Dead Weight (Three Oaks Book 11)

by Gerald Hammond

  Another man came into the bar, nodded to us and took a stool at the far end. I knew his face although for the moment I couldn’t place him. Mrs Hebden went to serve him.

  ‘Coming back to this,’ Alistair said plaintively, brandishing his letter, ‘should I do anything about it?’

  ‘Definitely no,’ Henry said. ‘Don’t answer it. You’d be in danger of turning a nothing into a something. Swallow your pride and ignore it.’

  I rather disagreed and I was about to advise Alistair to put on record at least a letter denying any such offence but Henry, with a sidelong glance at the newcomer, frowned me into silence.

  ‘And talking of swallowing,’ Isobel said, ‘John, I was to tell you that your meal’s on the table.’

  I gathered my dogs and my excess burden of draught Guinness, nodded to the stranger and set off for home.

  *

  The garden at Three Oaks, like the paddock which I had bought with the rest of the property, had largely been taken over by the kennels and their runs, four to a group, and by such other essentials as a large rabbit pen; but we had managed to retain a vegetable plot behind the old farmhouse and some lawns with adjacent beds and shrubberies at the front and one side. Near the corner, beneath a silver birch, a trestle table was installed in fine weather and here, on our motley collection of folding chairs, we assembled next day to take a snack lunch and compare notes. There was just enough breeze to keep midges away but the food had to be covered against the droppings of a family of blackbirds which had claimed the tree above.

  Our junior helpers had been excused work for an hour or two to allow the heat of the day to pass and Sam, our young son, had been taken to lunch with a friend, so we were an adult company – very adult in the case of Henry, who had walked over to join Isobel. In addition to Beth and myself were our two kennel-maids, Hannah and Daffy.

  The day being Saturday, our house guest was also present. Bruce Hastie was a thin, dark man in his early thirties. He was Beth’s cousin and a recently fledged partner in a substantial firm of Dundee solicitors. He was in the process of purchasing a house nearby (to which he hoped to bring his present fiancée in the fullness of time) but the agreed date for possession was still several weeks away and, in a moment of rare expansiveness, we had offered him the use of our spare room until he could move in. We had rejected his offer to share in the running cost of the household, with the result that he spent much of his evenings and weekends hard at work about the kennels out of a sense of obligation – which was, from our point of view, a far better bargain.

  The hot topics were soon disposed of. Macbeth, a huge golden retriever whose owners were holidaying in the Canary Islands, had taken badly to being left in kennels and had been trying to demolish and eat his kennel, his bed and Hannah, but a mild tranquillizer in his feed seemed to have solved our problem; and a potential outbreak of fleas introduced by a so-called Jack Russell terrier (Jack Russell, strictly speaking, is a standard and not a breed) had been nipped in the bud. Fleas are a perennial risk in kennels and can spread like wildfire. Owners and visitors are not impressed by an array of furiously scratching dogs and the well-being of the hosts can be seriously affected, so the risk is treated seriously. Isobel will treat any flea-ridden local pet free of charge with preparations of her own devising, arguing that the expenditure is modest and the disruption negligible compared with eternally treating the much larger number of animals on our premises and regularly sanitizing the kennels and runs.

  That subject put aside for the thousandth time, there was leisure to chat and I was curious. ‘Why did you shush me last night when that man walked into the bar?’ I asked Henry. The previous evening, I had told Beth the story of Alistair and Mrs Horner as an amusing anecdote. She must have passed the tale on to Bruce, Hannah and Daffy, because nobody seemed to be in any doubt about the context.

  ‘Didn’t you know him?’ Henry asked.

  ‘I know hardly any men in the village, except the shooting men and one or two who come into the pub,’ I said. ‘I know some of the wives who I’ve met dog-walking, but I couldn’t tell you their names, only the names of their dogs.

