‘Should I leave the room?’ Henry asked without moving.
‘Not unless he wants you to,’ Isobel said. ‘Rest your ancient bones.’
E.J. Rodgers turned out to be a man of middle age, so perfectly turned out that he would almost have put Sergeant Ewell to shame. He belonged, I thought, under a glass bell. His black hair was parted along a geometrically perfect line. He was so freshly shaved that I was sure that he kept a battery razor in his car. The dark suit, white shirt and club tie had to be as nearly brand new as made no difference. Even his shoes seemed to have crossed our slightly muddy gravel in the rain without marring their perfect polish. Looking at him, one expected his features to be equally unblemished, but his face was slightly top-heavy. It was unbalanced by a bulbous nose and bore the scars of past acne.
Beth hung his dark coat and hat beside the boiler. I got up and turned one of the fireside chairs round, one-handed, so that he could face us. He thanked me and sat, careful not to stretch the perfect creases out of his trousers.
‘You don’t mind if we meet in the kitchen?’ I said. ‘It’s cheerier in here.’
‘And less formal,’ he said. ‘This is very suitable. A pleasant room. One feels at home.’ His voice was deep with a faint trace of Glasgow in the vowels. He smiled briefly and got down to business. ‘I asked to see you together because my errand is confidential and I’m advised that you three partners – plus Mr Kitts,’ he added in Henry’s direction, ‘keep no secrets from each other. Also, I am to invite any one of the partners to undertake a . . . an errand on behalf of a client. I can speak in confidence? The matter is in no sense illegal,’ he added quickly.
‘On that understanding,’ I said, ‘we’ll listen to you in confidence. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll do whatever you ask.’
‘That I accept, of course. Very well. On behalf of a client, I have obtained the springer spaniel bitch which was found in St Andrews and which you, Mrs Kitts, later identified as Salmon of Glevedale.’
‘We called her Anon,’ Beth said.
Mr Rodgers nodded politely. ‘My client is at present in the United States,’ he said, ‘and wishes the . . . Anon to be delivered there. She could be sent by air as livestock, but there have been cases in which animals have been neglected in some warehouse.’
‘There are firms which specialise in that sort of thing,’ I said. ‘They send a courier with the animal. Grooms with horses and that sort of thing.’ My sentences sounded oddly truncated when compared with Mr Rodgers’s rolling periods.
‘My client is aware of that but is not confident that such a firm could be certain to produce somebody who was reliable, caring and discreet. And also, if it should prove necessary, enterprising enough to overcome any obstacles such as red tape.’
We considered the proposition in silence, exchanging glances rather than words. My first instinct was that one of us should accept. I could only too easily envisage the distress of a dog, separated from its late owner and despatched among strangers to some unknown fate. On the other hand, what seemed an extravagant way to transport a dog would make more sense as a trap – except that a trap would surely have been set for an individual, not for an unspecified member of a partnership.
Isobel’s mind seemed to be working in the same direction. ‘Before we go any further,’ she said, ‘do you have any proof of your identity?’
For the first time, Mr Rodgers produced a full-blown smile. ‘Very sensible,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’ll find something in here to satisfy you.’ The question seemed to have been expected. From an inside pocket he produced a leather folder and handed it to Isobel. Its plastic envelopes held an assortment of credit and membership cards. With a gold fountain pen he signed his name on a slip of paper and passed it across. ‘None of those cards bears my photograph,’ he said, ‘but you can compare signatures. If you still have any reservations, we can phone my office.’
Isobel returned the folder. ‘You are E.J. Rodgers,’ she said, ‘WS, FCIArb and all the rest. We, on the other hand, are spaniel breeders and trainers. We’re not in the transportation business.’
‘But you do have a certain reputation for getting dogs to the right place at the right time and in the peak of condition,’ Mr Rodgers said.
‘You seem to know rather a lot about us,’ I said. ‘Have we been investigated? Or spied on?’
‘Certainly not. One of my partners – Evan Lewis – judges at spaniel trials. I am authorised to offer a fee of a thousand US dollars over and above your travelling costs, for an errand which should take no more than three or four days at the most.’
