The Unkindest Cut (18 page)

The last case of the afternoon had featured a mastiff with a false pregnancy and a nervous owner – a combination that she had barely managed to dismiss with the aid of some reassuring words and a placebo. The mastiff had made up her mind that she would have her non-existent pups in a corner of Jane's surgery and the bitch was rather larger and considerably stronger than her mistress. Jane's back had been troubling her since lifting an overweight Labrador on to the table that morning and she had no intention of risking aggravating any injury – or endangering her pregnancy – by joining in the tug-of-war, so a serious stalemate was imminent until a convenient passer-by added his strength to that of the owner and fairly dragged the huge dog out to the owner's car.

Jane was relieved and grateful but much less so when she realized that the passer-by had no intention of passing but was coming into the surgery. He was, in fact, Ossy Hepworth, one of the very last people she would have welcomed. He took a cautious look around the surgery and then beckoned to somebody out in the Square. Bart slipped in as quickly as he could, considering the weight of his wrapped bundle.

Jane came within a micron of blowing her top. ‘I've told you and told you,' she said. ‘No more. None. Not one. Never. Not ever. Put it out of your mind.'

‘You wouldn't leave a dog to suffer,' Bart said. The argument between them was so old that he did not even attempt to sound persuasive.

Out of love for all dogs – some breeds more than others – Jane had conceived an overpowering hatred of dogfighting. The instinct to fight, to defend family or territory or the right to mate, still lingered strongly in most breeds but the idea of putting a pair of aggressive dogs to fight it out was abhorrent to her. For once, as with the dead lion in the Bible story, it seemed that good might come from evil.

Her thoughts turned to her last visit to the seaside, some years earlier, where Jane had inserted a coin into a telescope on the front. This had allowed the viewer to turn a handle that focused the telescope. The resulting view had been disappointing except for the pleasure of observing the activities of people who thought themselves unobserved. While she pondered on this memory, she almost heard again the metallic rattle of the falling coin. Her idea was coming into focus, becoming sharper by the second.

‘This really is the last time,' said Bart. He seemed surprised to find that he was speaking truth for once and his voice found a fresh conviction. ‘I'm retiring. Owning the dogs is a mug's game. You're just getting fond of them, and they come to trust you, and then they get damaged, worse even than a clever and sexy young vet can put together again, and you have to put them down and you get to know what they mean by
heartbreak
. Thanks be, I've got another line of business.' He had manoeuvred Jane against her surgical table and while he spoke he was uncovering a bull terrier with a badly bitten face.

‘It's going to happen again,' Jane said. ‘I can't save this eye. Can a one-eyed dog still … perform?'

‘I said I was giving up owning fighting dogs. You want to listen, lassie. I'm going to keep this one for a pet. One good eye will be enough.'

Jane's idea burst like a plant into full flower. ‘And of course you'll need a guard dog, carrying that money around when you're a bookie.'

Bart jumped as though prodded with a pin. ‘Who said anything …?'

Jane still had her surgical gloves on. She prepared and administered an anaesthetic injection. The dog, which had been trying to lick Bart's hand, closed its eyes and relaxed into sleep.

‘Here, what did you do to him?' Bart demanded in a voice that rose into a squeak.

‘Put him to sleep. No, not for keeps; but you needn't think I'm going to approach the biting end of an awake and wounded Staffy with surgical instruments in my hand. I'm not that daft.'

‘He wouldn't've touched you. Gentle as a lamb, he is.'

‘And that's how she got those wounds to her head?' There was no reply from either of the brothers. ‘There are scars of old cat scratches, so you've been training her to fight. And now you're going to be a bookie full-time, are you?' Jane knew that the training of dogs to fight begins with pitting them against cats. She was already cleaning and disinfecting the wounds. Lucrezia had been lucky. Her eye was past saving but the bones of her face were unbroken and the flaps of skin were still there. Only cleaning and needlework was called for. ‘Will you have a monopoly or does anybody else make a book at the dogfights?'

‘They better bloody not,' said Ossy.