  ‘It’s come back to me that I’d met that chap once before. He came into the pub and we got talking about Devolution and possible Independence. I said that we Scots weren’t a nation but a whole lot of tribes who never had got along together. I pointed out that accents and dialects change about every ten miles. He went further. He said that you could tell whether a population considered itself united in nationhood because its songs gave the game away. England and Wales, he said, have songs about the countries but, outside of London, very few songs about places. Scotland and Ireland have few songs about the countries but almost every city and most of the small towns are mentioned in songs. Everywhere from “I Belong to Glasgow” to “The Ball of Kirriemuir”. The same, as he pointed out, is even more so in America; and apart from “Rule Britannia” and “The British Grenadiers” we couldn’t think of a single song about Britain as a whole, which goes to show how much of a nation we Brits are. I’ve been thinking about it ever since and he’s right.’

  ‘Be that as it may, and I’m not commenting until I’ve had a chance to consult the Song Book, the man was Roland Bovis,’ Henry told me. ‘He has some sort of connection with Mrs Horner. I don’t know what, but I’ve seen them talking amicably enough. Maybe they’re related.’

  Daffy, without seeming unduly curious, always knows everything about everybody. ‘They’re not related,’ she said. ‘He’s a neighbour and he’s in partnership with her nephew. The nephew lives in Dundee but Mr Bovis moved into the village recently, where Mrs Tolliver used to live, next door to Mrs Horner. The two men have an upmarket antique shop in Broughty Ferry. It says The Snuff Box over the door but it’s usually known as Shute and Bovis.’

  ‘I know the place,’ Henry said. ‘I looked in the window the other day when I was over at my dentist. They have some good stuff in the window, but overpriced. The shop looked half empty. If Bovis hadn’t walked in on us yesterday, I was going on to say that Mrs Horner’s making enemies, right, left and centre.’

  Hannah was looking puzzled. ‘Is she a stocky, red-faced woman who wears tweedy sort of things even in this weather and puts on good jewellery just to go to the corner shop?’

  ‘Add that she has a face like a frog,’ said Daffy, ‘and that’s the one.’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen her around,’ Hannah said. ‘And not long ago I bumped into her in the door of the shop. Literally bumped, I mean. She helped me to pick up some things I’d dropped and she was as nice as ninepence.’

  I happened to be looking at Bruce. He seemed about to speak but changed his mind.

  ‘Obviously you didn’t have one of the dogs with you at the time,’ Isobel said. (Hannah shook her head.) ‘I gather that she’s quite rational on any other subject. A backstabber and a general pain in the neck, but comparatively rational. She just happens to have a phobia about dogs. It’s her misfortune that almost everybody else around here has at least one much-loved dog and often more. She’s quite capable of stopping some innocent dog-walker in the street and ranting at them.’

  Once again, Daffy knew the reason. ‘Her husband’s sight was failing before he died,’ she said. ‘Somebody told her about Toxocara canis and she got it into her head that that’s what he died of. Not that she liked her husband very much, from what I’ve heard, but he was hers and she doesn’t part willingly with anything she owns.’

  ‘Is that what it’s about?’ Isobel said. ‘She got on to me about Toxocara once and I gave her the facts. I told her that you can’t catch it except by swallowing the eggs excreted by a dog, cat or fox and nobody ever died of it anyway. I said that it’s rare for the sight of even one eye to be impaired, that several times more children are blinded by fireworks every Guy Fawkes Night than by Toxocara in a year and that all the dog-owners around here religiously pick up the dog-doodies and worm their pets regularly.’

  Bruce made a sound o
f amusement. ‘How do you pick up a dog-turd religiously?’ he enquired. ‘Or are you referring to the power of prayer?’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean,’ Isobel retorted. ‘You lawyers make fortunes by nit-picking over the meanings of words and I suppose it becomes a habit. Anyway, I pointed out that almost every known case of Toxocara had resulted from a child playing at home with the family pup, so a little domestic hygiene would accomplish more than all the harassment of dog owners in the world. But I had the impression that her ears slammed shut whenever I said anything she didn’t want to believe.’

  ‘Was that this morning?’ Beth asked. ‘I thought that I saw her old banger at the door.’

