Going to the Dogs

by Dan Kavanagh

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Duffy.

  ‘Even if they’d forced the french windows last night nothing would have happened,’ said Vic. ‘I didn’t turn the alarm on.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Duffy repeated.

  ‘I hope you will, son. I hope you will.’

  At that moment the door of the video library opened and a flirtatious Nikki appeared. She looked up at Duffy and said, ‘Can I do my dance for you now?’

  ‘Later, sweetheart, later,’ said Vic.

  ‘Can I do my dance for Taff when he comes back from the woods?’

  ‘That’s a nice idea, sweetheart. Off you go now.’

  Vic unlocked the french window with the brown-paper patch in it and stepped out rather heavily on to a flagged terrace. Duffy followed him. Growing between the square stones were little plants — probably herbs or something — which Duffy didn’t recognize. A couple of large urns, which may have been pre-weathered or may have been the genuine pound note, contained a bright array of geraniums. A bumblebee droned slowly past, flying awkwardly as if weighed down by shopping. Hesitantly, Duffy sniffed the air. He felt like someone asked to taste the wine in an expensive restaurant who doesn’t reckon his chances on knowing whether the stuff is meant to taste like that or not.

  ‘Smells different,’ he announced cautiously.

  ‘Funny, that, isn’t it?’ said Vic. ‘I notice it, too. It’s all these years of being in London. Doesn’t smell real, does it, the country? Smells like it comes out of a can. Old God up there with his aerosol thinking, “What shall we give them this morning: puff of Spring Flowers, squirt of Autumn Fragrance?” You know, I often come out here and feel like having a smoke, just to put some real smell in the air. And I don’t even smoke any more.’

  By this time they were leaning over the stone balustrade at the back of the terrace. Duffy’s eye was caught by a movement away to his right. A figure had turned the right-hand corner of the terrace and was coming towards them. He was crawling, quite fast, with his elbows stuck out and his toes kicking at the ground. Head down, he passed five feet below them without taking any notice, scuttled towards the far end of the terrace and disappeared from view.

  ‘Looked a bit like a salamander,’ said Duffy knowledgeably.

  ‘Jimmy was in the Army,’ Vic explained. ‘Loved it, always loved it. They said he wasn’t bright enough. He’s always going on at me to let him build an assault course in the grounds here. He thinks guests might like to try it — you know, squeeze through those big sewer pipes and swing across the lake on ropes — before they earn their gin and tonic.’

  ‘What’s he do now?’

  ‘I think it’s called being an estate agent,’ said Vic sceptically. ‘But I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk about it.’

  He led Duffy to a rustic seat which confirmed Duffy’s suspicions about the discomforts of the country.

  ‘Spit it out, Vic,’ said Duffy.

  ‘It’s Angela. We’re a bit worried about Angela. Belinda and me.’

  ‘Is she the one with the red hair?’ Out of a bottle, Duffy silently added.

  ‘Right. We’ve known her ever since we moved down here — longer than any of the others. She’s best mates with Belinda, and I’m very … fond of her.’

  ‘Does that mean what I think it means?’

  Vic ignored him. ‘I don’t know how to put this, but Angela’s always been a bit… rackety. She’s been around a bit, as they say, by anyone’s standards. I mean, that sort of thing’s more noticeable in the country. No one cares where anyone sticks their chewing-gum in London, but you have to be slightly more careful out here. And she’s never been a careful girl. Do anything, try anything, that’s always been her motto.’

  ‘So she screws around a lot and takes drugs,’ said Duffy, keeping a professional voice on. ‘What else?’

  Vic shrugged. ‘She might look a tough cookie to you at first glance, but she isn’t. That’s one of the reasons she gets on with Belinda. You know, they both look like they know the way everything runs, but deep down,’ Vic’s voice shifted register slightly, ‘they’re just girls at heart. Little girls lost in the wood.’ He paused. Duffy didn’t exactly feel a torment of sympathy for the two maidens adrift in the bracken.

  ‘Take a squint at her wrists if you get the chance. Looks like Clapham Junction with all those lines. That was the second time, about a couple of years ago. The time before that, it was the pills. They pumped her out, tried to cheer her up, told her not to do it again, and she went on exactly as before. Two years ago, as I said, shaving her legs in the bath, takes the blade out of the razor and … Someone found her an hour or so later. It was a miracle she wasn’t dead.’

