by Guy Kennaway
One of the things Springer Spaniels were most proud of, and for which they were rightly admired by all other breeds, was the impressive stench they generated when damp. Sour and sedgey, like rotting swamp with top notes of cowpat, it permeated deep into carpets and soft furnishings. Easily defeating any air freshener, furniture cleaner or proprietary pet-stain remover, it was acknowledged by dogs all over the world as a great canine achievement. With Sunshine as their secret weapon, the dogs had won their smell-off with Tom and Victoria in the caravan, and the last unnatural traces of his deodorant and her shampoo were satisfactorily overwhelmed by wet Spaniel, Terrier pee and Dachshund breath.
They lolled, savouring their victory, on the supine body of Victoria, all four of them watching ‘Crufts’ on The Horse and Country channel.
‘Look at that bitch,’ cooed Spot. ‘Now that is a pair of legs.’
‘What about the Boxer behind her?’ said Sunshine. ‘That’s a well-presented pair of testicles. And nicely balanced. Very evenly pouched. You don’t see that often.’
‘Inbreds,’ said Tosca, glancing at the screen. ‘Good God! I know That dachsy,’ she said, stopping to stare. ‘He’s Regent St Richard Crutwell the third. We’re related on my mother’s side. We don’t really talk to them. They are all such show-offs.’
A feeble rain fell like a whisper on the aluminium of the static.
‘Rain,’ said Sunshine.
‘That means lambs!’ said Spot. ‘Let’s have some fun.’
The dogs jumped off Victoria’s couch, and trampled across her clothes to the door, which she opened with her toe. The rain called them like music summoned party-goers. Spot and Tosca barged past Sunshine, who stood trembling as she screwed up the courage to jump. Finally she slithered off the caravan onto the ground, saving her creaky joints.
The dogs didn’t bother to wait for Victoria (they had given up doing that weeks ago), and set forth with Tosca at their head. The rain started to fall more steadily onto the parched land. Within half an hour leaves began minutely to unfurl, blossom to open, grass sat up and looked lively, and even the fish shook themselves from their lethargy as they felt the waters rise. The pack nipped through the hedge, over the lane, and through another hedge, taking a path onto the steep birchwood hill. They galloped upwards, squeezed under a fence, and appeared on the edge of a wide field sprinkled with ewes. It was a five-acre birthing suite, with little lambs popping out left, right and centre.
Sunshine had a bad feeling about being so far away from Victoria and Tom; it didn’t seem right. She watched with furrowed brow as Spot streamed across the field towards a ewe in the act of giving birth. With snapping jaws he chased her to the bottom of the hill, harried her along the hedge and back up the hill, where the lamb finally detached from mother, at which point Spot turned his attention from the ewe to the offspring.
The joy of terrifying sheep was exquisite to any dog. All it took was a whiff of afterbirth and an absence of human beings, and hundreds of years of domestication were swept aside. The human equivalent of little Spot’s behaviour was to run through a maternity ward, terrifying the mothers, then picking on one and chasing them around the beds until they either gave birth or collapsed and died. Then you jumped up and down in joy and started attacking the newborn baby. It doesn’t sound entertaining, but for a terrier it was top fun, and Tosca, though slower, was happy to join in too. Victoria’s voice had been growing weaker in their heads for weeks, and now they had strayed too far to remember the many complex rules of being a domesticated pet.
They killed four ewes and two lambs before retiring satisfied with the afternoon’s sport. Aware that the farmer could turn up, they slipped back through the hedge and wandered off roughly in the direction of the river. They arrived at the lane that ran through the Llanrisant Estate and trotted up the middle of it, enjoying making two cars screech and swerve to avoid them, and stopped to ransack a prolapsed litter bin. Banger had closed up some parking spaces by embedding huge stones in the verge, but it hadn’t stopped a stationary Mondeo that had a couple of wheels off the road. The driver was emptying an ashtray out of his window while his girlfriend lay back with her bare legs out of the open door.
Spot saw the juicy flesh of exposed ankles under the Mondeo, padded round, and in an act of delirious ecstasy sunk his teeth into the girl’s flesh, feeling the sharp canines doing their work.
