Twice Bitten

by Gerald Hammond

  To my further relief Beth, leading a sleepy Sam with one hand and balancing a tray on the other, met me in the hall, shook her head and said, ‘Hush!’

  ‘It isn’t Sam, is it?’ I whispered.

  She shook her head. ‘Daffy had a bit of a shake-up,’ she said softly. ‘She’s all right, more or less, but having a lie-down. Hannah came back – she hated it at home, with her father away most of the time – and she’s sitting with Daffy now. Joe’s been on the phone, in a tizzy because you’d vanished without a word and he didn’t know whether you were unconscious in a ditch. I told him that you would be on the way home because I’d let you know that something was wrong, so it was my fault really. I was just going to brew more tea or something. Are you hungry?’

  I thought about it and realized that I had got by on one sandwich and an apple since my early breakfast. ‘Starving,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘Go and sit with Daffy. She can tell you her story, if she feels up to it. That’ll let Hannah finish up.’

  Hannah, drawn by our whispering or the sound of the car, emerged from the sitting room. She looked more alert and cheerful and I thought that the image of her Dougal might be slipping from reality into memory. I was still wondering why Daffy needed a sitter.

  Before I could ask, Hannah said, ‘How did Ash get on?’ Not, you will note, how did her owner, trainer and handler get on? At Three Oaks, the dog was all-important. But at least she had remembered to ask.

  ‘He’s still in the car, and unfed,’ I told her. I paused before adding, ‘We won.’

  Hannah beamed, stood on her toes and kissed me.

  Beth looked pleased but only said, ‘You’re not going to crow over Isobel, are you?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ I said. ‘That was my only reason for trying so hard.’

  Beth made a face at me. ‘Daffy won’t go to hospital, won’t speak to the police, won’t eat or drink anything and she won’t even let me call the doctor.’ Beth combined a sigh with blowing a strand of hair away from her face. I tucked it back for her, took the tray from her and put in down on the hall table. ‘Thanks. She says she doesn’t want to be a nuisance! Well, she’s a damn sight more nuisance worrying everybody sick. She just lies on the settee, moaning. See what you can do with her.’

  Beth had to be seriously upset to let such doubles entendres slip by.

  The sitting room, I found, was lit only by the firelight, supplemented by one small table lamp. Even that poor illumination seemed to be too much, because Daffy was stretched on the settee with a cloth over her eyes. She was wearing a dress which I seemed to recognize as one of Hannah’s. She put up a listless hand to lift an edge of the cloth and peep at me. Sarda, sprawled across her lap, watched every movement with anxious eyes. ‘It’s you,’ Daffy said hoarsely.

  It was not the occasion for a funny answer, nor a pedantic one. ‘It’s me,’ I confirmed, throwing grammar to the winds.

  ‘How did you get on?’

  ‘I thought nobody was going to ask. We got a first.’

  ‘Well done! So Ash can go forward to open stakes.’ The news would usually have had her on her feet. Instead, she sounded only mildly interested.

  ‘What happened to you?’ I asked her. ‘Beth and Hannah are too busy to tell me anything. And I don’t think that they know a lot.’

  She roused slightly but remained prone. ‘We packed up early because of the snow,’ she said in a tired voice. ‘Mrs Cunningham invited me to stay for a meal, but there was a heap of things waiting for me at home and now I had a chance to get at them at last and have the place clean and the laundry done before Rex comes home again. Am I making sense?’ she asked.

  ‘Perfect sense,’ I assured her.

  ‘I seem to be thinking through cotton wool. Mrs Cunningham offered to drive me home but conditions were rotten for driving and I thought that I’d probably be safer walking on the back road. Well, I set off to walk home. I had Sarda with me – on a lead, thank God! It was almost dark and snowing hard, but I had a good torch and good boots with plenty of tread, so we got along all right until we came to the place between the walls, you know where I mean?’

