Slaughter in the Cotswolds (6 page)

What she had done was unforgivable. She had arrogantly assumed she knew best what was good for the dogs. She had directly disobeyed an instruction. She deserved to be blacklisted and never allowed to house-sit anywhere again.

Then common sense kicked in, and she told
herself that the dogs would certainly come home again when they got hungry. They were relatively well-behaved and domesticated, despite their boring outdoor existence. Just so long as they committed no dreadful crimes while they were loose, everything was going to be all right.

A man was coming towards her, his eyes narrowed with some uncomfortable emotion that looked at first glance like anger. ‘Were those your dogs that just dashed past?’ he demanded, from some distance, his voice raised.

She smiled weakly. ‘I’m afraid so,’ she said. ‘They flushed out a rabbit and decided to give chase.’

‘You’d better catch them quick,’ he advised. ‘Not much tolerance for stray dogs around here.’

‘They’ll come back soon,’ she said with feigned confidence.

‘I could be wrong, but that huntaway looked to me like Cedric Angell’s. Am I right?’

‘That’s right,’ she admitted. ‘I’m the house-sitter.’

‘Did he tell you it was all right to release the dogs out here?’ The anger had segued into disapproval and suspicion.

‘Not exactly. I just thought a walk would do them good.’

‘A
walk
,’ he sneered. ‘You think dogs like that expect a
walk
? They’re workers; they know their
job and do it well. Otherwise, they need to stay tied up.’

‘OK,’ she said, opting for submission, despite an argumentative inner voice insisting that Cedric Angell had no work for the dogs – that they were superfluous yard ornaments and nothing more. ‘So how do you suggest I get them back?’

‘Not my problem,’ he said unpleasantly. ‘I’ve got better things to do.’

Thea gave him a closer look, wondering how to react to this lack of courtliness. He seemed to be in his fifties, slight and weather-beaten. There were crinkle-lines around his eyes, as if he might do a lot of sailing. He did appear distracted, impatient, moving his feet on the spot as if mentally still walking.

‘That’s perfectly true,’ she said calmly. ‘I’m sure it’ll all come right. Things usually do.’

A look of contempt and disbelief crossed his face. ‘Do they? If that’s your experience, then all I can say is that you’ve been very lucky. As I see it, the very opposite is true.’

She could feel him needling, wanting her to panic, infuriated by her persistent optimism. She smiled briefly. ‘Well, don’t let me keep you,’ she said.

He remained stationary for a few more beats, and then set off briskly without another word, leaving Thea to insist to herself that the chances
of anything seriously bad happening to the dogs were very slim. They’d dash about for a bit, as the freedom went to their heads, then turn back for home full of cheerful rabbit-chasing memories. Even if Cedric had been right about the gun-toting farmer, it would be the direst of bad luck for him to encounter the dogs while armed and angry. Besides, they were half a mile from his land and heading in the opposite direction.

Her instinct was to keep walking and calling, hoping for a glimpse of them. Basil would still have the string trailing from his neck; it might get caught in brambles or on a fence. Then what would he do – howl for rescue or sit quietly trusting that someone would know he was there? In spite of herself, she began to worry. It was a big wide world out there, with fields in every direction, not to mention disused quarries and roads and copses sacred to the pheasant and gamekeeper. A lot of booby traps for unwary dogs unused to having it all as their playground.

Another instinct was to approach all the houses she could find and report the missing animals, hoping for assistance and concern. But after the encounter with the unhelpful man, she could not rely on a positive reception. And her impression of Cotswold residents was that they were too busily involved with their computers and social clubs to perform anything as time-consuming as
combing the landscape for lost dogs.

It was only a couple of hours before Phil was due to arrive. He was the fond owner of a pair of dogs himself, and could surely be relied on to make useful and sensible suggestions. He would also chastise her for such careless disobedience. With a sense of walls closing in, she understood that she really might be in trouble. There really might be cause to fear for Hepzie, too, if the delinquent influence of the others overwhelmed her already shaky response to her mistress’s calls.

They knew the way home, that much was certain. They could retrace their own scent and that of Thea. She should go back and wait for them to give themselves up. If they still hadn’t returned when Phil arrived, then the two of them could conduct a search. But it felt entirely wrong when she turned round and started back, empty-handed and ridiculously lonely.

