Dead Weight (Three Oaks Book 11) Read online

  DEAD WEIGHT

  Gerald Hammond

  © Gerald Hammond 2000

  Gerald Hammond has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2000 by Macmillan.

  This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter One

  ‘You’re tired, John,’ Beth informed me, looking up from her crouched position among the roses. ‘You’ve done enough. Knock off and go down to the pub. Have a pint of Guinness,’ she added. ‘You could take Myrtle and Polly with you. Be back by seven.’

  In case there is any doubt in the reader’s mind, Beth is my wife. Not every wife says that sort of thing but Beth is exceptional, partly because she is always afraid of a relapse into the illness which terminated my army career. She is convinced that Guinness will put back a little much-needed weight onto my bones. It is not a delusion which I am in any hurry to dispel.

  I might have put up an argument, but in fact there was very little work left to do. It was the height of summer and the kennels were full, but it was also the school holidays. Over the years, instead of increasing the year-round staff, we had built up a select band of young ‘volunteers’ who, with the enthusiastic approval of their parents and in return for ‘gifts’ of pocket money considerably less than the minimum wage, would come in and help with the dog-walking, bathing and grooming, run-cleaning and feeding and even, in selected cases, elementary training. An intelligent, carefully instructed teenager could enjoy instilling the basics of ‘Come’ and ‘Heel’ and ‘Sit’ (or ‘Hup’) into a spaniel puppy and in the process probably learn as much as his or her charge. More advanced training in hunting and retrieving for our stock of young working spaniels was well in hand. Even the garden was as immaculate as the dogs would permit and Beth’s continued gardening was no more than her personal therapy.

  I was leg-weary and might have preferred to put my feet up in front of the telly but, as usual in summer, there was nothing on the box that anyone with two brain cells to rub together could possibly want to watch, so I gave Beth a kiss on the less muddy of her two cheeks, gathered Polly and Myrtle (our two best brood bitches) and set off by a path running parallel to, but a safe hundred yards from, the road.

  A hot day was giving way to a beautiful evening. The air over north-east Fife was cooling, the light softening. In the middle distance but just within earshot a tractor was gathering the straw bales left by the harvester and rooks were squabbling around a wood on the skyline. Too far overhead to be audible, a jet was drawing a straight line across the sky. It was good to see butterflies making a comeback even if their offspring were less than welcome on our vegetables.

  Each of the bitches was already a Field Trial Champion, now retired from active service except for occasional bouts of motherhood, and so tended to be left to last in the routine of walking and training. But young rabbits were bobbing in the hedge-bottoms among a blaze of wildflowers. They both knew better than to give chase, but Myrtle thrust into a bed of ground elder and put up a cock pheasant, a wanderer from one of the several shoots thereabouts. The bird rocketed, clocking indignantly, then set his wings and glided to a strip of gorse bushes fringed by rabbit holes. He might still be around in October but I doubted it. Somebody would snare him before then or bring him to hand by the use of raisins soaked in whisky.

  The path brought us to the back door of the pub and we made our way inside. The ‘pub’ is, in fact, a former coaching inn which has grown rather haphazardly over the years to meet the demand generated by remarkably good cuisine, without ever being subjected to brewer’s modernizations beyond the laying of quarry tiles on the floor. Thus the public bar, all white paint and dark woodwork, wanders around some surprising corners and has windows opening onto unexpected views. For much of the day it is a place of quiet calm and we seemed to have caught it at its quietest, between the visits of the opening-time quickies and the arrival of the home-going commuters.

  Among the charms of the pub, in my view, were the facts that it was in the village and so was just the right distance from Three Oaks Kennels for a leisurely stroll; and that the proprietors welcomed dogs with the sole proviso that they were house trained and well behaved. They could hardly do otherwise, to the displeasure of hygiene inspectors and the anti-dog brigade, when the Hebdens’ own two dogs, a chocolate Labrador named Angus, and Hector, some kind of terrier of uncertain breeding, had the run of the place.

