Mad Dogs and Scotsmen (Three Oaks Book 7)

by Gerald Hammond

  I stopped. The other men closed in slowly. The tension seemed enough to drown out all sounds except for several clicks as of guns being closed or safety catches slipped off. Tholess pushed forward. I let the muzzle of the dart-gun stray in his direction as if out of carelessness and he froze. I wondered what the penalty would be for tranquillizing a member of parliament against his will. A CBE at the very least.

  ‘Everybody hold it,’ Tirrell said sharply. He nodded to me. Tholess made an impatient noise.

  I had been blowing occasional trills on my silent whistle and I tried it again. There was a small sound in reply but no friendly form came out, tail-wagging fit to bowl himself over. When I moved forward again I heard a rumble from beyond the doorway.

  I had never heard Jove growl. It would be very unlike him to growl at me. Nor was this how I would have expected Jove’s growl to sound. But, as Tholess had said, one of the first symptoms of the onset of rabies is unnatural behaviour. I sent up a silent prayer that if my sphincter let me down it would do so discreetly and in silence.

  A tranquillizer dart works quickly but not instantaneously. My mouth had gone dry and something was wandering on my spine although I could not have said whether it was making its way up or down. I thought of borrowing one of the shotguns and going in with a shotgun in one hand and the dart-gun in the other, but that would be a slow and cumbersome defence at close range. Instead, I replaced the dart with one more lightly loaded. It might not have stopped a rampant politician in his tracks but it would put a Labrador to sleep in a hurry.

  I leaned my back against the brickwork, out of the sight of whatever might be inside, and spoke very softly. ‘Get ready,’ I said. ‘I’m going in. If I come out again in a hell of a hurry, be ready to shoot. But be sure and let me get out of the way first.’

  The curve of faces nodded in unison.

  I stepped into the doorway. ‘Jove?’ I said.

  It was dark inside the brick structure and made darker by my occupying the doorway, but I was in no hurry to step in and to the side. The rumbling rose to a snarl that set the hair crawling up the back of my neck, but the dark shape crouching tensely in the far corner kept its distance.

  My eyes began to adjust to the poor light. I squatted down, still ready to hurl myself backwards. The move allowed more light in and at the same time would have made me look less threatening. After a long moment, still crouched, I backed out of the door.

  The SSPCA man was nearby and I spoke to him. ‘This is one for you,’ I said. ‘I seem to remember someone advertising for a lost black Labrador bitch three or four weeks ago.’

  ‘She’s in there?’

  ‘There’s a bitch in there,’ I said. ‘She’s certainly black and mostly Labrador and she’s got a litter of pups. She’s as thin as a rake, poor thing, after feeding them and living off what she could pick up on the foreshore. I can tranquillize her for you if you like.’

  He shook his head. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said. ‘That took some guts,’ he added grudgingly.

  I thought that Beth would probably say it took a hell of a lot of stupidity. But I had believed that it was Jove in there and I was sure that Jove would never bite me and almost as sure that he was clear of rabies. That sort of certainty may be the death of me some day.

  As we walked back to the cars I stayed as far as I could from Hector Tholess and fell into casual conversation with a man whose face was vaguely familiar to me. When he said that he was the water bailiff, my interest quickened. A word that Miss Johnson had used had been slipping in and out of my mind. ‘What do you understand by the word “bothy”?’ I asked him.

  ‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘It used to mean a rough sort of place for farmworkers to bide in, but there’s precious few farmworkers any more and the few there are expect council house standards or better. Nowadays, it mostly means a fishing hut. Sometimes just a wee shed where anglers can leave their gear, shelter from the rain or brew a pot of tea; but I’ve heard the word used of some smart wee places where a man could spend a week and maybe entertain a friend as well.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘Are there many along this side of the Tay?’

  ‘There’s a few,’ he admitted.

  Hugh Morris had kindly left a road map of the locality in the car. It was an advertising hand-out but I appreciated the thought. ‘Could you mark them on a map?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not saying I ken them a’,’ he said cautiously. ‘I ken the most of them but that’s only along my beat of the river. I’ll do what I can.’

