Barking (20 page)

Fair enough.

‘At least let me think about it,' he heard himself say, and he was ashamed at how obvious the fear in his voice was. ‘It's not something to be rushed into, you know?'

‘Of course.' Luke had always been magnanimous in victory. It was probably his least attractive feature. ‘Take as long as you like.' He nodded, as if to say
dismissed
, and Duncan started to walk to the door. ‘By the way,' he added, ‘in case you're wondering, in this context, a text message counts as “in writing”. If it's an emergency, let's say.'

Duncan smiled as he left the room, but what he really felt inclined to do was roll on his back with his arms and legs in the air. Wasn't that what dogs did when they knew they were beaten?

 

Duncan jogged back from Putney, where they'd been for their run. For once, he hadn't enjoyed it much. They'd found a fox, its head buried in an upended wheelie bin, and it had given them a good brisk chase. But it gave them the slip in the Waitrose car park, and by then it was too late to look for another one. Actually, he'd been secretly pleased; he hadn't really been in the mood.

He let himself into his flat, thinking
I really have got to find somewhere else; this place is a dump
, and checked the answering machine. Two messages.

Imogen Bick, calling from Crosswoods. Just in case he'd been worrying, Sally was back in the office that morning. Apparently she'd been in Buenos Aires with a (pause) friend. No cause for concern, panic over, sorry you were troubled.

He shrugged. He hadn't actually given Sally much thought, not since he'd formed the hypothesis that Ms Bick had just confirmed for him. Buenos Aires, he thought; well, why not? Probably she didn't get to see much of the place. None of his business, not any more. He deleted the message and went on to the next one.

Sally's voice. One word, four letters, begins with H, rhymes with
yelp
. Then a pause, and then the click.

Duncan stared at the receiver for a moment, stunned, as though Death had thrown him a surprise party, with balloons and poppers and a big cake with a scythe iced on it in steel-grey sugar. Then his brain dropped into gear and he dialled 1471. Number withheld. Thank you so much.

Buenos Aires, he thought. Why would you need a pound of liver to go to Buenos Aires?

He rewound and played it back, this time giving the message the full force of his lupine superhearing. On the fourth replay he fancied he heard a soft clunking noise in the background, which could have been the heavy tread of a sadistic fiend on the stairs, or someone winding up a vacuum cleaner flex. Sod it, he thought; and of course, it would have to be a quarter to midnight, by which time even the eager beavers at Crosswoods would be likely to have gone home—

Home; of course. He still had Sally's home number, somewhere. A quick, frantic skirmish through the jumble of bits of paper, yellow stickies and frayed envelopes that constituted his address database produced the relevant data, and he stabbed it into the phone and waited.

Four rings; then a woman's voice, extremely grumpy and sleepy. ‘What?'

Not her. ‘Hello,' he said. ‘Can I speak to Sally, please?'

‘What?'

‘Is Sally there, please? Sally Hughes. No, sorry, Sally Moscowicz.'

Pause; then: ‘Not here any more.'

‘What do you mean—?' He was shouting; not good. ‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘But when you say not here any—'

‘Moved.' Huge yawn; rather like when Arizona yawned once long ago, not heeding its mother's warning about sticking like it, and that's how the Grand Canyon came to be. ‘Bought this flat off her ten months ago. Do you realise what time—?'

‘Yes, I'm very sorry. Have you got her new number, by any chance?'

‘Huh? Oh, no, sorry. She gave it to me, but I lost it. All right?'

‘Are you sure you haven't still got it somewhere? If you could just look—'

Click; implying no, she just couldn't. Furthermore, when Duncan called her right back and started to plead, she got quite upset and used the sort of language you don't find in the pages of Jane Austen. No joy there, then. Have to wait till the morning.