  ‘No, it was weeks ago. She brought her old moggy to me for a check-up this morning,’ said Isobel. ‘I told her yet again that there’s nothing wrong with her cat except old age. I gave her some dietary supplements which may or may not do some good. Dogs weren’t mentioned or I might have tried again. Honestly, how she has the nerve to rant against dogs, indulge in a good, old fashioned slanging match with me in the street and then bring her cat here, of all places, for veterinary treatment I’ll never know.’

  ‘It’s nearer,’ Beth said. ‘And probably cheaper. Well, back to the old treadmill, I suppose.’ She began to gather the dishes.

  ‘That cat hates nearly all dogs with a deep and deadly hatred,’ Isobel said. ‘That may be part of the problem. But that cat, geriatric or not, can see off any dog in Fife.’

  ‘Like owner, like cat,’ I said.

  *

  Behind the house and only one long field away there is a long and narrow wood where, with the full permission of the landowner and the grudging but unnecessary agreement of the tenant farmer, I am permitted to shoot rabbit and pigeon and to train dogs. On a hot afternoon, the wood is more shaded than the Moss, so I gathered my three pupils for the afternoon and headed there.

  ‘Little and often’ is the prime rule in dog training, and as it was cool under the trees, we were making good progress, and by concentrating on one dog at a time, leaving the other pair attached to a shady tree, I was paying at least lip-service to that rule. The wood was partly open and so was well undergrown with bracken and blaeberries. These were young dogs, siblings, sharing their first experience of being put to hunting a pattern among the heady scents of rabbits. After the first minute or two the rabbits were all underground, but I fired the occasional blank cartridge through the adapter in my shotgun and gave the occasional retrieve of a fur-covered dummy. It seemed that three simultaneous pennies had dropped. My pleasure was second only to that of the dogs and I was glad of the excuse to stay in the shade and ram the lesson home.

  Young dogs are easily distracted. I was tempted to suspend the lessons when the sound of footsteps approached, brushing through the bracken on either side of the narrow but well-trodden path. On the other hand, they would soon be expected to work while ignoring all distractions, including the presence of strangers, so I decided to stick to both routine and discipline until the stranger had passed. The newcomer, however, not only made his appearance but stopped to watch while making the little throat-clearing noises of someone who hesitates to interrupt but would like to catch your eye. Before looking round, I sat the dogs and dared them to move again.

  The new arrival was a man who I had occasionally passed while dog-training on the Moss. He was a cheerful, tubby man who could have been any age between fifty and seventy but was certainly retired – from one of the professions, to judge from his manners and turnout. I had never seen him without a camera so I judged that he made a hobby of photography and took it seriously, but instead of his usual Pentax I noticed that he was nursing a new-looking digital camera.

  ‘It’s Captain Cunningham, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘Mister Cunningham,’ I said. ‘I stopped being a captain some years ago and I don’t see any need to pretend otherwise.’

  ‘And I’m Allan Carmichael.’ We shook hands. ‘I have a new toy,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I try to capture some of the spirit of your dogs?’

  ‘Not in the least, if I can get prints of your best shots. I’m always in need of good photographs and it’s not easy to work the dogs while using a camera. My wife usually cuts their heads off.’

  ‘I’ll try not to do that,’ he said modestly and we passed a pleasant half-hour trying to get each of the dogs to perform to best advantage for the camera. He seemed happy to take shot after shot. ‘Film doesn’t cost anything,’ he explained. ‘When I’ve filled it up, I dump it into the computer and start again.’

  ‘I was admiring your toy,’ I said. ‘I’ll come and admire the prints when they’re ready. Where do you live?’

  ‘I live near the Pit.’ The ‘Pit’, also sometimes known as the ‘Quarry’ is in fact a large sand-pit beyond the Moss which had been reopened recently to supply sand to the building industry. Traditionally this had been obtained from the River Tay, but Tay sand could be very salty, resulting in stained and damaged work. Builders who wished to play it safe used pit sand.

  ‘But,’ he said, ‘you needn’t trouble yourself. Here’s another advantage of the system.’ And he showed me how the viewfinder was also a miniature viewing screen. He flicked through the pictures that he had taken and I was able to pick out a dozen excellent shots of the dogs at work and at rest. I promised him a duck or a pheasant in due course in return for prints of each. He chose the pheasant and we parted on amicable terms.

