The Unkindest Cut (10 page)

‘Nicholson,' said the collator. He was in his sixties, bald and stooped, but his eyes were very sharp.

‘Mr Nicholson. He will have a radio, but in case that's busy take the phone number with you and leave a message on the answering machine that I see somebody – DS Bright? – has thoughtfully obtained for us. Follow up any leads but check with Mr Nicholson before following up a line of your own in case somebody else is already sniffing along that trail.

‘Same time and place tomorrow morning. And dress down a bit. You all look too policemanlike for the generally young people you'll be mixing with. That's all. Go and get on with it. Settle between yourselves who goes where.'

Several chairs scraped and there was a snapping shut of notebooks. Ian was left with Mr Nicholson. ‘How did I do?' he asked.

Nicholson had been tidying up some of Bright's script on the whiteboard. He faced round. ‘You did well, sir,' he said. ‘I think they were all pleased to be informed and considered. Makes a change.'

Ian's attention was caught by the wording. ‘You're ex-CID?'

‘Did my time with the Met. Retired as a DI. Retirement was boring and the pension ungenerous so I applied for work as a civilian collator. This is much more interesting … and fulfilling.'

‘I should think they jumped at your application. Did you know Honeypot in the Met?'

The collator's rather stern expression softened into a smile. ‘Indeed I did. And now she's a detective super up here. Very popular she was, handing out some very good tips.'

‘You mean?'

‘On the horses. One of her boyfriends was a trainer. But the tips stopped coming when she married her present husband. Also a super, I believe?'

‘Yes. And he's the boss-man around here, so be careful what old tales you spread around.'

Mr Nicholson smiled. ‘I'm not much of a gossip. And, if any hints come in while you're out, where can I contact you?'

‘Try my car radio.'

J
ane, meanwhile, was having a worse morning than DI Fellowes. After having left the police station, she had been confronted by the usual few clients seeking urgent attention for their pets and by a surgery that had been bloodied by a dying puppy, largely cleared of medications by the knifeman, turned over by the police and partly scrubbed out by Helen Maple until her time ran out. Between advising the clients what prescribed medications to buy from the pharmacy across the Square (in the process sacrificing her own profit on those items) and keeping a record for billing purposes, Jane embarked on a final clean and tidy of the rooms, listing for Ian the missing drugs and at the same time preparing a similar list for her insurers and for reordering, mopping away blood missed by Helen when summoned to stand in at the jeweller's shop, and removing the last traces of fingerprint powders.

The last of the morning callers was an old lady whose parrot had made an escape and was circling above the town. Jane could only advise her to wait for the hungry bird to return home, meanwhile spreading the word in the town that anyone given the opportunity should drop a towel, a coat or a rug over the bird; and no, she would not attempt to dart the bird with tranquillizer because, firstly, she would almost certainly miss and anaesthetize some citizen with the descending missile and, secondly, the bird, if darted, would fall asleep in mid-air and break its neck on crash landing.

Jane had just ushered the old dear out and was preparing to launch a fresh attack on the outstanding jobs when two more figures darkened the doorway carrying between them a bundle of no little weight. With a sinking heart she recognized the Hepworth brothers and she hurried to plant herself in their way.

‘No,' she said. ‘Bugger off, the pair of you. I told you last time never to come back. Not until it's to bring me a kitten or a budgie or even a spaniel. But this isn't any of those.'

Bart Hepworth shook his balding head. He was a rough-looking man, roughly dressed. His brother, who was smaller and comparatively dapper, had shut the surgery door, greatly reducing the noise of a heavy vehicle passing through the Square, and hung Jane's sign on it.

‘No,' Bart said. ‘It isn't one of those as you damn well know. It's nothing that you haven't done before.'

‘But I'm not going to do it again. I told you.'

Bart waved aside the refusal. ‘You wouldn't turn away an injured animal. I know you. And it's against your oath or your professional obligations or something.'

‘It's also against the law to do it,' Jane said.

‘Not treating a dog,' said the brother. Jane never knew his real name but he was always known as Ossy. ‘There's no law says you mustn't treat a dog.'

‘There's laws that add up to saying that I mustn't treat a dog that has obviously been wounded in an illegal fight.'

‘There's never anything to say that the fight was illegal. It just broke out in the park.'

