Going to the Dogs

by Dan Kavanagh

  ‘Jimmy?’

  ‘Damn. Damn, damn, damn.’

  Duffy turned, and saw Jimmy flat on his stomach about three yards away. He was wearing a camouflage jacket and a small home-made hat plaited together from ferns. ‘Damn. When did you spot me?’

  ‘Oh, only right at the end. I think you must have, er, disturbed a twig or something.’

  ‘Ah. But how did you know it was me?’

  ‘Well, it was either you or the Boston Strangler.’

  Jimmy, lying in the bracken at the edge of the wood, appeared to give the alternative possibility some serious thought. ‘Well, it couldn’t have been him,’ he said finally and came to sit beside Duffy on the bench. ‘Damn,’ he repeated.

  ‘Sorry if I spoiled it.’

  ‘No, you were quite right. Tell you what, why don’t you try following me now?’

  ‘Maybe not today, Jimmy. I’ve got to mend the alarm.’

  ‘Oh, right. Did you find what you wanted?’

  ‘What I wanted?’

  ‘Yes.’ At the top of his head Jimmy’s bald pate fell away, and at the bottom his chin fell away, but in between his slightly popping eyes were fixed firmly on Duffy. Don’t assume he’s as thick as he’s painted, Duffy thought. ‘What you wanted. In the shed.’

  ‘Not unless there was a dead dog in there I missed.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘Have you been looking for him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ricky.’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Duffy, ‘I just thought that if we could find him, between the two of us, say, we could give him a proper burial. Seems a bit unfair that first he gets killed and then he disappears. I’m sure Angela would appreciate it.’

  ‘See what you mean,’ said Jimmy. ‘That’s something I could get on to. Not much happens in these woods that gets past old Jimmy.’

  Duffy nodded conspiratorially, happy that Jimmy had bought the feed so quickly. There was no point Duffy tramping through the woods and looking for freshly moved mounds of earth and getting nettled and bitten and stung when old Jimmy could do it for him. Perhaps being in Vic’s house infected you with Vic’s philosophy: sub-contract, never do the work if some prat will do it for you, and if it all comes to nothing, well, mugs will be mugs, won’t they?

  ‘I suppose Angela’s pretty cut up about this business,’ said Duffy after a pause.

  ‘She’s a grand girl,’ Jimmy replied, ‘she’s a grand girl.’ Whether or not this was intended as an answer to the question, Duffy could only guess.

  ‘You’ve, um, you’re obviously, um, fond of her.’

  ‘Loved her for years,’ said Jimmy, ‘loved her for years. Poor old Jimmy. Nothing doing there. Washing her car, that’s all I’m good for. Not bright enough. Not that women mind that,’ he commented ruminatively. ‘No oil painting, either. Not that women mind that. No money. Not that women mind that. No prospects. Not that women mind that. I suppose what women mind is the combination of all four. Poor old Jimmy.’

  ‘That’s tough,’ said Duffy. He wondered if washing her car also included other duties. Running up to London for things to keep her merry, for instance.

  ‘Will she be happy with Henry?’

  ‘Got money — doesn’t need prospects,’ said Jimmy rather bitterly.

  ‘What’s Henry like?’

  Jimmy considered the question at some length, gazing across the lawn to the distant glint of the lake. ‘He’s all right if you like people like him,’ he said finally.

  ‘Check.’

  They sat on the bench for a while longer. Then Duffy had another thought.

  ‘I suppose you can probably swim.’

  ‘Rather.’

  ‘Probably got a snorkel and some flippers.’

  ‘Rather.’ Jimmy looked across at Duffy, then followed his gaze towards the lake. ‘Right. Yes. Good thinking.’ He stood up. ‘Enjoyed the chinwag.’

  ‘Oh, and Jimmy?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mum’s the word.’

  Jimmy paused in his departure and half-wheeled back towards Duffy. ‘You know I often wonder why people say that. My mum talked all the bloody time.’