But he couldn't. He undressed, got into bed and turned out the light, but inside his head the dog was howling to be let out.
Help
, for crying out loud. What a singularly useless, unhelpful thing to say, and so typical of Sally, who'd always expected him to be able to read her mind. A sensible, rational creature would've expanded on the theme somewhat:
Look, haven't got much time, trapped in locked cellar with three starving hyenas, Unit 46a on the Springmead industrial estate, carry on down the main drag till you get to the plumbers' merchants, then left and left again
; or
Duncan, get over here right now, there's a huge great spider in the bath
; or even
I seem to be staring into a bottomless pit of existential angst, get your arse over here immediately
. He could've handled any of the above, provided the directions for getting there had been clear and accurate - in Sally's case, that'd be a first, but even so; but
help
, pause, possible muffled thud, click was just so—

Duncan jumped up and turned on the light, although he didn't really need to; superlative night vision was part of the package. His answering machine, he'd suddenly remembered, had all sorts of wizard techie features that he'd never bothered with, on account of human life being too short for standing around prodding little buttons while your brain boils out through your ears. One of the wizard features, he was fairly sure, was something which told you precisely when a call had come in. It wouldn't help all that much, but it would be extra hard data, and any information's better than nothing, unless it's supplied by DEFRA.

First he couldn't find the instruction booklet. Then he could-n't find the right bit (he found it in French, Spanish, Greek and Portuguese, but not English). Then he couldn't make the stupid thing work. Then it told him that the second call had come in at nineteen-fifty-seven, which confused him for a long, tense moment until he realised that the answering machine used the twenty-four-hour clock. Eight in the evening, give or take a morsel of superfluous precision. At eight o'clock, Sally had rung him up and said
help
. Solid facts; scientifically obtained and verified, and no bloody help at all.

He played the message back another six or seven times before he accidentally deleted it, but further and better information proved as elusive as WMD in Iraq. He sat on the floor (might be an idea to get two of those doggy-bed things, one for the office and one for home; ever since the Great Change, he'd found himself feeling unaccountably guilty when sitting on furniture) and tried the analytical approach. Hadn't there been a philosopher once who reckoned he could figure out the whole history of the world just by sitting looking at a pebble for long enough? Well: maybe that explained why
philosopher
didn't tend to show up in the lists of top ten career choices for high fliers. Back to basics. What did he actually know?

From the top. On the day that Luke Ferris had come bouncing back into his life, he'd been talking to someone from Crosswoods on the phone - that Bick woman - and he'd asked if Sally still worked there. A bit later, Sally herself had rung him and told him not to ask after her any more. Then nothing, until the Bick woman called to ask if he knew where she'd got to; at which point the enigmatic pound of liver made its first appearance. Then more nothing; until tonight. Sally, according to the Bick woman, was back from sunny Latin America and all was well. Except that, at eight in the evening, she'd rung up her ex and said ‘help'. It was now a quarter past one; oh, and she'd moved house about ten months ago, and the miserable cow who lived in her old flat had lost her new phone number.

All in all, Duncan decided after a while, he'd have been better off with the pebble. He could, of course, fabricate a whole wodge of possible storylines that would account for the pitiful handful of known facts. She'd run off with the client-account money, Crosswoods had hunted her down and were torturing her with cattle prods to find out where she'd hidden it. She was still so completely bombed after her romantic getaway that she thought it'd be amusing to call up her ex-husband on the phone and say ‘help' at him, just to worry him to death in the wee small hours. She'd found a spider in her bath, rung for her new boyfriend to come and dispose of it, called Duncan's number by mistake - After an hour of this sort of thing, the only thing Duncan knew for certain was that he wasn't going to get a wink of sleep that night, not if he counted all the sheep in Queensland.

He woke up and found he was huddled on the floor next to the telephone table, with a crick in his neck and sunlight pouring through the living-room window onto the face of the clock, which said nine-fifteen. Curious; a moment ago, when he'd closed his eyes just to rest them for a second, the clock had said 4.45 and it had been as dark as a bag outside. Also, he was late for the office.

Screw the office. He jumped up, lunged at the phone and plunged into the long, gradual slide into brain death that constitutes Directory Enquiries these days.

Eventually: ‘Crosswoods solicitors', said a brisk voice. ‘How can I—?'

‘I need to talk to Sally Hughes,' he snapped. ‘I mean Moscowicz. Now.'