‘Aaaaayyyyyyaaaaaa!’ the girl screamed.
The man leapt out of the car and tried to kick Spot. Spot stood his ground and growled, to see what it would be like to scare a human. Fear flashed through the man. It was very good fun. Spot darted at the man, trying to bite him.
‘Run!’ shouted Tosca.
The three dogs sprinted back down the road, up the hill, across the field, down the birchwood, across Glyn’s track, under the hedge and under the caravan, panting their little lungs out.
‘That’ said Spot, licking blood off his coat, ‘was living.’
28
Red Bull Cans and Cigarette Butts
BANGER STOOD AMONGST discarded Red Bull cans and cigarette butts on the verge of a busy roundabout, staring at a sign.
MANCHESTER 23
This meant that Llanrisant, Victoria, the Land Rover and the will were seventy miles to the west, with Chester in the way. He didn’t see himself walking through the centre of Chester, and to go round it to the North would add on another twenty miles. Going south of Chester was not an option: it was land owned by the Duke of Westminster, a man much admired by Banger, not because he was the richest person in Britain, but because he diverted a lot of his income and a great deal of his time into the pursuit of shooting game. Banger didn’t think it was a good idea to drop in on him in his recent incarnation. The season was over, but he didn’t trust the Duke’s keepers not to dog him back in for the summer and keep him there, though there were surely fates worse than to be a pheasant shot by the Duke himself.
It had taken Banger, as it would any pheasant, four challenging and exhausting days to travel the mile to this roundabout. Pheasants were territorial, not roaming birds, rather as Banger had been as a human. They liked to know one wood in all its weathers, in all its seasons, in all its moods, rather than many woods passingly. It was difficult to gauge and travel over new ground. It was dangerous. You needed to know the hollows and the crevices where the weasel and stoat might lurk, you needed to know where the sparrowhawk nested. If you didn’t know these things you’d be dead by dusk. The conclusion that Banger drew was that it would take well over a year of travel to reach Llanrisant, maybe even two. It would be miserable work and almost certainly suicidal. But his daughter and grandson were in trouble. It was his fault. He had been an arse. It was his duty to help them, or die in the attempt. He was a pheasant, and he was far from them, but he was something else too: he was a Peyton-Crumbe, and Peyton-Crumbes went towards, not away from danger. He summoned the memory of his father Oofy, who held his trench at Passchendaele for seven hours against overwhelming odds during the battle for the ridge. When Oofy’s Lee–Enfield rifle had jammed he had grabbed its barrel in both hands and killed four Bosch with the flat of the stock as if he were hitting long hops over the tuck shop on the school cricket pitch at Shrewsbury, yelling ‘Six! Four! Six!’ as seasoned mahogany connected with Teutonic skull.
He turned his back to the rising sun, and headed directly west, taking the shortest route he knew towards Llanrisant. He had a debt to repay to Victoria and he was prepared to die in the attempt of discharging it.
29
The Package Deal
D.I. DAVE WAS IN a good mood. He had picked up intelligence that some lads had hidden a stash of drugs in a barn a few miles to the south of the town. It wasn’t coke, crack or heroin, but a seizure of grass was the best he was likely to get around here. He felt his knuckles tingling in anticipation of the moment of seizure. He had applied to a magistrate for a search warrant, and been refused on grounds that his intelligence had been received informally, i.e. after D
ave shouted at a terrified youth for sixteen hours in the interview room without the presence of a lawyer or a tape recorder. But this made it better: the operation was rogue, as all real police work should be.
‘Powell,’ he shouted.
Constable Powell put his head round the door. He was chewing on a sausage roll.
‘Yes, boss.’
‘I think I might have a use for that dog of yours. I want you to come undercover with me tonight to check out a few barns.’
Buck heard this where he lay in the kitchenette and got slowly to his feet. He had put on rather a lot of weight recently.
‘Oh – are we ratting?’
‘No. We are looking for a bale of marijuana I’ve heard is hidden up there. Lassie can sniff it out for us, then I’m laying a stake out.’
Buck put his head round Powell’s legs.
