Mad Dogs and Scotsmen (Three Oaks Book 7)

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Cochrane, as we know, started off as a biochemist but moved over into sales. She heard that he had been brought back from India to become head of the publicity and marketing department when the two were rolled together comparatively recently, but that merger had happened since her retirement so she had no details to give me. The only Donald she could call to mind in that area of the company is Donald Aggleton, Noel’s assistant and right hand, and her description of that young man, allowing for a slight leaning towards the romantic, accords with the lad we found yesterday.’

  Hannah was ready with the meal for the younger pups. She loaded the trolley but paused. ‘What about the dead woman?’ she said. ‘The one I had to identify.’

  ‘I tried the description you gave us on Miss Laidlaw. Assuming that she was a member of that circle,’ Henry said, ‘she would have to be Harriet Williams, Cochrane’s colleague heading the PR side of the department. That would seem to be a rather rash assumption, except that Miss Laidlaw coyly revealed that there had been a romantic attachment between Miss Williams and Donald Aggleton.’

  Beth was frowning. ‘But Miss Otterburn seemed to be suggesting that any romance was between Donald Aggleton and herself.’

  ‘That,’ Henry pointed out, ‘was while she was calling herself Johnson. It may have been Lies for a Prize Day.’

  ‘It certainly gets more and more difficult to guess who might be in league with who,’ I said.

  Henry nodded sadly. ‘That’s almost all that I got from the lady, although she said not to hesitate before phoning her if we have any more questions. But my friend had given me one more snippet of information. He said that he sold out his shares in Cook and Simpson on a vague hint from a pal – which may have had some substance in it, because the shares have fallen substantially during the past week. I asked Miss Laidlaw about this. She knew nothing about share movements, she said, any money she had was safely tucked away in a building society, but at the time of her retirement there had already been rumours of a major disagreement at management level. There had been raised voices behind closed doors and memos sealed in envelopes marked “Confidential” which had never been put out for filing.’

  ‘Wow!’ said Hannah. ‘I’d better go,’ she added reluctantly.

  I felt a prickle of conscience. ‘Do you need help?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re busy. Daffy’ll be back in a minute. She can help me.’ Resolutely turning her back on all the excitement, Hannah pushed the squeaking trolley out into the passage.

  ‘If Mr Heatherington has his own personal tough guy,’ Beth said, ‘why is he said to be hiring Glasgow heavies?’

  ‘Because Jake went solo, according to Miss Otterburn,’ Henry reminded her. ‘Of course, both those snippets were disgorged on an occasion when not a word was uttered which has since been shown to be true. On the other hand, the lady may have been sailing under false colours but nobody can fib all the time. Isobel, you might be able to find out some more about Cook and Simpson on the Old Vet Network.’

  Isobel humphed. ‘Vets are the last people they’d allow to see their dirty laundry.’

  It seemed to me that the whole thing was getting out of hand. ‘Do we really need to do all this investigation?’ I demanded. ‘It may make an interesting pastime – as if time didn’t pass all too quickly already – but it’s police business, not ours. We’ve got my gun back. If we can recover Jove unhurt . . .’

  ‘In my opinion,’ Henry said, ‘yes, you do need to help things along. You may need friends in the police, and if there’s a song and dance about Jove escaping from custody it may stand you in good stead if you can show that he went missing as a by-product of some much bigger machinations.’

  Reluctantly, I saw that there was something in his point of view.

  There came the sound of an engine and the brush of tyres on our gravel. I craned my neck. As best I could see, the new car had no dents in it. Daffy looked in, gave me a thumbs-up signal and went off to help Hannah.

  The phones rang. The cordless was beside me, so I answered.

  ‘Mr Cunningham?’ It was a gruff voice with a broad accent. ‘This is Bruce Henry at Mannofield Farm by Kindore. I hear you’ve lost a dog.’

  ‘I have indeed,’ I said.

  ‘Well, there’s a black Lab been running wild near here.’

  ‘Where was he last seen?’ My voice went up so that the others all stared at me.

  ‘In the trees at the western march, down by the firth.’