  I said that I did. The cottage which Rex and Daffy shared was on a side-road that came off on the other side of the village, but an even more minor road, little more than a lane, cut the corner and would have saved her a mile. About half a mile from Three Oaks, the road squeezed between the high garden wall belonging to a farmhouse and a drystone wall to a field.

  Daffy’s voice was getting stronger. ‘We were in the middle of that bit when a car arrived suddenly. It seemed to come out of nowhere. One moment it was dark, a moment later the world was full of blazing bright snowflakes and a pair of lamps was rushing at us. He couldn’t have pulled up on the snow, even if he’d seen me in time, and you know how narrow the road is just there. The garden wall is impossibly high so I went the other way. I threw myself to the side of the road, dragging Sarda after me, couldn’t stop and ended up doing a dive over the wall into the field. I don’t know whether Sarda was dragged over on the lead or if she jumped but she seems all right. It was damn close, he actually hit the duffel bag which was over my shoulder. But there’s a drop to the field and I came down on a big stone with Sarda on top of me. I was dazed and I seemed to have cut my head and it was nearer to come back here and anyway there wouldn’t have been anyone at home. You don’t mind?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘Don’t be an ass. We’d have minded very much if you’d done anything else. Let’s have a look at you.’

  She peeped out from under the cloth again and evidently discovered that the light no longer hurt her eyes. She discarded the cloth – one of my scarves, I noticed – and sat up, tucking the skirt modestly under her knees. Marriage had certainly changed her. The change was mostly for the better but sometimes I missed the old, outrageous Daffy.

  During my army days I had gained some experience of injuries. I put up the top light without causing more than a frown of discomfort and examined her. A lump like half an egg was lifting her hair above her right ear, but Beth had already cleaned up the attendant cut. Several other abrasions had been plastered. She was breathing normally and comfortably and, though stiff and sore, could move all her limbs. Her eyes looked normal. She was pale but not clammy. I judged that she had had a mild concussion but was already coming out of it.

  I switched off the big light again and sat down. ‘You’d better stay here overnight,’ I said. ‘Just in case you have any after-effects.’

  ‘Mrs Cunningham already said that. And Hannah says that I can come in with her.’

  ‘Good arrangement,’ I said with relief. The spare bedroom now doubled as a nursery. If Daffy had slept there, Sam would have had to come in with us and he was a noisy and demanding roommate.

  ‘It’s very odd that you didn’t see the car coming,’ I said. ‘He came from in front of you?’

  ‘No, it came from behind. And you know how falling snow muffles noise.’

  ‘Even so, there would have been a lot of light spilling forward and illuminating the snowflakes.’

  Daffy rubbed her eyes. Her mind, usually bright, was working again. ‘I didn’t expect a car. You hardly ever see traffic on that road except a tractor or a small herd of cows. And I was thinking of other things. Partly I was wondering how you’d got on. Then again, it wasn’t quite dark. And a lot of people prefer to use dipped headlights in fog or snow, so as not to make it reflect back in their eyes. He may have un-dipped the moment he saw me.’

  ‘I suppose all that’s true,’ I said. ‘You seem to have thought it out.’

  ‘I’ve had nothing else to think about, lying here.’

  ‘All the same, why don’t you want the police?’

  ‘What could they do?’ she asked petulantly. ‘Anyway, I was just as much at fault as he was. I should have been paying attention. And if I did call the police and they did manage to arrest somebody, he would probably turn out to be a friend or relation
of somebody I know or somebody important and I’d be in for endless hassle. Sod’s Law.’

  It was certainly too late for the police to accomplish anything that night. The guilty vehicle would almost certainly be home and cold by now and much snow had fallen over the whole scene. Daffy’s duffel bag was on the carpet beside her. There was a rip through which her spare jeans showed. I turned the bag in my hands. There were no convenient flakes of paint to be seen. ‘We’ll put this away in polythene,’ I said, ‘just in case. I can lend you another bag for the moment.’

  Beth called me to come and take my meal. I decided to sleep on the problem.

