The last thing I wanted was for a nervous old lady to call the police. ‘He’s very friendly,’ I said. ‘Quite harmless. He never ever bites. The worst he could give you would be a nasty lick.’
I heard a small chuckle. ‘So I discovered. I gave him a meal of my leftovers and he wolfed it down. Of course,’ she added, ‘he may be visiting a dozen other houses as well.’
‘Very probably,’ I said. Labradors are entirely gut-oriented. A popular rule of thumb is that you can safely feed a puppy all that it will eat in ten minutes. That might be true of other breeds but in my experience ten seconds is enough for a Labrador pup while, on the other hand, I have had springers that needed to be coaxed and wheedled into eating at all. ‘Does he seem all right?’ I asked.
‘He seems very fit. Nice shiny coat and a moist nose. And so friendly. I was hoping he was a stray that I could adopt.’
‘Definitely not, if it’s the right dog,’ I said. It sounded as though there were no symptoms of rabies. ‘He’s the ewe lamb of a devoted owner. He was in a car when it was stolen. I’d better come and see you.’
‘I’ll be in all morning,’ she said. I could hear the disappointment.
‘If he’s the right dog,’ I said, ‘there’ll be a reward. And I’ll help you to adopt another Lab from the dog’s home.’
‘Would you?’ she said wistfully. ‘I’d like that.’
Henry and Mike were ready to move. My half of the conversation and my evident excitement had been more than enough to alert them. ‘Possible sighting of Jove at Ardunie,’ I said. ‘He seems to be making it a morning breakfast call and he’s already made today’s visit, but it’s worth a poke around. Are you both coming?’
They were both coming. Beth, I think, was glad to see the back of us. Mike offered to take his car so that Beth and the girls would not feel stranded.
‘Mine’s already equipped for carrying a quarantined animal,’ I pointed out. ‘You couldn’t even get the travelling box into yours.’
‘Then I’ll leave my keys on your hall table,’ Mike said. ‘They’re welcome to the use of my car.’
Without the crate but with the travelling box in the tail, we might not be legal for carrying a quarantined animal but at least we could use the back seats. If we found Jove, it would be a sign that our luck was running too high for any serious clashes with authority. Mike got in behind us. ‘Where is Ardunie?’ he asked as I settled myself in the driving seat.
‘A village near the Tay,’ I said absently. I was struggling with a recalcitrant key-ring, trying to remove the spare car key which jingled annoyingly while the car was in motion. ‘In fact, it’s not far from Lindhaven, where my old car was dumped, so it’s hopeful.’
The two keys separated. I dropped the spare into the glove-box and we set off.
Despite the gloomiest prognostication of the forecasters it was a lovely morning, one of those spring mornings when you can be sure that winter will never come again, but I was in no mood to appreciate it. I wanted only to get on with the quest. Once Jove was recovered I would have fulfilled my responsibilities. From then on Noel Cochrane and all the others, police included, could work out their own damnations.
Mrs Rodgers lived in the last house of the village, a bungalow the back windows of which looked down a long slope of fields to woodland fronting the Tay. She was an elderly lady but still pretty and, like Henry, was delighted to have a break in the monotony of retirement. She took us into the back garden and showed us where she had fed her visitor. She showed us the bowl she had used, a souvenir of a Shetland collie which had died three winters previously. She invited us inside for coffee which was already prepared. I accepted for all of us. I wanted time to think.
Before we went inside, I tried a blast on the silent whistle. It set the local dogs barking but failed to conjure up a glossy black Labrador; and Jove’s deep bowff was not to be heard among the others. So it seemed that he had not already been adopted by one of the neighbours.
The lounge was bright with floral wallpaper and a thousand ornaments and pictures. It had a broad window overlooking the fields, the woods and the Tay which, so far upstream, was down to a mere mile and a half wide. The hills in the distance rose out of a faint mist. They could have been cardboard cut-outs. The coffee was percolated and very good, and it was accompanied by small scones and pancakes and home-made raspberry jam. It was not long since my breakfast but, like the others, I found myself tucking in with appreciative little noises. Mrs Rodgers seemed pleased. I guessed that she had devoted her life to looking after her menfolk and now missed having someone to mother.