  Hector and Angus were well acquainted with Myrtle and Polly, though not as well acquainted as they would have liked at certain seasons, and they made room for them in front of the dead fireplace. The bar seemed otherwise deserted, but Mrs Hebden, who usually did bar duty until the hour when paid bar staff began their shifts, appeared like a genie from a trap to serve my pint of Guinness and remained dutifully to chat about the weather and the doings of the day. A fat and friendly lady with unnaturally yellow hair, she was a fountain of local gossip more than equalling the Fife Herald.

  I was not to have my side of the bar to myself for long. Henry Kitts, the elderly husband of Isobel (the third member of the partnership in the kennels) put his creased and raddled face round the door before I had paid for my drink. ‘So I’ve caught up with you,’ he said. ‘Isobel says she’ll walk down and join me here when it’s time for you to go home.’ Replying to my raised eyebrows, he added, ‘A dram and a pint of Eighty Shilling.’

  I repeated the order. That is the penalty for being first at the bar. I willed Mrs Hebden to finish up and give me my change before any other thirsty friends arrived (because, as a one-drink man, I found it an expensive folly to become involved in the ritual of ‘rounds’) but it was not to be. She pottered with the till until Alistair Branch made an appearance and took the stool on the other side of Henry.

  Alistair was retired – from being something in insurance, I believed. A stocky man with a thatch of silver hair, he had the unlined face of the truly serene. He looked, in fact, like that rarity – a saint with a sense of humour. At his heel was June (short for Juniper), a springer bitch who we had sold to Alistair several years earlier after she had provided us with her permitted complement of pups. The two were inseparable, pottering away the years together in desultory pursuit of rabbit and pigeon, and wildfowl in season. Alistair could well have afforded membership of a quality pheasant syndicate but I secretly sympathized with his view that anyone forking out that sort of money for birds of which only a small percentage would be remembered at the end of each day had to have more money than sense. Rough-shooting, he could pursue agricultural pests, summer as well as winter. June came to say hello to her one-time master and shooting companion and then went to join the growing throng at the fireplace.

  Alistair was a friend and near-contemporary of Henry’s rather than mine, but that did not excuse me from the traditional courtesies. Alistair accepted a large Grouse and Mrs Hebden at last got around to making change. The next arrival could buy his own or take over the chair.

  The unusual heatwave could have been expected to take up several minutes of conversation, but Alistair dismissed it in about three words. He was a reserved character, not given to showing emotion, but his usual air of serenity was absent and he gave the impression that there was something needling him. A pull at his whisky did little to improve his mood. ‘Who would you say was the rudest man in the village?’ he asked suddenly.

  The question was not
one to be answered lightly. I was turning over several contenders in my mind when Henry nodded towards me and said, ‘John, of course.’

  ‘Would you?’ I said, surprised. I do not suffer fools gladly and I have what Beth calls a ‘cutting edge to my tongue’, but I thought that I was seldom rude. ‘It seems to me,’ I told Henry, ‘that you’ve just put yourself in line for the title. Anyway, there must be somebody ruder than I am – even if I can’t think who just for the moment.’

  ‘Me, for instance?’ Alistair said.

  ‘You’re an also-ran,’ Henry told him. ‘A novice. A non-starter.’ And it was true. Although not quite Henry’s age, Alistair gave the impression of being a rather shy, very courteous gentleman of the old school. ‘We don’t have an actual trophy for the event yet,’ Henry went on, ‘but I might be persuaded to present one. Who’s been suggesting that you’re in line for the challenge cup?’

  Alistair hesitated, too much the gentleman to bandy a lady’s name in the pub. But his grievance was rankling and some names could do with a little bandying. ‘Mrs Horner.’ I had the impression that only respect for the house restrained him from spitting over his shoulder after uttering the name.

