secret, I thought that he disgorged the information reluctantly.
Buchan was on the point of asking another question when the telephone sounded its electronic note. The Constable answered it, spoke a few words and then disconnected.
‘The scooter was reported stolen in Glasgow yesterday, so there is little help to be gained there. But there is also a report of a car on fire in the lay-by just this side of the village of Myresie,’ he said. ‘The Inspector has gone straight there. He would like you to go and see if you can identify it.’
‘Oh, shit!’ Noel said, softly but audibly.
Chapter Two
There was a moment of suspended animation while we weighed the ramifications. Noel put our cordless phone down on the table very gently, as if silence was imperative. Beth had come back while the Constable was on the phone. ‘Is there any sign of a dog?’ she asked urgently.
‘Not that they told me,’ said Buchan.
‘Take my car,’ Henry said. He gave me the keys. Constable Buchan, who had been assuming that duty required him to offer transport and envisaging a long night of it, gave a sigh of relief. ‘And you’d better have this,’ Henry added, handing over his own slimline mobile phone. He had managed a lengthy business career without any such aids, he once said, but at Isobel’s insistence had carr
ied a Yuppiphone ever since his first heart attack caught him alone and in the countryside.
It seemed to be assumed that Noel and I would go. Beth got between us and the door and grabbed Henry’s car keys off me. ‘You are not going off into the night hungry and cold,’ she said. ‘Either of you.’
It would have been useless to protest that we had only just finished our mugs of soup. When Beth uses that tone even head keepers toe the line and I could see that Noel recognized force majeure as well as I did. In what seemed like seconds she had furnished us each with a bacon roll, the bacon hot from the pan already sizzling on the stove, while Isobel filled a Thermos flask with coffee. Beth dropped the keys into my pocket and gave me a nod of dismissal.
I gobbled my sandwich between the house and Henry’s car. We belted ourselves in and I drove off into the darkness.
‘How far is this place?’ Noel asked. He was still working on his sandwich and his voice was muffled.
‘Maybe fifteen miles,’ I said.
‘God! I hope Jove’s all right.’
That went without saying. I settled down to burn up the road. The old car had not owed me anything and I was not overly concerned about Noel’s briefcase; but Jove was important, as much for his own sake as for the implications of his removal from quarantine. As for the shotgun, I had had Old Faithful since my boyhood but had rarely used it since acquiring a much more up-market gun; perhaps a good blaze would have accomplished deactivation within the meaning of the law and got me off that particular legal hook.
Noel said no more but he was muttering to himself, perhaps in prayer. The road was a narrow and twisting country road but I blazed down the tunnel of our lights and covered the fifteen miles in not many more minutes. We came out on a more important road. I knew where to find the lay-by, a loop of old road left stranded behind a string of trees when the road was straightened. Any glow of flames in the sky had died away but there was some reflected lamplight and the blink of a blue lamp which died as we approached. As we came closer the stink of burned rubber and paint and plastic filtered into Henry’s car.
There were tapes across the mouth of the lay-by. I could see two cars at least beyond the tapes and a group of men, some in uniform and some not. A uniformed officer halted me and came to the window.
‘The lay-by’s closed,’ he said.
‘I was sent for,’ I said. ‘That might be my car. Has a dog been found?’
He became more human. ‘Not that I know.’ He lowered his voice. ‘But pigs will fly the day they tell me anything.’ He lifted the tapes and I parked just beyond as directed.
As soon as I was out of the car I fished out my dog-whistle and blew a rapid series of short blasts, the almost universal ‘come’ signal. Among the men’s voices and the sound of a passing van, the ‘silent’ whistle was inaudible.
Noel got out and waited beside me, but the dark figure which arrived in apparent answer to my whistle was not an affectionate black Labrador but another uniformed policeman, rather more senior to judge from the silver that glittered on his shoulder. ‘Mr Cunningham?’ he said.
‘I am,’ I said. I raised my hand so that he would see which figure the voice was coming from. ‘And this is the owner of the dog that was in my car.’
I thought that he nodded in the darkness. ‘We’ve been expecting you both. This way.’
We followed him, but he stopped short of the majority of lights and voices and shone a torch on the remains of an estate car. There was foam on the ground and on the surrounding bushes but the worst had been hosed off the car. It was a sorry sight, a gutted shell.
‘Is this your car?’ the officer asked. ‘Sorry to have to call you out to ask you this, but the number-plates were removed before it was set on fire.’
The feeling that I was attending the funeral of an old friend faded suddenly. ‘It’s very like it,’ I said. ‘Same maker. But no. This model came in about three years after mine was built.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive,’ I said. ‘I looked at my car ten times a day for more years than I care to remember. The roof line’s higher and my back window was a slightly different shape.’
I heard the policeman grunt. ‘I thought that it was a wee bit too neat,’ he said. ‘Life’s seldom so kind. There seems to be little point to the other part of the exercise but we may as well go through the motions, though you’ll not enjoy it. The Fire Brigade was called out to the burning car. When they had it under control, one of the firemen wandered off – for a pee, I think, although he won’t admit it because of the implication that he might have had a bladder full of beer. Otherwise what he found might have remained where it is for long enough. A body,’ he said at last. ‘It’s become a long shot, but you’d better look and tell us if you’ve seen the person before because, if you don’t, somebody’s bound to ask why not and I’ll not have an answer. Come with me.’
