by Rebecca Tope
Phil had listened closely to this verbal map, one eye closed in concentration. ‘I think I get it,’ he said slowly.
‘I can draw it for you if it helps,’ she patronised. ‘It just makes me all the more certain there are perfectly reasonable explanations for everything she said – or didn’t say. She obviously wasn’t hiding anything when she came back last night – she told me the whole story and it all rang quite true.’
‘She didn’t tell you she knew the victim,’ he reminded her.
‘Because she had no idea it was him,’ Thea flashed back. ‘I’m in absolutely no doubt about that.’
‘OK,’ he nodded. ‘You’ve just about convinced me. Now – how about coming for a little walk with me. It’s not such a bad evening, compared to last night.’
‘I will, once we’ve done something about those bloody dogs. I can’t just leave them out there all night. I’m getting really worried about Hepzie. She’s never been off for this long. They must be leading her into wicked ways.’
Phil paused, his brow wrinkled. ‘I’m surprised you’re not frantic by now. Are you sure she could find her way home in a strange area?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Do you think we could go back along the same path and call her? I can’t just wait and hope. It feels much too irresponsible. But dogs always do come back in the end – don’t they?’
‘Nearly always,’ he said.
He went with her the half-mile to the point where the dog pack had eluded her. The sun was still high, but there was an evening feel to the light, and a gentle breeze had sprung up. Unselfconsciously, Thea called her dog, lifting her voice as if throwing it across the fields. Then she would stop and listen intently. Phil went into gateways and scanned the landscape, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun. Then, very faintly, Thea heard a distant yelp, repeated three or four times.
‘That’s her!’ she cried. ‘I can hear her. She’s over there.’ She pointed to a patch of woodland away to the right, on the crest of a gradual slope. Heedlessly, she scrambled over a gate and began to trot towards the sound, calling the dog’s name every few yards.
‘Do you want me to come?’ Phil called from the path. ‘I doubt if I’d be much use.’ He had a precautionary hand to his back, anxiously eyeing the uneven ground.
‘Up to you,’ she panted, already breathless. The woods were not looking any closer, and there were two thick hedges across her path with no sign of an opening. As she called and listened, the direction of the dog’s cries seemed to change, until she could almost convince herself they were coming from a different patch of trees entirely. But they did grow gradually louder as she kept to her original trajectory, and she pressed on.
It took ten minutes to get to the wood, and even then the quest was not over. Hepzie’s yelps went infuriatingly silent as the spaniel assumed it was about to be rescued, and quite possibly chastised. ‘Where are you?’ Thea shouted, peering amongst the trees. It was a fairly narrow band of woodland, with a footpath sign pointing through the middle, and rough patches of bramble on either side. The road to Lower Swell ran close by.
In the end she stumbled upon the dog when least expecting to. A squeal alerted her, and she found Hepzie curled awkwardly at the foot of a large tree. ‘For goodness sake, you bad dog. What do you think you’re playing at?’
Large miserable eyes met hers, and a convulsive movement showed that something was very wrong. ‘What happened to you?’ Thea demanded.
Bending down, she found that a length of barbed wire had wound itself around the dog’s lower body, digging tightly into her soft belly, drawing blood in places. ‘Oh, Hepzie!’ Thea moaned. ‘That must really hurt.’
Knowing the wire could only be removed with great care, but desperate to be clear of it, Thea made little progress at first. Where the hell was Phil, she wondered? Had he been fool enough to take her at her word and leave her to deal with this on her own? Apparently so. Well, bugger him – she’d manage well enough.
Eventually she found an end of the wire, and by methodically unwinding and pulling, she got it free – though not without several punctures to her own hands and wrists. As if alive, the stuff would whip round and attack bare skin as it was being manipulated. At one stage, a barb narrowly missed one of Hepzie’s eyes. The other end of the wire was firmly attached to a post alongside the tree, remnants of a fence no longer functioning.