  No, it wasn’t a miracle, thought Duffy; or not exactly a miracle. It sounded more like incompetence. Duffy had come across quite a few attempted suicides in his days as a copper. People always said that if you failed it proved you didn’t really want to die. Duffy disagreed. What it usually proved was that you weren’t very good at doing it. People thought cutting your wrists was easy, so they just slashed across at right angles, but often the weight of your hands just closed up the cuts again. The people who were really serious cut their wrists diagonally.

  ‘Poor kid. Why did she do it?’

  Vic shrugged. ‘Said she wanted to be dead. Said no one loved her. You know, the usual stuff. The parents split up when she was a kid, that may have something to do with it. They’re dead now.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Thirty-seven, thirty-eight. Looks younger, doesn’t she? They do nowadays. She’s a sweet kid underneath it all.’

  Duffy grunted. People were always saying things like that. She’s a sweet kid underneath it all. So why does there have to be all that stuff on top, Duffy always wanted to ask.

  ‘So, you get the picture. Things definitely a bit dodgy.’

  ‘She got money?’

  ‘She got money. Anyway, a bit dodgy, and all the usual things had been tried, doctors and clinics and you know what, and lots of promises, followed by lots of promises being broken. Even if you’re fond of them you can get a bit fed up with people like that. So, about a year ago, she meets Henry.’

  ‘Was that the one who said he’d been to see a man about a dog?’

  ‘Check. Henry’s been around for a long time. Comes from one of these country families that go way back.’

  ‘Vic,’ said Duffy. ‘All families go way back. I’ve got just as many ancestors as the next man. So’ve you. So’s a ferret.’

  ‘Don’t start getting chippy again. You know what I mean. Henry’s about forty-five, and everyone had pretty much given up on him. In the marriage stakes, I mean. He’s a bit funny, you know, you don’t quite suss what makes him tick. Anyway, contrary to all expectations, he went for her. Perhaps because she was different. I mean with Henry, it’d always been girls with headscarves and green wellies whose idea of fun was to pull the shooting-stick out from under him at the point-to-point.’

  ‘So it’s wedding bells, is it?’

  ‘Three weeks’ time. The church is booked.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right, then,’ said Duffy, prodding.

  ‘She lives in this cottage, just outside the village. About two months ago things started happening. Just little things. Noises in the garden and you can’t tell if it’s a dog or something else. One day she finds a dead bird on the step — well, it could have been a cat leaving it there. Knockings in the night. Then one morning a stone comes through the window. That did it. She took a handful of pills to calm herself down and passed out. That’s when we told her to move in here.’

  ‘Where does she get all the pills? And the other stuff for that matter.’

  ‘Rich people can always get pills, Duffy. Anyway, the point is, she’s really on the edge now. She quietened down a bit when she got here, then she got worried about the cottage and went back, and do you know what she said? She said she thought the whole woodpile had moved about two yard
s. The whole pile. Just got up and walked. That set her off, and not knowing whether she was imagining it didn’t help.’

  ‘What does Henry think about all her … activities?’

  ‘We think he’s had the cleaned-up version. I mean, I don’t think he gets off on that side of her. He probably just thinks girls are like that, one day they’re a bit excited and one day they’re a bit quiet.’

  ‘So she’s on the edge.’

  ‘She’s really on the edge. I mean, I don’t know what it’s about, and I don’t know how much she’s imagining, but I do know we’ve got to keep her in one piece for the next three weeks. This is her last chance, Bel and me both think so. Henry’s her last chance. Getting her up that altar is her last chance. We just think she’d fall apart if she doesn’t make it.’

  ‘So the dog didn’t help.’

  ‘The dog did not help. Who’d do a thing like that, Duffy? Poor innocent creature …’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like dogs.’

  ‘I didn’t say I did. I just said they were poor innocent creatures.’

  ‘Right. What else?’

  ‘She says she’s being blackmailed.’

  ‘Now he tells me. Who, why, how much?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say. Just clammed up. You don’t like to push her in case …’

  ‘Sure,’ said Duffy. ‘Call the coppers.’