  When at last I made my way down to the gate between the field and our garden, the shadows were beginning to lengthen and a pleasant coolness was creeping over the land.

  Beth met me at the corner of the house. She was carrying a puppy in her arms and had another on a leash. Her eyes were bright with excitement. In a checked shirt and cut-off jeans she still looked like a teenager. ‘You won’t believe what’s happened,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you later. There are clients waiting – a couple. Their son’s a member of a rough shoot and they’re thinking of getting a trained spaniel for his twenty-first birthday.’

  Beth was quite right, of course. The firm’s revenue comes from several sources but the sale of trained dogs comes high on the list. Suppressing any impatience, I spent an hour with the man and his wife. They were quite knowledgeable, only slightly shaken by the cost of a trained dog and satisfied when I explained the months of keep and training that had gone into the product. I put Nepita through her paces on the lawn. They held a whispered consultation and concluded the deal. I agreed to keep her until the great day, but all the while I was wondering at Beth’s barely suppressed animation. It could have been due to anything from an outbreak of mange to a phone call inviting us to dine at Balmoral Castle.

  I found Beth in the kitchen, struggling to prepare the evening meal. This was due to Isobel who, because she hated the claustrophobic office, had brought the paperwork out to the big kitchen table; and the kennel-maids whose preparation of the dogs’ dinners had overflowed from the former scullery next door. Henry, who still had a finger in many pies, was away on business and Bruce was fetching supplies from Cupar or they would have joined the throng and Beth, I am sure, would have given up in disgust. Beth likes but seldom gets the kitchen to herself.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘What is it that’s happened that I’m never going to guess?’

  ‘Two of the boys came back in a high old state of excitement,’ Beth said. ‘They’ve knocked off and gone back to see what they can find out.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ I asked in the faint hope of goosing Beth into jumping forward to the punchline. I should have known better. Beth tells a story in her own sequence or not at all.

  ‘No, of course that’s not it,’ she said irritably. ‘They’ll be coming back for their money later.’

  Daffy and Hannah, I could see, were hiding smiles. They always enjoyed my abortive attempts to get Beth to the point. Isobel was more helpful. She looked up from her papers. ‘The police were at Mrs Horner’s house at lunchtime,’ she told me
.

  ‘Who’s she been complaining about this time?’ I asked.

  Now that the main storyline was out, Beth was ready to speak out rather than risk losing her audience. She threw Isobel a reproachful glance. ‘It must be more than that,’ she said. ‘Dennis lives in Old Ford Road and he’d taken Steven home to lunch. They say that there were several cars and a tape across Mrs Horner’s gate boxing in a bit of the pavement. They went back to Dennis’s house, two doors further along, and looked out of an upstairs window but they couldn’t see more than just heads over the wall. The police seemed to be milling around in her garden.’

  ‘Sounds serious,’ I said. ‘Do you suppose she’s been in an accident?’

  Isobel never hesitates to say aloud what’s in all our minds. ‘We should be so lucky. Somebody’s probably been pinching fruit out of her garden and she’s called out all the forces of law and order to trap the culprit. She seems to have a very strong sense of what’s due to her.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s been running an illicit still,’ Daffy said, ‘or growing pot in that big greenhouse.’ She went out to call Sam and Audrey, the other two junior helpers, who had been happily cleaning the last of the dog-mess off the grass with the aid of a powerful but odorous machine. Under her stern eye they washed their hands thoroughly and were set to helping with all the dishes and the various diets.

  When the four trolleys (ex-supermarket, rescued from the River Eden) had squeaked and clattered away, Beth said, ‘They wouldn’t tape the place off unless they were searching for something, would they?’

  ‘Probably not,’ I said.

  Beth inflicted serious injury on an inoffensive courgette from our garden. ‘Don’t be so aggravating,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think anything,’ I said. ‘Calm down. I’ve no doubt we’ll have all the rumours in an hour, we’ll know which of them are rubbish a day later and we’ll know all about everything in the fullness of time. Why waste precious brainpower in guesswork when we don’t have enough facts?’