‘Bit of a problem with that,’ said Powell, swallowing the last of the sausage roll and licking his fingers. ‘Buck has, er, difficulties with detecting drugs.’
‘What?’
‘He hasn’t a very good sense of smell.’
Buck closed his eyes in shame, and shrank back.
D.I. Dave clenched his fist. He didn’t know who he wanted to punch first, Powell or Buck.
‘It what?’
‘That’s why he’s up here with me. He can’t smell.’
‘What the hell have we got it here for?’
‘He’s jolly good with kids, they love to stroke him. Don’t they?’ he said to Buck, giving him a consoling pat. Buck looked up apologetically. ‘He’s great PR, aren’t you, my old friend?’
‘Get rid if it,’ D.I. Dave said.
‘I don’t think we should do that,’ smiled Powell. ‘Everyone loves him.’
‘This is a police station, Powell, not a frigging petting zoo.’
‘But police work nowadays is about building bonds with the community, and Buck is very good at that.’
‘Get rid of it. I never want to see it again,’ said D.I. Dave. ‘Take it to the vet and have it put down. All that money we’ve been wasting feeding it.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,’ Powell said.
D.I. Dave looked up at him with steely hatred. ‘What did you say?’
‘If he goes, I go,’ said Powell.
Buck shook his head slowly from side to side and turned away.
‘Are you serious?’ asked D.I. Booth.
‘I’m sorry, sir, I am deadly serious. We are a team, me and Buck. If he goes, so do I.’
‘You couldn’t see yourself carrying on here without him?’ D.I. Dave asked.
‘No. I’m sorry to force your hand, sir, but we’re a package deal, me and Buck.’
‘Right, in that case you can give me your resignation now. Don’t leave, I’ll write it for you before you change your mind.’
Ten minutes later Powell came through to the kitchenette. Buck looked up at him from the lino.
‘It’s over,’ said Powell, with moist eyes. ‘Thirty years in the force …’
Buck went to him, and rubbed his head on his shin. Powell knelt down to stroke his fur. Buck hoped it gave some solace.
‘What are we going to do now?’ Powell asked with a dry throat. ‘Who wants a fifty-year-old ex-policeman and his faithful dog?’
30
Life and Death in the Fast Lane
BANGER HAD BEEN on the move for days; an oak wood he had seen from a distance and planned to shelter in overnight had turned out to be a clump of trees at the bottom of a large suburban garden, and useless because its owner had lovingly shaved the cover under them with a ride-on mower. The next promising wood was patrolled by three cats from a housing estate, and so he had pushed on looking to rest his legs.
The whisper that was the first buds in the trees and hedgerows was now a shout. Winter was over, and people all over the county would be saying that spring had arrived. Banger never subscribed to the theory that there were four seasons. There were twenty-four seasons, at least. There were long, cold springs, there were hot, warm, short ones, there were dry summers, wet summers, there were summers that seemed to slip straight into winter, and others that looked autumnal in August. There were gentle, warm winters, when it rained until the ground was waterlogged and spongy, and others when it froze under clear blue skies for weeks. There were snowy winters, dry winters, mild winters. This spring had been a dry season, and everything was held back for weeks, until the rain came and released a month of spring in eight hours. For Banger they all needed their own names. Four wasn’t enough to cover their variety.
The dusk air rang with the chatter of excited songbirds, back from their holidays. Occasionally a flock of migrants flew past, all of them saying, ‘Hold on, which way are we going now? Hold on, hold on, hold it! This way!’ and the flock would gather, hover, and flow in a new direction.
Banger pushed on through some rich spring grass, looking for a safe place to rest. The night held special fears for pheasants not safely off the ground. Things sneaked up on them in the dark – foxes, weasels, stoats, dogs, cats and humans; things that had one thing in mind: trouble.
