Bloodlines (Three Oaks Book 8)

by Gerald Hammond

  A little later we came to the small pond at the centre of the Moss. It was open water where the feeder stream entered but the rest was thinly coated with ice. A lone mallard drake got up. My shot caught it over the land but it came down in the water. Accer swam for it, breaking the ice with his chest where he met it, and brought it out, this time favouring me with the retrieve. He shook himself, producing a rainbow in the low winter sunshine.

  ‘I’m satisfied,’ Charles said. ‘We have a deal. No, back off, you silly sod,’ he added to Accer. ‘I’ll fuss with you, when you’re dry. Captain Cunningham—’

  ‘Mister,’ I said. ‘And call me John.’

  ‘John, then. You don’t consider him fully trained?’

  ‘He’s coming along,’ I said cautiously. ‘Basic obedience is there and the elements of retrieving and hunting, but I still intended to work on his memory and marking and teach him to use his nose a bit more. He has a good nose but he still prefers to mark his game or be handled onto it.’

  We started back towards the car. Accer, pleased with himself but knowing that work was over, trotted ahead. A wind had sprung up and was driving pellets of frosted snow into our faces. We hurried towards shelter.

  ‘I’m only here for a day or two this time,’ Charles said. ‘And I can’t take a dog where I’m staying for the moment. I take up my new post in six weeks’ time. Could you keep him here until around then and give him his final polish? Then we can spend the spring and summer getting to know each other.’

  It was a sensible programme from his point of view and remunerative from mine. As we chatted, I gathered that he was taking up a senior non-academic post with one of the three local universities and had come up to check up on the building of a house.

  ‘I was offered a puppy from your stock,’ he said suddenly, ‘but I didn’t want to waste most of next season training a novice—and then possibly getting it wrong.’

  ‘Whose pup was that, then?’ I asked.

  ‘The man I’ve bought the site from. Garnet. He says he knows you.’

  I nearly said that Garnet only thought he knew me. But it was not my business to utter warnings. What was more, Garnet was quite devious enough to have sent a stranger to trap me into making slanderous statements so that he could put pressure on me under threat of legal action. ‘The pups are born, are they?’ I asked.

  ‘Seven of them. They look good. But I gather there’s some question about their registration?’

  ‘Some,’ I said. ‘Did Garnet tell you about that?’

  ‘My builder had heard it on the grapevine. Garnet didn’t say anything.’ He sounded surprised and I thought that I could detect the first signs of doubt in his voice.

  We arrived back at the car. Accer hurled himself over the tailgate. I dropped my game carrier with the rabbit and the duck onto the floor behind the front seats and he got in hurriedly out of the wind.

  ‘How much is Garnet taking for the pups?’ I asked.

  ‘More than enough.’ Charles mentioned a figure which was indeed more than enough. It would have been more than enough even if the pups had been registered. It seemed to me that Ben Garnet was painting himself into a corner. But he had painted himself into corners before and come out clean and shining and with the paint unmarked.

  Chapter Three

  After a few more minutes of fussing with a delighted Accer, Charles Hopgood wrote his cheque and departed. As I handed the dog over for drying and kennelling he was holding his head high. I could have sworn that Accer knew that his status had improved from kennel stock to client’s dog in training.

  I was hardly into the house before Lord Crail’s head keeper, ex-RSM Fergusson, was on the phone and enquiring whether I would be free to shoot in a few days’ time. Remembering Ben Garnet, I asked who would be along.

  He knew what I was about and I heard his chuckle. ‘This isn’t His Lordship’s day, this is mine,’ he said.

  That was different. Traditionally, the last shoot of the season belongs to the keeper; his guests are the beaters and pickers-up who have served all season for the love of it, the promise of the ‘Keeper’s Day’ plus perhaps a fee which would be a tiny proportion of what they could have earned elsewhere. (And woe betide the shoot manager who breaks with that tradition. Next season, he will be lucky to recruit beaters averaging more than one leg apiece.) Ben Garnet would certainly not qualify for a invitation. I accepted hastily. A shoot run by a keeper for his own guests, without interference from the shoot’s proprietor and after his need to conserve birds has passed, can be the best of the year.

