The White Shepherd

by Annie Dalton

  She slipped out of her socks and trainers. Gathering them in one hand, Anna looked down at them with mute horror. There was no blood, nothing that she could see, yet she felt contaminated inside and out.

  She fled into her bathroom, dropping both trainers and socks into the dirty linen hamper. This action tripped an internal switch, and Anna began shedding the rest of her clothes in a frenzy, feverishly bundling them into the basket on top of the rest. Then she walked into the shower, shut herself behind the sliding glass doors and stood under the scalding hot water, soaping and shampooing and rinsing herself over and over until it finally ran cold.

  She emerged into a fog of steam. Wiping her hand across the steamed-up mirror, Anna regarded her flushed, shiny face. I’m like a different order of being to Tansy, she thought. Tansy’s delicate heart-shaped face instantly registered her emotions, like weather chasing across the sky, where Anna’s was habitually guarded. Her eyes, a dark, almost navy, blue, were the untrusting eyes of a survivor. Her gaze dropped to the neat, faintly-puckered scar below her navel. For the millionth time, she saw the flash of the blade, felt it slice stinging into her flesh, saw herself run, stumbling, bleeding, into the dark.

  In her bedroom Anna carefully blow-dried her shoulder-length hair – a similar honey-brown shade to Naomi’s, she realized. She dressed in her favourite slouchy trousers and a long, loose T-shirt. Her reflection looked back from the full-length mirror, a thirty-something young woman ready for yoga or Pilates, some holistic activity not involving bloodshed.

  She heard herself make an incoherent sound and saw her eyes, reflected in the mirror, turn pleading, but it was no use. Naomi’s murder had dragged her back to the bad place, the mad place, and she only knew one way to stop the madness from overflowing.

  She snatched up a black scrunchy, painfully yanking her newly-washed hair through it as she hurried across the landing to her study. It was the only room she kept shut. Turning the handle she slipped inside, closing the door behind her. It was the smallest room in Anna’s flat. Inside it she kept her somewhat esoteric reference library, her desktop computer and printer, and a running machine. All these objects had been crowded awkwardly into one corner. It was the only way Anna could fit in her giant antique cupboard.

  She’d found the ancient French armoire in a street market. She’d loved the way its double doors were hand-painted with an elaborate floral design. Over time the pattern had faded, and in some places only a faint gold and cobalt-blue stippling remained. Anna had thought her street-market find was beautiful once. Now she wished she could chop it up and set it on fire. If the day ever came when it had served its purpose, she would.

  The key lived in the top drawer of her desk. Anna fitted it into the lock, turning until she felt the telltale click. She could feel the blood drumming in her ears as she pulled the two doors apart.

  Inside was horror and chaos. It filled the top two-thirds of the cupboard, extending on to and totally covering the backs of both doors; layers of yellowing news clippings, photographs large and small, typed lists of names and questions, timelines, witness statements, scrawled arrows, printouts of floor plans, pink and yellow Post-its, and Anna knew the exact position of every single one. Over the top, taut criss-crossed strings ran back and forth, forming a dense spider-web of connections. The bottom third of the cupboard was stacked with tatty cardboard files, so swollen with documents that they seemed about to burst their seams. Gasping now with a mix of emotions so explosive that it felt like they surely had to blow her apart, Anna blindly groped for a marker pen, writing furiously across one of the clippings.

  Dead End, she scrawled, in jagged black letters, before she hurled the pen away.

  For a long moment she stood where she was, fists clenched, taking great sobbing breaths. She wouldn’t cry. She hadn’t cried then, and she wouldn’t cry now. Instead she forced herself to reread the screaming headlines, forced herself to remember why she had to keep on keeping it together and why she’d come back to live in this city after so many years.

  Calmer now, Anna picked up a different marker from the jar on her desk, running her finger along one of the strings until she found a blurry photo of two amiably smiling generic-looking young males. Frowning, she printed a thick blue question mark above one of the faces. Underneath she wrote in a more legible script: Where are you?

  She relocked the doors, shutting all the murder and madness safely inside. Like always when she’d added something to her cupboard, however small, she had a childlike sense of being forgiven.

  Outside her study, Anna was suddenly shaky from lack of food. It was late afternoon, and all she’d consumed, not counting the life-saving gulp of coffee-flavoured vodka, was her skinny latte while she was waiting for Naomi. The idea of food or cooking still felt indecent though, so she set off downstairs to her kitchen to make herself a smoothie.