  *

  There were no alarms in the night, but all the same I was restless. Daffy’s accident fitted too neatly together with other events, to make a pattern which I did not want to recognize. It seemed to me that somebody might mean to do Daffy harm. The thought was not conducive to sound sleep under the same roof.

  Daffy herself had slept well and was up early, hobbling around like an old lady but doing her share of the work, a still worried Sarda constantly at her heel. Daffy was showing several more lumps which had developed during the night and some bruises which had hardly been visible earlier had now blossomed into Glorious Technicolor, but I judged that any danger of serious injury or concussion was now gone. I was waiting in the kitchen when she and Hannah came in for breakfast, while Beth was getting Sam up and ready for the day.

  ‘Think back,’ I told Daffy. ‘I know that you weren’t paying attention at the time, but try to remember. Have you any idea what sort of a car it was?’

  ‘None at all,’ said Daffy. ‘Just a big blur behind bright lamps.’

  ‘Did it sound like a big car or a small car?’

  Daffy thought back. ‘Big,’ she said at last.

  She was probably right. The tear in her duffel bag had been up near the draw-cord and, knowing how Daffy carried the bag slung over her shoulder, almost certainly out of reach of a conventional family car. But there would be little to be gained by pursuing that line any further. Memory can record very erratically in moments of emergency. Once, in my youth, I was knocked off my bicycle by a large black car but my memory still insists that the culprit was a small red van.

  ‘It came at you suddenly from behind. You were on your usual way home. I’ll offer you two scenarios,’ I told her, ‘and you can pick the one that you think most nearly fits the circumstances. One, it was on a normal journey and you didn’t see it or hear it until the driver upped his headlamps and was about to overtake you. Or, two, it was waiting in the driveway to the farmhouse until you passed by and then pulled out and followed you up. Which?’

  Hannah was staring at me over her cereal but Daffy looked ready to cry. ‘You’re suggesting that somebody tried to run me down?’

  ‘We have to consider it. What’s more,’ I said with sudden insight, ‘I believe you’ve been wondering the same yourself but haven’t wanted to recognize it.’

  Daffy was shaking her honey-coloured head. ‘I can’t, I just can’t believe that anyone hates me that much,’ she whispered.

  ‘If it’s any comfort to you, I don’t think it’s anything personal. You’re in somebody’s way, that’s all. Finish your breakfast.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Daffy opened her boiled egg and spread butter on a slice of toast. Her movements were abstracted. ‘I’ll give you this much,’ she said. ‘Before I got as far as the village, I saw the lights of a vehicle turn into the lane ahead of me. He could have gone ahead and stopped at the farmhouse gate and waited to see me coming.’

  ‘Right. What’s more,’ I added, ‘he doesn’t necessarily want you dead. He hit your duffel bag. You carry most of your worldly goods in that bag. He must have thought that he’d hit you. And yet he didn’t come back. If he’d been innocent, or if he wanted you dead, he’d certainly have come back.’

  ‘He could have panicked and done a hit-and-run,’ Hannah piped up for the first time.

  ‘Right again. All the same, my guess is that somebody wants Daffy out of action. We’re going to have to do something. His next move might be to poison all the dogs, or something crazy like that.’

  Beth came in, leading Sam. She heaved the child onto his raised chair. Our discussion dried up. Beth would have to be put in the picture but I was not expressing my worries within Sam’s hearing. When Daffy had finished her breakfast, or at least had eaten as much as we thought she needed, I got to my feet. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’re going to Ardrossie,’ I added to Beth.

  Beth, who looks so much less than her real age, often surprises me by saying very little and then proving to be far ahead of me. ‘Yes, I think you’d better,’ she said. ‘We don’t want any more nonsenses. But don’t you think you’d do better to take the police along?’

  ‘Not at this stage,’ I said pulling on my coat. ‘We’ve no proof of anything. But letting him know that we know should stop him.’

  Hannah was far behind but still pursuing. ‘Just a minute,’ she said. ‘Does this have anything to do with Dougal’s disappearance?’