  At that moment a gong summoned them in to lunch. Duffy felt uneasy throughout the meal. When he looked at Jimmy, he half-expected him to blurt out their plan of combing the woods and the waters for Ricky’s corpse. When he looked at Lucretia, he wondered if last night’s plan of reading posh magazines to impress her could possibly have been serious. When he saw Mrs Hardcastle passing another bottle of Vinho Verde to Damian, he wondered if what he’d seen meant what he thought it meant. And when he looked at Damian receiving the bottle, he wasn’t sure what he felt. Embarrassment? Disapproval? Nausea? And what, for that matter, did last night’s little incident suggest about Damian’s sexual preference? Was his little game hetero or homosexual, randy or contemptuous? Perhaps neither; perhaps it was just a moment’s sport which laughed at sex, which said it was about as serious as snooker. He could try asking Sally, except she was probably too smashed at the time to notice.

  Whatever Damian felt about it all, embarrassment wasn’t at the top of the list. When he caught Duffy’s eye on him, he looked straight back and said, ‘By the way, you won’t forget our little game tonight?’

  ‘Game?’

  ‘You promised me a couple of frames.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘I assumed that was why you were creeping around the house late last night in your frightful dressing-gown. Wanting to get in some practice before the big match.’

  ‘That’s my dressing-gown, actually,’ said Vic.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Damian brightly. ‘Foot in mouth time again for Damian. All I can say is, I bet it looks much more fetching on you, my dear Vic.’

  ‘You could talk your way out of a roped sack,’ said Vic.

  ‘I’d just thcream,’ said Damian. ‘Thcream and thcream.’

  After lunch Duffy was working in the video library fixing the new pressure plate — well, at least some part of the overhaul could be authentic — when he heard the door open. He looked up and saw Sally. She was either still pissed from lunch or starting her aperitifs early for dinner; or perhaps she’d mixed some private cocktail of her own.

  ‘Thought I’d find you in here,’ she said, half falling on to the sofa. ‘Got an apology, you know.’ She giggled as if apologies were almost as funny as jokes. ‘Let down your tyres.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry, right? Well, it wasn’t my idea. Damian said why don’t we let down his tyres, you do the ones on that side I’ll do the ones on this side, but by the time I’d done mine he’d buggered back into the house. Said he thought he heard someone coming.’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Seemed like a good idea. Fun. Sorry, right?’ She turned her head to one side and her heavy black curls flopped round the side of her face. Clearly, she was bored with apology now.

  ‘By the way,’ said Duffy, trying to keep his voice in neutral, ‘I should take your shoes off next time.’

  ‘Next time? I wouldn’t do it again. It wouldn’t be worth it. Anyway, you’d guess it was us.’

  ‘Not the van. The snooker table. Heels are bad for the cloth.’

  She paused, thought, and remembered the previous night as if it had been a month ago. ‘Oh, right.’ Now that she was clear what they were talking about, she began to laugh again. ‘I’ll take them off next time. Ooh, those balls were cold.’

  ‘You shouldn’t do things like that,’ said Duffy. He hadn’t meant to say it, he’d wanted to stay cool. It had just slipped out. Anyway, he meant it.

  ‘Do what I like,’ she replied sulkily.

  ‘You shouldn’t let … him do things like that to you.’

  ‘Oh, you mean, like he won’t respect me?’ Duffy grunted. ‘You’re neolithic, you know that, neolithic. Anyway, what makes you think I want to be respected?’ Duffy hadn’t quite meant that, but he couldn’t find the
words for exactly what he did mean. ‘It’s fun,’ she added listlessly.

  Duffy thought it didn’t matter too much what he said to this girl; she probably wouldn’t remember anyway. ‘You shouldn’t drink so much.’

  ‘It’s fun,’ she replied.

  ‘It’s not fun for others.’

  ‘You’re the first to complain, Mr Neolithic.’

  ‘And you shouldn’t take whatever it is you’re taking.’

  ‘It’s fun,’ Sally said, ‘it’s fun, it’s fun, it’s fun. It’s not fun here any more. No fun with you. How old are you anyway?’

  ‘Old enough to be your brother.’

  ‘Then don’t come on like my fucking father, right?’ She screamed this last part.