  Henry was waiting with the car complete with crate, which I was relieved to note was as neat a fit in the new car as it had been in the old one. While my new friend made pencil marks on the map and Henry had a word with the Inspector, I unloaded the dart-gun and recovered the travelling box from Tirrell’s car.

  ‘There’s no word of any more cars having been stolen,’ Henry said when he rejoined me.

  It was dawning on me that we had missed lunch and suddenly I was ravenously hungry. I knew of a small hotel not too far away which kept the bar open during the afternoon and served snacks whenever they were wanted. Henry, whose appetite of all his faculties was the least damaged by age, took very little persuading.

  Chapter Six

  The hotel was little more than a pub with a couple of bedrooms for visitors. It had existed, at least for the past hundred years, without paying any attention to changing fashions. It was still a place of dark-stained pitch-pine linings, enamelled wallpaper, battleship-quality linoleum and bentwood chairs and tables.

  This absolute refusal to upgrade the amenities was balanced by a similar refusal to lower the standard of the food, which was in the best tradition of Scots cooking and was prepared and served by the landlord’s wife at almost any hour. The sole concession to change had been to interpret the liberalization of the licensing laws as a permit to open and close whenever the whim took them or the customers demanded.

  We waited in the empty bar for our stovies – a peculiarly Scottish dish of potatoes stewed in onions. Henry bought beer for us both and brought it to a table. I gave him the story of the morning with very little expurgation and then we sat and sipped in companionable silence. I was still winding down after the earlier surge of adrenalin when I had half expected to be rushed at by a rabid Labrador.

  Somebody else knew of the place, because a large car, a recent model but battered and already beginning to rust, pulled in beside mine and a smooth-faced man got out. I was sure that I had seen him among the walking searchers but, if so, then he had managed an almost complete change of outer clothing. He had been dressed earlier in jeans and wellingtons, but now he had on a business suit, polished shoes and a tie that could have belonged to some school, club or regiment, although I was unable to identify it. With the tweed cap put aside, his black hair was neat.

  ‘Do you suppose,’ I asked Henry, ‘that Noel Cochrane has Jove with him?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Henry said after a moment. ‘Even if he’d managed to find him, or to make contact with whoever had him, I don’t see that that would do him any good. He couldn’t take him abroad secretly, except perhaps by yacht. In this country, Jove would be as bad as a visiting card. And if he does have him,’ Henry said, ‘Noel becomes the most likely suspect for having knocked Donald Something on the head.’

  ‘If Noel was already planning to vanish abroad and had an alternative passport in his pocket,’ I said, ‘he might well be able to take Jove with him. Nobody gives much of a damn about outward bound dogs. Apart from our paranoia about quarantine, travelling within the EC has become much easier. Maybe they’re already abroad. In which case, all the fuss and flapdoodle will go on for ever.’

  ‘Nothing lasts for ever,’ Henry said. ‘Aeons and aeons, but not for ever. Work on the assumption that they’re still around.’

  ‘So, apart from trying to be in at the recovery of Jove, do we leave it all to the police?’ I asked.

  ‘It still seems to me,’ Henry said
slowly, ‘that you need a result. One trouble with the police is that some of them are more interested in closing a file than in arriving at the truth. As things stand, on the face of it, you’ve let a quarantined animal get away from you. If your last hypothesis was correct, it might even look as though you let the owner walk off with him. While Jove’s on the loose, there’s the added possibility that he might develop rabies, bite somebody, start an epidemic, you name it. If you – we – get him back safely, a different light is shed. Somebody tried to make off with the dog but failed. You follow me?’

  The smooth-faced man came into the bar. The landlord appeared and served him with a whisky. Then, instead of the customary nod and a mention of the weather before retiring to another table in the opposite corner of the room, the man crossed the floor, put his whisky down between our beers and said, ‘Do you mind if I join you?’ He had a gentle voice out of keeping with the intensity of his expression and no trace of an accent.

  ‘We don’t so much mind,’ Henry said, ‘as wonder why you should want to.’