‘Poor baby,’ Thea crooned as she worked. ‘Nearly got it now. Soon be home. What an awful thing to happen.’ The dog kept still, only squeaking when a tuft of hair came away with part of the wire. She was thick with mud from ear to tail, which didn’t help.
Finally she was free and Thea set her down to assess the damage. ‘Can you walk?’ she asked.
With a slow wag of the plumy tail, Hepzie tested herself. All four legs seemed to be working. ‘Good!’ encouraged Thea. ‘Come on then.’ She chivvied the animal back towards the footpath, ready to carry her if necessary, but hoping fervently that it wouldn’t come to that. Not only because of the mud, but there was blood mixed in, and Hepzie had always been an awkward armful at the best of times. Picking up the pace across the fields, they made the journey back to their temporary home.
Phil had gone back to Hawkhill, and was waiting impatiently. He obviously had not planned for such a long stay, and had been stewing about it in her absence. He ought to have come with me, Thea thought crossly. How unchivalrous he can be sometimes. Since hurting his back he had avoided physical risk as far as possible. Now it was well on the way to recovery, he was braver, but the memory of the pain and disablement was still too fresh for comfort.
‘No sign of the others, then?’ he asked as she crossed the yard to where he sat on the lichened seat by the door.
She gave him an unsmiling look before answering, ‘No. I hoped they’d have come back here in the meantime.’
‘How’s Hepzie?’
‘I won’t know till I’ve washed her. She was tangled in barbed wire. It was wrapped round her about three times. She’s got a lot of cuts, but she can walk all right. It would have been nice to have some help.’ It had to be said, so she uttered it straight, loud and clear.
‘I’m sorry, Thea, but there are four or five very good reasons why I opted to leave you to it. It made no sense for me to get filthy dirty and probably torn on brambles. I could see you for most of the time, and it was obvious you didn’t need me.’
She looked down at herself, streaked and splashed with mud, punctured by the barbed wire, and sighed. ‘At least she’s home,’ she said.
‘When does she get her beating?’
The joke fell flat, girlfriend and spaniel both giving him the same humourless look. He laughed anyway, more at their faces than his own jocularity. ‘I can only stay another hour at most,’ he said.
‘It’s Sunday,’ she reminded him. ‘Can’t you have the evening off?’
‘I can, actually. But I said I’d take the boys to Painswick. Linda is having them this week, and she likes to settle them in by about nine.’
‘Gosh – what time is it now, then?’
‘Nearly seven.’
‘No wonder I’m so hungry. I had no idea it was as late as that. Do you want some soup or cheese or something?’
‘If there’s anything handy, that would be nice. But you should get on and bathe your dog – and do something about the missing two. Linda will have something waiting for me.’ Linda was his sister, who shared the care of his corgi and Gordon setter, taking them when he was working long hours, giving them a break from the confinement of his Cirencester flat.
Thea took a deep breath and did her best to concentrate. ‘Well, it doesn’t look as if we’re much use to each other at the moment, does it? You with the dogs and me with your murder. I feel exhausted, to be honest. Don’t forget that my father died only a week ago. You need to bear that in mind with Emily as well. That’s why she came here, you know – to talk about Daddy. She was in quite a state about it, feeling guilty and abandon
ed and a whole lot of other things.’
‘She was oddly calm when she called the police.’
‘Damn it, Phil – will you stop implying that she’s done something wrong! Everything you say carries so much suspicion. It’s horrible. She got covered in blood and gore, not to mention soaking wet and terrified. Give her a break, for heaven’s sake. It’s not like you to be so down on somebody.’
‘I’m not down on her, as you put it. If you must know, I’m bending over backwards to give her the benefit of the doubt.’
Thea was searching for a reply to this when with a skittering scrambling noise, two filthy dogs came trotting towards them, heads and tails hanging low, tongues lolling out. With brief glances at the people, they made as one to a shallow trough of water standing outside their shed, and gulped great quantities of it for a full minute.
‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ said Thea. ‘But look at the state of them!’
