‘First of all,’ Henry said, ‘do you have any identification? For all we know, you may not be from the press at all; worse still, you could be from some tabloid rag and hellbent on making scandal.’
‘Admirably cautious,’ Coutts said. From his wallet he produced and gave Henry a card which I took for a credit card, but I could see a miniature photograph bonded to it.
Henry took one look and returned it. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You’re Michael Coutts. Secondly . . . I’m choosing my words because whatever Noel said to you, he did not state categorically that he was going to give you his story, he said that he “might” have a story for you. He may now be trying to prevent a story rather than make one. On the other hand, he may be dead, injured or liable to arrest, we just don’t know. So I’ll put it this way. Will you promise to give us fair treatment in anything you write if we, for our part, promise to fill in for you any details that we know and you don’t –’ Henry paused and drew a deep breath ‘– with regard to any story which is breaking or which Noel would want to break or which seems to be in the public interest to break?’
My mind had stalled half-way through Henry’s interminable question but Coutts took only a few seconds to parse it and come to a decision. ‘I can do that,’ he said. ‘I’m not interested in reporting incidents along the way, only in being able to write up an exclusive, major story when the time comes. But what about the present status quo? I don’t want to report it, but I need to know it in order to pursue my own line.’
‘Point taken,’ said Henry. ‘You’re an investigator. We want the facts out in the light of day. We’ll consider spilling what we know so far if you’ll do the same.’
Coutts smiled. ‘That seems reasonable.’
‘You go first,’ Henry said.
Coutts hesitated and then agreed. It was soon as clear to me as it had been to him that he had less to lose than he had to gain. He had made full use of his sources and those of his paper, particularly within the police and ambulance services. Whatever we told the police seemed to have lost little time reaching Mr Coutts. He was able to confirm that the other enquiry after the location of Noel’s mobile phone had been from Cook and Simpson. He had tracked down Noel’s travel agent; Noel had not booked for California but for Spain, which raised fresh doubts in my mind.
Henry left me to fill in any gaps in Coutts’s knowledge. Coutts listened intently and asked a hundred and one questions. He was particularly interested in what we had thought of Catherine Otterburn (alias Johnson) and I tried to recall my impressions of a visitor who had called while I was tired and distracted by worry. ‘I put her down as tougher than she acted,’ I finished. ‘She played the worried girlfriend, but her face showed too much character for a secondary role and her body language was all confidence. I felt that any boyfriend of hers would do the worrying.’ During my army service I had often been consulted by squaddies whose wives or girlfriends were playing fast and loose or by ladies asserting that they had been wronged and their hearts broken by one or other of my men, and I had soon learned to distinguish between the gold-diggers and the genuinely wronged.
I was still trying to explain this when we were interrupted. The phone in Henry’s pocket began to bleep. Henry looked at me in surprise as he took it out. The phone was in his pocket for no other purpose than to enable him to summon help in case of illness and was seldom used for anything else. I took it from him.
Beth was on the line, speaking very quickly, which with her was usually a sign that she was over the moon and yet I thought that I could detect apprehension in her voice. ‘I’m so glad I’ve found you. Where are you? In some pub?’
‘Having a very late lunch at the Ferryden Inn,’ I told her. ‘The dog wasn’t Jove. I think it was the bitch somebody was advertising for a few weeks ago. You remember, you read it out to me. She has a litter with her now. What’s happened?’
For once, even the news of a litter failed to divert Beth. ‘You’d better come home straight away. Everything’s more or less under control but we’ve had visitors. I don’t want to say any more, especially over the airwaves. Just come. Quickly. Please.’
I could see that Henry and Coutts had been able to follow at least the gist of what she had said. Henry was nodding violently. ‘Coming straight away,’ I told Beth.
Coutts pushed away the uneaten part of his lunch. ‘I’ll follow you, if I may,’ he said. ‘We haven’t finished our little chat.’
Even had we wanted to leave him behind it would have been difficult to do so without violence. We left the correct money on the table and hurried out to the cars.
