Dead Weight (Three Oaks Book 11)

by Gerald Hammond

  I was not quite sure what I meant but I had gained his full attention. I was speaking before I had quite thought out what I was going to say. ‘Blitzen will go into the police pound. He’ll miss you. He’ll get a poor diet, minimal care and no companionship. He’ll die of a broken heart. He’ll be sure that you abandoned him in his old age.’

  Recognizing his name, Blitzen came over and leaned against my leg. ‘Blitzen likes you,’ he said wonderingly. ‘If I give up now, you’ll keep him for me? Is that what you mean?’

  The last thing that I wanted was an ageing freeloader in need of regular care, but I had talked myself into it. ‘Come out now without further trouble,’ I said, ‘and I’ll look after Blitzen as long as he lives. Or until you can look after him again yourself.’

  ‘Word of honour?’

  ‘Word of honour.’

  The schoolboy phrase seemed to reassure him. There was another long silence. The crowd at the gate had swollen. They were listening avidly.

  ‘All right,’ Bovis said suddenly. ‘Tell them to cool it. I’m coming out.’

  *

  It was all over bar the shouting, most of which took place in court. When Roland Bovis was brought to trial in Dundee, I was not required as a witness. I was too busy to spend whole days in the courtroom but the trial was fully reported in the Courier and elsewhere.

  The shouting, or at least the haranguing in a booming voice that rattled the windows, was mostly the work of the advocate for the defence. He poured scorn on the circumstantial evidence. Isobel, who landed the job of giving the evidence about fleas, came in for her share but I heard that she stood her ground. It was the forensic scientific evidence which counted most heavily against him. In particular, the water butt had overflowed on Mrs Horner’s enforced entry, wetting Bovis’s shoes with water tainted by the weed-killer, fertilizer, foliar feed and several insecticides that she habitually used. The combination turned out to be unique and traces were found on his shoes and the cuffs of a pair of trousers. The jury took several hours to arrive at a verdict but in the end he was convicted.

  I still cannot work up a dislike of Bovis although I know that his crime was a savage act committed for purely selfish motives and that, through my own rashness, I came very near to death at his hands. There are those in the village who feel that Mrs Horner should have been drowned at birth and that anyone caring to remedy the omission at a later date could not be all bad. I do know that he receives regular parcels of comforts from a group of supporters and his house is kept repaired and tenanted, ready for his return some day in the still rather remote future.

  I am left with one genuine regret. Blitzen was not with us for long. He did not die of a broken heart. He was being walked by one of the juniors alongside the road when he jerked his lead out of the unready hand in order to chase a cat across the road in front of an approaching van. The cat made it. Blitzen, being old and stiff, did not. It could be argued that I had kept my promise to Bovis, but I still feel guilty. That is why I sometimes make a contribution towards the food parcels.

  Detective Inspector Blosson took early retirement on health grounds rather than face a disciplinary hearing over an investigation carried out sloppily and with bias. He is now in Aberdeen and working for ex-Inspector Burrard who, I understand, keeps him firmly in line.

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