‘I'm sorry, Ms Moscowicz isn't in the office right now. Can I take a message?'

‘No. How about Imogen Bick, is she there?'

‘I'm sorry, Ms Bick isn't available right now. Can I take a message?'

‘Fine. Get me the senior partner.'

Stupid thing to say; because she stuck him on hold, played Elgar at him for twenty minutes, then cut him off - the way you do, when you get some nut on the phone who won't go away. He should have known better, of course. The telephone is an imperfect instrument, ideally suited for obstructing and frustrating the importunate enquirer. He was just going to have to go there and make a nuisance of himself in the front office.

He got dressed. Duncan Hughes the human being wouldn't have stood a chance on the desperate mission he had in mind; far too diffident, polite, well-behaved. Fortunately, he wasn't that Duncan Hughes any more. Nights spent clambering over people's fences and trampling their flower beds in pursuit of the fox had given him a measure of the arrogant confidence of the true-born aristocrat. If the goons on Reception at Crosswoods tried to play funny games with him, he'd know what to do about it.

He was just about to slam his front door behind him when he remembered his obligations to the pack. He paused and rang the office.

‘Hello, is that—?' Needless to say, he couldn't remember the name of the little bald man who crouched by the front desk all day. A muted whimper saved him the bother of having to try. ‘Listen, it's Duncan Hughes here. Tell Mr Ferris I'm feeling a bit under the weather, so I won't be in today, all right? Thanks a lot, bye.'

A simple, perfectly straightforward sickie, the birthright of every British worker. So why did he feel so hideously guilty? He scowled, as if he was trying to frighten the guilt away. More important things to think about right now. Besides; he'd make the time up, it wasn't as though there was any work that needed to be done anyway (apart from the Allshapes estate accounts; hah!) and he wasn't a snivelling little employee any more, so if he was stealing time he was in effect stealing it from himself. He slammed the door behind him and set off for the Tube at a long-paced trot.

The address he'd been given turned out to be a large building just off Chancery Lane. The windows, he noticed, were black mirror glass, and the fancy self-opening doors led into a huge reception area where a plaque on the wall told him that Crosswoods's offices were in the basement and sub-basement. He found a lift - very snug, with red velvet upholstery on the walls, though it reminded him a bit of a rather showy coffin - which seemed to go down a very long way before depositing him in the biggest front office he'd seen in his life. Apart from a huge desk, the place was fairly sparse and empty - a few chairs out in the middle, like the Azores surrounded by the vast Atlantic, and that was about it. Lots of dark red carpet, presumably to match the lift.

The woman behind the desk didn't seem to have noticed him come in, so he walked up to her and coughed. She looked up at him with big, glassy eyes.

‘Can I see Sally Moscowicz, please?' he said.

She stared at him vacantly for about two seconds, then shook her head. ‘Ms Moscowicz is not available,' she said in a flat, measured voice; not the one he'd heard on the phone that morning. ‘Do you have an appointment?'

‘Is she in the building?'

Another pause. It was like the delay on a transatlantic phone call. ‘Ms Moscowicz is not in the office today. Would you like to leave your name and a message?'

‘All right,' Duncan said. ‘What about Imogen Bick? Can I see her?'

Just talking to the receptionist was making him feel tired; drained, and oddly cold. He wished he'd worn his coat. The same length of delay, then, ‘Ms Bick is occupied right now, can I have your name, please?' Still that same flat, featureless voice; it was like listening to Holland.

‘Duncan Hughes.' Saying his name made him feel nervous, as though he was giving away more than mere information. ‘Can you ring through and tell her I'm here?'

Pause. In order to prove it he'd need one of those stopwatches they use for timing races at the Olympics, the ones that are accurate to a hundredth of a second; but he was convinced that each of her pauses was precisely the same length. ‘Ringing through for you now,' she said, and reached for her phone. ‘Ms Bick? A Mr Duncan Hughes is in reception.' Pause. ‘Very well.' She put the phone down, then said, ‘Ms Bick will be through shortly, please take a seat.'