‘Well, what I want from you is to know who's been losing money heavily. There's always one damn fool who goes on increasing his bets to try and win back his losses. Who have you been leaning on to pay up?'

‘Here!' Seeing Ossy under the bright lights she noticed for the first time the scarring on his face and the once-broken nose. Evidently Ossy was the enforcer of the partnership. He leaned forward and scowled into her face. ‘You can't expect that sort of info.'

Jane did not take kindly to menace. She had a large scalpel in her hand and she let them see it. Each took a step back. ‘That sort of info is exactly what I expect and if I don't get it … just remember that I know all the animal people around here and most of them owe me a favour or two, just like you do. Well, I'm calling in my favours and if I'm not satisfied I'll be tipping off the police and the SSPCA when and where the next dogfight's going to happen. And I may not be too secretive about who let the cat out of the bag. That won't make you popular with the followers of illegal dogfighting. On the other hand, if you help me now you'll be helping the police. I won't even say where the information came from until the next time you're in trouble. Then I'll tell them that you provided the information that enabled them to put away the Knifeman.'

The two brothers locked eyes, apparently conferring telepathically. ‘Is that who you're after? We'll do it,' Bart said suddenly, ‘if you'll not charge us for fixing up Lucrezia there.' He nodded at the bloodstained bundle on the table.

‘You've got a bloody nerve,' Jane said, ‘but it'll be worth it if it gets you off my back for ever. Just don't ever tell anyone who takes over supplying the dogs that he can bring them to me when they get their bits chewed off.'

An hour later, when the brothers had carried the limp bundle out to their van, Jane was on the phone to Ian Fellowes before even beginning the clean-up of the surgery. She gave him a truncated and bowdlerized version of the story of her dealings with the brothers Hepworth. Ian could quite see that this was not a matter to be discussed on a landline phone.

‘Stop there,' he commanded. ‘I'm coming over.'

He was in Jane's surgery within ten minutes, unaccompanied. The preliminary courtesies took less than fifteen seconds.

‘The way I see it,'Jane said, ‘is that Knifeman may be driven to it by debt, probably a big gambling debt. You've already checked the legitimate bookies, or so you say, but you can't get to those who take bets on illegal activities; and the only one of those illegal activities to thrive around here is dogfighting, or if there are any others they don't come to the attention of a local vet. Reluctantly, I've let myself be pressurized into patching up injured dogs. I'm guessing that the brothers have been leaning on somebody who has been losing money to them and that that somebody may have been Knifeman acting out of fear or to keep his or her bad habits out of the ken of a strict parent or partner. They'd be prepared to let you know who the big losers have been, but that would mean admitting to you that they participate in – and probably promote – dogfighting. And I'm not going to get the list for you because that might mean admitting to the SSPCA that I'd been aiding and abetting.'

Ian looked at her, stone-faced. ‘I'm trying very hard,' he said at last, ‘to forget what you tell me as fast as I hear it. If it ever got out that I'd turned a blind eye to dogfighting my time in the police would be done.'

‘But if I just brought you the list …? I could say that it had only just been brought to me. Could you keep the SSPCA off my neck if the poo hits the fan?'

‘I think so. If I get hold of the right senior man beforehand and say that the facts had just reached me anonymously.'

‘But I can't give you dates and places of the dogfights in advance,' Jane said. ‘And you needn't look as though I've just stolen your lollipop. You must see that I can't. They won't cough up any information unless I promise not to spill all the beans.'

‘And your promise is binding even if it permits the severe wounding of dogs?'

It was a potent argument. Jane did indeed consider her promises binding. She fell silent. ‘There is a way around it,' she said at last. ‘Let's suppose that I get them into a suitably malleable frame of mind and then leave you to make the promises.'

‘Here!' said Ian and, ‘Hey! I can't afford to get it put around that my promises aren't to be trusted. All my sources would dry up immediately.'

‘How terrible for you!' Jane said. They were still in her outer surgery and she was leaning, as usual, across the counter while Ian sat in the client's chair.

