‘What?’
‘You heard,’ he said, straightening up. ‘There’s no way they’d pay a ransom. Tighter than a duck’s you-know-what, the lot of them.’
Seth was already shaking his head. ‘You’re suggesting Samson goes down to London and kidnaps the dog?’
Troy stared back at him. ‘I’m suggesting no such thing. That would make me an accessory.’
But Will was already standing up, ready to act. ‘It could work,’ he muttered. ‘Grab Tolpuddle from a busy street. Send a ransom note.’
‘And then what?’ asked Seth with a sigh. ‘Bring the dog back up here, where Neil’s entire family lives, and hope no one notices a Weimaraner is back in town? I can just see that working out.’
Will thumped a large fist down on the bar. ‘Well, what then?’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got to do something.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that . . .’ Samson was standing too, crossing to the window where he’d just seen a flash of silver go past. A BMW. ‘I think,’ he said, with a grin beginning to form, ‘we’ve already done all we need to.’
Seth and Will hurried over to his side and then they were opening the door, heading out into the street where the sound of an air-raid siren was issuing from the car parked outside Samson’s office.
‘Jesus!’ said Will, as the car doors shot open and two people spilled onto the pavement, gagging. ‘What the hell . . . ?’ He stuttered to a stop as the faint odour of rotten hops wafted across the road. ‘I’ll be damned.’ He turned to say something to Samson, but the detective was already running towards the office.
Mug in hand, she was leaning against the worktop when she heard the car. She didn’t think anything of it. But then she heard that unmistakable whine. A high-pitched keening that she knew from experience could last for hours. She was crossing towards the window when footsteps pounded up the stairs.
‘Delilah! Delilah!’ Samson’s head appeared above the bannisters, a wide grin on his face. ‘Come quickly!’
Heart thudding, she thrust the mug on the table and hurried across the landing, following him down the stairs two at a time. Out onto the doorstep and there was the BMW, doors wide open, a dreadful wail coming from within and Neil and Abbie standing some distance away, Abbie’s ivory skin a shade of green. She was holding a lace handkerchief to her nose while Neil was staring at the vehicle with a mixture of disgust and respect.
Then Tolpuddle emerged from inside the car. He saw Delilah and Samson, his ears picked up and the whining cut out mid-yowl, to be replaced with enthusiastic barking. The dog had gone from depressed to elated in a matter of seconds, bounding over to leap up at the pair of them.
‘Down, Tolpuddle,’ Delilah said half-heartedly as she wrapped her arms around him. She glanced across at her ex-husband with raised eyebrows. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘Did you forget something?’
Neil shuffled closer, taking a circuitous route around the car. ‘We’ve changed our minds,’ he murmured.
There was a snort of smothered laughter from the vicinity of the pub doorway where, yet again, a small cluster of people had gathered.
Delilah glanced from Neil to Abbie and then at Samson, an unconcerned look on the detective’s face. And then it reached her. A fetid smell oozing from the interior of the BMW, an invisible mushroom-cloud of stink.
‘Oh, really?’ Delilah fought back a coughing fit, blinking to stop her eyes streaming. ‘How come?’
‘Erm . . . Abbie’s not sure about taking Tolpuddle.’ Neil shrugged, apologetic. ‘She thinks it’d be a problem. His size in our flat.’ He stared at the pavement, cheeks reddening at the lie.
Struggling to keep a straight face, Delilah nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘She’s not a country girl, like you,’ he continued. ‘She’s not used to animals.’
Delilah stifled a laugh.
‘That said,’ Neil added, looking down at the dog, ‘I don’t remember Tolpuddle being . . . well – so . . .’
‘Smelly?’ Delilah gave him a sympathetic look. ‘It’s age. No doubt it’ll come to all of us.’
Looking slightly appalled at the thought, Neil nodded. He made to go and then turned back. ‘Thanks, Dee. For being so understanding about everything.’ He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, the citrus tang of his aftershave a memory of happier times. And a welcome respite from the foul odour still emanating from the car. ‘You might as well take this,’ he said, thrusting an envelope in her hands. ‘Bye.’