Phil had other things to think about than missing dogs, and he listened irritably to the story, tutting to himself and shaking his head. ‘I can’t believe you were such a fool,’ he said. ‘I thought you
knew
about dogs.’

‘I know about Hepzie. I’m sure she’ll be back any minute now.’

‘How long ago was this, did you say?’

‘Nearly three hours,’ she admitted.

‘Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve no intention of traipsing over hill and dale in the faint hope of finding them. When I was a boy, our dogs could be gone for twenty-four hours at this time of year. Even in those days, it was a worry – you
never knew what they’d get up to. Nowadays, they stand a real risk of getting themselves shot. Luckily for you, there don’t seem to be any sheep farms left around this area.’

‘There’s one – just over there.’ She pointed towards the back of the house. ‘Mr Angell warned me about it.’

Phil sighed and tutted again, and Thea fought against the image of herself as an irresponsible teenager. She looked at him closely, analysing him as if for the first time. There was nothing especially remarkable about him; his skin was good, lightly tanned and smooth. The brown hair had a narrow fringe of silver over the ears and temples. His eyes were set deep, blue and thoughtful. Even before the onset of political correctness he would have considered the effects of his words before he spoke. But inevitably he had lost some of the natural human bounce he must once have possessed, thanks to the deadening influence of the police force. He had seen too much, suffered too many traumas and crises and attacks to maintain the kind of smiling resilience that Carl had had. The damage to his back a few months earlier had further weighed him down. Now he thought twice before making any sudden movement. It had added to his air of caution, and made him a more frustrating companion in Thea’s eyes.

The murder of the previous evening had quickly been transformed from a simple piece of one-on-one aggression to something much more complicated. Phil plainly had a lot he wanted to say about it, but was inhibited by her words on the phone. The diversion of the errant dogs was as annoying to Phil as it was a relief to Thea. She found herself more and more resistant to the thought of discussing Emily and the suspicions that the police were apparently entertaining.

‘I’m sorry to ask you this,’ he began stiffly, once the subject of the missing dogs had been brushed aside. ‘But you can’t evade it entirely. Did your sister tell you she’d got lost almost as soon as she left here?’ he asked.

‘More or less, yes.’

‘But did you know she had a SatNav in the car?’

‘Is that the thing she calls a TomTom?’

He kinked a reproachful eyebrow. ‘You know it is,’ he said.

‘Oh, well, it’s all a mystery to me. As it happens, though, I did ask her about it, and how come she’d got lost in spite of it. She said she didn’t like it giving her orders. That’s typical Emily, by the way. It might be that she didn’t know how to work it properly, either. I had to give her directions for getting here.’ A thought struck her. ‘Aha!’ she chirped, holding up a finger
to suggest a sudden enlightenment. ‘I know why she turned right when she left here. I directed her that way when she was coming here – I told her to come through the middle of Lower Slaughter, because I wasn’t sure she’d find this road from the south. So naturally she tried to retrace her steps. Then she must have missed the next right turn into the village, and headed straight for Upper Slaughter. It all makes perfect sense,’ she concluded, with satisfaction.

Phil had listened closely to this verbal map, one eye closed in concentration. ‘I think I get it,’ he said slowly.

‘I can draw it for you if it helps,’ she patronised. ‘It just makes me all the more certain there are perfectly reasonable explanations for everything she said – or didn’t say. She obviously wasn’t hiding anything when she came back last night – she told me the whole story and it all rang quite true.’

‘She didn’t tell you she knew the victim,’ he reminded her.

‘Because she had no idea it was him,’ Thea flashed back. ‘I’m in absolutely no doubt about that.’

‘OK,’ he nodded. ‘You’ve just about convinced me. Now – how about coming for a little walk with me. It’s not such a bad evening, compared to last night.’

‘I will, once we’ve done something about those bloody dogs. I can’t just leave them out there all night. I’m getting really worried about Hepzie. She’s never been off for this long. They must be leading her into wicked ways.’

Phil paused, his brow wrinkled. ‘I’m surprised you’re not frantic by now. Are you sure she could find her way home in a strange area?’