*
For the third car in succession, I had promised myself to give the new acquisition a gentle introduction to life with the Cunninghams, but Beth’s summons seemed to outweigh my good intentions. I put my foot down hard and the car responded to my urging with far less complaint than the old one would have made. Less than ten minutes later I squeezed past a badly parked Jaguar, through the gateway of Three Oaks and followed the short gravel drive, between slightly whiskery lawns and occasional beds of flowers much ravaged by puppies, to the front door. Michael Coutts had been in my mirror all the way.
Beth, Daffy, Hannah and a host of young spaniels were waiting for us, grouped before the sunlit house as if for a photograph. Except for the spaniels, the general mood seemed to be indignation mixed with triumph and spiced with guilt. Any attempt to introduce Michael Coutts or to warn of the presence of the press was doomed. When we asked what the fuss was about, our words seemed to uncork a deluge of verbosity. Each seemed determined to tell the story. Even Sam, secured in his pushchair, was trying to give us the benefit of his own version and, in fact, his exposition was hardly less lucid than the point and counterpoint of the others. The pups for once were too busy foraging around an overturned stainless steel bucket to pay us more than token attention.
The chorus, with allowance for the facts that there were very few pauses for breath and that almost every utterance overlapped its neighbours, went something like this:
Beth: Isobel was in the kitchen and I was doing some gardening—
Hannah: While we waited to hear whether you’d found Jove—
Beth: And that blasted mutt Dover was trying to sneak in—
Daffy: So she had the catapult in her pocket. I was making up the pups’ feed—
Hannah: While I was brushing them on the lawn here—
Beth: When that car pulled up at the gate and two men came in. One of them grabbed—
Hannah: Grabbed hold of me and asked—
Beth: In the most atrocious Glasgow accent—
Hannah: Demanded to know where Mr Cochrane was and when I said I didn’t know he asked me where Mr Cochrane’s dog was and when I said I didn’t know that either he started to twist my arm. I can’t think why he picked on me but—
Henry: Because you’re the only one of the three of you who looks as though they might know something. Daffy looks like something from outer space and Beth looks younger than either of you. Now, will you please—
Beth: Anyway, Hannah started to struggle, she was yelping like a pup that’s been trodden on—
Hannah: I was not!
Beth: And I could see that he was hurting her. I couldn’t think what to do so I hit him with a slug.
Henry: Slug? What kind of a slug? Do you mean an airgun slug? You don’t have an—
Beth: No, no, no. I had my slingshot handy only I’d used my last stone on Dover a minute earlier—
Hannah: And you know what a super shot she is when she’s got her eye in—
Beth: Before I had time to think I’d loaded up with what was in my hand at the time and let fly—
Hannah: It was a simply huge slug, all soft and squishy, a monster—
Henry: You mean an invertebrate slug? A shell-less snail?
Hannah: Yes, yes, yes, of course. I had to duck my head out of the way or I’d have got it in the eye—
Daffy: And he opened his mouth to
say something at that moment and I think it went right down his throat—
Beth: No, it couldn’t have done, not all the way down, because he was coughing up bits of it for ages while he staggered round in circles with his eyes watering and the other one came at me and Daffy—
Daffy: And I’d just come out of the house with the puppies’ feed so I hit him as hard as I could with the bucket, first in the middle and then over the head, and he fell down—
Beth: Not badly hurt—
Daffy: Not crippled for life unfortunately, but as well as being laid out for the moment he was covered in warm puppy mash and the pups were hungry—
Hannah: They’re always hungry—
Daffy: And they jumped on him—
Beth: And they’re six months old, they’re not exactly little any more but still hyperactive—
Hannah: And they were jumping all over him and licking him and every time he opened his mouth to roar he got a tongue inside it and that seemed to scunner him more than anything else, I never heard such language in my life, I’m no prude but I was shocked, so I was going to hit him again with the bucket if I could have found a gap between the puppies—
Beth: But Isobel came out of the house and she’d seen all the fuss and flapdoodle going on so she brought your shotgun with her—
I had been letting the babble wash over me while I absorbed the general sense of it, filed away any portions which I might want to repeat, either to the police or for the amusement of my peers, and waited for the punch-line. But things were getting serious and it was high time that I took my part in the discussion. ‘My Dickson?’ I said. ‘How would Isobel get her hands on that?’
