‘When I got back this time, there was still no word. Today, I went out for an hour and when I came back just now there was a message on my answering machine from Garnet’s wife, saying that the pup wasn’t available after all, he’d decided to keep it for himself. Not a word of apology. So I phoned Steedman but he said he’d had to let the pup go. I called Garnet’s number again and only got his machine and I left a message calling him every name I could think of. That was just minutes before you showed up. When I opened the door and saw just another tall, thin streak—you don’t mind?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Not if it’s true,’ I said.
‘Yeah. It jumped into my mind that he’d come to pick a fight over my message. And I remembered that he’d been keeping me on a string and now I wouldn’t have time to get a pup and turn it into a trained worker before they put me out to grass and I just boiled over. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ I assured him. ‘Somebody put Garnet in hospital, mistaking him for me, so I suppose it was my turn.’
Kirkmichael, I was sure by now, was not the guilty one. I told him the story. It took some time and several more drinks and by the time I left, with an order for one of Dahlia’s pups subject to satisfactory introduction, I had a new friend. I also had a load on board—if I had had the use of both eyes I would have been seeing double. Kirkmichael wanted to drive me home, but he had absorbed at least as much as I had and then, if we arrived safely at Three Oaks, somebody would have had to turn out and return the favour.
So I refused the kind offer. In retrospect, I think that I am glad that I did so; but sometimes I wonder what I would have done if Kirkmichael had been driving.
I drove myself home, very carefully but not so meticulously as to attract attention. I went by a back road where I knew that the police very seldom lurked. I felt good, and it was not just the effect of a very good malt whisky. If I was disappointed that we were again running short of suspects, I was pleased that we were getting facts.
I think that I was smiling as I turned in at the gates and somebody tried to kill me.
Chapter Nine
Later, it was explained that if the shot had been fired a moment sooner or later I would have been dead. And if I had braked at once he would have been able to have another crack at me.
I knew nothing of that at the time. My mind was far away when I heard a hell of a bang and felt a myriad tiny hammer-blows to my face. And then the shock became pain and the pain was becoming agony and I seemed to be unable to see. I meant to tread on the brakes but I hit the accelerator instead. For once, my automatic pilot failed and the car surged up the drive and onto the lawn before some long standing habit pattern took over and guided my foot to the brake.
Then there were people around me. Joe and Dave were shouting to each other. I recognized Beth’s voice, high and quick but fighting to stay calm, and a part of my mind reached out to her for rising high above panic. But I was confused and disoriented, my world was upside-down and I took refuge in the one question that is always asked—‘Where am I?’
‘You’re in the middle of the lawn,’ Beth said. For some reason, that seemed to satisfy me. ‘You stink of whisky,’ she added.
‘So would you,’ I replied. God alone knows what I meant.
They were putting cloths over my face and wrapping bandages around, which did little for the pain but made it easier to keep my eyes still and closed. The effort of not distressing Beth with anguished noises was enough. And then an ambulance came. I recognized the sounds. Somebody stuck a needle in my arm and in moments I was away with the fairies.
That was pretty much the story of the next twelve hours or so. For seconds at a time I was aware of riding in the ambulance, of being wheeled from place to place and back again. I woke up once to find my bandages being changed under a dim light by a fluorescent green nurse. She explained that the colour had been put into my eyes to show up damage and foreign bodies. She was promising me that the colour would go away when I drifted off again.
I was vaguely aware of being unwrapped and examined several more times, of being stuck with needles and of being told to keep still for X-rays although I had already made up my mind never to move again. In between times, I was in another world and groping in black velvet for half-forgotten dreams.
I surfaced for a few moments in the morning. A voice that reeked of officialdom was asking for a statement, but I had little to say and what I did try to articulate came out as a garbled mumbling that even I could make no sense of.
Then they wanted me for surgery and I was plunged into the deepest sleep yet.