  ‘Right.’

  Sally stomped off, and Duffy carried on wiring up the pressure plate. He felt depressed. It was always the same problem. The same problem whether you were at Braunscombe Hall or in the back alleys behind some South London comprehensive where the crime figures were higher than the national average. Duffy had still been a copper when the first scares about glue-sniffing had started up. Kids putting their heads in plastic bags and sniffing away at solvents. It sounded like a really dumb thing to do. Duffy had read all the reports in the papers. Glue-sniffing gave you headaches, it gave you sores round your nose, it made you apathetic. It made you do badly at school and it screwed up your home life because all you were thinking about was getting outside with the plastic bag and the aerosol. And that was just the start. The end was that you OD’d on solvent. You died. Kids of ten, twelve, thirteen dead on the streets, and all their own work. Duffy couldn’t fathom it. You blame the parents, you blame the teachers, you blame the shopkeepers who ought to know better than to sell the stuff to users, and you blame the kids themselves. But after all this blaming, you still don’t understand.

  Duffy had wanted to understand, and one day he’d found a couple of kids in an alley who hadn’t run away from him. He wasn’t a teacher, he wasn’t a social worker, and they weren’t old enough or canny enough yet to smell a copper. He got round to asking them why they did it. Fun, they said. What sort of fun? Different sorts of fun, they said. Fun looking forward to it, for a start: you never knew what was going to come out of that bag when you sniffed. And what did? All sorts of things, they said. Sometimes you saw things, like giant frogs jumping over the houses, that was magic. And you hear great winds rushing around you but you’re not cold, and you see colours, fantastic colours, and you feel good, you feel good. It’s fun. What’s it like after? It’s not so good after. You come down, and it’s not so good. But there’s always the next time. It’s fun.

  That’s what you don’t want to accept, thought Duffy, but that’s what you’ve got to. They do it because it’s fun, whether it’s behind some railings with a plastic bag in the rain or whether it’s in a comfortable toilet, sorry lavatory, on the Buckinghamshire/Bedfordshire borders. It seems to you that the fun they get can’t be worth it, you can see that it can’t be worth it. To them it is worth it. You can call it addiction if you like, but you mustn’t duck the other truth: they do it because it’s fun.

  ‘Belinda.’

  ‘Just hold her a minute.’

  ‘Hold her? Where?’

  ‘Not by the tail, you berk. There.’

  Duffy got hold of one of the metal bits with leather attached which in his view were altogether too close to the horse’s mouth and held on. Christ, they were big, horses. Much bigger than on the telly. A huge eye bulged at him; a colossal vein ran down the snout; lips like sofa cushions pulled back to reveal vast yellow teeth. Why did they need such big teeth if all they ate was grass?

  ‘Thanks,’ said Belinda. Duffy nearly shook his head to clear his ears. Had she said thanks? Had he done something right at last?

  She had slipped to the ground while he held the horse — or rather, while he stood there and the horse very decently decided not to run away — then took charge of it. She led the way into a stable and indicated that they could talk while she gave the horse a rub-down, or a shampoo, or whatever people did after riding. Duffy stood apprehensively just inside the horse’s two-part front door. That was the other thing about stables: they reeked of horse-shit.

  ‘How’s Angela?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘How’s Angela?’

  ‘She’s taking rather too many anti-depressants. She’s up and down all the time. Most nights she comes in and sleeps with us. She’s very apathetic. And she doesn’t take any bloody exercise at all.’

  ‘She sleeps with you?’

  ‘Not the way your perverted mind assumes. There’s a bed-well, it’s a sort of large cot, really, in our room, and when she’s feeling bad she just comes in, doesn’t even wake us usually, and climbs into it. Find her in the morning sleeping like a child.’

  ‘Do you think she’s …”

  ‘… a danger to herself, as the doctors put it? I can’t say. Got it wrong twice before, didn’t we? She’s my oldest mate —well, my oldest mate down here — but I don’t know what’s going on inside her.’

  ‘Who do you think’s trying to tip her over?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘But you think someone is?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Does she have anyone —` I dunno, anyone who’s mad at her?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard.’