  The room was half kitchen, half conservatory. A pair of French doors looked out on to a pretty courtyard garden. The afternoon sunlight poured in through the glass, glinting off the gleaming copper pans hanging from their hooks and the open shelves where Anna still kept her grandmother’s beloved Limoges china. In her heightened state the delicate cups and dishes seemed to glow as if lit from within.

  Anna opened the French doors, letting her eyes rest on the pots of herbs and flowers. A late-flowering clematis had been allowed to ramble unchecked over a wooden pergola, creating a leafy roof starred with enormous white, green-veined blossoms.

  Bonnie had retreated to her basket in its alcove. She looked cautiously up at Anna, unsure what was required. Anna clicked her fingers. ‘Bonnie, good dog, come here!’

  Bonnie stepped out of her basket, allowing Anna to scratch her between her ears, her eyes narrowing with pleasure. With her fingertips, Anna gently searched for and found the tiny mysterious ridges beneath the snowy white coat. Bonnie’s inexplicable scars were part of the mystery that Naomi had been going to try to solve. ‘So you’re not just beautiful, but you’ve got a secret past! You’re like the canine Mata Hari!’ Naomi had told Bonnie.

  ‘Well, maybe some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved,’ Anna told her dog softly. ‘And that’s just how it is. So I am going to make a green smoothie which will hopefully turn me into a whole new woman, and when it’s ready we’ll go out into the garden and enjoy some of this sun. What do you say?’ As Anna went on talking sweet nothings, Bonnie cocked her head first to one side and then the other, seeming appreciative of Anna’s efforts at communication.

  She went over to her fridge and pulled out a packet of baby spinach, an avocado, a cucumber and other ingredients for her smoothie. Then she plugged in her juicer, found a sharp knife and chopping board and set to work. Bonnie wandered over to the open French doors, sniffing the air before she lay down in the sunlight, positioning herself so that she could keep a watchful eye on Anna. Surprisingly, the high-pitched whine of the machine, which always set Anna’s teeth on edge, only induced an occasional ear-twitch in her dog.

  Noticing that Bonnie’s water bowl was empty, she wiped her juicy hands on some kitchen towel and refilled the bowl before she went back to juicing. Anna still felt like a novice as a dog owner though Bonnie was really so little trouble. Whoever trained her had done a stellar job. But Anna was starting to wonder exactly what kind of life the White Shepherd had led before she turned up in the rescue centre, because she had a bad feeling that Naomi’s was not Bonnie’s first ever dead body.

  Having methodically processed her fruit and vegetables, Anna poured the juice into a blender, threw in half the avocado, added the squeezed juice of half a lime and whizzed everything together. She was just pouring her smoothie into a tall glass when her iPad, which was lying on the kitchen table, surprised her with a friendly ping. She’d had an email from someone she’d never heard of, a guy called Jake McCaffrey.

  Anna collected up her tablet and her smoothie and, with Bonnie following at her heels, carried them out to the little bistro table and chairs under the pergola
’s dappled shade.

  Dana, the woman who rented the top-floor flat, had her Velux windows standing wide open, and Anna could hear the all-too familiar opening chords of Van Morrison’s ‘Moon Dance’. In between shifts as a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon at the John Radcliffe, Dana somehow found time to conduct a string of love affairs with a series of unattainable men. Since she only played the bitter-sweet ‘Moon Dance’ when she was in the throes of a break-up, Anna had to assume that Dana’s latest man, a Dutch banker called Rene, had proved as disappointing as the others.

  With Dana’s break-up music for her soundtrack, Anna slowly sipped at her drink. Warm sunlight filtered down through the clematis flowers, casting patterns on her skin. Bonnie had come to lie with her head resting on Anna’s bare feet, something she’d only recently taken to doing. Anna felt ridiculously touched each time. It suggested that Bonnie was starting to trust her, making Anna feel as if she might after all be a halfway OK person.

  ‘OK, shall we take a peek at Mister Jake McCaffrey?’ she asked Bonnie after she’d finished her smoothie.