‘You went off in a hurry, remember?’ Beth said. ‘You took out the dart-gun and you left your gun safe unlocked.’
The police take the safekeeping condition on the Shotgun Certificate very seriously. I cast a frantic look around in case some lurking policeman was making notes. ‘Don’t ever say that aloud again,’ I said. ‘Don’t even think it. Where is it now? She didn’t put a dent in the barrels? Please tell me that she didn’t let them take it away from her and go off with it!’ Not only was the Dickson a very beautiful and valuable gun, but with the loss of Old Faithful it was the only gun to my name. If the police wanted to take such action they would have a legal battle on their hands to get the Dickson away from me, but it might have been within their power to prevent me from purchasing another gun – and the shotgun is an essential tool in the training of working spaniels.
‘Relax,’ Beth said. ‘It’s quite safe. And Isobel didn’t have any ammunition for it. But they didn’t know that,’ she added soothingly. ‘Isobel’s standing guard over them now. With Old Irma. They were sort of disoriented because nothing like this had ever happened to them before, it must have been like being savaged by a pet gerbil, so they could easily believe that a sweet, middle-aged lady was quite prepared to shoot them.
That much bore the stamp of credibility. ‘Have you called the police?’ I asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘We’ll have to.’
‘Yes, of course we will,’ Beth said impatiently. ‘The question is when. We thought you might want to ask them some questions first.’
I looked around. Reality was slipping away again. ‘Where are they?’
‘Where do you think? In the obvious place. We locked the two men in one of the quarantine runs, the one Jove was in. I took their wallets off them first.’
‘And these,’ Daffy said. She exhibited a cosh, a razor, two flick-knives and a knuckleduster.
I began to see a modicum of method in their madness, but it was not a method which should ever have been displayed to the press. ‘Henry,’ I said, ‘would you and Mr Coutts please help Hannah to gather up the pups and kennel them again?’
‘I’m coming with you,’ Mike Coutts said. ‘If you say that it’s off the record then it’s off the record until I have your permission to write it up. But if you think that I’m playing with puppies while you interview a couple of Glasgow heavies, you’re dreaming.’
‘Nothing was ever further off the record,’ I said. Henry shot me a dirty look but he began to help Hannah to gather up the youngsters. They kept Sam with them.
I took the dart-gun from the car and led the way round the house. It was a wonder that I could walk at all, because I was simultaneously trying to look through the wallets and give Beth a précis of our discussion with Mike Coutts.
*
The area occupied by the quarantine kennels was enclosed on three sides by the old stone walls of what had once been a cattle court, cement rendered on the inside. The fourth side, originally open, was now fenced with welded wire mesh incorporating gates wide enough to admit a vehicle. Within this enclosure, which was now floored neatly in concrete, were the individual kennels and runs, separated from each other by low walls but once again topped and fronted with mesh so that the inmates could at least look out at the forbidden world as an antidote to the boredom of long confinement in quarantine. The dogs in residence were all at the wire, curious at the strange break in their routine.
Isobel stood at the outer gate, an incongruous figure in her pink-framed spectacles with my Dickson Round-action in her hands. ‘Old Irma’, sprawled on the paving outside the runs, looked the more formidable of the pair. Irma, an enormous and ancient German shepherd bitch, was the guard dog belonging to a vehicle repairer who, now that his busy season of icy roads was past, had taken his wife to the Canaries for a sunshine break. The son who always guarded the premises during their absences brought his own guard dogs so that Irma, temporarily redundant, was deposited with us. She had been trained as a guard dog and knew exactly what was required of her. She looked and sounded the epitome of menace. In fact she was half blind, almost toothless and as amiable as a Labrador to her owners and their friends although she was much too lazy to fawn.