A thousand dollars – about six hundred pounds at that time – represented a substantial part of the price of a trained dog and considerably more than our profit after our many outgoings – including the everlasting expenditure on dogfood – had been taken into account. ‘Very generous,’ I said. ‘Over and above the cost of travelling to where exactly?’
‘There, I must admit, is the rub,’ Mr Rodgers said. ‘My client’s desire for confidentiality is such that the “Need to Know” principle applies. Whoever acts as courier will only receive each instruction when it is required.’
‘And those who remain here,’ Isobel said, ‘will know nothing.’
‘That is so, at the time,’ Mr Rodgers admitted. ‘My client is perhaps being over-cautious but those are my instructions. I can only give you my personal assurance that my client does have a genuine regard for the dog and an equally genuine reason to keep the whole transaction as secret as possible.’ He fell silent and waited for our comments. The message was clear. Take it or leave it. Make your mind up time.
Beth looked at me. ‘I think you should do it,’ she said.
I looked at her in mild surprise. She had been trying to tuck me up in bed ever since I left hospital and now she was encouraging me to go jauntering off to an unknown destination in the United States. ‘I thought that you might go,’ I said.
‘Neither of us can spare the time,’ Isobel said, ‘and Henry isn’t in the business. But you, you’re still not ready for physical work although you’re trying to help when you shouldn’t. You won’t need more luggage than you can put into a briefcase. A couple of days spent sitting around in aeroplanes and airport lounges might give you the physical rest you need but won’t take.’
‘And at the same time you could feel that you were doing something useful,’ Beth said.
‘Instead of getting in everybody’s way? I don’t fancy getting snowed up in Detroit or somewhere,’ I said. According to the television, late blizzards were still sweeping across the Canadian border. I looked at Mr Rodgers. ‘I’ll do it if you’ll give me one hint. Where I’d be going, would it be warm?’
‘You certainly wouldn’t encounter any snow,’ he said cautiously, ‘except perhaps to see it from aloft or through an airport window while in transit. Do you have a current passport?’
‘Yes. No American visa, though.’ I had been to the States, but not for some years.
‘That can be taken care of. Give me your passport before I leave and it will meet you at the airport.’
‘Which airport?’ I asked.
‘The one to which you will be taken by the car which will pick you up at eight a.m. tomorrow.’ He saw my look of surprise. ‘The sooner it’s done, the less chance of a leak of information.’
That made sense, once you had accepted the need for extreme secrecy over the travel arrangements of a springer spaniel. ‘We’ll need one of those travelling boxes,’ I said.
‘That has already been obtained.’
‘And you’d better leave Anon with us overnight. It’ll be less unsettling for her if she gets used to me again. She’ll need a certificate that her inoculations are up to date and another for her general health.
‘I intended to have her taken to a vet this evening.’
‘I am a vet,’ Isobel said. ‘We’ll also want a letter of instructions on your firm’s paper.’
Mr Rodgers smiled, almos
t laughing, and took an envelope from his pocket. ‘If everybody was as sensible as you are, we solicitors would be out of business,’ he said. ‘You will be on your guard?’
‘Very much so,’ I said.
‘And you will all—?’
‘None of us will discuss this except between ourselves,’ Isobel said patiently.
‘Then that would seem to be that.’ Mr Rodgers, who had accepted a cup of tea, drank it without saying another word and left with my passport.
We made a fuss of Anon, who had been curled up on the back seat of Mr Rodgers’s car under the eye of a chauffeur. I brought her back into the kitchen. She seemed genuinely pleased to see us. Some gundogs are like that. We had gone shooting together, so we were lifelong friends.
‘But who on earth could his client be?’ Beth asked plaintively. ‘Not the man who tried to steal her?’
‘Definitely not,’ said Henry. He had been sitting so quietly that we had forgotten his presence. ‘If we thought that, we’d have dissuaded John from the task. No, Mr Rodgers is who he says he is and represents a very respectable firm of solicitors. He might wander near the borderline of the law but he would never step across it.’