The fluffy coat of the one she called Freddy was matted and lumpen with rapidly drying mud. Basil, being short-haired, was less bedraggled, but still coated liberally with the same substance. ‘Where did they find so much mud? Even after yesterday’s rain, this is pretty excessive,’ said Thea, retreating from the panting animals.
‘In the river, I suppose,’ said Phil. ‘Or at least the edges of it. That’s where the mud must be. At least there’s no sign of any blood.’
Thea was to remind him of this remark in the days to come. ‘You said there was no blood. You’re their witness. There wasn’t any blood on them – was there?’
The trouble started less than half an hour later. The Angells’ phone rang, and when Thea answered it, a furious male voice began yelling into her ear. ‘Those dogs – I know they’ve been loose. They were seen. And I’ve got four prize tups dead and another five torn to bits and needing to be destroyed. The dogs have got to be shot, there’s no two ways about it. I’m coming over now, so be sure to have them shut up and waiting for me. The law’s on my side. They’ve been asking for it. They’ve got to be shot.’
At last he quietened down enough for Thea to make a shaky response. ‘They’re not guilty,’ she said. ‘They have been on the loose, but they haven’t killed anything. There’s no blood on them. You can’t shoot them without proof.’ Then she had the sense to add, ‘There’s a policeman here now. He’ll tell you. You can’t shoot the dogs without proof.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I don’t know the exact law on this,’ Phil said. ‘And I need to be off. For God’s sake, it’s not my job to act as defence for a pair of wild dogs. I have a strong suspicion that he’d be within his rights—’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Thea expostulated. ‘You can’t go round shooting innocent dogs.’
‘OK, wait a minute.’ Phil ran his fingers through his hair. ‘No, that’s right. They have to be caught in the act. I remember now. Your neighbour probably knows that. I doubt if he’ll turn up after all. Besides, not many men can just shoot a dog in cold blood – not even a furious farmer. His rage will have died down a bit by now, and he’ll start to see sense.’
‘Phil, you’re not thinking of leaving me to deal with him by myself, are you?’
He glanced at his watch and ruffled his hair again. ‘I suppose Linda can wait. I’ll phone her.’ He chewed his upper lip agitatedly. ‘I’ll give him until half past eight. It’ll be nearly dark by then – I doubt if he’d leave it any later than that.’
He was proved right when a man with a shotgun under his arm appeared from behind the house as Thea was with the dogs, trying to get the worst of the mud off. She had fed them as usual, but they seemed uninterested in the food.
‘Trying to hide the evidence, I see,’ said the man, standing in the doorway of the shed and blocking all the remaining light. His silhouette seemed huge to Thea. Hagrid flickered through her mind, making her feel foolishly optimistic. The feeling was strengthened by something in his voice – the standard English accent, and the barely audible thread of humour suggested a man who was capable of reason.
‘Not at all,’ she said robustly. ‘There’s nothing to hide. They came back muddy but not the least bit bloodstained.’
She approached him and he stood back, letting her out of the shed. ‘You can’t shoot them,’ she said firmly. The man was in his forties, and really was big. His voice suggested a businessman more than a farmer. ‘You have to prove them guilty first.’
‘I know that,’ he said with a nod. ‘You’re lucky it’s me here and not my father. He’d have blown them away by now, no messing about.’
‘So why are you here?’
‘To warn you. To tell you this isn’t done with, by a long way. I’ve told Cedric Angell that if these beasts get loose again, we’ll go to law about it. There’ll be an injunction this time.’
Phil made a slow appearance, standing at a distance, listening calmly. The man took a moment to notice him. ‘Good evening,’ Phil said.
‘Oh – I thought she was bluffing when she said there was a copper here. That’s you, then, is it?’ He peered more closely at Phil’s face. ‘I know you. Hollis, isn’t it? Bit senior for a sheep worrying case, aren’t you?’
‘I’m afraid you have the advantage,’ said Phil.
‘Henry Galton. We were in the sixth form together, a million years ago.’