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Do you think we could go back along the same path and call her? I can’t just wait and hope. It feels much too irresponsible. But dogs always
do
come back in the end – don’t they?’

‘Nearly always,’ he said.

He went with her the half-mile to the point where the dog pack had eluded her. The sun was still high, but there was an evening feel to the light, and a gentle breeze had sprung up. Unselfconsciously, Thea called her dog, lifting her voice as if throwing it across the fields. Then she would stop and listen intently. Phil went into gateways and scanned the landscape, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun. Then, very faintly, Thea heard a distant yelp, repeated three or four times.

‘That’s her!’ she cried. ‘I can hear her. She’s over there.’ She pointed to a patch of woodland away to the right, on the crest of a gradual slope. Heedlessly, she scrambled over a gate and began
to trot towards the sound, calling the dog’s name every few yards.

‘Do you want me to come?’ Phil called from the path. ‘I doubt if I’d be much use.’ He had a precautionary hand to his back, anxiously eyeing the uneven ground.

‘Up to you,’ she panted, already breathless. The woods were not looking any closer, and there were two thick hedges across her path with no sign of an opening. As she called and listened, the direction of the dog’s cries seemed to change, until she could almost convince herself they were coming from a different patch of trees entirely. But they did grow gradually louder as she kept to her original trajectory, and she pressed on.

It took ten minutes to get to the wood, and even then the quest was not over. Hepzie’s yelps went infuriatingly silent as the spaniel assumed it was about to be rescued, and quite possibly chastised. ‘Where are you?’ Thea shouted, peering amongst the trees. It was a fairly narrow band of woodland, with a footpath sign pointing through the middle, and rough patches of bramble on either side. The road to Lower Swell ran close by.

In the end she stumbled upon the dog when least expecting to. A squeal alerted her, and she found Hepzie curled awkwardly at the foot of a large tree. ‘For goodness sake, you bad dog. What do you think you’re playing at?’

Large miserable eyes met hers, and a convulsive movement showed that something was very wrong. ‘What happened to you?’ Thea demanded.

Bending down, she found that a length of barbed wire had wound itself around the dog’s lower body, digging tightly into her soft belly, drawing blood in places. ‘Oh, Hepzie!’ Thea moaned. ‘That must really hurt.’

Knowing the wire could only be removed with great care, but desperate to be clear of it, Thea made little progress at first. Where the hell was Phil, she wondered? Had he been fool enough to take her at her word and leave her to deal with this on her own? Apparently so. Well, bugger him – she’d manage well enough.

Eventually she found an end of the wire, and by methodically unwinding and pulling, she got it free – though not without several punctures to her own hands and wrists. As if alive, the stuff would whip round and attack bare skin as it was being manipulated. At one stage, a barb narrowly missed one of Hepzie’s eyes. The other end of the wire was firmly attached to a post alongside the tree, remnants of a fence no longer functioning.

‘Poor baby,’ Thea crooned as she worked. ‘Nearly got it now. Soon be home. What an awful thing to happen.’ The dog kept still, only squeaking when a tuft of hair came away with
part of the wire. She was thick with mud from ear to tail, which didn’t help.

Finally she was free and Thea set her down to assess the damage. ‘Can you walk?’ she asked.

With a slow wag of the plumy tail, Hepzie tested herself. All four legs seemed to be working. ‘Good!’ encouraged Thea. ‘Come on then.’ She chivvied the animal back towards the footpath, ready to carry her if necessary, but hoping fervently that it wouldn’t come to that. Not only because of the mud, but there was blood mixed in, and Hepzie had always been an awkward armful at the best of times. Picking up the pace across the fields, they made the journey back to their temporary home.

Phil had gone back to Hawkhill, and was waiting impatiently. He obviously had not planned for such a long stay, and had been stewing about it in her absence.
He ought to
have come with me
, Thea thought crossly.
How
unchivalrous he can be sometimes.
Since hurting his back he had avoided physical risk as far as possible. Now it was well on the way to recovery, he was braver, but the memory of the pain and disablement was still too fresh for comfort.