  ‘Saturday, then,’ he said. ‘Nine a.m. at the bothy. Fetch Mrs Cunningham along, if she’d fancy bringing yon Lab of hers. There’ll be bree, beer, sasters and rolls. If you want ocht fancier, ye’ll hae to bring it yoursel’.’ Mr Fergusson, who liked to set a good example, was a careful speaker when Guffy could hear but in the boy’s absence would lapse into the broad Scots of his early days.

  After accepting with thanks, I hurried to check with the rest of the firm that it was all right. It happened that that weekend we had no other commitments. Rex, Daffy’s husband, was home from the oil rig, so she was taking the Saturday off; but Isobel and Hannah expressed themselves happy to run the place between them, with back-up from Henry if needed.

  If we had had an inkling of the events which were already germinating, we would never have gone to the shoot. But life is composed of a million things that one doesn’t know for every one that one knows.

  That Thursday, for example, we did not know that there was a message on the answering machine. Our telephoning was conducted almost entirely on the wall-mounted cordless phone, which usually lived in the kitchen but was as often in the pocket of whoever was around the house or garden at the time. A quick response to a ring obviated the need to wait through my voice telling callers to ‘speak after the tone’. As it happened, nobody had looked into the chilly sitting room to see the little green light flashing.

  And on that Thursday night a traffic policeman from Cupar came to our door to say that a man had been knocked down by a hit-and-run vehicle and found unconscious between the village and our gates. Had we seen or heard anything unusual? Lights for instance? We were able to assure him that from dusk until his arrival, just before we went up to bed, we had seen and heard nothing. Henry and Isobel had driven home along that road just after six and, when we phoned them, were sure that there had been no unconscious man lying on or near the carriageway at that time.

  Nobody told us that the injured man was Ben Garnet.

  And so, on the Saturday morning, Beth and I set off in the car, with Jason and Blossom and the two cockers in the back. It was another crisp January day, the air so dry that one seemed to see every pebble on the furthest hill. There was a surprising amount of police activity at the roadside before the village but we took it as a sign that the victim of the accident had died and that the case had become one of manslaughter. Nobody told us that the doctors had been adamant that Ben Garnet’s injuries had not been inflicted by a vehicle but by what one of them defined as ‘a whack on the head’.

  With only a mile to go we overtook a solitary cyclist, head down and struggling to make haste up a gradient. ‘Was that Guffy?’ I said.

  ‘Probably. He’s living with an aunt in our village. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘How would I know?’ I asked reasonably. ‘I’m not included in the gossip machine. Should I give him a lift?’

  ‘We couldn’t lift his bicycle as well. Not with dogs in the back.’

  ‘True. So he’ll just have to be late.’

  The beaters were gathering in strength at the bothy. They raised a cheer when Guffy came panting in at last to meet the restrained fury of the ex-RSM. On more formal days, Guffy was in charge of the game cart; but on this occasion the function of the tractor and trailer would be replaced by two pick-ups belonging to the beaters and Guffy was needed for the beating line.

  We moved off in good time.

  At Foleyknowe
on Keeper’s Day, the ground had been virtually swept clean by the guests working in three teams so that at any moment one team was beating, one was standing and the third was already in transit to the next stand. While Mr Fergusson’s shoot did not go quite so far over the top, nevertheless it was soon evident that a brisk pace was to be kept up and that the number of drives which His Lordship usually managed to put into the day would at least be doubled.

  But our participation in the day was short lived.

  Beth and I walked on the first drive. I had the two cockers with me and the little dogs bustled and burrowed through the cover with enormous zest. If I could keep them steady at the next week’s trial, we would be in with a good chance. On the second drive I was a standing Gun, not far from the small loch, with Beth as picker-up well behind me. I had returned the cockers to the car and had Blossom sitting beside me as a test of steadiness. Mine turned out to be the ‘hot seat’ and I had eight birds down before the beaters appeared and the whistle sounded for the end of the drive. Blossom had never budged an inch and I was satisfied.