She relaxed and waited. Ian could be remarkably devious for a Lowlander at times. He did not disappoint her. Sometimes she thought that there must have figured a Highlander among his ancestors. ‘There's a sergeant in Traffic,' he said, ‘who is due to retire next month. His mate got knifed in Dundee and nearly died, so he hates knife crime. You get me the list without making any promises and introduce him to a suitably indiscreet member of the doggy fraternity and he can spill the beans in his own time.'

‘And I don't have to break any promises,' Jane said, ‘you keep your reputation for trustworthiness and with a little luck it puts an end to dogfighting around here.'
For a month or two
, she added silently. She knew that it would take a nuclear holocaust to stamp out dogfighting for ever.

S
ergeant Midmill was, as promised by Ian Fellowes, on the verge of retirement, but he still had a full head of curly brown hair only slightly greying and his face was unlined. He had a ready and charming smile but he exhibited the promised hatred of knife crime and fell in willingly with the plan to entrap Knifeman.

Two weeks slipped away before the two Hepworth brothers could or would make themselves available for a conference at a time that suited Jane's plans. They were understandably suspicious but less so than might have been expected. Jane's word was known to be her bond; less well known was the conflict in train between that bond and the combination of her hatred of dogfighting and her grudge against Knifeman. During that period Jane had managed to speak in secret with a scrap metal dealer and three separate farmers in order to discover the information this part of the investigation desperately needed to reach a bargaining point with the two Hepworth brothers. Jane had had to work hard at prising the information out of the scrap metal dealer; however, the farmers in particular were easily brought to heel. Today's farmer is so hedged around with regulations and restrictions that he will almost inevitably stray occasionally over the strict boundaries set by the Law; and nobody is better placed to observe these deviations from strict compliance than the local vet.

For once, the brothers arrived in Jane's surgery without lugging between them a bloodstained and whimpering bundle. ‘What's this about?' asked Bart.

Jane thought that his manner was already defensive. She was in no mood to tiptoe around the subject. She gave him a look that might well have burned a pair of holes in his hide. ‘I think you can well guess what it's about,' she said. ‘It's about tomorrow afternoon's scheduled dogfighting meeting at Prospect Wood, which is between Harrow and North Yielding Farms. I want that list of punters who owed you money last month and the month before and also who has paid off that debt or a substantial part of it. I personally don't want that information and I'd rather not know, but if you don't cough it up to Sergeant Midmill, who is waiting to come and have a word with you, the police, the SSPCA and the landowner will be informed of the planned dogfighting and word will be spread that you were the source of the leak. And you needn't bother looking daggers at the place where you quite wrongly believe my heart to be,' she added bravely. ‘On this subject I don't have one and anyway my husband's video camera is watching and listening, linked to a recorder in the police station. Here's pencils and paper.'

The bluff worked. The violence that had seemed imminent faded away. Ossy began to write.

‘One name stands out,' Ian said later back at the police station when the brothers had sulkily handed over the list and retreated back home. ‘Well, I already had my suspicions about young Ledbetter, but not this one. Each of the others had paid off his or her debt or has a shatterproof alibi for most of the days in question, including Ledbetter. This one really has the gambling bug – their name doesn't pop up among the clients at the betting shop, so presumably they prefer the illegal kind of gambling rather than the more tame version, probably so no one knows about it – and any pretence of an alibi is the kind of waffle that a first-year police cadet could spit through the holes in without touching the sides.'

Jane chuckled at the idiom while regretting the identity of the suspect. ‘I'm afraid so,' she said. ‘But I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall during that interview.'

‘Maybe that could be arranged,' Ian said. ‘I can certainly see possible advantages in having you on hand. I'll phone you.'

He came on the phone two days later and invited Jane to attend at the police station. The local animals had entered a period of health and the inoculations were as near up to date as they ever come, so that Jane was free to accept the invitation. DS Bright escorted her to Ian Fellowes who took her under his wing and led her to a very small, dull and bare-looking room on the ground floor. This was furnished only with a half-dozen folding chairs. The single small window looked into another, larger room, the typical interview room with more chairs, a table and some audio-visual equipment.