‘No sign of the others, then?’ he asked as she crossed the yard to where he sat on the lichened seat by the door.

She gave him an unsmiling look before
answering, ‘No. I hoped they’d have come back here in the meantime.’

‘How’s Hepzie?’

‘I won’t know till I’ve washed her. She was tangled in barbed wire. It was wrapped round her about three times. She’s got a lot of cuts, but she can walk all right. It would have been nice to have some help.’ It had to be said, so she uttered it straight, loud and clear.

‘I’m sorry, Thea, but there are four or five very good reasons why I opted to leave you to it. It made no sense for me to get filthy dirty and probably torn on brambles. I could see you for most of the time, and it was obvious you didn’t need me.’

She looked down at herself, streaked and splashed with mud, punctured by the barbed wire, and sighed. ‘At least she’s home,’ she said.

‘When does she get her beating?’

The joke fell flat, girlfriend and spaniel both giving him the same humourless look. He laughed anyway, more at their faces than his own jocularity. ‘I can only stay another hour at most,’ he said.

‘It’s Sunday,’ she reminded him. ‘Can’t you have the evening off?’

‘I can, actually. But I said I’d take the boys to Painswick. Linda is having them this week, and she likes to settle them in by about nine.’

‘Gosh – what time is it now, then?’

‘Nearly seven.’

‘No wonder I’m so hungry. I had no idea it was as late as that. Do you want some soup or cheese or something?’

‘If there’s anything handy, that would be nice. But you should get on and bathe your dog – and do something about the missing two. Linda will have something waiting for me.’ Linda was his sister, who shared the care of his corgi and Gordon setter, taking them when he was working long hours, giving them a break from the confinement of his Cirencester flat.

Thea took a deep breath and did her best to concentrate. ‘Well, it doesn’t look as if we’re much use to each other at the moment, does it? You with the dogs and me with your murder. I feel exhausted, to be honest. Don’t forget that my father died only a week ago. You need to bear that in mind with Emily as well. That’s why she came here, you know – to talk about Daddy. She was in quite a state about it, feeling guilty and abandoned and a whole lot of other things.’

‘She was oddly calm when she called the police.’

‘Damn it, Phil – will you stop implying that she’s done something wrong! Everything you say carries so much suspicion. It’s horrible. She got covered in blood and gore, not to mention soaking wet and
terrified. Give her a break, for heaven’s sake. It’s not like you to be so down on somebody.’

‘I’m not down on her, as you put it. If you must know, I’m bending over backwards to give her the benefit of the doubt.’

Thea was searching for a reply to this when with a skittering scrambling noise, two filthy dogs came trotting towards them, heads and tails hanging low, tongues lolling out. With brief glances at the people, they made as one to a shallow trough of water standing outside their shed, and gulped great quantities of it for a full minute.

‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ said Thea. ‘But look at the state of them!’

The fluffy coat of the one she called Freddy was matted and lumpen with rapidly drying mud. Basil, being short-haired, was less bedraggled, but still coated liberally with the same substance. ‘Where did they find so much mud? Even after yesterday’s rain, this is pretty excessive,’ said Thea, retreating from the panting animals.

‘In the river, I suppose,’ said Phil. ‘Or at least the edges of it. That’s where the mud must be. At least there’s no sign of any blood.’

Thea was to remind him of this remark in the days to come. ‘You said there was no blood. You’re their witness. There wasn’t
any
blood on them – was there?’

The trouble started less than half an hour later. The Angells’ phone rang, and when Thea answered it, a furious male voice began yelling into her ear. ‘Those dogs – I know they’ve been loose. They were seen. And I’ve got four prize tups dead and another five torn to bits and needing to be destroyed. The dogs have got to be shot, there’s no two ways about it. I’m coming over now, so be sure to have them shut up and waiting for me. The law’s on my side. They’ve been asking for it. They’ve got to be shot.’

At last he quietened down enough for Thea to make a shaky response. ‘They’re not guilty,’ she said. ‘They have been on the loose, but they haven’t killed anything. There’s no blood on them. You can’t shoot them without proof.’ Then she had the sense to add, ‘There’s a policeman here now. He’ll tell you. You can’t shoot the dogs without proof.’