  We prepared to move off for the pick-up, but there was a gathering of beaters near the last fence and somebody seemed to be waving in our direction. I thought that I had heard a squeal and I hoped to God that nobody had peppered a dog.

  ‘Will you do the picking-up?’ I asked Beth. ‘Take Blossom with you. I’ll go and see what’s wrong.’

  ‘To hear is to obey,’ she said brightly, shouldering the canvas game-bag. ‘I think there’s only one to find. The rest are in the open.’

  I left both dogs with her and went to join the throng.

  The pundits of the gun-dog world are united in recommending that a dog is always lifted over barbed wire. It is almost the only subject on which they agree. I have gone along with them in theory but with reservations, because that advice is not always practicable. One function of a gun-dog is to retrieve birds which have fallen far off, thus covering many times the distance that a man could reasonably be expected to walk; another is to seek for birds which have fallen out of sight. An owner who would accompany his dog as far as the furthest fence might as well, if gifted with sharp sight and a good nose, do the job himself. Additionally, some dogs are too heavy to be lifted by some owners.

  Most dogs become adept at crossing fences. Smaller dogs may seek a gap and wriggle through. Lightly built dogs will make a single leap, sailing high above the top strand. Some of the more heavily built dogs develop a knack of jumping onto and off the topmost wire, almost never, by some miracle, damaging their pads on the barbs.

  Such a dog was Jumbo, a huge Labrador/golden retriever cross belonging to Joe Greystone. Joe had started life as a mason and bricklayer and had done some work for me on occasions, but he now spent his time as site foreman and drainlayer for a small builder.

  Jumbo had come to grief on a fence which was topped with new wire, shining and sharp. Joe and another man were holding him still. Unbalanced and possibly unsighted by the large pheasant in his jaws, he had missed his footing and landed with all his weight on a barb. He was trying to struggle up and the sound he made was pitiful. Such accidents usually entail no more than a tearing of the skin, but it took only one glance to see that Jumbo had not only ripped his skin. The abdominal wall was also torn and several inches of intestine, luckily undamaged, protruded. There was an unpleasant amount of blood.

  I was not a vet but the situation was not quite unknown to me. ‘On his back,’ I said. ‘One man to each leg. Keep him still and for God’s sake don’t let him lick. Does anyone have anything we can use as a bandage?’

  ‘Mr Fergusson’s gone for the first-aid box,’ Joe said. There was more anxiety in his voice than he would have shown over an injury to himself, and rightly so. ‘Can we get him to Mrs Kitts?’

  ‘Let’s do that. She’s at Three Oaks today.’ It occurred to me that Jumbo’s chances would be improved if Isobel was forewarned and the surgery was prepared. I looked around the faces and picked out Guffy. Surprisingly, I caught him in a huge yawn. ‘Phone my house, Guffy,’ I said. I quoted the phone number. ‘Tell Mrs Kitts that we’re bringing in a patient.’

  Guffy dithered.

  Mr Fergusson arrived back with his Land Rover and climbed stiffly out in time to hear what I said. ‘Get going, boy,’ he told him.

  ‘From your house?’

  ‘You’ll be quicker to go down past the wee loch and along the side of the field to the Stouriden road. There’s a phone-box there. That’ll be best. Here. Take this.’ He took a Phonecard out of his wallet and pushed it into Guffy’s hand. ‘You know how to use it. You’ve made calls for me before.’

  Guffy gaped as though he barely understood the words, but eventually he nodded and turned away. After a few yards he broke into a shambling run.

  There were several big bandages in the ex-RSM’s first-aid box and he had brought the remains of an old, torn-up but clean sheet. First I had to coax the intestine back through the stomach wall. Not without difficulty I managed to lift and manipulate the slippery membrane until the grey-green gut slid through and out of sight. I would have given a lot for a needle and thread but my guess was that a quick trip to Isobel’s surgery would be worth more than a wait while a suture was fetched. I used up all Mr Fergusson’s wide bandage in the hope of holding the lot together.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘We need a coat to carry him in.’ My first impulse was to offer my own; but the wind had a cutting edge. I had been sadly underweight ever since my sickness and was more sensitive to the cold than ever before in my life. Moreover, Beth would have hit the nearest roof if she had caught me stripping off while there were strapping younger men around. ‘Any offers?’ I enquired.