Banger heard something, the footfalls of a four-legged animal moving subtly through the underwood. Before he turned his head he caught the full force of a fox’s stink. His feathers prickled his neck. He heard the sinister sound of the predator not far behind him: ‘Hunting with Dogs Act, 2004 …’ It was a male fox happily talking to himself. ‘A person guilty of an offence under this Act shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level five on the standard scale. Level five, that’s, er, five thousand pounds to you, mister huntsman.’ The fox chuckled before continuing. ‘Arrest: a constable without a warrant may arrest a person whom he reasonably suspects … Without a warrant! Without a warrant! The beauty of it! Lay off that fox, sir, or suffer the consequences! Unhand me, huntsman, or I’ll have you arrested and banged up by the beak. I shall see you in court! Hold on. Is that a fat foolish pheasant on the wind? I believe it is. Now, let me just check the laws, because we don’t want to break any laws, do we? Let’s have a little think. The Hunting with Dogs Act 2004 … What are the penalties for hunting pheasants? Oh, really? Really? Surely not. Well, in that case it seems churlish not to …’
Banger took a pee, to lay his scent, cut back on his path, trying to confuse the fox, leapt a ditch, climbed up the other side and sprinted across a field of newly sown wheat. He hid panting under some sprouting blackthorn, feeling the fox’s eye panning across the landscape. Banger knew he hadn’t thrown him off; the light was fading, and the fox was just waiting for dark, when he could emerge silkily from the blackness and kill him.
Banger managed to fly across the next field, but made such a racket taking off he knew the fox had heard him. He climbed into another thorn hedge trying to find a bit of holly to hide in. All was quiet, but then he heard, ‘… Hunting is indeed a cruel activity and must be controlled – I do so agree, but exceptions must be made, and what better place to start than a plump, edible, idiotic pheasant?’
Banger could now see him, a blur of white in the deep gloaming, heading on a course directly for him. Banger jumped from the hedge and ran towards where the sky glowed with streetlights, hoping that he could find safety in a settlement. He sprinted up a bank and the M56 at rush hour reared up in front of him, in all its roaring six-lane ferocity. On the other side was the sprawl of Chester Services. He looked back – the fox was closing in.
Banger slid down the bank and stood trembling on the asphalt, battered by the slipstream of passing artics. The fox crouched with his belly on the ground at the top of the bank brazenly eyeing Banger, as if he were deciding which part of him to leave till last.
Banger kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t need to look behind him; he could feel the fox move down the embankment.
At the right moment he dropped his head, held his wings tight, put a claw onto the tarmac and ran for it. He heard a vast truck roar behind him, the air currents tugging
him off course, but he straightened up and was soon on the central reservation, huddled under the barrier. He then waited for a gap in the northbound traffic, and tore across the road.
He reached the verge and skirted a loop of rope and an old shoe before turning. Between cars he could see the fox setting off from the hard shoulder. He looked in the direction of the southbound carriageway, up which two freight trucks obligingly thundered abreast, with a Volvo estate overtaking in the fast lane. The fox timed it badly, very badly. From the look of the grimy pelt with the open mouth caught in its final scream it must have been squashed by at least sixteen of their combined fifty-two wheels.
Banger staggered up the embankment and under the barrier to find himself among the galvanised bins at the back of Burger King. In this proximity to humans he knew he was safe from raptors and foxes, so decided to go no further. He was hungry, but a seagull with a chunk of pizza in her beak warned him off with a glare from her diabolic yellow eyes. Three rats fought over some spaghetti in the grit under the bins. Banger ended up licking specks of batter out of the bottom of a KFC family-meal bucket.
31
‘Freedom,’ They Squealed
AFTER A NIGHT in a urinous hedge by the HGV parking, Banger smelt dreadful, but he hoped it might put off any keen-nosed predator.
A few hours later he was back out in the flat country, hopping over ditches and scampering through herds of Friesians with their straining udders, alert to danger, but boldly determined. At sunset he stopped for a drink in the shallows of a muddy brook in a lightly shaded covert, carpeted with leafy wild garlic. He cocked his head and heard the distant sound of a pheasant, maybe more than one pheasant, in distress.
‘For God’s sake, help! Ohhh Chriiiiiiiiiiiiist!’
He hopped a rotting oak trunk, thick with moss, crept through a rabbit-nibbled hedge, and hiked towards the noise. Individual voices could now be made out among the general racket of moans, groans, screeches and screams.