  ‘Do nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m on my way. For the love of God don’t call the police just yet.’

  ‘O’er late for that,’ Mr Henry said cheerfully. ‘My neighbour, Mr Tom McLoan, ca’d them an hour back. He thought to call me about it and I minded that you’d put the word about. And there was mention of a bittie siller?’

  ‘If that’s the dog and I get him back safe, you’ll get the reward.’ I pushed the phone at Beth. ‘Black Lab seen at Kindore,’ I said. ‘Coming, Henry?’

  ‘Kindore’s rather far from where the crates were found,’ Beth protested. ‘It must be fifteen miles.’

  ‘Twelve at the most. And there’s no saying how far a dog can wander when it’s lost and trying to find its way home,’ I pointed out.

  Henry was already on his feet. ‘Where would Jove think of as home, after all this time?’ he asked.

  ‘Here, probably,’ I said. ‘But if so, Kindore’s in the wrong direction. If he’s making for India he’s got a long swim in front of him.’

  ‘You always said that Jove was the strongest swimmer you’d ever trained,’ Beth said.

  *

  Into the back of the new estate car went a travelling box, heavy gloves and the tranquillizer dart-gun with its bag of accessories. Henry got into the passenger seat and we moved off.

  Half a mile up the road, we came to a halt. I had forgotten the anti-theft precaution installed by the previous owner. Fizzing with impatience, because at any moment some trigger-happy volunteer might be inscribing Jove’s name on a bullet, I cursed myself aloud, pressed the switch and ground the starter until the pump refilled the carburettor and the engine fired.

  ‘If it stops you, it’ll stop a thief,’ Henry said soothingly as we got moving again.

  I stopped muttering to myself and let the comment hang, concentrating on hustling the unfamiliar car over familiar roads. There was a new feeling of tautness and a silence where the old car had clattered.

  My function as the prime trainer and supplier of gun-dogs for the area had earned me a lot of invitations to shoot or pick up and I had also visited much of the shore of the Tay on wildfowling trips. From Kindore I had no difficulty finding Mannofield Farm, but the farmhouse and yard were in clear view from the minor road serving them and there was neither activity nor an unusual number of vehicles to be seen. If Mr McLoan at . . . I searched my memory and came up with the name Knock Farm. If Mr McLoan had made the original report to the police, Knock Farm was where the action would begin.

  The farm road to Knock Farm was roughly where I remembered it. Vehicles, mostly olive-green, were parked short of the farmyard and a dozen or more roughly-dressed men in wellingtons were milling around the grey stone buildings. Apart from the complete absence of dogs it looked too much like the prelude to a shoot for my liking, and indeed some of the men had bagged guns slung over their shoulders. I drew up behind the last vehicle. Beyond the farmhouse I could see the Tay, a broad river but much narrower than its width twenty miles nearer the sea. From the stir over the sandbanks the tide was running out fast, flashing and sparkling in the sunshine of another fine spring day.

  To my partial relief I found Inspector Tirrell there, newly arrived on the scene but about to take charge. He seemed as relieved to see me and even wore a hesitant smile as he came to meet us. ‘I phoned and spoke to Mrs Cunningham,’ he said, ‘but you were already on the road. I thought you’d want to be along.’

  ‘Damn right I’d want to be along,’ I said. I raised my voice so that I was addressing the
throng. ‘Let’s be clear about this. The dog was stolen out of quarantine but there’s no reason whatever to suppose that he has rabies. In fact he’s been thoroughly vaccinated against it.’

  ‘Vaccination isn’t a hundred per cent,’ said a man. I recognized him suddenly as an SSPCA inspector, Thane by name. I thought that he could be trouble.

  ‘Damn near it,’ I said.

  He shook his head. He was a skinny man with pop-eyes and in the past I had found him both officious and inclined to see mischief where none existed. ‘There’s a doubt been cast on the effectiveness of it. I saw an article about it just last week.’