When I awoke, it seemed to be no more than a moment later. My face was more comfortably bandaged and although there was still pain it was more orderly and I knew that it would go away in time. My mind was clear again. I was more concerned about my eyesight than about discomfort but none of the passing voices could tell me anything. One, that I guessed belonged to the ward sister, assured me that the consultant surgeon would be coming to see me. From the scarcity of the noises around me I gathered that I was in a private sideward. Nobody had asked me whether I wanted such privacy so I guessed that it was down to Beth and the firm’s insurance package.
An early visitor was Inspector Burrard. He was in a less disbelieving mood than ever before. I could see his line of reasoning. I would certainly not have exposed myself to such pain and danger in order merely to distract attention from my own misdeeds. Therefore the threatening message was probably genuine. Therefore the poisoning of Accer might be genuine. Therefore there was a possibility that Ben Garnet had been whacked over the head by one of his many other friends and admirers. The Inspector was therefore looking for a double assailant and attempted murderer. He listened in silence as I went over our earlier information again and then brought him up to date.
He seemed slightly cheered that his case was now undoubtedly attempted murder, with resources to be allocated accordingly. He told me more than I was able to tell him. I had survived, paradoxically, because the shotgun had been fired at me from close range. A pattern of shot sweeps a path through the air which has been described as trumpet-shaped—remaining compact at first and belling outwards as it gets further from the muzzle. The shot had still been in a dense ball when it struck the car and, by happy chance, it had been centred on the windscreen pillar. The fringes of the pattern had managed to smash both the windscreen and the driver’s window but in doing so had largely been deflected.
I had been very lucky. Lucky to be alive, that is. About my eyesight I was still . . . in the dark. The real meaning of that phrase was coming home to me.
The surgeon arrived, displacing the Inspector. His voice was assured and reassuring. He had recovered several flattened pellets from over my eyebrow ridge and fragments of glass from in and around my eyes. He thought that he had got it all, although he said that the green stain revealed everything but glass. It was, he admitted, too early to predict the outcome. The fluid in my left eye was still too clouded with blood for him to examine the retina. I was certainly in for a pair of handsome black eyes, he said. The tiny scratches to the cornea of my left eye might or might not dim my vision permanently, he thought probably not; but Kirkmichael had done me a favour by ensuring that my right eye was already closed.
I was roused from a light doze by the patter of small feet, the pressure of a soft body leaning over me and a shower of lightweight kisses on the unbandaged parts of my face.
‘Again?’ I said, taking a firm grip. ‘Which of the nurses are you?’
‘Pig!’ Beth said. I could feel her shaking but without being able to tell whether she was laughing, crying or trembling with nerves. She pulled back, leaving a trace of tears on my chin, and I heard her pull a chair while still keeping tight hold of my hand. ‘I’ve seen the doctor. He says you’re going to be all right.’
‘Which is good news when you remember that I wasn’t exactly all right before.’
My attempt at humour fell flat. ‘How can you jok
e about it? Somebody tried to kill you.’
‘It isn’t the first time,’ I pointed out. ‘Somebody was trying to kill me when they took a blunt instrument to Ben Garnet, but I’m still around. Did whoever shot me get caught? Inspector Burrard was here but he got kicked out before he could tell me anything.’
Beth’s voice steadied. I could sense the effort. ‘I’m afraid not. We were much too concerned about you.’
‘And the lawn,’ I said.
‘The lawn was frozen too hard to take any damage. It’s quite all right, you’ll be glad to hear. Were you joking?’ she asked sternly.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it’s not funny. We’d heard a shot and then the car charged across the lawn and stopped just short of ploughing into the house and you had blood all over . . .’
Her voice was rising again. I gripped her hand. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘We’re both here and all’s well, more or less.’