He walked towards the BMW, Abbie reluctantly coming over to join him, her lips in a tight line. With a swirl of red coat she got in the car and slammed the door, head leaning towards the open window, handkerchief pressed to her face. Neil got in beside her and the BMW pulled away.
Watching them leave, Delilah felt a nudge on her hip. Tolpuddle, leaning against her, surveying the world, and next to him, Samson, waving at the departing car.
She waited until the vehicle disappeared around the corner, then she sank to her knees, arms thrown around Tolpuddle, hugging him to her in a mixture of laughter and tears of relief.
‘Thank you,’ she said, looking up at Samson. ‘I don’t know what you did, but thank you.’
‘It worked then?’ Seth Thistlethwaite was crossing the road towards them, Delilah’s brother, Will, next to him, the pair of them grinning.
‘Finally!’ said Samson.
‘They couldn’t get out of that car quick enough,’ laughed Will, slapping Samson on the back. ‘I owe you an apology, O’Brien.’
Still kneeling next to Tolpuddle, Delilah looked from her brother to Samson and then to the pub, Troy Murgatroyd standing in the doorway, a rare smile on his face.
‘Beer!’ she exclaimed, comprehension dawning. ‘That was your master plan? You fed Tolpuddle beer?’
Samson grinned down at her. ‘Just a couple of sips. It worked, didn’t it?’
‘Took a while, but aye, it worked a treat,’ Will said, surprisingly in agreement with the black sheep of Bruncliffe.
‘I thought she was going to be sick,’ chuckled Seth.
Delilah shook her head in despair. ‘You’re all incorrigible.’
‘No point fighting fair with the Taylors,’ said Will. ‘Gets you nowhere. And we don’t even have the assurance that the runt won’t try something like this again.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ Delilah was holding out a set of papers.
‘Are they from the Kennel Club?’ asked Samson, taking the papers from her and unfolding them.
She nodded, a large grin on her face. ‘Yes. Neil’s given me Tolpuddle’s official documents. I can get him registered in my name.’ She started laughing, wrapping her arms back around her precious dog.
‘Thanks,’ Will murmured to Samson, tipping his head in Delilah’s direction. ‘I think losing that dog would have killed her.’
‘What did you say?’ Samson had turned to Will Metcalfe and was staring at him intently.
‘Thanks. I said thank you.’
Sensing a shift in atmosphere, Seth Thistlethwaite stepped forward, preparing to intervene between the two men again.
‘No. The other bit.’ From lounging in the doorway having a joke, Samson O’Brien was now standing bolt upright, his face fierce with concentration.
Will looked puzzled by the dramatic change in the detective’s demeanour. ‘That losing the dog would have killed her,’ he repeated.
Samson gripped his arm. ‘My God. That’s it. That’s what’s missing.’ He wheeled round and headed into the office.
‘What did you say to him?’ demanded Delilah, aware of Samson’s abrupt departure.
‘Nothing,’ protested Will. ‘For once, I didn’t say anything.’
Delilah stood up and walked across the hall to poke her head through the doorway of Samson’s office.
‘Everything all right?’ she asked.
He glanced up from his laptop. ‘Livvy Thornton,’ he said. ‘I think I know what we’ve been overlooking.’
<
br /> ‘It’s the dog.’
‘Red? Livvy’s collie?’ asked Delilah, cutting into a Yorkshire pudding, thick gravy oozing from it. She’d persuaded Samson to accompany her across the road with Tolpuddle for a celebratory Sunday roast. With plates of Kay Murgatroyd’s delicious beef in front of them, Samson was telling Delilah about his revelation.
‘Something’s been niggling me ever since I called in to see Mrs Walker at Fellside Court on Friday. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. But then Will made a comment earlier about the impact losing Tolpuddle would have had on you.’
‘Don’t,’ Delilah said, stricken with a mixture of relief and dread at what could have happened. She glanced down at the hound sitting by her feet, watching her patiently. ‘I can’t bear to think about it.’
‘Precisely. Given what everyone has said about Livvy, I don’t think she could have, either.’
‘Which is why she took Red to Leeds.’ Delilah was frowning, failing to see the breakthrough Samson was excited about.
‘Exactly!’ he said. ‘So how come he’s missing?’