‘Then who’s the client?’ Beth asked again. Anon, having greeted each of us, decided that Beth either had the most comfortable lap or would be the most tolerant host, and Beth allowed her to jump up and settle. ‘Spoiled monkey!’ Beth said.
‘The widow, obviously,’ Henry said. ‘You’ll note that Mr Rodgers never said “he” or “she”, just “my client”. We know that the dead man’s wife visited him and we’re told that she fell in love with the dog—’
‘We were told that by the spurious Miss McGillivray,’ I pointed out. ‘And she wasn’t what she seemed.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily mean that she was wrong on every count,’ Henry said. ‘Think about it. Who else but the widow might desperately want her late husband’s dog but be quite determined not to let the dog lead the authorities to her?’
‘Oh hell!’ I said. ‘This puts a new complexion on it. Oughtn’t I to go to the police?’
‘What with? You don’t know any more than they do,’ Henry said. ‘They’ve already released Anon to Mr Rodgers. You only have my guess that she’s his client. If you think about the sequence of events, you’ll see that it’s very unlikely that she ever saw any money from the British swindle, while the proceeds from the Savings and Loan fraud are American business. Do the errand and you may be free to tell the police something useful.’
‘And besides,’ Beth said, ‘you promised.’ In her view, that was the clinching argument.
*
Anon slept on our feet that night. This was in flat contradiction of our rules and principles, because we could hardly admit one dog to the house without admitting them all. (Jason was an occasional exception.) But we were in no mood for another midnight escapade.
When the car arrived, on time, in the morning and Beth saw us both off, I thought that she put more emotion into her farewell to the dog. Which, I supposed, was only fair – she was saying goodbye forever to Anon, while I expected to be back within a few days.
The car was a hired Rover, its driver skilled but uncommunicative. We joined the motorway but came off again two interchanges later, at Kinross. Not Turnhouse, then.
Anon, sprawling across my lap, seemed unperturbed. Most dogs would have shown anxiety but, bearing in mind her time adrift in St Andrews, she had remarkable confidence in her own future and in the essential benevolence of mankind. It was evident that she had been well treated – even by her last owner, a man who had not jibbed at robbing the small saver. Perhaps, like many another, he had cared more for dogs than for his fellow men. I was in no position to be critical. I was just as capable of the anthropomorphism of dogs, and of giving affection where I knew that it would be returned. It did not of itself make me a bad person or a good one.
We crossed Kincardine Bridge and the car was filtered effortlessly through the late rush-hour traffic of Glasgow. We passed the turn-off for Renfrew. Not a shuttle to London, but Prestwick.
A young man from Mr Rodgers’s office was waiting with the white plastic travelling box and my passport. He took over my luggage – one briefcase with a book, razor, toothbrush, pyjamas and a polythene bag of biscuit meal – and stayed with me. We had time to give Anon a walk on the grass and then she was settled in the box and I was in the queue to check in for the plane to Boston. The new security precautions were being taken very seriously but the contents of my briefcase were obviously innocent. They wanted to X-ray Anon in case she had been induced to swallow a bomb but when I explained that she was pregnant they excused her. I could only glimpse her through the ventilation holes but I thought that she gave me one anxious look as the baggage conveyor took her away.
The young man escorted me to the boarding gate before giving me my tickets and boarding pass. I glanced through the tickets. Boston – Memphis – Houston. Each ticket was in a different name.
The in-flight movie was rubbish. I dozed and read to Boston. The airline seemed to feed us whenever it was a mealtime by local time. Flying with the sun, mealtimes did not come around very often. I thought about Beth. At the last moment she had added a pair of clean underpants to my bag. ‘You may get caught up in a bomb scare,’ she said. It came to me suddenly what she had meant. I shook with private laughter but nobody paid any attention. They probably thought that I was watching the film.
If ever I take to smuggling as a profession, I shall take a dog along with me. From the moment when Anon came off the luggage carousel in Boston, everybody from baggage handlers to the immigration officials were more interested in her than they were in me. Where was she going? Was she trained to the gun? Was she thirsty? Any one of them would cheerfully have dropped everything and gone to fetch water. Somebody had even cleaned out the tray in the bottom of the box.
