The Unkindest Cut (11 page)

‘As much as you ever do.'

Jane grinned and gave Roland a friendly punch on the shoulder. ‘That's all right then. At the same time, the list was being compared with the other list, the one of what we know about Knifeman, which isn't a lot but it was quite possible to remove the very old, the very young, the one-legged or deformed, those with heads of shapes that I would definitely have remembered; and soon, I suppose, Hugh Dodd will be subjected to much the same inquisition. And I'm quite prepared to bet that his list and mine will only fit where they touch.

‘And talking of bets,' Jane went on, ‘Bart Hepworth and his brother came to the surgery again.'

‘With Crippen?'

‘I think they've retired Crippen, he'd been in too many bouts. They've got a new one, Borden. Just as chewed up. I tried to tell them to bugger off but it was the same old story. I had to sew up the wounds or they'd spill the beans about all the patch-up jobs I did in the past.'

Roland, whose mind had been at least half on his current writing rather than wholly on his conversation with his wife, returned it to Jane. ‘You should have stuck to your guns,' he said. ‘They couldn't drop you in the shit without following you in, and deeper. I suspect that it was your sympathy for the dog that motivated you.'

‘Well, maybe. He looked at me as though he knew that I was the person who could make the pain go away. Which is a step forward. Usually they look at me as if to say, “Touch me with that needle and I'll have you for dinner”.'

Roland turned to face her. ‘Now, you listen to me. All right, dogfighting is an offence that quite rightly they take seriously. If you don't patch up the damage, what's going to happen? They try to find another vet. If they can't, and if the dog dies, they'll bury it quietly in the woods. But if the authorities get on to you, what then?'

‘I'll tell you something,' Jane said. They were alone but she lowered her voice. ‘You know the SSPCA man, the curly-haired one? I put it to him once as a hypothetical question.
If
somebody brought me a dog injured in a fight, what should I do? His answer was perfectly positive. I should treat the dog but call the SSPCA who would notify the police. I pointed out that there was no way to tell whether the injuries had been caused in a street confrontation or an organized fight but he said that that didn't matter, it was for the police to investigate and decide.'

‘He'd soon change his tune if you started getting him out of bed for every dog-bite that's brought to you. Anyway, you can deny everything. The Hepworths came to you for the first time and threatened that if you didn't help them they'd make up a story about all the times you'd helped them in the past. Beyond that point you could hide behind medical confidentiality.'

‘Which doesn't apply to animals.'

Roland pointed a finger at her and then tapped her on the nose. ‘But you've been told that it does.'

She ducked her head aside. ‘Who by?'

‘By me. I'm wrongly sure of my facts.'

‘You crime writers. Always ready with the devious escape. But being wrongly advised about the law has never been an accepted excuse. The sun's going in, let's move through. There's something coming on the telly that I want to see – and those are words that I never dared hope to hear passing my lips again.'

When they had settled in one of the enormous leather chairs, Jane picked up the remote control of the TV, but she hesitated before saying cryptically, ‘Something Bart said started me thinking. He mentioned that a law student won around fifty quid or something, betting on Borden, just a couple of weeks ago. That's got me wondering whether there isn't something Bart can do for me … I'd like another word with that man before giving up on him.'

T
he activities of Knifeman seemed likely to become the prime topic of interest around Newton Lauder, but Jane and Roland were soon taken out of those discussions. The kind of happy chance that occurs too rarely in this life brought together all the elements needed for a perfect and immediate honeymoon. A letter from a big-time art dealer informed Jane that two major collectors had become willing to accept the provenance of the Raeburn painting and had tried to outbid each other. Jane emailed immediate instructions to sell quickly before the white heat of enthusiasm had time to cool.

The postponed honeymoon was now financially possible. At the same time, Jane heard that a colleague with a veterinary practice near Edinburgh had been forced by a serious illness in the family to cancel a planned luxury cruise. The tickets were available as were the services of the locum who had been booked for the period. Their passports were valid.