‘I’ve asked around the neighbours,’ she said. ‘Your dog has called at most of the houses and been fed by at least half of them.’
‘He’ll be getting as fat as a pig,’ I said sadly. ‘Were all his calls made in the morning?’
‘All of them. He seems to be a morning person.’
I decided to take a calculated risk. ‘I think the best thing to do would be for us to come back first thing tomorrow,’ I said.
She nodded brightly. ‘I could put a collar on him if he comes before you’re here.’
I nearly decided to invoke the police after all. This sweet old lady wanted to lay hands on an escapee from quarantine. Even if Jove proved clear, any hint that I had delayed in calling in the police, the local Divisional Veterinary Officer and the council would bring down the wrath of all three authorities on my head and those of my partners. But, judging from the happenings of the previous day, if an official search did happen upon Jove his chances of survival would be on a par with those of an airman whose parachute has failed to open . . .
‘He might be nervous of a stranger trying to get hold of him,’ I said, ‘and then he probably wouldn’t come back again. Don’t worry. We’ll be outside your back door from early morning. Ignore any sounds you hear. We’ll let you know when we’ve got him.’
‘If you’re quite sure . . .’ she said.
‘I’m sure.’ Mike was still working his way through the pancakes or I would have dragged us away. Mrs Rodgers had probably heard a whisper about a dog that had escaped from quarantine. Rather than give her time to connect the two incidents, I tried to change the subject. Miss Johnson’s words came back to me. ‘Are there any bothies around here?’ I asked her. None of the crosses made on my map by my friend the water bailiff had been within ten miles of Ardunie.
‘There used to be one or two, down by the river,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Just shacks that the anglers used for taking shelter. I think they’ve been cleared away now. Unless you mean Mr Spurway’s place? He calls it “The Bothy” but it’s more of a weekend cottage and a pretty luxurious one at that, so I’m told. You can almost see its roof from here.’
I must have goggled at her. During the worst of the long illness which had ended my days in the army, I had suffered occasional hallucinations. As the only available means of retaining a grasp on reality, I had developed the habit of weighing any very unusual occurrence before reacting to it. I was still wondering whether what I was hearing was real when Henry beat me to the obvious question.
‘By Mr Spurway, you mean Jake Spurway?’
‘I believe that his first name’s Jacob,’ Mrs Rodgers said. From her tone I guessed that Jake Spurway was not a favourite with her.
‘Of Cook and Simpson?’ Henry persisted. He sounded as incredulous as I felt. It is not often that badly needed information bypasses all other seekers after truth and jumps up and down in front of us, making faces.
‘I think so.’
‘He has a weekend cottage here? For fishing? And he calls it “The Bothy”?’
‘Yes, yes and yes.’ Mrs Rodgers was beginning to sound impatient. ‘Although I don’t think that he’s much of a fisherman. His brother used to come here for the fishing and stay for weeks at a time – that was before he was drowned, of course,’ Mrs Rodgers said, in case there should be any misunderstanding on that point. ‘He was a gentleman, Mr Paul Spurway. But not sens
ible enough to leave a will behind him. There was trouble in the family over the heads of it, I heard, and the upshot was that his brother Jacob took “The Bothy” for his share or part of his share of the estate. He comes through just as often as his brother ever did but he seldom comes alone.’
Here, clearly, was the root of her disapproval. ‘Girls?’ Henry asked in a shocked voice.
Mrs Rodgers nodded severely. ‘Seldom the same girl twice. And the salmon isn’t all that he’s fishing for, I’ll be bound,’ she said.
Henry turned his face away to hide the gleam in his eye. ‘I hope that’s all that he catches,’ he said solemnly.
Mrs Rodgers either missed or ignored the double entendre. ‘Yes indeed,’ she said.
The visiting Glaswegians had seemed to know nothing about any bothy, but their information had come from Mr Heatherington and it was believable, I decided, that the managing director of a large concern should know nothing of an employee’s love-nest while at the same time his own secretary was well acquainted with it.