I could have checked her through to Houston but I thought that she might be comforted by the sound of a familiar voice during the wait at Memphis. We shared a hamburger there and I collected her for the last time at Houston-Hobby airport. She was beginning to fret, but only about her dinner which was long overdue. It was around eleven p.m. in Houston but almost dawn at home. I opened my polythene bag of kennel meal and fed and watered her while I wondered what happened next.
Another young man appeared – even younger than the one at Prestwick. He had the sort of face which used to be typecast as the boy next door. He sported a crew cut, sneakers, jeans, a T-shirt and a baseball cap. I had noticed him earlier, circulating in the background and watching faces. ‘Captain Cunningham?’ he asked, with an accent on the last syllable.
‘Just Mister,’ I said. ‘Mr Cunningham.’
We shook hands. I was still wearing my sling, as much to warn others not to bump into my shoulder as for any real need, but he picked up Anon in her travelling box and firmly removed my briefcase from my grasp. ‘Come this way, sir,’ he said.
‘Happily,’ I said. ‘I’ve had enough flying for the moment.’
‘You’re not finished yet, sir.’
He led me off the beaten track and through a parking garage on to the street. We stepped over low fences. It became soft underfoot and by the lights of traffic – so close that I could feel the wind of its passing – I saw that we were on grass. The young man waited politely while I let Anon out of her box. She hurried a few polite paces from us, squatted down and then came to heel. We walked on together, hopping more low fences, towards some buildings with a sign that read AVITAT. Toylike aircraft, looking ridiculously small after the monsters in which I had spent almost a day and a night, were lined up outside.
At a desk inside, a man was drinking coffee and watching a small television set. ‘You found him, then?’ he said, without taking his eyes off the screen.
‘Yep. How much do I owe you?’
The man chuckled at something on the TV. ‘Hell, you ain’t been here long enough to charge you parking,’ he said absentl
y. ‘Ain’t no one else coming in tonight. Gimme thirty-three fifty for the gas and oil and remember to use us again next time you come to town, hear?’
‘I’ll sure as hell do that,’ the boy said. He turned to me. ‘It’s the Cessna one-fifty out there, sir. I’ll be a minute. You better have a pee, it’s a long way and no pit stops.’
With some difficulty, one-handed, I lifted Anon up into the small two-seater plane, settled her in my lap and passed the strap around both of us. The boy arrived almost on our heels and stowed my briefcase and the box behind the seats. He began an exchange with the tower. I fell into a doze. It had been a long day. I was vaguely aware of the plane taxiing around the endless taxiways at Hobby and the increase of noise as we took off.
About two hours later I felt a change of motion and snapped awake. Anon, on my knee, was sitting up and taking an intelligent interest in the instruments and the night outside. By now, she considered herself to be a seasoned flyer.
A small cluster of lights was showing to port. The boy saw me looking. ‘Jersey Lily,’ he said loudly over the engine’s noise.
‘Who?’
‘Langtry, Texas. That’s Mexico beyond.’ He set a new course on his compass.
We flew on. I think that I dozed again. I felt the plane slow and begin a descent. On the ground a light showed and, nearer, a glow which I thought would be from the headlamps of a car facing away from us. As we came lower, I could make out the car’s tail lamps. He brought the lights into line, switched on his landing lights at the last moment and set the plane down gently. When we had rolled almost to a halt he turned and taxied back to the car. ‘We’re here, sir,’ he said.
‘Where’s here?’
‘This is. It’s an old dirt strip made by the dope smugglers.’
The engine cut and died. He climbed out stiffly. I heard a woman’s voice. Anon pricked up her ears and then did a flying leap through the open door. I followed more slowly, stepping down on to a surface of dirt and occasional weeds. The air was warm, warmer than most summer days in Scotland.
The woman’s figure was vague against the dazzle of the car’s headlights, but I saw that Anon was up in her arms and the woman was having to twist her neck to avoid getting a well-licked face. ‘You remember Mommy?’ she said delightedly. ‘Or is it the cookies you remember, my darling?’ She put the spaniel down and nodded to me. ‘Hi!’
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