‘Yes.’ She puffed out a gusty breath. ‘Well, anyway, Dave did take a look along the road and Joe ran round the house but there was nobody to be seen in the darkness. We never heard a car drive off but by the time the police arrived whoever it was had had pots of time to run off through the fields. Some CID men came and they tried to find footprints, but what with our footprints being frozen into the ground and then the thaw starting soon afterwards—it’s raining now, did you know?—they didn’t really have a chance.’
‘I didn’t really think they would,’ I said. ‘I eliminated James Kirkmichael, by the way. He was out of the country until Saturday night. He played me back a message on his answering machine from Mrs Garnet to say that her husband had decided not to sell him the pup after all. I think I’ve sold him one of Dahlia’s litter.’
‘That’s all very well,’ Beth said. ‘But he didn’t know that he wasn’t going to get a Garnet pup and you’ve only his word for it that he was out of the country—’
‘His wife came in before I left. She confirmed it.’
‘Well, she would, wouldn’t she?’ (I thought that Beth had a low opinion of other women, or else she was judging them in the light of the fact that she would have lied her head off for me.) ‘Or she may have been . . . did her voice sound anything like the threatening phone calls?’
‘Not a damn bit,’ I told her. ‘She’s a headmistress with a deep voice and a rather ponderous way of speaking. And if we start inventing accomplices we’ll have to start again at the top of the list. We may have to do that anyway. We only have one suspect left and we don’t know who the hell he is.’
‘I’d rather be down to one than be left with half a dozen,’ Beth said thoughtfully. ‘Don’t you worry about it. Concentrate on getting back on your feet and don’t even hurry over that. I’ll have a good think.’
I relaxed. Beth may look like a teenager and too pretty to have more than three brain cells to communicate with each other, but in fact when she ‘has a good think’ she thinks to good purpose.
‘You realize that I shan’t be fit for Saturday?’ I asked.
‘I know. We’ll just have to cancel the cocker stake.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ I said. ‘Get Daffy and Rex to escort Isobel to the championships. Henry and Hannah can look after the place, guarded by Joe and Dave if they’re still willing. And you take the cockers on.’
‘And who looks after Sam, may I ask?’
‘All of them. I’ll do it if I’m at home, which I intend to be.’
Beth started to protest, but the prices commanded by our dogs were largely governed by the successes of their immediate ancestors in competition. I rode over her protestations. ‘You’ve handled them often enough in training and you’ve been competing, quite successfully, with the personal Labrador that I tried to tell you not to have. It’s time you pulled your weight on the firm’s behalf in trials.’
‘You expect me to go and win—?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘You don’t?’
‘Not unless luck’s really running your way. I do expect you to get a place. Or a certificate of merit at the very least. Try yourself out if you can get home before dark—’
‘It’s dark now.’
‘Is it? I can’t tell the time and I don’t particularly want to. Tomorrow morning then. Get Henry to shoot for you.’ I thought about the cockers and where Beth, who was more used to the springers and to one very patient Labrador, might go wrong. ‘Don’t stand any nonsense,’ I said, ‘but don’t work them for too long on barren ground. If they do what you tell them but with a “Can’t you see I’m busy?” expression, knock off. Come back and tell me how you got on.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to try.’ Beth sounded very put upon and yet stimulated by the new challenge. ‘I’ll be back to see you this evening if I can borrow Henry’s car again.’
I was satisfied. Beth is far better at handling spaniels than she thinks she is and the cockers adored her. ‘Phone our insurers about the car in the morning,’ I added.
‘It’s funny how you always manage to be unavailable when the difficult things have to be done,’ she said unfairly. ‘Like filling up claim forms. What do I put this time? “Shot to bits by dissatisfied customer”? The garage think they can put it back together again or we might have got a new one off the insurance. Guffy turned up first thing this morning, by the way, anxious to earn some money towards a pup. Do you think that Guffy should be a suspect?’
‘I wondered,’ I said, ‘but on the whole, no. We haven’t heard a whisper about him being one of the clients.’
‘Who’d know, except himself and Mr Garnet?’