Mrs Rodgers pointed out a roof peeping through the treetops in the distance. We tore ourselves away from the delights of her coffee-table and returned to the car.
‘Let’s go and take a look,’ Henry said.
I have never been one for precipitate action; impetuous infantry officers were a bad insurance risk and angels have been known to rush in where I fear to tread. The police would doubtless be pleased to learn that Jake Spurway had a weekend home in the vicinity. On the other hand, I wanted to have a very cautious look for Jove before letting loose another firing squad.
‘Let’s do that,’ I said, ‘but carefully.’
‘Miss Whatshername said that there was nobody there,’ Henry pointed out.
‘There may have been nobody there at the time she visited,’ I said. ‘That’s not to say that they’re not there now.’
*
Following Mrs Rodgers’ directions, we turned down towards the estuary through open farmland and made several turns onto ever more minor roads which soon reduced to a single, narrow lane with demarked passing places. It entered the trees which at that point bordered the estuary. A little further on we arrived at the mouth of what seemed to be a rough drive patched with gravel. There was no gate and no sign, but Mrs Rodgers’ directions had been specific.
I reversed into the drive and drove back to the mouth of a track which I had noticed in passing. ‘I’m going to park here,’ I said. ‘I don’t know about you two, but I intend to approach very circumspectly on foot through the trees. There’s some person or persons going around loose who’ve already knocked two people on the head, one of them fatally. Such things have been known to go in threes.’
‘Discretion being the better part of valour,’ Mike said, ‘I’m sticking with you.’
‘The police may have heard about this place by now and picked him up,’ said Henry. But he sat tight while I inched the car along the narrow track until it was hidden from the road.
‘If the police had got him,’ said Mike, ‘I would have heard.’
I shooed Henry out and lifted the back seat.
‘God’s sake!’ Henry said. ‘You can’t go visiting somebody’s weekend cottage while bearing arms. You’ll get every firearms certificate in the Region revoked.’
I showed him what I had taken out. ‘Tranquillizer dart-gun,’ I said. ‘I have reason to believe that I may meet up with a dog which has escaped from quarantine. And both of you remember that I said it. Officially, we’re looking for Jove.’ All the same, I again filled the first dart with a load of tranquillizer that would have knocked out a St Bernard or an overweight politician. As an afterthought, I put Jove’s rubber kangaroo in my pocket.
The others seemed content to follow my lead. The cart-track brought us out in a grassy field separated from the Tay by the broad belt of woodland. Ewes glared at us and gathered in the furthest corner, suspicious of our intentions towards their lambs, but we were hidden from the village by a swell of ground. For all I could see, the driveway might be close to that side of the woodland and I could make out the occasional glint of water between the trees, which suggested that we could easily be in full view of somebody screened by the shadows of the wood. Rather than expect Henry to move in a crouch I followed a line twenty yards out from the dry-stone wall, where a long dip helped to hide us.
Almost immediately, I began to glimpse the slated roof among the trees ahead. The dry stone wall enclosing the trees was topped with a single strand of rusty barbed wire but we came on a dilapidated narrow gate, provided for some purpose long forgotten. After a painstaking scrutiny of the trees, I untwisted the wires which had held the sagging gate closed and led the way through. The trees were deciduous and sparse, allowing patchy daylight to reach the ground, and any path that had ever been planned was now overgrown; but cattle or sheep had invaded the wood from time to time and made their own pathways. We followed in their tracks. Mike was cursing under his breath as mud and dung fouled his city shoes and brambles snatched at his suit. Henry was in his customary tweeds and stout boots and I had dressed, as usual, on the assumption that before the day was over I might have to crawl through the bushes after a lost dummy or a confused puppy.
The house stood in a clearing. Little attempt had been made at gardening, but the space was rocky and bright with assorted heathers and baby conifers. A hedge of yew had been planted around three sides of the clearing in the hope of providing a windbreak and although the plants had not exactly thrived in the thin soil there was some cover for our approach. The fourth side was open, with a tree-framed view to the Tay and the hills beyond.