  The man chuckled as though Henry had cracked the funniest joke in history. Then he looked at me. ‘Captain Cunningham . . .?’

  ‘Mister Cunningham,’ I said.

  ‘Mister, then. I’m Michael Coutts. I want to get in touch with your friend Noel Cochrane.’

  I was about to point out that Noel Cochrane wasn’t a friend of mine when the thought came to me that he probably was.

  ‘You and everybody else,’ Henry said.

  ‘That does seem to be so. But I, for one, do not mean him any harm and it could be very much to his advantage that I get to him before any of the other parties.’

  ‘Well, I can’t help you,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where he is. I wish to God I did.’

  ‘Is that really so?’ He seemed to be asking himself the question rather than expressing doubt to me. ‘Tell me, when did you see him last?’

  ‘One moment,’ Henry said firmly. ‘Just what is your locus in this?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Coutts said. This time his question was expressing huffiness. It struck me as calculated or even practised. Without being quite sure where the thought came from, I was beginning to think that he was a bit of an actor if not a poseur. He had changed his clothes so that he would fit in with his company of the moment and he seemed able to produce whatever manner suited his purpose.

  Henry, I could see, was thinking along the same lines. ‘I mean,’ he said firmly, ‘are you representing the police, the family, the local authority or the media? Or, of course, the dog?’

  ‘I’ve already told you that I’m a friend of his.’

  This was getting a bit much. ‘No, you haven’t,’ I said. ‘You hinted at it.’

  Coutts thought it over. ‘I believe you’re right,’ he said. ‘Well, if I forgot to mention it, I truly am friendly with Noel, to the extent that we’ve often had a friendly drink together after work. And I genuinely am concerned for him.’

  ‘All of which may be perfectly true,’ said Henry, ‘but you’re still a member of the press. I’ve known that from the moment you arrived, I’ve just been waiting to find out how long it would take you to reveal yourself.’

  Coutts hesitated and then nodded. ‘How did you know?’ he asked.

  ‘Even if I hadn’t recognized your byline, I can see the press sticker on your car from here.’

  I craned my neck. There was certainly a sticker on Coutts’s windscreen. Henry could see it from a more favourable angle than I could. I took another and more curious look at Coutts. He was unlike the common run of journalists. For one thing, he was neatly but inconspicuously dressed, well shaved and, even after our walk across country, his nails were clean and unbroken. I would have put him down as a modestly successful businessman, which I suppose in a way he was.

  Our meal arrived then. The landlord’s wife looked at Michael Coutts enquiringly. He shook his head but asked for another whisky. When she had served him and left he said, ‘Perhaps I should have been more open with you, but some people are wary of speaking openly to the papers. If you know my stuff you know that I’m not gutter press.’

  ‘As I recall, you come closer to what they call investigative journalism,’ Henry said. ‘Although just what kind of journalism isn’t investigative beats me.’

  ‘The kind that makes it up as it goes along,’ I said.

  ‘Which is not my style at all,’ Coutts said. His manner was persuasive. ‘So I’ll come clean. As I told you, Noel and I use the same pub and we get along well. That, I suppose, is why he picked on me and not some other hack. Anyway, about a week ago he phoned me at the office and asked me to meet him that evening in the usual place. When I turned up, I could see that he was on edge. He told me that he might have what he described as “one hell of a story” for me. He wanted to be sure that he could get hold of me at short notice and he noted down places and phone numbers where I might be reached.

  ‘He also said that it went against all he’d ever learned, to blow the gaff on somebody he owed so much, but there came a time when enough was enough. I think those were his words. Of course, he was mildly sloshed at the time.’

  ‘And he didn’t drop a hint as to whether he was talking about his employers?’

  ‘My guess is that he was,’ Coutts said. ‘Then, the day before yesterday, he phoned me on my mobile to come and meet him at Prestwick Airport. He’d hand me the whole thing on a plate. And he didn’t want any money for it, which makes him unique among informants. But he never turned up. There was a message at my office to say that he’d be in touch. And that was all.’

  ‘Yet you arrived here,’ Henry said.