  ‘I guess it’ll have to me mine,’ Joe said. ‘Seems only right, like. What do you reckon? Will he be all right?’

  ‘Of course he will,’ I said stoutly. I was only offering comfort and Joe probably knew it.

  We worked Joe’s waxed coat under the dog without too much difficulty. Jumbo seemed to have discovered that effort equated with pain. At each corner, a man held the coat with one hand and Jumbo’s leg with the other and thus we managed to move him gently, still inverted, into the back of the Land Rover. With Joe on one side of him and one of Joe’s mates on the other, he was well stabilized.

  Guffy came panting back from the direction of the loch, looking distraught. ‘It’s no’ there,’ he said. ‘It’s bloody gone!’

  Ex-RSM Fergusson was not going to tolerate bad language or sloppy reporting from his subordinates. ‘Don’t swear,’ he said severely from the Land Rover’s driving seat. ‘And what’s gone?’

  ‘The phone-box.’

  Mr Fergusson spared a moment for an amused glance around the gathering. ‘Don’t be daft. It can’t have.’

  ‘It bloody has!’

  ‘You must have looked in the wrong place.’

  Guffy usually faced the world with a placid smile which quite disarmed his critics, but for some reason this caught him on the raw. He stamped his foot. ‘I did not! There isn’t a wrong place. I looked just where the phone-box was yestreen. It’s gone. Somebody’s nipped it. Or else it’s bloody walked,’ he added defiantly to Beth, who had just joined us.

  This time, Mr Fergusson let Guffy’s behaviour go for the moment. There were more important issues. ‘Somebody run and phone from my house,’ he said. ‘Then the rest of you may as well shoot on. Charlie, take charge. We’ll set off in the Land Rover and get back when we can. And I’ll deal with you later,’ he added to Guffy. ‘Vanishing bloody phone-boxes!’

  ‘It’s gone, I tell you,’ Guffy said plaintively, his spurt of temper over. ‘And who’s swearing now?’ he shouted after the receding Land Rover.

  Beth had arrived with the missing bird and all three dogs. We decided to follow on. We had only a few minutes’ walk to our car. In keeping with its function as an ambulance, the Land Rover was moving slowly. I decided that we could easily overhaul it. When we emerged onto the public road, out of curio
sity I turned away from home towards Stouriden, a matter of no more than half a mile.

  As it turned out, Guffy was right. The phone-box which had stood on a grassy triangle within sight of the row of cottages had vanished. The base remained, adorned by the sole of a shoe. Some wires protruded from a pipe in the ground and there were signs that the tarmac had been lifted and relaid not far away. Otherwise it was as though the phone-box had never existed.

  Shaking my head, I turned and drove after the Land Rover. Truly the ways of British Telecom were mysterious indeed.

  *

  We caught up with the Land Rover before the gates of Three Oaks and followed it up the drive. Police activity in the road outside seemed to have broken off.

  As we parked, I thought that the hard-packed snow over the gravel in front of the house seemed to be rather full of cars but I was too concerned over Jumbo to pay them much attention. I simply assumed that the cars belonged to clients, prospective clients, disappointed shoppers or owners visiting pets boarded or in quarantine. Saturdays could sometimes be busy without being profitable.

  Isobel had come out of the house to meet the convoy. With her was Daffy, the kennel-maid who usually helped her in the surgery when help was required. (The other kennel-maid, Hannah, was quite unperturbed by dog dirt but inclined to turn up her toes at the sight of blood.) The message had got through because both of them had donned white coats. Daffy’s bizarre hairdo contrasted strangely with her surgical garb.

  Isobel shot me a look which seemed intended to convey some warning or other, but she was carrying a loaded hypodermic syringe and she climbed into the back of the Land Rover without further explanation. The need to relieve pain and to prevent Jumbo causing more damage by struggling was paramount.