Next I turned to my list of the horses’ trainers, but that was interrupted by Marina who came downstairs from trying to settle Saskia.
“Sid,” Marina demanded, “what the hell is going on? Where are the dogs?”
“You know what’s going on,” I said. “And I have no idea where the dogs are.”
“But you know who took them.”
“I think I know,” I said. “At least I think I know who arranged it. The same man who arranged for Sassy to be collected from school last Thursday. The same man who’s been calling us and demanding that I sign a report that’s a complete load of rubbish. The man with the Northern Irish accent.”
“Billy McCusker?” she said. “The terrorist?”
“Yes.”
“What does he want from us?” It was a rhetorical question. Marina knew what he wanted. “Can’t you just sign his bloody report and be rid of him?”
“Signing his report won’t get rid of a man like that,” I said.
“Then, for God’s sake, how do we get rid of him?” Marina shouted.
“Shhh, you’ll disturb Sassy,” I said, but Marina didn’t seem to care. She was frightened, and angry, and I was the only one around to lash out at.
“Do what he bloody wants, can’t you,” she screamed at me. “I love those dogs.” She started to cry. I stood up and went to put my arm around her, but she pushed me away. “Just do what he wants,” she sobbed.
Did I have any choice?
“OK,” I said. “I’ll sign his bloody report, but it won’t be the end of it, you’ll see.”
As if on cue, the telephone on my desk started ringing.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Marina asked as we both stood there, looking down at it.
I picked up the handset. “Hello,” I said tentatively.
“Is this the Halley residence?” It was a voice I didn’t recognize, and one that was definitely not Northern Irish.
“Yes,” I said with some relief.
“My name is Philip York,” he said. “I’m a veterinarian, and I’ve been treating a dog of yours. It has your name and telephone number on its collar tag.”
“Yes,” I said excitedly. “We’ve lost two dogs. They went missing this afternoon.”
“Well, I only have one of them here,” said Philip York, “and I’m afraid the news is not good.”
“Oh?”
“No,” he said. “She was found running loose on the freeway and she has obviously been hit by at least one vehicle.”
“Oh,” I said again, trying to hold back my emotions. “How is she?”
“Not good,” he said. “Not good at all. I’m really only calling to let you know that I’m putting her down.”
“No,” I said instinctively. “There must be something you can do?”
“Mr. Halley, I’m sorry but there’s no alternative.” He spoke with authority. “Her back is broken.”
Marina was in tears again alongside me. She may have been only listening to one side of the conversation, but she knew exactly what was being discussed.
“Which dog is it?” I asked, this time unsuccessfully keeping the grief out of my voice.
“It says Mandy on the tag.”
“Where was she found?” I asked.
“On the freeway,” he said again.
“Which freeway?”
“The M6,” he said.
“The M6? Whereabouts?”
“Just north of Stafford. My practice is in Creswell, junction 14. The police brought your dog in here about twenty minutes ago.”
The clock on my desk showed it was half past nine.
“But I live in Oxfordshire, near Banbury,” I said.
“Banbury is eighty miles from here,” he said. “My wife’s parents live there. When did you say your dogs went missing?”
“This afternoon. My wife checked on them at about two, so sometime between two and three-thirty.”
There was a pause in the conversation as we both absorbed the significance.
“So Mandy didn’t just wander off, then,” said the veterinarian.
“No,” I agreed.
“Have you informed the police?”
“Yes, but they’re not very helpful. Dogs, it seems, are nothing more than mere property in the eyes of the law. Like a garden table, I was told.” I paused again, almost overcome with sorrow at the loss of such a dear friend. “The law is an ass.”
“I’m sorry,” the veterinarian said. He would know only too well how dogs were much more than just “property” to their owners.
“Do you know if there was any sign of the other one?” I asked.
“The police didn’t say anything to me about there being a second dog. Perhaps you should give them a call.”
“Yes,” I said, “I will.”
“What do you want me to do with the body? I can dispose of it fairly easily here unless . . .” He tailed off.
“Can I collect her tomorrow?” I asked.
“Of course.” He gave me his address and I wrote it down. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for calling me and letting me know.”
“Right,” he said. “I’d better get on. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, then,” I said. “Oh, hold on, don’t go. One last thing.”
“Yes?” he said.
I was near to tears. “Please give Mandy a last stroke from us, you know, before . . .”
“Of course,” he said. “She’s sleeping—heavily sedated already. She won’t feel or know anything.”
I suppose it was a comfort, but not much.
I stood, hugging Marina, as great bouts of grief caused her whole body to shake. Mandy had been a member of our family for the past six years, since she’d been a two-month-old little bundle of red-haired joy we had excitedly collected from the breeder.
“Let’s look on the bright side,” I said. “Rosie may be loose as well. All we have to do is to find her.”
“How?”
“Let’s start by calling the Staffordshire Police,” I said.
“Staffordshire?”