We followed his torch again, through a gateway and over grass which felt and smelled damp from the evening dew, and traced a rough semicircle designed to take us by the route least likely to contain any useful tracks. We returned almost to the lay-by. The last few yards of our route were demarked by stakes and tapes. There was the quick blink of an electronic flash and the photographer backed away onto our leader’s toes. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘That’s the lot.’
The officer tutted without otherwise replying. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked us. ‘Not squeamish about dead bodies?’
He meant well, but I said that I had served in the Falklands and elsewhere. I refrained from adding that I had probably seen far more bodies than he had. It might even have been untrue if he was in Traffic.
Noel was equally familiar with death. ‘I started life as a biochemist,’ he said.
‘That’s all right, then. Don’t touch anything,’ the officer told us. ‘Just look.’
The body lay on its side. It had been laid or pushed down between the dry stone wall backing the lay-by and a white enamel bath which was acting as a cattle trough. It was the body of a woman. As best I could tell by the light of a portable lamp, she had dark auburn hair; and it was certainly tied back in a pony-tail. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness and under the bright lamp every detail of her face and clothing was clear and sharp. Her face was unmarked and held little expression, yet I was sure that she had not died peacefully.
I had seen death many times during my service days. It had never lost its sadness but it no longer had the power to shock me. If Noel had developed the same resistance during his laboratory years he had lost it since moving into management. ‘I’ll wait for you back at the car,’ he said shakily. ‘I’m only here in case my dog turns up.’
The officer agreed absently. His attention was all on me. ‘You’ve seen her before?’ he suggested.
‘Only in my mind’s eye,’ I told him. ‘But she matches the description of the woman who stole my car. Matches it very closely. I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but if you send for Hannah, my kennel-maid, we can settle the matter straight away. She had a good look at the woman and gave us the description.’
‘Very well.’ He led me back to the gateway. On the way, I blew my silent whistle again. In the distance a dog barked but it was shrill compared to Jove’s deep note. ‘I think we still have a constable at your house. He can bring her here,’ the Inspector said.
Constable Buchan, I thought, was going to wish that he had accepted the offer of food. Perhaps I could help. It sometimes pays to earn the gratitude of the local bobby. ‘I’d better speak to her,’ I said. ‘She might panic if she’s suddenly whisked away by a strange man even if he is in uniform. Then I can wait and reassure her and take her home again.’
‘That sounds sensible.’
I took out Henry’s phone and groped for the on-switch. Obligingly, the keypad lit itself up. I was not well acquainted with mobiles – such devices ranked fairly low on our list of future extravagances – but I knew enough to preface my home number with the area code and fini
sh with the ‘pick-up’ key. Beth answered.
‘Put Hannah on, please,’ I said.
‘All right. Is it – was it – our car?’
‘No. Put—’
‘So there’s no sign of Jove?’
‘None at all.’ One of my personal quirks, that of being thrifty with phone calls, dated from my childhood. It was redoubled on Henry’s mobile. Henry never seemed to concern himself over the cost, but I knew that as a moderate user he had opted to pay a low rental for the connection and a high cost per minute for calls. I had a mental picture, only slightly exaggerated, of golden coins dribbling into a slot. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when I see you,’ I said. ‘Let me speak to Hannah.’
‘In a moment. Here’s Henry.’
‘I spoke to my friend at Cellfone,’ said Henry’s voice. ‘The technician he wants seems to have vanished into London’s nightlife but he’s trying to get hold of him.’
‘I see. Put Hannah on.’
Hannah came on the line at last. Quickly, I explained to her that she should let Constable Buchan chauffeur her to me and I pressed the ‘hang-up’ key before the policeman beside me could ask to speak to Buchan. Without comment, he used his radio to convey the order.
We waited.
The officer, who finally introduced himself as Inspector Tirrell, seemed to accept that I was palpably innocent, a victim rather than a culprit, because he became unusually forthcoming for a policeman. He had a pleasantly deep voice which came out of the darkness without any noticeable accent, but the glimpses that I had of his face, as lights and cars came and went, left me with a confused picture of a man designed by Picasso and executed by Dali.
‘You’ll have your hands full, with a murder on them,’ I suggested. ‘You don’t have to let me take up your time. I’ll bring Hannah to you when she arrives.’
I heard a sound in the darkness which I took to be the proverbial mirthless laugh. ‘There’s a detective super on the way,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, I’m the senior officer present but a detective sergeant’s directing the real work. I ken fine how it’ll be. I’ll be left with stolen or burning cars to deal with and maybe a missing dog.’ He gave another snort of something that wasn’t quite laughter. ‘The car will be cool enough for us to read the engine and chassis numbers, but I could make a good guess at them now.’
Mad Dogs and Scotsmen (Three Oaks Book 7) Page 3