  Henry, who had begun to drink his beer, snorted suddenly and had to make use of his handkerchief. ‘Look who was talking!’ he said. ‘The pot calling the kettle black. What did you do? Refuse to lay your coat in a puddle for her to walk over? Or hold up a mirror?’

  Almost opposite the pub a minor road (Old Ford Road) ran away into the countryside, serving farms and a sand-pit. Half a dozen houses, rather larger and of better quality than the average for the village, had been built along one side of the road. The other side, ragged with bushes and a few mature trees, fell away steeply to a burn. Mrs Horner, I knew, lived in the first house fronting the road and Alistair, I thought, in the fourth or fifth. ‘A clash between neighbours?’ I suggested. ‘What in Glasgow they’d call a stairheid?’

  ‘Not exactly. It’s a long story.’ Alistair sighed. ‘Same again?’

  I had not finished my pint of Guinness and when I finished it I would normally have set off for home. But Mrs Horner, although I hardly knew her, was one of my least favourite people and I would not have wanted to miss anything that reflected unfavourably on her. I accepted a half. Henry, who would also be walking home, took the same again.

  ‘It goes back years,’ Alistair said, ‘to when we’d just moved into the village. We used to walk June along the road. Well, more particularly, I used to walk her along the road to the pub or the shop. I didn’t know that Mrs Horner’s feu included some of the rough ground on the other side of the road, or so she says. That was the logical place for June to run around and do her business, but one day Mrs Horner rushed out and accosted me. Honestly, from the way she carried on you’d think that I had personally crapped on her doorstep. You wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘Yes I would,’ I said. ‘I met her in the street in Cupar one day, and for once I didn’t have a dog with me. Without a hello or goodbye and in fewer words than I’d have believed possible, she suggested that the reason I was alone was because no dog would walk with me any more.’

  ‘That sounds about par for the course,’ Alistair said. ‘When she pointed it out, I saw then that the first twelve inches or so from the road was mown, but I’ll swear that June had never messed on that.

  ‘I’m all for the peaceful life. The first time that somebody comes at me aggressively, I walk away. In my book, hassle just isn’t worth it. As you probably know, we have a back lane. The back gardens have gates opening onto it but Mrs Horner’s house has a high and blank garden wall and a gate that I’ve never seen unbolted. So I’ve taken to walking by the lane except when it’s very muddy or I’m in a hurry. There’s only a narrow margin of grass and weeds between the track and a field which is usually in pasture, sometimes in grain or potatoes. This year it’s oilseed rape. It’s not as interesting for a dog as the bushes below the road but at least nobody bothers us and there’s no need to pick up dog-plonks. And on the few occasions when I’ve walked along the road I’ve stayed on the pavement and kept the old girl at heel until I was past Mrs Horner’s house. If I was only dog-walking, I went the other way. There’s a path down onto the Moss.

  ‘About a week ago, I had a pint in here before lunch. Somebody kept me talking and I was in a hurry to get home because Betty was going out and she wanted us to have an early lunch. So I went along the pavement with June at heel. I’d hardly set eyes on the harpy for months because of using the lane, but as luck would have it she had opened her drive gate to take out her car and she was just inside her gate. Her gatepost must be a favourite place for dogs to pee and the scent was just too attractive for June, so for once she broke away from heel and squatted to squeeze out a few drops to leave her own signature. You know how dogs do?’

  We assured him that we had a very good idea how dogs do.

  ‘She flew at us,’ Alistair said. ‘She was screeching, “Shoo! Shoo! Shoo!” Well, that isn’t any part of June’s vocabulary and the poor old thing was startled out of her wits. She jumped almost out of her skin and dropped a small, dry turd right in the middle of the gateway. I couldn’t blame her. If somebody rushed at me, screeching, “Shoo! Shoo! Shoo!” I’d probably do the same.’

  I agreed that my reaction would likely have been similar.