“Mandy was wandering on the M6 north of Stafford,” I said. The M6, I thought, was the route from our house to Manchester.
The Staffordshire Police, far from being sympathetic over our loss, were angry with us for allowing our dog to wander on the freeway where it could have caused a major traffic accident.
I tried to point out that it wasn’t our fault but to no avail. Informing them that there might be a second dog loose did nothing to improve their humor. In fact, quite the reverse.
“What time does it get light tomorrow?” Marina asked when I hung up.
“Around six.”
“Then we’ll leave here by five.” It wasn’t a question. It was an instruction.
• • •
BILLY MCCUSKER called again at a quarter to midnight.
“You bastard,” I said, picking up the phone by the bed.
“Now, now, Mr. Halley, mind your language.”
“You’ve gone too far this time,” I said.
“You English, you’re so sentimental about your animals. Why don’t you do as you’re asked, and I’ll go away.”
Did I believe him?
“Where are my dogs?”
He ignored my question. “Did you get the report?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He sounded pleased and so sure of himself. “You will sign it and send it to the head of the BHA Security Service.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Oh, Mr. Halley, I think you will. Your wife has such a beautiful face. It would be a shame to put that in danger, so it would.”
“Bastard,” I said again.
“Do as you’re
told, Mr. Halley.”
He hung up.
I sat on the edge of the bed, wondering how I had got into this mess and, more to the point, how I was going to get out of it.
Would signing his damn report make any real difference? Maybe not. So why was I so fixated about not doing so? Pride, I suppose. But Chief Inspector Watkinson had referred to pride as coming before a fall. Be pragmatic, he’d told me.
Be pragmatic, I now told myself, and save Marina’s beauty.
I went downstairs to my office and signed the paper.
9
Almost five hours after starting to search, I tried to tell Marina that we were wasting our time, but without much success. She was determined to stay as long as it took to find our Rosie.
We had left home in the dark, just before five o’clock, with Saskia wrapped in a blanket on the backseat. I’d been asleep for barely four hours, but I was wide awake and eager as we approached junction 14 on the M6 just as the sun began peeping up over the eastern horizon.
Where did we begin?
The previous evening, the police had told me that Mandy had been found about half a mile short of the junction on the northbound carriageway, so there seemed as good a place as any. But stopping on the hard shoulder was surely for emergencies only.
I decided this was an emergency and pulled over.
The freeway was already busy with a continuous stream of early-rising truck drivers tearing along the inside lane at breakneck speed. One didn’t realize how fast the traffic moved on a freeway until you were standing only a couple of feet away from it, much as one didn’t appreciate the pace of a steeplechase until you stood right next to a fence as the horses jumped by.
It had sounded so easy when Marina and I had discussed it on the way here. We would both shout Rosie’s name in turn, and out she would appear from the undergrowth.
Sadly, it wasn’t quite like that.
The incessant noise of the trucks as they thundered by meant that we could hardly hear what we were shouting at each other as we stood side by side behind the car.
“This is hopeless,” I bellowed in Marina’s ear. She nodded. “Let’s get off the freeway.”
We climbed back into the Range Rover and made an exit at junction 14.
At that point, the M6 freeway was built through land that had been used extensively for mineral extraction. There were several large disused gravel pits now filled with water, and cutting through the whole area were the West Coast Main Line railway tracks between Birmingham and Crewe.
It began to dawn on me what a Herculean task it was to search for our missing dog in such a large space even if we could assume that she had been released at the same spot as Mandy.
But Marina was not to be deterred, and I found myself driving time and again up tracks into the old gravel works until barred by chain-link fencing or padlocked gates. Marina then took to standing on the passenger seat with her head up through the sunroof as I drove, shouting for Rosie at the top of her voice, with Saskia and me adding more decibels through the open side windows. But our voices wouldn’t carry far. The continuous roar of the traffic on the nearby freeway was all encompassing, drowning out any other sound. We wouldn’t have heard a dog barking in response to our calls if she had been more than a stone’s throw away.
I took the Range Rover back under the freeway and approached it from the other side and into a country park created around some of the water-filled gravel pits.
Again Marina and Saskia shouted for Rosie and again there was no response, save from a couple of locals out walking their own dogs.
“Haven’t seen a loose Irish setter anywhere?” I asked, going up to one of them.
“Sorry, mate,” he replied, holding his own golden retriever tightly by its collar. “When was it lost?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” I said.
He shook his head. “Crazy dogs, red setters. Always running off. Not as bad, mind you, as Afghan hounds. They’ll never come back.”
I made a mental note never to get an Afghan hound.
“Come on,” I said to Marina. “We’re wasting our time.”
“Just a bit longer,” she said imploringly. “We must try for a bit longer.”
• • •
WE FOUND ROSIE on what I had decided would be our very last excursion up a dirt track. One moment, I was working out how I would tell Marina and Sassy that we had to go home now and, the next, our dear little Rosie came bounding up to the car, her tail wagging intensely, as if it was nothing out of the ordinary to meet us eighty miles away from home.