  ‘Nothing else is breaking just now. I knew that Noel’s dog was in quarantine near here, so when a stringer phoned in about cars being stolen, one of them containing a dog, and a woman’s body being found, it seemed that this had to be where the action was. Even if the mention of a dog was purest coincidence, there would still be a story of sorts. I came hotfoot.’

  ‘I expect you did,’ said Henry. ‘But the temperature of your feet is not at issue. How do we know that you’re on Mr Cochrane’s side and not planning a hatchet job, some terrible exposé?’

  ‘Exposé of what?’ Coutts asked.

  ‘I don’t know of what,’ Henry said irritably. ‘I’d be grateful if you could tell me. But half the human race have secrets they’d rather not see plastered across the front pages. Present company excepted, of course.’

  ‘Personally I’d put it higher than fifty per cent,’ Coutts said thoughtfully, ‘and not except anybody, but my experience tends to be selective. I’ve no evidence to offer you of my good intentions – nothing, at least, that would stand up in court. I can only tell you in all honesty that it was he who first approached me, that I believe that any present difficulties he may be facing are related to whatever he planned to divulge and that once those facts are out in the open any danger will be lifted. That, I find, is very often the case. There is no point in pressuring an informant who has already spilled the beans; and revenge seldom pays dividends.’

  Henry, looking thoughtful, leaned back in his chair. ‘In other words, powerful forces are determined to prevent him speaking to the press.’

  Coutts nodded. ‘Or are trying to recover evidence. Either way, I would be amazed if it didn’t concern some dirty dealings at Cook and Simpson.’

  ‘And you’re satisfied that Mr Cochrane, like yourself, is on the side of the angels?’ Henry asked.

  Coutts looked surprised. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am. The signs are that he’s in possession of facts or documents which the firm wants to recover. In theory, I suppose, Noel could be stealing secrets or attempting blackmail; but in neither eventuality would he talk to me.’

  ‘He might threaten to talk to you,’ Henry said. ‘If he had blackmail in mind, the interested enquiries of a well-known journalist might add a great deal of point to the threats and urgency to the victim’s deliberations.’

  ‘We seem to
be spending a lot of time making guesses about what Noel may have been thinking. Are motives so important?’ I asked. I was far more concerned with how the outcome might affect Noel, Jove and our business.

  ‘Yes,’ Henry said slowly, ‘I think they are. Always. Look at it this way. Suppose that you’d been in Hungerford when Michael Ryan started shooting up the place. Suppose that, after he’d killed his third or fourth victim, you shot him dead. You’d be a hero?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘Where is this leading?’

  ‘To this point. Suppose it then came out that you had a grudge against Ryan or something to gain from his death. Perhaps you didn’t even know at the time that he’d shot anybody. You see what I’m getting at? Same deed but on the one hand you’re in line for a medal and on the other you’re wide open to prosecution.’

  ‘That, of course, is true. I honestly believe that Noel’s up on a white horse but my mind’s at least half open.’ Coutts paused and swallowed. ‘I also believe that I could go a sandwich after all,’ he said. ‘I’m not used to long walks in the fresh air. Can I offer you another round?’

  ‘We’d rather keep our wits about us,’ Henry said.

  ‘Very wise,’ Coutts said. He looked at me curiously. ‘Did you have your wits about you this morning? Walking into the den of a possibly rabid dog struck me as being about as witless as you can get.’

  ‘Jove’s fully protected by vaccinations,’ I protested.

  ‘I wouldn’t put too much faith in vaccinations if I were you,’ Coutts retorted, almost echoing Mr Thane and the unpleasant Hector Tholess.

  ‘Did he really do that?’ Henry asked Coutts but raising his eyebrows at me.

  ‘Don’t you go telling Beth,’ I said.

  Coutts got up and went to the bar. I started to speak again but Henry raised a hand for silence. Coutts was speaking to the landlord and paying us no attention, so I concluded that Henry wanted peace in which to do his thinking.

  Coutts returned, not with a sandwich but with another plate of stovies. He may have taken Henry’s words to heart, because instead of another whisky he carried a large mug of coffee. ‘Well?’ he said.