  ‘I usually have my pockets full of polythene bags,’ Alistair continued. He dug into a pocket and produced three or four bags, at least two of which had once contained sliced loaves. ‘But when I tried to find one and remove the offending morsel I realized that I’d left my jacket at home because of the heat and I didn’t have one with me. I tried to explain this. I even asked her to provide me with a bag,’ Alistair said indignantly, ‘but she pretended not to hear. She just ranted at me. I think she was enjoying herself. She even said that I was still encouraging my dog to mess on her strip of grass, which just wasn’t true. The last straw was when she taxed me with walking off while she was talking to me, several years ago. I said that I would have been happy to discuss the matter if she hadn’t been so damn rude. And that’s when she blew her top and said that I was the rudest person in the village.

  ‘I didn’t feel like facing another shouting match so I walked away again. I went straight home, fetched a plastic bag and returned. And – would you believe? – she told me not to remove the object because she was calling Environmental Health and she wanted to show it to them. I wasn’t having that. I did my duty and removed the turd like a good citizen.’

  And that ended the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘Did it hell!’ Alistair said with unwonted heat. ‘This came in this morning.’ He produced a letter from his wallet. ‘From Environmental Health . . . I have received a written complaint from a resident alleging that your dog regularly fouls roads and footpaths when being walked and that the excrement is not lifted. Section Forty-eight of the above Act makes it an offence for anyone in charge of a dog to allow it to deposit its excrement in certain places including footpaths . . . Any persons who allow it to do so is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding Five Hundred Pounds.’

  ‘That’s a bit thick,’ Henry said, ‘even allowing for a certain eccentricity of syntax. But, after all, there’s no harm done.’ I rather suspected that Henry was finding the whole incident rather funny, as I was. It was to seem much less funny later.

  ‘There may be no immediate harm done,’ Alistair said, ‘except to my feelings, but what if she’s spreading her lies around? And what if poor June really does drop a plonk on a footpath some day and I don’t notice it? Having been warned once, I could find myself in court.’ He took out a tin, produced a small cigar and lit it. I noticed that his hand was shaking.

  Isobel had arrived almost unnoticed as we gave our attention to the story. Although she is somewhat younger than Henry her appearance suggests a stereotypical housewife, preoccupied with domestic trivia and good works. Only on closer acquaintance is it revealed that s
he is a qualified vet, an inspired dog-handler in competition and a fairly good shot. She is also a usually moderate drinker who sometimes goes off the rails. She flashed her unsuitable spectacles at Alistair. ‘In court? Alistair, what have you done?’

  Mrs Hebden had reappeared behind the bar, apparently in answer to a telepathic message from Henry, who included me in another round before I could stop him. She lingered while Isobel was brought up to date with the latest gossip. The offending letter was handed round.

  When the tale was told, Isobel said, ‘I wouldn’t worry, Alistair. That woman’s quarrelled with three-quarters of the village. It was just your turn. She thrives on discord.’

  ‘It’s very confusing,’ Mrs Hebden said. Like any good licensee, she always tries to see the best in everybody while still suspecting the worst. ‘When she has paying guests they often come in here in the evening and they say what a nice lady she is. I’ve never met her myself. I don’t think she’s a drinker.’

  ‘I’m afraid she is,’ Isobel said. ‘I was behind her in the checkout queue at the Co-op in Cupar and she had several vodka bottles in her shopping. If it had been several different spirits I’d have known that she was stocking up for her guests, but vodka’s what the secret tippler buys because the smell’s easily disguised. When she saw me looking she said that she’d seen me coming out of the pub that morning and I ought to be ashamed of myself – that was the morning I came by to book a meal for that evening. I told her that the bar wasn’t open at that time and that she of all people should know that.’ Isobel smiled at the memory. ‘She was not pleased. She’d have to show her visitors a different face, of course. They come back year after year for the golf or sailing or the wildfowling and they pay through the nose because she really is a damn good cook – or so I’m told – she’s never invited me to dinner. She probably needs the money – have you seen that awful old car? – and she’d hate to lose it.’