‘Because he ran after the car?’
‘I don’t mean in the past. I mean in the present.’
Samson saw her thinking it through, the fork placed back on the plate, the furrow on her brow as she contemplated his question. Then the dawning comprehension. She was sharp. He had to give her that.
‘They didn’t mention him,’ she said, with growing excitement. ‘At Snips. Neither Mrs Atkins nor her daughter mentioned that Livvy had a dog.’
Samson nodded. ‘Exactly. Everyone in Bruncliffe we’ve spoken to has referred to Red – Jimmy, Jo Whitfield, even Mrs Walker. The common consensus is that Livvy and Red were inseparable. To the extent that she brought him to work with her on her first day.’ He gestured towards the empty hairdresser’s on the other side of Back Street.
‘But if that were the case, how come she didn’t do the same in Leeds?’ Delilah had temporarily abandoned her meal, leaning eagerly across the table. ‘We need to talk to the owners of the salon again. See if they remember Red.’
‘I agree. Unfortunately it’s Sunday, so I doubt they’ll be there.’
Delilah groaned. ‘Of course. How frustrating.’
‘Welcome to the reality of being a detective. And talking of frustrating . . .’ Samson was looking at Tolpuddle, who’d moved closed to Delilah, his head now resting on her lap, big eyes gazing up at her. ‘I reckon he’s earned a bit of beef.’
‘He can have all the beef he wants,’ said Delilah with a smile as she rubbed Tolpuddle’s head and then gave him a morsel of meat. ‘But beer . . . Never again!’
Sunday. A day the same as every other for farmers. But for Jimmy Thornton’s mother, it had been a holy day. A day set aside for church.
Jimmy hadn’t inherited his mother’s faith. He’d stopped going to St Oswald’s down in Bruncliffe once he started working at Tom Hardacre’s farm. His mother had objected at first, but gradually he’d made her see that being out on the land was as good as religion for him. When up on the fells, he felt closer to anything resembling a god than he did cooped up inside the four cold walls of the church.
Today, he’d decided to honour his mother. Not through prayer but through tending her beloved rhubarb. Having spent the morning doing chores on his farm, he’d driven over to Quarry House after a superb roast – Gemma’s Yorkshire puddings every bit as good as those his mother used to make – and had arrived at the cottage intending to sort through the kitchen. He’d set about his task diligently, packing up pots, pans and dishes. But with the will still unsettled and Matty having advised him not to be hasty in getting rid of things, given the legal uncertainty, he’d soon become frustrated by the increasing pile of boxes cluttering up the floor.
‘Typically over-cautious solicitor,’ muttered Jimmy, annoyed at the inability to tie the loose ends of his mother’s passing. What the hell could be taking so long to sort out?
Leaning on the kitchen counter and watching the clouds moving fast over the top of the quarry, a delicate blue sky behind them, he’d decided some fresh air would ease his exasperation at the unexpected mess that had followed his mother’s death. Abandoning the open cupboards and the contents of the kitchen strewn across the worktop, he headed outside.
Sort out her rhubarb. She’d been pressing him to look after it before she’d died and he still hadn’t got round to it.
Which is how he found himself walking the length of the garden, mentally preparing to enter the outbuilding that marked the end of the property. With its stone walls and small windows, it resembled so many other barns that dotted the landscape of the Dales. As a farmer, Jimmy had been in his fair share of them. None of them made him feel the way this one did.
Taking a deep breath, he unlocked the door and entered. It was innocuous to the outsider. A workbench crossing the wall opposite the door, plastic shelving to the right groaning under the weight of half-filled cans of paint and rusting tools, a couple of old bikes hanging from the roof, one of them Livvy’s, and another set of shelving to the left where the gardening equipment was kept. And in the middle of the floor, directly opposite where he was standing, a brown stain.
The place where his father had killed himself.
He crossed to the gardening tools stored in a rack he’d made for his mother in woodworking classes, the joinery rough, the design functional. She’d refused to allow him to buy her something better when he had the money – rakes, spades, hoes and forks all standing upright in his first and only attempt at carpentry. Feeling the familiar unease in the space, his eyes always drawn to that patch of concrete, he grabbed the spade and a bucket and got back out into the fresh air.