  Dear Ms Hopkins,

  Naomi Evans has given me your contact details. She seems to think there’s a chance that you might have adopted my godmother’s dog from the Oxford Dog Shelter. Bonnie was originally my dog, but circumstances made it impossible to keep her. From Naomi’s reports though she’s happy and healthy, and you’re obviously doing a great job of taking care of her. I’m attaching a photo for purposes of identification. I’m flying in from Washington on the 10th and have to be in Oxford the following day to talk to lawyers about my aunt’s estate. Would you be available to meet me that day? If it’s not imposing, I’d like to see Bonnie again, and perhaps you’d like to hear more of her history.

  Regards,

  Jake McCaffrey

  After the initial shock of seeing Naomi’s name, Anna’s next thought was that Naomi had kept her promise. Not only had she succeeded in tracking down Bonnie’s previous owner, but she’d also gone the extra distance by putting the White Shepherd’s past and present owners in touch. Anna could maybe have done this herself. But it seemed that Naomi had liked Anna enough to make her a present of her special expertise. It was the kind of thing you might do, Anna thought, if you wanted someone to be your friend.

  Then she reread the email and found herself resenting Jake McCaffrey’s attitude. Bonnie was her dog now, and this guy, whoever the hell he was, had no claim on her whatsoever. Anna’s finger hovered over her Trash icon, but then her curiosity kicked in. She’d wanted to find out about Bonnie, hadn’t she? It couldn’t hurt to look at a photograph.

  Anna clicked on the attachment and felt a prickle of shock to see a gangly White Shepherd, still just a half-grown puppy, but instantly recognizable as Bonnie. In a strangely human, upright pose, she sprawled against the shoulder of an exhausted American soldier who was sitting propped against a crumbling piece of wall. Presumably, he was Jake McCaffrey. Dressed in desert fatigues, he had cornflower blue eyes, startling against his sunburn, and looked in serious need of a shave. With a pang, Anna thought that he and Bonnie seemed like affectionate comrades in arms, their heads so close that Bonnie was unable to resist licking the helmeted soldier’s jaw as he fended her off, laughing.

  She reached down to find the hidden striations in Bonnie’s skin. ‘Is that how you got hurt?’ she asked her softly. ‘Some idiot meatheads took you into a war zone?’

  Bonnie seemed to pick up on a new tenderness in Anna’s tone. Her tail gave a friendly thump, then she unexpectedly flipped over on to her back, all four paws playfully pedalling in the air, exposing her vulnerable belly.

  That’s when Anna saw it. The rusty speck of blood on the underside of Bonnie’s forepaw.

  Naomi’s blood.

  For a moment Anna went deaf and blind.

  Then the horror flooded back in. She had tried so hard to live a background life, a harmless life, yet still the darkness and blood had followed her home.

  Grabbing Bonnie by her collar, she hauled the startled dog to her feet. ‘Bath! Now!’ she screamed.

  In her distress, Anna had forgotten that ‘bath’ was the one word that caused Bonnie to baulk. Worse still, her new human, who she had just begun to trust, was now yelling at her as if she’d done something wrong. Bonnie was an impeccably behaved dog, but she had a strong streak of self-preservation. Planting all four paws firmly on the sun-warmed bricks, she politely refused to budge.

  Panting with effort, Anna had to push and pull her into the house, up the stairs and along the landing until they reached the alcove where Bonnie’s lead hung next to the coats. Anna was close to hysteria by this time, and it took several bungled attempts to attach the lead. Even then she virtually had to half-drag her still firmly resisting dog into her bathroom. Somehow she managed to heave eighty pounds of White Shepherd over the side of the old claw-footed tub, accidentally clonking Bonnie’s head against its cast-iron side on the way.

  Once she was actually in the bath, Bonnie made no further attempt at resistance, even after Anna had removed her collar and lead. Tail tucked between her legs, carefully avoiding all eye contact with Anna, she submitted to her ordeal, enduring two applications of shampoo followed by a long, thorough and, by this time, freezing cold rinse.

  Too freaked to remember dog shampoo, Anna had to resort to her favourite bottle of Aveda. When she let out the water, she realized she’d also forgotten her old dog towels. She grabbed an inadequate hand-towel from the rail and quickly blotted the shivering Bonnie where she sat in the empty bath, head bowed, emanating reproach.

  ‘Bonnie, out!’ Anna told her.