  ‘She wouldn’t talk to the coppers. And I’m not having coppers around if I can help it. Old habits die hard.’ Yes, and coppers with sharp noses might arrive bringing big dogs with sharp noses. They stood up. ‘So you’ll stick around for a few days?’

  Duffy nodded. ‘I charge higher rates for posh people.’

  Vic shook his head sadly. ‘You’re such a bad businessman, Duffy. I’ll pay you your normal rates.’

  ‘All right.’

  They walked slowly round the outside of the house, as if inspecting it for possible ways to break in. When they reached the drive Duffy swore. Bloody hell, someone had been fiddling with his van. It was all at a funny angle. He walked across the gravel, half looking across to the house as he did so. His two offside tyres were flat.

  Minder to a slice of posh, Duffy thought. Well, if that’s what they wanted to pay him for … In Duffy’s view, Braunscombe Hall didn’t need Duffy. It needed the coppers, and it needed a psychiatric nurse, and it needed a good spring-clean, one long squirt with some giant aerosol which made selected humans go around for a couple of minutes buzzing like a dentist’s drill before falling down with their legs in the air; but it didn’t need Duffy. On the other hand, who did you hire if you wanted to make sure someone got married? Were there wedding enforcers in the Yellow Pages? Perhaps they’d ask him to give Angela away, just to make sure he could accompany her all the way to the altar. Would he have to manacle her for the trip? Yes, sir, and with the grey morning suit and the gloves and the topper, we recommend this nice pair of silver-gilt handcuffs. Very discreet, as you can see, sir. No, everyone’s getting married in them nowadays. As the bridegroom slips the ring on the bride’s finger, the security adviser unlocks the manacles and throws the key to the posse of waiting girls. First one to catch it is next up the aisle.

  Still, it was the client who was paying, and forty a day plus expenses (no, he shouldn’t have used that line about charging more for posh people — he should just have upped his rate) also bought, for a brief initial period, the benefit of the doubt. And he hadn’t really examined this Angela, just seen her bolt from the room at the mention of a dog. He’d obviously have to watch his tongue about the place. Not say ‘Woof Woof at the wrong moment. Customer relations, Duffy, he thought, customer relations. It wasn’t his strong point and he knew it.

  ‘Duffy’s staying on for a couple of days,’ Vic announced casually as dinner began. ‘The alarm system’s all cocked to hell.’

  ‘Maybe it was a bad installation,’ said Belinda sarcastically. Thanks a bunch, Bel, thought Duffy. He tried to imagine the conversation between Bel and Vic when the latter had informed her that Duffy was going to hang around for a bit. He wondered where he’d be sleeping. Probably in some attic with newspaper on the floor and a broken window, if Bel had her way.

  ‘Well, that’s very jolly,’ said Damian, looking evenly at Duffy. ‘You can make up a four at bridge.’ He batted his long lashes and gave the tip of his nose what seemed like an intentional waggle.

  ‘I don’t play,’ said Duffy.

  ‘Then we’ll have to make you dummy, won’t we?’ Damian smirked and Sally, the one with big squiffy eyes who always giggled, giggled. You watch it, my son, Duffy wanted to say, or you’ll get your nice velvet suit all muddy. Instead, he looked around the table and said, ‘Who’s been mucking with my van?’

  ‘Mucking?’ replied Damian. ‘With your van? I wouldn’t muck with somebody else’s.’

  ‘Two of my tyres got let down. That’s dangerous. And if the rim’s gone through the tyre that’s criminal damage as well,’ he said, trying to sound a bit more authoritative.

  ‘Round up all the usual suspects,’ bellowed Jimmy, as if he had just thought of the line. Bald twerp, thought Duffy, and remembered Jimmy scuttling along below the terrace like a salamander. No, like a ferret.

  ‘I thought you were meant to be secure,’ said Sally. ‘Duffy Security,’ she repeated, and grinned at him.

  ‘I’ll pump up your poor little tyres if you’ll play bridge with us,’ said Damian in a tone of mock weariness, as if this really was his last offer and nothing Duffy did would make him improve it.

  ‘Round up all the usual suspects,’ repeated Jimmy. Lucretia was silent.