  ‘There’s still no reason to believe that the dog is infected,’ I retorted. ‘Anyway, he knows me and I have a tranquillizer gun here. I’ll be glad of help to find him, but after that I’ll make the first approach, so that if anybody gets bitten it’ll be me. All we’re required to do is to get the dog back into quarantine. Let me make it absolutely clear that anyone unnecessarily shooting a valuable trained dog will certainly be sued for damages by a loving owner.’ If the loving owner ever shows his face again, I added to myself.

  Several of the men were nodding agreement. I recognized two keepers and some members of the local wildfowling club. They knew the value of a good dog. I had also attended a public meeting at which several of them had argued cogently against the outdated quarantine regulations. I began to feel more hopeful.

  A thick-set figure turned away from a huge, black, Japanese four-wheel-drive and turned a face towards me which reminded me irresistibly of a male salmon ready to mate – coloured and with a distinct hook to the jaw. A hat adorned with fishing flies was pulled down over the brow but I had no difficulty recognizing Hector Tholess, my least favourite politician, MP for somewhere-or-other in the central belt and former cabinet minister, done up in a tweed plus-four suit with highly polished boots and gaiters. I had never liked his politics or the image he presented during his many appearances on television; and when he had turned up as a fellow guest on a shoot my dislike had increased. I saw that he was a greedy shot, self-assertive to the point of being dangerous and, worst of all, inconsiderate to his dog. He had, I remembered, an estate near Perth and I recognized at least one of the men present as being on his staff.

  ‘Rabies is not something to take chances with,’ Tholess said in a tone which brooked no argument.

  ‘Nobody is suggesting taking chances,’ I said with what I hoped was equal authority. ‘The dog is healthy. But even if he had rabies, which he doesn’t, and even if he then bit one of you, which he won’t, there would still be plenty of time for protective shots.’

  ‘Which Mr Thane tells us are less than a hundred per cent effective.’ As he spoke, Tholess was unbagging a deer rifle with an expensive telescopic sight and feeding it with what looked like .243 cartridges. ‘And what is the first symptom? Untypical behaviour, that’s what! And how do you know what’s untypical?’

  The question was clearly intended to be rhetorical but Thane answered for him. ‘In the wild, one symptom is when an animal which would normally run away comes towards you.’

  ‘Exactly. I’ll tell you this, if that dog comes towards me, it’s dead.’

  ‘And how will you know if it’s the right dog?’ Henry asked.

  Tholess transferred his black glare from me to Henry. ‘Right or wrong, mad or no. Any black dog approaching me this morning has to be mad,’ he added with grim humour.

  I turned to Tirrell. ‘The dog knows me well,’ I said. ‘He’ll come to me. Make sure that I get a chance to collect him unharmed. Could you delay the start while I seek an interdict to restrain the honourable but trigger-happy gentlemen?’

  Tholess made a noise which Henry later described as resembling a dinosaur’s fart but failed to come up with a timely riposte.

  Tirrell shook his head. He was looking unhappy. ‘I have my orders,’ he said.

  ‘If they include an order to shoot the dog without attempting a safe recapture,’ Henry said, ‘give me the name of the person issuing that order. It will come in useful when the writs begin to fly. Failing which, the writs will have your name on the front.’

  ‘We’ll give you your chance,’ Tirrell said to me.

  ‘I’ll need my crate for transportation,’ I told him. ‘To satisfy the law, not myself.’

  ‘You can have it. It’s behind the police garage at Cupar.’

  I handed my car keys to Henry. He looked relieved. He is past the age at which long walks start to exact a toll in aches and pains. I took the travelling box, the gloves and the dart-gun out of the back of the car. ‘Meet us back here,’ I told Henry.

  ‘No problem. If the crate fits into the car.’

  ‘It will,’ I said. ‘Definitely. If it doesn’t, come straight back.’

  He sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine. He was half-way back to the road before I thought of reminding him to press the special switch. Well, that was two of us who would not forget again.

  I stowed the box for the moment in the back of Tirrell’s Range Rover and, while he developed his plan of action with the help of a couple of locals, I busied myself readying three darts with what I considered to be appropriate doses of tranquillizer. The one that I loaded into the dart-gun would have stunned Tholess, let alone a Labrador.