  Bonnie didn’t need telling twice. She sprang out of the bath, scattering water droplets and sending out expensive wafts of mint and rosemary. For a moment she seemed poised to bolt downstairs, and Anna felt belated shame at having scared her lovely dog. ‘Bonnie, come,’ she repeated, and after a moment’s hesitation, Bonnie followed her a little warily into her bedroom.

  Apart from a few small changes, Anna had kept her rooms much the same as they’d been when her grandmother was alive. Only her bedroom had a haphazard unfinished feel. Framed pictures leaned against walls that she had stripped back to the bare plaster. A carved wooden screen, in need of repair, had been arranged to camouflage a pile of unpacked boxes. Anna’s bed, with its silky hyacinth-blue sheets and pillows, supplied the one note of sensual luxury in this otherwise Quakerish room. A battered cube of metal, a flea market find, stood in for a bedside table. On its dimpled surface, next to her mobile, a single dark-red rose in a small fluted vase was dropping petals.

  Anna turned away to plug in her hairdryer. ‘I’m going to dry you off,’ she told her dog. ‘Then we’ll go downstairs and I’ll find you something totally dogtastic to eat, and I promise I will do my absolute best not to scare you again, OK?’ Then she caught herself talking nonsense to her dog and was glad no one was around to hear. Turning back, she saw Bonnie about to launch herself into an apocalyptic shake. Anna barely managed to snatch her phone out of reach of the watery shock-wave created by a post-bath White Shepherd.

  ‘Should have seen that one coming,’ she said breathlessly. ‘You’re a super-civilized dog, Miss Bonnie Hopkins, but at the end of the day you’re still a dog!’

  Her phone had been left switched off, and Anna immediately switched it back on, hoping her grandfather hadn’t been trying to get hold of her while she was at the police station. The mobile’s screen lit up, and she saw the tiny whirling symbol announcing her reconnection to the outside world. Anna would always remember how she’d felt a prophetic clutch of dread even before she saw that she had voicemail. ‘Hi, Anna,’ said the light warm voice, immediately recognizable after only two conversations. ‘It’s Naomi Evans.’

  THREE

  Dusk was closing in as Anna drove through Summertown. It was more than two hours since she’d heard Naomi’s message, but she still felt shaky and unreal.

  Waiting at some traffic lights, she found hers
elf watching a young family at the window table of an upscale bistro. A flickering candle on the table illuminated their intent faces as the parents helped their small children consult menus almost as big as themselves. For a fleeting moment Anna saw her younger self, her brothers and her little sister inside that charmed circle. Heard her father saying, exasperated, ‘Just try it, Will! You’ll never know if you like it until you try.’

  Anna heard a driver’s impatient hoot and belatedly noticed the lights had changed. She briefly considered stopping off at Xi’an, the Chinese place her grandfather loved, to get them both takeaway, but decided against. The thought of food still made her stomach muscles clench.

  She turned off the Banbury Road into an avenue of detached Victorian and Edwardian houses and soon saw the familiar sign for Bramley Lodge. The tyres of her Land Rover Defender scrunched on gravel as she swung into the drive. The car park was empty except for the few vehicles which belonged to the night staff. Anna went to let Bonnie out of the back, and she sprang down, her snow-white coat glimmering in the twilight.

  Bramley Lodge was a handsome three-storey villa which had been converted to look more like a boutique hotel than a retirement home. Inside it smelled of good coffee, lavender polish and the faint scent of the tasteful floral arrangement on the reception desk. The night receptionist bookmarked her place in her kindle and gave Anna a warm smile. ‘Hello, have you come to see Mr Ottaway?’

  Anna was hastily slipping off her leather jacket. Summer was apparently over at Bramley House, and the thermostat had been cranked up to near-greenhouse levels. ‘Sorry, Gita, I know it’s a bit late for visiting.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to see you,’ Gita said. ‘Not to mention Bonnie here.’

  Anna’s grandfather lived in one of the coveted ground-floor apartments at the back. In the distance she could hear what sounded like a swelling soundtrack from one of the communal sitting rooms. Monday night was Movie Night, she remembered. Bonnie padded silently at her side over the thick-pile carpet. Her tail gave a happy swish as they reached George Ottaway’s door. Like most people who met her, Anna’s grandfather had fallen in love with Bonnie at first sight and kept a stock of treats for her.