‘Good God – Giant Henry! So it is.’ Phil extended a hand, which the farmer took, once he’d shifted his gun to the other armpit.
Much to her relief Thea found herself sidelined as the men assessed each other. The dogs, it seemed, had achieved a stay of execution, at least. Hepzie was firmly shut in the kitchen, in the hope that her very existence would remain unnoted. But Phil was inviting the man in, offering him a drink, suddenly in no rush to get to his sister’s. ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on,’ said Thea, hurrying into the house. The spaniel was still very dirty, although the scratches on her underside had been washed and disinfected. There would be bloodstains on her, visible to anyone looking closely. She really ought to be kept out of sight, for fear of inclusion in the threatened trouble.
But where to put her? She couldn’t be allowed in a bedroom or on a sofa, the state she was in. That only left cupboards or the cold little scullery with its bare stone floor. ‘Well, it serves you right,’ said Thea, as she bundled the dog into this unwelcoming space. ‘It won’t be for long.’
To his credit, Phil did his best to defend Thea and the dogs. ‘She’s here for a fortnight,’ he explained. ‘By the end of that time, all this can be forgotten, can’t it? If you get an injunction on the dogs, what’s their owner going to say when he gets back? Besides, there wasn’t a trace of blood on them.’
‘Blood washes off,’ Galton waved this away as irrelevant. ‘They’re covered in mud and muck – that’s all the proof I need.’
‘It wasn’t them,’ insisted Thea.
‘Well something killed my tups,’ said Galton. ‘If it wasn’t these two – and I still think it’s too much of a coincidence that they were loose just when it happened – then who was it? It’s good enough evidence to convince a magistrate, and you know it.’ His tone was level, letting the facts speak for themselves. Thea couldn’t avoid an image of dead and dying rams, their terror and suffering impossible to deny.
‘Has it happened before in this neighbourhood?’ asked Phil.
‘A couple of years ago, aye. Lost a dozen ewes that time. You know what the buggers do, don’t you? They tear great chunks of flesh from the back end, like wild animals. It’s not funny, not at all.’
‘Presumably it wasn’t these dogs that time?’
‘We never proved anything. The thing is, there’s not much sheep farming round here any more. Makes me more vulnerable to it. When they get a mind to it, dogs’ll travel two or three miles easily, often more. And they can be somebody’s pet labrador or setter. It’s not just huntaways and rottweilers. Jack Russells can do some damage, once the blood’s up. It’s the pack mentality. Get two bitches together, one moo
nlit night, and there’s a massacre waiting to happen. Three or more, and you’re really sunk.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a jungle out there, even these days. You’ll have heard about that bloke having his head kicked in last night?’ It didn’t feel like a change of subject – more of an obvious link.
‘I’ll have a word with the local chaps,’ said Phil. ‘As you say there’s been a killing here, which is going to raise the police profile by a factor of a hundred or so. Bloodstained dogs won’t go unnoticed over the next week or two, I can promise you that.’
‘Huh,’ grunted Galton. ‘That’ll be the day when the cops take sheep-worrying seriously. Still, not much I can do tonight.’ He drained his coffee cup and got to his feet. He had to be six foot three, thought Thea, and had the weight to go with it. Not fat, but big. Must be a good eighteen stone, she calculated. And with the dissipation of his rage, he seemed irresistibly cuddly, she realised. My God, she thought – am I going to feel like this about every new man I come across? If Phil didn’t get his back to a point where he could risk having sex again soon, she wasn’t going to be responsible for who she found herself jumping on.
‘And I must get my skates on,’ Phil said, with an alarmed look at the kitchen clock. ‘Linda’s going to be in a right old mood at this rate.’
Galton cocked his head, sensing a situation. ‘Linda?’ he murmured.
‘My sister. Three years older than me. You won’t have known her. She looks after my dogs when I’ve got a big case.’
‘And last night’s incident’s a big case, is it?’
Wow, thought Thea, he’s sharp, this chap. Doesn’t miss much.