It was a win-win-win situation. The locum was given the keys to Whinmount and a hasty briefing on such matters as which dog would swallow any item left unattended on the floor and which owner was almost certain to mistake breathed-in fluff for kennel cough. Mr and Mrs Fox were airborne within thirty-six hours.

They joined the ship at Naples. Their cabin was luxurious, the cuisine deserved the maximum number of stars and the Eastern Mediterranean was at its beautiful best. Roland had his laptop with him and was polishing off his outstanding chores for Simon Parbitter while enlarging the scope of his incipient novel. By working several of the Greek island backgrounds into the plot he hoped to make the whole trip tax deductible. Jane spent her time reading all the novels she'd meant to read for the past few years and just never had the time, as well as perusing various veterinary journals she'd brought with her, to make sure she was keeping up with the most up-to-date practices and drugs in the world of animal medicine. She also spent a certain amount of time in the self-indulgent pastime of just relaxing and doing nothing very much at all apart from lying down on beautifully comfortable deck chairs and anticipating how her life was about to change once the new baby was born – although it was still a fair few months away – and whether she'd ever get a moment to put her feet up again! Back to the present, and Jane's locum had only consulted her by phone on two or three occasions but stuck strictly to business, so there wasn't too much to concern herself with regarding their lives back home. They could truly feel a million miles away from the mundanities of their normal life.

The other three couples at their dinner table proved compatible. Conversation was wide ranging but after the first week was beginning to slow. The subject of mugging was mentioned. One of the couples was an Irish professor and his wife. He said that he had been mugged in the street at Naples. ‘And by my own wife,' he added.

His wife, who had a truly Irish temper that her husband enjoyed triggering, seemed to be on the point of explosion so Jane decided on a quick change of topic before the tranquillity of the trip should be endangered. She mentioned the activities of Knifeman including the insertion of the microchip. The story of the wedding seemed largely irrele-vant and she limited herself to a mention of the credit card slips that had found their way there.

There was an immediate stirring of interest. ‘Has anyone been arrested?' the professor's wife asked.

‘They hadn't up to when we left home, a week ago yesterday,' Jane said.

‘And you haven't phoned up to ask?' said the husband of the youngest couple in tones of amazement. Jane suspected that they also were honeymooners. ‘But you must. Why not ring up now?'

‘Knowing wouldn't change anything,' Roland said. 'We'll hear all about it when we get home.'

‘But
we
won't,' the young man's even younger wife pointed out. ‘Go on, phone.'

‘My phone's locked in the safe in our cabin,' Jane said. ‘I check it once a day for voicemail and that's quite enough. In my job the phone only brings bad news so I can do without it on … on holiday.'

The young wife reached into her husband's pocket. ‘Use this one.'

There was a murmur of agreement around the table. Jane bowed to the will of the majority, only too well aware that the cost of mobile phone calls to Britain from abroad approached the cost of brain surgery without NHS support. She keyed in a well-remembered number and found Ian at home. The phone was loud and the others could hear him say that, no, there had been no arrest yet. They were looking into the possibility of getting more sensitive microwave detectors. ‘I'm glad you called,' he carried on. ‘I was hesitating whether to call you. There was an attempt to break into your house but the intruder was chased away by the combination of your dog and your locum.' And how was Jane enjoying her honeymoon?

Damn and blast!
She terminated the call as quickly as she could without downright rudeness.

‘So you're newly-weds!' said the professor's wife. ‘How sweet!'

‘Not as sweet as all that,' said Jane. ‘We had been partners for a year or more.' She hurried on, hoping to put that admission behind them, and told the story of the wedding, the puppy and the wedding gown. Hilarity reduced most of the table to tears of mirth. The professor's wife's vision became so blurred that she blew her nose on her napkin. The transparency of the nightdress Jane did not dwell on.

The company remained more interested in Knifeman. The professor turned out to have some knowledge of microchip technology. ‘Your friend the detective inspector needn't waste his time looking for more sensitive detectors. The fault isn't in the detectors. Those little microchips for implanting have to be small enough to spare the animal discomfort. They don't have to be powerful enough to register at any distance, not like the transponders they put on a wild animal to track its movements.'