Marina and Saskia wept buckets, and I shed more than a tear or two myself, as we each gave her the biggest hugs.
Just dogs? Ha! What nonsense.
Marina danced around and around with joy beside the car as Saskia and I poured water and dog biscuits into bowls for Rosie to gobble down. Her normal feed time was five o’clock in the afternoon, and she hadn’t been given anything yesterday.
“Now we have to find Mandy,” Sassy said chirpily.
Marina and I looked at each other.
“Sassy, darling,” Marina said, “I’m afraid Mandy won’t be coming home.” Marina did her best to tell Saskia everything in as kind a way as possible, but our little girl was confused and completely distraught.
“But why, Mommy?” she kept howling. “Why did someone take her? Why is Mandy not coming home? Why? Why? Why?” Even Rosie licking Sassy’s face could not console her in her grief.
I asked myself if this nightmare was somehow my fault. Had it been me who had caused all this hurt by not agreeing sooner to do what McCusker wanted?
I felt wretched.
But it wasn’t me who had kidnapped the dogs. It wasn’t me who had let them loose to run and be hit on the freeway. I had been happy in my life of stocks and shares, bonds and gilts. It had been McCusker who had been the unwelcome visitor. I hadn’t been searching for him. He had turned up unannounced and unwanted.
No. The fault lay firmly at his door, not at mine.
But how could I make him pay?
• • •
WE WENT to Philip York’s veterinary practice just after midday.
Marina and I had discussed what was best—in particular, what was best for Saskia. My first instinct had been to bring Mandy’s body home for burial, but, on reflection, I wasn’t sure that was the best course. We needed to move on, perhaps with the help of a new puppy, and dwelling on the past with a grave in the garden as a continuous reminder would be counterproductive.
Philip York understood entirely.
“I can dispose of the remains,” he said quietly and only to me. “No problem.”
“How, exactly?” I asked. I didn’t want Mandy lying on some garbage dump being picked at by the crows.
“Cremation,” he said. “There’s a service that will collect. They’re very good.”
“Fine,” I said.
None of us even saw Mandy.
Philip York gave Rosie a quick check over and declared her fit and well, and we departed, with him refusing my offer of payment. “I receive an annual retainer for doing police work,” he said, “and I’ll charge them for the disposal since they brought her in.”
“How about Rosie?” I asked.
“There’s no fee for telling you that your dog is fine,” he said, smiling. We shook hands warmly. “I remember watching you ride. Shame about your accident.” He glanced down fleetingly at my left hand, as everyone did. “When I was younger, I used to be one of the veterinary surgeons at Haydock. I still love my racing, especially over the jumps, but this practice is now so demanding that I hardly ever have the time.”
“Never complain that you’re busy,” I said.
“No,” he agreed.
• • •
WE TOOK ROSIE home to Oxfordshire, where she seemed confused and l
ost without her elder sister, alternately lying in her bed and then pacing around the house and garden as if searching. How I wished she could talk and tell us what had happened.
Marina had earlier called Mrs. Squire, the head teacher, to say that Saskia wouldn’t be in today, but at end-of-school time she took our sad little girl over to the Gaucin household to play with Annabel. I wasn’t sure whether it was mostly for Saskia’s benefit or for Marina’s. She too was also desperately down over the loss of Mandy and was in need of some cheering up by Paula.
One of the disadvantages of marrying a foreign national was that family members were usually so far away. Marina could have done with a good cry on her mother’s shoulder, but Mr. and Mrs. van der Meer, Marina’s parents, were in Fryslân, a northern province of the Netherlands, and even though they visited us fairly often, they were hardly down the road when needed for a good weep.
After Marina and Saskia had gone, I sat alone in my office, staring at the signed report that still sat on my desk. Without enthusiasm, I took an envelope from a drawer and wrote out the address: Peter Medicos, Head of Racing Security, The British Horseracing Authority, 75 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6LS.
I folded the paper and sealed it in the envelope, but not without first making a photocopy. I then stuck a first-class stamp on the top right-hand corner.
I sat looking at it.
Was I doing the right thing?
No, was the simple answer, I was not doing the right thing. But did I have any choice in the matter? McCusker had threatened to disfigure Marina’s face, and I believed that threat to be genuine. If there was one thing I had learned about Billy McCusker, it was that he had no conscience whatsoever over inflicting pain and injury on other people. He seemed devoid of morals, and that made him a very dangerous enemy, indeed.
The mail was collected from the box on the village green at four o’clock.
At five minutes to four, I carried the envelope out of the house and put it in the bright red mailbox, hesitating only for a moment before popping it through the slot.
What was done was done, I told myself and went back inside.
Rosie came up to me and looked up with her doleful eyes as if to say Where’s Mandy? I stroked her head, and then she wandered back to her bed in the hallway.
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