‘Mr Fergusson would surely have known. But when I sounded him out, he said that Guffy had asked Garnet and been turned down.’
‘Oh well. It was worth a thought. Sam doesn’t like him.’
‘Guffy’s several pups short of a litter,’ I said, ‘and a child would sense it without understanding.’
‘That may be it. I wonder that they let him loose with farm machinery.’
‘Anybody can learn simple tractor-driving. They don’t let him near the big stuff, but I’ve seen quite young children in a tractor’s driving seat at harvest time.’
‘I told Guffy my guess was that you wanted him to dig away the hump behind the barn and fill in the hollow beyond the kennels. Was that right?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Oh, good!’ her voice said cheerfully. ‘He’s coming up to see me in the morning but I’ll try to get back to see you whenever visiting starts. Shall I bring you some fruit?’
‘I’d probably poke it up my nose,’ I said. ‘Bring me my radio. The music on the hospital earphones seems to be chosen by a coloured teenager with feminist tendencies.’
‘Don’t be racist. And anti-feminist. And ageist.’ She kissed me fondly and left.
My next visitor did not kiss me, fondly or otherwise. I was getting handier at feeding myself and had managed the evening meal without making quite so much of a mess, or so the nursing auxiliary assured me. The main benefit of a room to oneself was said to be the undisputed control of a television, but that facility was of little use to me. Even when I had mastered the use of the remote control, the bursts of unexplained laughter and sound effects were maddening. I was just wishing that somebody would come and talk to me when somebody came to talk to me.
‘Hullo, old son,’ said a voice. ‘They told me that you were in here. How are you getting on?’
The voice was familiar but so friendly and sympathetic that it took me several seconds to identify it. Then I remembered Ben Garnet’s singular ability to be ‘Hail fellow well met’ even, or especially, with the person whose metaphorical throat he was about to cut. I decided that a reply in kind might possibly get me the missing name.
‘Uncomfortable, but I’m told that I’ll see again. You’re getting over your bump on the head?’
His face was invisible to me, but if he resented having the potentially murderous assault on his cranium referred to as a mere bump on the hea
d, his voice showed no sign of it.
‘Much better,’ he assured me. ‘My memory’s coming back, a little at a time.’
‘You don’t happen to remember how you proposed to persuade me to sign your form?’
‘What do you mean?’ He sounded less affable.
‘I understand you told your wife, just before the attack, that you were on your way to see me and get me to sign your Kennel Club form.’
‘Did I say that?’ He sounded amused. ‘Perhaps I intended to rely on personal charm and the power of rhetoric. Everything that’s happened since I came round after the attack is clear enough, and most of my life before that day. It’s the events leading up to the attack on me that are still vague. They tell me that they could come back at any minute or in a year’s time or not at all.’
I wondered why he was explaining in such detail a matter which he could expect to be supremely uninteresting to me. ‘You’d better be careful,’ I said.
‘Believe me, I had that in mind.’
‘Yes.’ I was groping towards the subject that I wanted to bring into the open but in such a way that I hoped that he would mention it first. A direct question might switch him straight into his ‘What’s in it for me?’ mode. ‘For all you know,’ I said, ‘you recognized your attacker and he may be aware of it. Of course, general opinion is that your attacker mistook you for me—which could make a lot of sense when you remember that somebody took a shot at me last night. On the other hand, he may have good reason for having another go at you.’ Like most of the rest of Scotland, I nearly added.
‘Is that what happened?’ he asked sharply. ‘Somebody shot you? My wife said that nobody seems to know much but she thought that you’d been involved in an accident.’
‘Deliberate as hell,’ I told him.
There was a silence. I would have given a lot to have seen his face. ‘Why would somebody want to knock you off?’ he asked. There was a faint emphasis on the ‘you’. I thought that he was slightly miffed that I was stealing his thunder.
Bloodlines (Three Oaks Book 8) Page 14