  Tirrell’s plan was simple. The line could spread wide apart as we crossed the fields as long as each hedge and ditch was covered. Thane, the SSPCA man, was not carrying a gun. As we set off, a man in jeans and a sweater with a mean face, who I recognized belatedly as Mr McLoan, was threatening dire reprisals on anyone who traversed his crops by any other than the tramlines left by the tractor.

  I placed myself not far from Tholess in the line. If he lifted his rifle against any dog that I thought might be Jove, I would fell him with a dart first and apologize for a regrettable accident, caused by a stumble over a stone, after he came round.

  Two fields on, we came to a patch of rough ground, a place of weeds and boulders, where I remembered a wounded goose once planing down into cover and being fetched out by Samson and here the line had to close up. Further on, we entered a long strip of trees. Because of a deep gulley, the place was fenced against cattle and densely undergrown. The older men crossed the fields while the rest of us cursed and sweated through the trees, treading down the brambles and prodding sticks into bushes. There was some excitement when a large fox was put out of cover but no shot was fired. No instructions had been given about foxes and nobody was sure whether they were on the day’s quarry list along with black Labradors.

  The stream, and the gulley and tree-strip with it, made a right-angle turn towards the Tay. We had a rest while some of the older men made the long trip through a pasture and around the outside of the angle. A compact flock of sheep trotted ahead of them. There were midges under the trees, unseasonably early so that I for one had not thought to bring insect repellent. Several of us drifted to the fence in the hope of getting a respite for our ears and foreheads. Some of the men lit pipes or cigarettes and the smoke helped to drive the little pests away.

  Trying to keep Tholess within range, I found, had brought me near the SSPCA man. I pointed the dart-gun into the ground. I had a feeling that somewhere there was a question I should be asking him. ‘What did you mean about the vaccinations losing their effectiveness?’ I asked.

  ‘Exactly that. These things happen. Mutations produce new strains and then, of course, the scientists have to go back to work.’

  ‘With the use of animal testing?’ I asked mischievously.

  His face clouded. ‘I’m afraid so. We can’t prevent it, wouldn’t if we could. The most we can do is to try and ensure that it’s done as mercifully as possible and press for more humane methods to be found. There’s no adequate alternative yet. You’d think there would be. They grow the diploid cells, which are the basis of the vaccine, in human tissue culture but apparently that doesn’t work for testing. Then again, the efficacy of some types of diploid cell va
ccine can be drastically reduced if the patient’s taking chloraquin for malaria.’

  ‘You’re very well informed,’ I said. ‘I’m impressed.’

  He hesitated and then decided to be modest. ‘Three weeks ago I wouldn’t have known any of this. It was all in that article. I was interested . . .’

  ‘I can see that you would be.’ Something was stirring at the back of my mind. ‘Would any of this explain why the Cook and Simpson shares have been taking a knock?’

  He thought it over, his pop-eyes staring over my shoulder. ‘I suppose it might. But they’ll take a damned sight bigger knock if the company starts getting lawsuits from widows.’ He spoke with a relish that I found distasteful.

  The line was ready to move again shortly after that. We resumed our places and the midges came back to the attack.

  We were moving downhill now and the going was slightly easier. From memory, I thought that we were close to the boundary (‘the march’) between the two farms and therefore nearing where the dog had been seen. Through gaps in the tree canopy I could see the water. A small boat powered by an outboard motor was puttering across the tide. The two men in it were trolling for salmon.

  The line moved slowly, with many pauses while somebody negotiated a particularly sticky bit of cover or investigated some possible hiding place under upturned roots or piles of cut branches. I was beginning to think that we had drawn a blank and that our quarry had moved on.

  A steep bank rose from high-water mark and there the trees and fences came to an end. It was a place where I had once been landed by boat before dawn to lie in wait for the geese. Slightly nearer to me I could see the brick structure with a concrete roof behind which I had lurked, close to the stream. It was about the size of an ordinary bathroom and I guessed that it had once held a water-pump before mains water had come to the farm. It was on my side of the stream and gulley and the doorless opening faced my way, but it was the man on the other side of the gulley who said, in a throaty voice, ‘There’s something in there. I saw it move.’