The other young husband was similarly knowledgeable but disagreed. ‘I don't think the microchip could have a power source of its own. It would receive an incoming signal and use that to power the reply. A boosted signal would be all you'd need.'

‘I'll tell Ian.'

It would have been a pity to be in touch with so much, if discordant, expertise without exploiting it. When she asked the question the two men were agreed that lead foil under the shirt would be enough to negate the signal.

‘But just fancy being on those sort of terms with a police inspector!' said the professor's wife. She had shown signs of IRA sympathies. ‘What would a burglar be looking for in your house? Do you think it's connected to the burglary at your surgery?'

Jane and Roland had already agreed to avoid mentioning the supposed Raeburn painting. ‘I don't suppose that there's a connection with Knifeman,' Roland said. ‘Probably an opportunist thief who thought the house would be empty.' It had been a leading question. Surely, he thought, the professor's wife could not be in league with a team of burglars and looking for information about valuables; but you never knew. The IRA was reputed to have links with organized crime. ‘Of course,' he added, ‘the inspector may have spread the word of our absence as a trap.'
You can spread that around and welcome,
he thought.

With the agreement of the telephone's owner he called Ian again. ‘I suppose the house is in turmoil?' he said. ‘Everything upside down and fingerprint powder everywhere?' There was an embarrassed silence from the other end. ‘Do us a favour,' Roland said. ‘Ask Helen Maple to clean the house for us – at our expense,' he added quickly before Ian could rush to the defence of his budget. Further inspiration hit him. ‘And would you mind asking Helen whether she'd like to take on light housekeeping duties for us, say three mornings a week at the going rate.'

‘What brought that on?' Jane asked when the call had finished and the other couples were engaged in a new conversation of their own.

Roland shrugged. ‘We're both working now. You're becoming stressed and that's not good for the baby, or for you, and I'm not clever at domestic things. We can afford some help, so let's have it.'

Jane felt her heart swell with love. At last he was thinking of her. It was unlikely to last but the most difficult part of any process is to begin it.

J
ane and Roland returned home tanned, relaxed and with renewed energy. Roland's laptop was loaded with ideas, snatches and whole chapters of works that he was determined to plunge ahead with. Jane's locum had earned her one or two bad marks by mistaken diagnoses but at least he had walked Sheba and, with Helen's help, had left the house and the surgery almost clean and fairly tidy. Sheba, the young Labrador, was suspicious of these newcomers for a few minutes and then, when recognition surfaced, went half mad with joy at their return.

It took only a day to restore the familiar muddle. Soon, Roland was engrossed in printouts. Jane, for her part, found that some clients had put off consulting the locum about lumps and limps until they could get Jane's personal attention, even if they had to wait for an appointment some days ahead. Jane was in the middle of breaking the worst possible news to a devoted cat owner when Ian telephoned.

‘I am sorry,' Jane told him, sounding more stressed than sorry. The relaxing effect of a holiday seldom lasts much longer than the journey home. ‘If you want to jump the queue and take priority over all my other customers, you'll have to arrest me. I am a busy professional and my first responsibilities are to my clients. I quite understand that the victim of a crime is only a bloody nuisance with few if any rights, but if you want to treat me as a witness you can make an appointment and send somebody to see me at home.'

Ian sighed audibly. ‘I'll come myself this evening, eightish. See you then at Whinmount.'

Jane disconnected grumpily. She had rather been enjoying bossing a fairly senior policeman around.

Promptly at eight, Ian Fellowes arrived at the door of Whinmount. The day was cold and damp, a shock to the system after the Greek islands. One of the few alterations that Jane had made since inheriting the house had been to have the garage added with a covered way to a side door. The covered way also acted as a
porte cochère.
Ian was therefore able to reach the house dry. Jane took him into the sitting room where Roland was already seated with a pad on his knee, drafting more ideas for his novel, a murder mystery in which the victim was pushed into a volcano on Santorini. Upon Ian's entrance into the room, the future blockbuster was laid aside.