The house itself was a mixture of ages. It seemed to have begun life as a rough, stone-built barn or cart-shed. This had been re-roofed, perhaps because of neglect, with a much tidier cladding of slates. Quite recently, windows and a door had been knocked out, with sills and lintels of concrete. The overall effect was eccentric but pleasing, even humorous, like that of a man trying to retain his dignity in a mixture of his gardening clothes and evening dress.
We came to a halt behind the thickest part of the hedge and studied the house. It sat there blandly, telling us nothing. There was no smoke visible at the only chimney, no milk on the doorstep, no paper in the letter-slot, no movement at the windows, no sound of music, no smell of cooking. The only sign of life was that a pair of swallows were nesting under the eaves. The house might have been empty for a year or be filled with muggers awaiting prey. There could even have been a comparatively innocent couple, sleeping late or enjoying each other’s bodies. There was no way of telling. Anything was possible.
I checked that the ground was dry and seated myself, leaning back against a moderately comfortable rock.
‘You’re not going to take root there, are you?’ Henry asked.
‘Time spent in reconnaissance,’ I retorted, ‘is seldom wasted.’ It had been a favourite dictum of my old general, the only wise words that I ever heard him utter.
‘But there’s nobody there.’ We were out of the breeze in the wood. An insect buzzed around us and Henry waved angrily at it.
‘Then why are you whispering? And do try to keep still,’ I told him.
Henry dried up. He and Mike found seats and we kept watch through the threadbare twigs. Henry lit one of his rare cigars. Against the risk of the smoke being spotted from the house, it kept the midges at bay. Birdsong returned.
‘There’s no sign of a car,’ Henry said peevishly.
‘The way he – or she or it or they – has been operating,’ said Mike, ‘he’ll be planning to steal another one as soon as he’s finished whatever he’s doing here. That’s what he’s saving up number-plates for.’
‘If he’s here,’ said Henry. ‘And if we’re talking about the same person.’
‘One of us could go and knock on the door,’ Mike said.
‘Are you volunteering?’
Mike shook his head.
I shifted myself and lay back, with the dart-gun ac
ross my chest and ready to hand. Crows were circling high above the treetops, much too cautious to settle while there were still men within gunshot. Their movement was hypnotic and I may have dozed off. I was roused by the alarm call of a blackbird. I could hear a car moving slowly along the drive, its engine jerking as the car lurched over the potholes.
‘Don’t move,’ I whispered. In peripheral vision, movement draws attention when a motionless figure would remain unobserved. Henry and Mike, who had struck up a rapport, froze in the middle of a listless game of Paper Scissors Stone.
I sat up very slowly until I could peer out through the hedge. A Japanese hatchback with sporty lines was pulled up in front of the house and Miss Johnson (presumably alias for Kate Otterburn) got out. She stood for a moment, a stalwart amazon, straightening her skirt and patting her hair. She leaned back into the car for a moment, allowing us a glimpse of a pair of muscular thighs, and came up with a ladylike umbrella. I thought that she had more faith in the weather forecasts than in her own powers of observation. I was wrong.
The house door was suddenly open, framing a man. He was large, almost filling the doorway. His cannonball head was bald except for a fringe of dark hair worn short, but his face, despite a bold jaw and black eyebrows, was that of a man of no more than thirty. He was smartly but casually dressed in fawn slacks, a white shirt open at the neck and a sports jacket. His movements were fit and well sprung, the mirror image of hers. The overall impression that he gave was of toughness and self-reliance.
‘You weren’t followed?’ he demanded.
‘Not a chance!’ she said gaily. ‘The police questioned me for hours, my darling, and as far as they’re concerned I’m as innocent as a babe unborn.’
His forceful face relaxed slightly.
‘And you. How did you get on?’
He grinned suddenly, moved forward out of the shelter of his doorway and held up a small, plastic envelope. ‘I’ve got it! A microfiche tucked under his toupee.’
‘Really?’ She sounded amused. ‘I didn’t even know that he wore a toupee.’
Mad Dogs and Scotsmen (Three Oaks Book 7) Page 12