  ‘Old boyfriends? Someone she’s jilted?’

  Belinda stopped rubbing down the horse and laughed. ‘Jilt? I haven’t heard that word in years. You mean, someone she’s stopped screwing?’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit more than that, I suppose.’

  ‘What, gave him back his engagement ring, that stuff?’ She laughed again. ‘No, Angela hasn’t jilted anyone.’

  ‘Is she OK for money?’

  ‘As far as I know she’s still comfortable.’

  ‘And what about Henry?’ Duffy had only glimpsed him briefly so far, a large, square-faced county fellow with clothes Duffy wouldn’t have been seen dead in.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Well, for instance, is she in love with him?’

  ‘I hope you’re better at fixing alarm systems than you are at asking questions. Jilted? In love? Look, Duffy, if you’re a girl, and you’re thirty … thirty something, shall we say, and you’re falling apart at the seams, and you’ve never even had an engagement ring on your finger before, and the chap is presentable and he’s got a farm and he comes from an old family, then you’re in love.’

  ‘Is that what it is? And what’s it like for the chap?’

  ‘See what you mean. Crafty little girl and all that. Well, what it’s like for the chap is this. If you’re a chap, and you’re forty-three, and you’re still living at home with your mum who isn’t very keen on being left alone, and you don’t have the greatest track record with the girls in green wellies and headscarves, and you don’t really have any friends that anyone knows about, and all of a sudden you meet this sexy girl who isn’t married to someone else, who’s got a bit of money and actually doesn’t mind moving in and living with your old mum after you’re married, and she knows how to drive a car, then you’re in love.’

  ‘I think I get it,’ said Duffy. ‘And then they’ll have babies and live happily ever after?’

  ‘I don’t know if they’ll have babies,’ said Belinda. ‘They’ll have to get a move on if they’re going to. And they’ll live as happily ever after as anyone else.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning you can’t tell beforehand. After a while it’s not a question of love, as you like to put it, but stamina.’

  ‘Like the three-day event?’

  Belinda looked up across the horse’s back in surprise. ‘Very good, Duffy. Where did you get to hear about three-day eventing?’

  ‘I must have seen it on the telly.’ He remembered a big country house somewhere and lots of men with flat caps and shooting-sticks. There’d been Land Rovers everywhere, riders falling off at the water-jump
, and a commentator whose tongue sounded as if it was wearing a flat cap and was supported in his mouth by a shooting-stick.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with my alarm system, anyway,’ he said suddenly. He didn’t want people passing the news on.

  ‘No. Right. Vic told me.’

  ‘So don’t go around saying so.’

  ‘I thought that’s what we had to pretend?’

  ‘Well, don’t say it like it wasn’t a big surprise to you when it went wrong.’

  ‘OK.’

  At that moment they heard a loud and regular noise on the gravel, a sort of thumping, not like the sound of someone walking. Belinda came across the stable and stood at the half-door with Duffy. Someone was marching across the driveway. Someone, what’s more, in a wet suit, with flippers on his feet and a mask on his face. Someone carrying a snorkel under his left arm like a swagger stick. Jimmy. He noticed Duffy and Belinda standing at the stable door but didn’t break step. Instead he yelled, ‘Special Boat Squadron … Ey-eyes … right’ and snapped his head across on his neck. When he had passed them he eyes-fronted again and disappeared on to the quiet grass in the direction of the lake. Duffy wanted to laugh but Belinda looked serious. No, perhaps it wasn’t funny. And perhaps poor old Jimmy had really thought about it. If you want to dive in the lake secretly, how do you do it? By diving in the lake obviously. Maybe he’s been reading Sherlock Holmes.

  ‘And Taffy?’

  ‘What about Taffy? He’s a house guest.’ She said it with considerably more ease than Vic did.

  ‘Mrs Hardcastle says the cutlery’s going missing.’

  ‘Duffy, number one, Taffy is our friend, number two, Taffy is a reformed character, number three, if Taffy was still into nicking, he’d go for the Range Rover or the house or something, not the spoons.’