Split the crowns.
It would give him something to do. Even though no one would be living here. The garden that she’d tended so carefully would be left to go wild, abandoned like the quarry looming over it.
He approached the sad mass of dying leaves and stalks in the rhubarb patch, the plants not having been tended since his mother’s illness really took hold in the late autumn, and his heart ached. Standing there in the shadow of the scarred cliff, everything bleak, it seemed to Jimmy Thornton that his life had been surrounded by death.
‘Get a grip,’ he muttered. Mother would have had no time for such maudlin nonsense.
He’d take a crown with him, he decided, trying to shake off his dark mood. A mere bit of rhubarb wouldn’t be missed if ever he was called to account over his mother’s will. He’d have a go at making rhubarb-and-ginger jam. The thought brought a smile to his face. Mother had made it ever year in the back end, stocking the pantry with jars of it. Chutney, too. And crumble every Sunday. She’d loved her rhubarb, loved the fact that her adopted county was famous for it.
He wielded the spade and shoved it hard into the soil around the first plant, his foot pushing it deeper. He was preparing to lever it when his mobile sounded. Gemma’s ringtone.
With the panic of all fathers-to-be, he whipped the phone out of his pocket and answered.
‘You okay?’
A burst of static was the reply. Bloody quarry and its dodgy reception. He moved across the garden to the barn and was rewarded with a fractured sentence from Gemma.
‘. . . dog running amok . . . yows . . . bring the gun.’
It was enough to tell him what was happening. Pregnant ewes, being harried around a field by a strange dog. Lives could be lost.
‘Bloody hell! I’ll be right back,’ he shouted into the phone. But the line was already lost.
Leaving the spade and bucket where they were, he hurried towards his Land Rover, cursing people who let their animals loose when out walking, always with the same claim that their dog wouldn’t do anything to harm the sheep – until one day the dog does go after them and chases them. And kills them.
His shotgun. He’d pick that up from the farm in passing and then head for the field.
He got in the Land Rover and, in a cloud of quarry dust,
raced off up the track and into the distance. The house and garden settled back into quietness, the empty windows looking out onto the sharp edges of the cliff, the ground dappled in light and shade as the clouds passed above. And the spade, upright, its blade buried in the soil. The soil that still held its secrets.
15
‘No doubt tha’s got washing for me?’
Monday morning, seven o’clock, and Ida Capstick was coming up the stairs to the first-floor kitchen, metal bucket of cleaning supplies in one hand, a big shopping bag in the other.
Samson started pouring the tea that was part of their daily ritual – a ritual that had begun the morning in November when the unsuspecting cleaner had walked in on him in his makeshift bedroom upstairs. Taking pity on her homeless former neighbour, Ida had agreed to keep his illicit use of Delilah’s top floor a secret. The price? A cup of tea waiting for her every morning at seven, with a plate of biscuits next to it. ‘Posh ones, mind,’ she’d stipulated. ‘None of that Rich Tea rubbish.’
As she muttered her way up the stairs, Samson realised how much he’d missed the ritual while Ida was away.
‘How was Bridlington?’ he asked.
‘Too much sand for my liking. Blowing up all over the place.’ She sat, pulled her mug towards her and reached for a biscuit. ‘Even on a dry day it’s difficult to get washing out.’
Samson grinned, picturing Ida ranting at the elements that were hindering her obsessive cleaning.
‘Aye, tha can grin. Wasn’t tha underwear that was collecting half a beach.’ She glowered at him before handing him the shopping bag, which was filled with cleaned and ironed laundry.
Samson knew better than to protest. Part of the bargain that had secured Ida’s silence had been her insistence on doing his washing in order to prevent him hanging it up to drip-dry in the bathroom on the top floor. All attempts to persuade her otherwise had failed, so instead Samson meekly handed her a bag loaded with dirty clothes in return.
‘And your cousin? How is she?’ he asked.
‘Humph.’ Ida raised the mug to her lips and took a drink before expanding on her disapproving opener. ‘Not so bereaved as she can’t be planning what’s next. She was already packing boxes when I left.’
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