  If I told her a lie now she would never forgive me. ‘It might,’ I admitted.

  ‘Then I’m coming with you.’ She grabbed her coat and followed us.

  Beth came to the door. ‘Don’t do anything silly, any of you,’ she said.

  ‘Like what?’ I asked her irritably. I had not paused to change my shoes for boots and I was slithering through several inches of snow at the time. The air had turned bitterly cold.

  She looked over her shoulder to check on Sam. ‘I don’t know like what,’ she said. ‘But you usually manage to find something. I wish I could come with you.’

  ‘Somebody has to mind the place and look after Sam,’ I said. I had the engine running. I slammed my door and moved off before she could think of any more arguments.

  The ploughs had been busy. The main roads were clear of snow but the sparse Sunday traffic threw up a spray of mingled slush and sand and I hated to think what the salt might be doing to the underside of my car. My companions wanted to ask questions but I shook my head. I was trying to think and to drive at the same time, which was more than enough to be going on with. The secondary road that led past Ardrossie had been snowed on since the plough had passed that way and the car wanted to play at being a carousel.

  At Ardrossie, things were worse. I should have been warned when I saw Quentin Cove’s big Shogun parked in a field gate off the farm-road, but I went on past the loading bay of the new buildings housing the dog-food factory, silent now in Sabbath calm. I pulled round the end and entered the spacious yard. On my right was the farm manager’s cottage formerly occupied by Dougal Webb and to the left the back of the farmhouse.

  I touched the brakes. Instantly, brakes and steering ceased to have any effect. Luckily I had entered the yard at a dead slow pace or I would shot straight into the open front of the big barn ahead of me and collided with a van or one of Quentin Cove’s tractors, but at the last moment two wheels of the car passed from ice onto a narrow strip of frosted snow and we slewed to a halt and stalled. There was a silence, broken only by the sound of barking from the kennels behind the barn, before we began breathing again.

  I found my voice. ‘You two stay in the car,’ I said firmly as I opened my door.

  The source of all the ice was immediately evident. Quentin Cove, engulfed in oilskins, was crouched at the corner of the house, attempting a short-term repair with tape to a burst water-pipe. Onto the snow, which was already compacted by the passage of vehicles, water from the pipe was spraying and running across the surface, freezing as it went. The yard could well have doubled as a skating rink.

  Forgetting that I was wearing smooth-soled shoes instead of my heavily treaded boots, I stepped out and almost went flat on my back. Somehow I managed to retain my balance. I had once been a moderately proficient skater and that half-forgotten skill, I think, saved me from going down. I remained upright, delicately poised, while without conscious effort or movement on
my part I slithered slowly across the yard. I came to a halt somewhere near the centre and stood still, hardly daring to breathe.

  Quentin Cove had been watching my antics, in and out of the car. He heaved himself to his feet, scowling. ‘What is it?’ he asked me roughly. ‘You can see I’m busy.’

  ‘I want a word with you.’

  ‘What word? I didn’t think you came for the sight of my pretty face.’

  I felt my temper beginning to slip. The farmer was acting as though he was the injured party. ‘If I did,’ I said, ‘I’m doomed to bloody disappointment because you haven’t got one.’

  Chapter Eight

  Quentin Cove hesitated. He took a second or two to decide whether to respond to my insult with amusement or aggression. His face had always been easy to read. I saw him review his options, make a conscious decision and summon up the adrenaline. I wondered for a moment whether, in my anger, I had gone too far. I was in no state to exchange blows with a doughty farmer. My only defence would be the unarmed combat that I had learned in the army. But nobody had taught me how not to kill. My mouth went dry.

  He moved towards me with clenched fists and stepped straight onto the ice. But he did not have the knack of keeping still and staying balanced. Arms flailing and legs pedalling in all directions, he approached me so directly that I was sure disaster was imminent. But I managed to skate half a pace to the side and he passed me by so close that I had to duck under one of his flying arms. He slowed and came to a halt.