  ‘Put it on the bill if there’s any damage,’ said Vic, ‘and stop messing about if it was any of you kids.’ He treated them like an uncle who had too much patience, Duffy thought; as if smacked bottoms and tears before bedtime were bad ideas.

  Turning slightly as he ate, Duffy tried to get a squint at, Angela’s forearms. Wrists like Clapham Junction, Vic had said. Well, Clapham Junction was wrapped in tarpaulin: a beige rollneck sweater also rolled its way all down her arms and covered the first inch or two of her hands. She didn’t talk much, this woman he was meant to be minding.

  At that moment, the door opened and a short man in a black turtleneck number entered. His neatly cut black beard made him look a bit like a member of a weekend jazz band who played trad at minor festivals; but the shape of his body made this unlikely. His top half was almost triangular: his swelling shoulders embarrassed his head with their size. His upper arms were powerfully developed, but his hands were quite small. His waist was narrow, and he moved delicately.

  ‘Taffy,’ said Vic. ‘We wondered where you’d got to.’ The black-haired man silently raised one of his hands and showed the table three pigeons, their necks tied together with string.

  ‘Pigeon pie,’ he said, in a very quiet voice.

  Duffy expected some elaborate sally to come from Damian’s curvy lips; but all he said was, ‘I like pigeon pie.’

  It was only when the pigeons had been handed over to Mrs Hardcastle that Duffy remembered. Christ, you’re getting slow, he thought; you’d never have been that slow when you were on the beat. But, then, you’d hardly have expected to run into this particular pigeon-slaughterer on the Buckinghamshire/Bedfordshire borders. Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief, Taffy came to my place and stole a side of beef. Except that, in this case, Taffy was an Englishman, and his name was a shortening of Tafford. Taffy was an Englishman, and a bit more than a thief.

  There must have been a time when Taffy was appearing on the front page of the same tabloid in which you could find Belinda aiming her upper storey at you from Page Three. Neither of them much resembled their photographic images. Belinda didn’t look at all like the sort of girl who would romp across the room, plant herself wigglingly on your knee and teasingly undo your top button; while Taffy, seated across from her and neatly slicing his roast veal, didn’t look at all like what certain headline-writers enthusiastically refer
red to as Public Enemy Number One. Where was the glazed hunter-killer look which had helped sell so many newspapers?

  Taffy’s career went way back and began, like most criminal careers, in mediocrity: a little pilfering, a little taking and driving away, a little gentle robbery. He didn’t steal much, he wasn’t particularly violent, and he got caught quite often. What with the constant interruptions to Taffy’s schooling, there was little chance of him getting into university. He was in his middle twenties before he finally broke out of the self-defeating cycle of small theft, small violence and small spells in prison. He worked out that the amount you could steal was often directly related to the amount of violence you were prepared to use. This key discovery led to his career breakthrough: the very nasty roughing-up of a husband-and-wife in Sussex, in return for which he obtained a large quantity of Georgian silver, not all of it on obvious display. Taffy also worked out that if you stole more at one time, then you didn’t have to steal so often, and the fewer times you went to work, the less often the lads in blue uniforms had a chance to nab you. As a result, Taffy was for some time able to live a normal social life; though he never did get into university.

  What put him on the front page helping Belinda sell copies for the same press proprietor was a touch of over-enthusiasm with an iron bar during a slack period for news. He’d been serving two years in Maidstone for being over-fond of what didn’t belong to him when he suddenly went stir-crazy, brained a prison officer with a piece of railing and did a runner. Where he’d got the weapon from nobody found out. The photo of the officer with blood all over his face looked rather fetching to the professional eye of front-page layout men; and it was swiftly followed by a picture of Taffy himself, definitely not looking his best. For a few summer weeks he became a brief celebrity. One newspaper offered a reward for his recapture; another speculated that he had escaped with the intention of making some public protest — perhaps he planned to interfere with the minor royal wedding two weeks hence. The public quickly deduced that Taffy was on the run, eager to inflict maximum violence on anyone who stood in his way, and plotting to blow up the entire royal family. A Welsh reader wrote to The Times pointing out that Taffy was not one of his fellow-countrymen.