‘We told them that Irma has rabies,’ Beth whispered. ‘I said that we’re only waiting for the Veterinary Superintendent to come and certify it before destroying her.’
That, I admitted to myself, made sense. To anyone unfamiliar with the exact symptoms of rabies, Irma would be believable. A pair of gauntlets, a muzzle and other restraining gear at Isobel’s feet suggested that the ladies had gone to some trouble to embellish the story with the sort of details that impart conviction.
The two men were also standing against the wire, although, unlike the other inmates, they were forced to stoop. It was not clear which of them had imitated the other, but a slight natural resemblance had been enhanced. They wore similar suits, once rather too sharp to be smart but now distinctly the worse for wear, and each had a slightly straggling moustache. They were below average height, thin-faced and, even seen at a disadvantage, they looked vicious. Looking at them through two layers of welded mesh and across ten yards of concrete, I thought that I would not have cared to have any member of my entourage meet them at closer quarters on a dark night. My look was met by twin glares from hooded eyes.
‘You can’t do this,’ said the one whose suit was still damp and reeked of puppy mash. I could barely understand him. In general, the Glaswegian speaks good English, diluted by local slang (the Patter) and sometimes made almost incomprehensible by an accent which could crush gravel, unlike other broad Scots who speak a variety of dialects, all derived from the same Germanic tongue but which evolved in not very close parallel with the English language.
‘We’re doing it,’ I said. ‘Who sent you?’
I expected no answer and that’s what I got, except that the first speaker called me a chanty-wrastler. The other man advised him to shut his geggie. Then the two fell stubbornly silent. But I had had some experience of dealing with ‘dumb insolence’ and in the light of the message ‘Miss Johnson’ had given us I could make an informed guess at the answer to my question. ‘What did Nigel Heatherington hire you to do for him?’ I asked.
If they worked for a gang leader they might well not know the name of the clie
nt, but I saw immediately that I had scored a bull. The two men looked anxiously at one another.
‘Who?’ said the speaker, much too late. ‘You better leave us get now, Jimmy. We’re not the right yins to mess with. We could come back and torch the place.’
‘It’s hopeless,’ I said to Beth. ‘These are hard men. They’ll never talk. We’ll just have to get rid of them.’
‘We could let Old Irma bite them,’ Daffy said helpfully. ‘Then, when they’re good and dead, they’d just be a couple of toughs who broke in looking for Mr Cochrane’s dog.’
‘Just a minute!’ said the second speaker. ‘Just a fookin’ minute! You can’t do that to another person. Rabies is a terrible way to die. The worst!’
‘Shut up, you daft nyaff,’ said the other fiercely in a hoarse voice. It was almost the first sound he had made other than a regular clearing of his throat followed by spitting. ‘It’s a bluff. Rabies can take all of six months to show. Any time up till then, we could get the shots.’
I brought into view the weapon I was carrying. ‘Here’s a better way,’ I said. ‘This is a dart-gun. I can put you both to sleep any time I like. How do you fancy waking up to find that you’re out at sea in a leaking boat?’
Their expressions made it clear that they did not fancy it at all. For all the tough talk, I was becoming sure that their boss had only sent the Second or even Third Eleven to confront a household which, as far as he was concerned, was composed of females and a convalescent.
Beth’s quick mind had spotted another lever to use. ‘And how do you come to know so much about rabies?’ she asked sharply. There was a furious silence. She turned her head to look at me. ‘Cook and Simpson, Noel Cochrane’s firm, they have something to do with rabies, don’t they?’
Isobel, who had been practising mounting my Dickson to her shoulder and taking aim at the mid-sections of our captives, to their great discomfort, gave us her full attention. ‘They have a hell of a lot to do with rabies,’ she said. ‘About three years ago, if I remember the guff in the veterinary journals correctly, they came out with a prophylactic treatment much cheaper than its predecessors. Instead of diploid cell vaccine cultured in human tissue culture they had gone back to the old rabbit brain tissue culture and got around the problems of severe reactions that had caused the method to be superseded – at least in this country.
Mad Dogs and Scotsmen (Three Oaks Book 7) Page 10