They had had this argument a dozen times, but now that Jane was an established vet with surgical premises and her name in the
Yellow Pages
she was not going to be persuaded. ‘It would be becoming an accomplice,' she said.

Bart grinned, showing broken teeth. ‘There's no law about accomplices in Scotland; they have to think up charges like breach of the peace and suchlike, which can't apply to treating a dog. I asked a law student who won fifty quid on this one a fortnight back. This is Borden.' Bart knew very well that once Jane had set eyes on an injured animal she would be unable to turn her back. He stooped and opened the old coat, revealing an unconscious dog of no very certain breed but partly resembling an American pit bull terrier. One side of its body and a foreleg were crusted with blood.

‘After Lizzie Borden, I suppose,' Jane said. Bart usually named his dogs after famous killers.

‘Aye. Listen, you can't leave the poor bugger to suffer. If you'll not help him I'll have to take my gun and put him down myself. And then I'll tell the cops and the SSPCA of all the times you did it before. That'll put a crimp in your business.'

‘You'd be confessing to promoting dogfights.'

‘I wouldn't need to confess a damn thing. I'd just be telling what I know.'

‘It may not be that bad.' Jane stooped for a good look. ‘When did this happen?'

‘Last night.'

‘And you left the poor devil until now? Hoping the bleeding would stop of its own accord? Lift him through into the surgery. And, you listen to me. This dogfighting has to stop. This is the last time, you hear me?'

‘I hear you.'

‘I really mean it and next time I shan't weaken. The poor beggar's unconscious – blood loss, I suppose.'

‘I always have something to hand,' Bart said. ‘Something herbal. But I know what you usually use and I brought …' He opened his hand to show a phial and a cardboard package that she recognized as containing a tube.

‘Where did you get those?' Jane demanded. ‘They look like what was taken from here on Saturday.'

‘I knew you'd been done on Sat'day. All over the town, isn't it? This isn't any of your stuff and you can ask at the chemist's yourself. That's where we went. The pharmacist would've wanted prescriptions but Ossy knows one of the girls.'

Jane nodded. The explanation was credible. Ossy probably knew all the girls. Jane could not see it herself but other females all seemed to go weak at the knees and everywhere else when he produced his suggestive smirk.

Jane sighed. ‘Cash up front,' she said. Interrupted by only two phone calls, neither of which was urgent, she fell to work washing and sterilizing the wounds preparatory to sewing them up.

Once the wounds had been sewn back up and the dog looked more comfortable in its anaesthesia-induced sleep, Jane admonished the Hepworth brothers again with a promise not to fall for their threats next time and hurriedly ushered them out the door.

Roland was lunching with Simon Parbitter, courtesy of Simon's wife, so Jane ate alone in the café in the Square. She had spent more time than she thought she could spare in mopping up Borden's blood and some remaining traces from Saturday's puppy; but she had dealt with a short list of afternoon clients and was tidying up again when Ian's message arrived, phoned by DS Bright, inviting her to the police building for another urgent round table.

The former gymnasium had suffered a major change. More wall had been covered with whiteboard, which in turn was covered with lists and charts and photographs with more arriving and being Blu-tacked up by the minute, in three groups. Many of the photographs had been tactfully trimmed to remove the more scandalous views of the bride and a woman constable was repeating this process of censorship with a fresh batch. In many cases such butchery would have removed the identities of some of the guests, in which instances the editing was achieved by the use of a Magic Marker. The woman constable, however, was limiting herself to scribbling over the gauzy inserts in the nightdress, producing an effect indistinguishable from black lace. Most of Ian's little team, which had acquired two new faces, was assembled in a semicircle fronting on the photograph wall, and were assisting the censorship with advice and comments which ceased abruptly when it was observed that the subject of the photographs had arrived.

‘Jane,' Ian said – loudly, in case someone had failed to register her presence – ‘come in and take a seat. As the central figure at the wedding you're the person most likely to identify the guests. I'll explain. As near as we can work it out, Knifeman left your surgery at about three-fifty. It is possible that he had some faster form of transport than the supposed bicycle so we're assuming that he could have reached the reception by four. This first block of photographs is of those timed before then. The middle group is of those taken after four. The third batch is of those without the time on them, but it will be possible to time most of them by the context.

‘For the moment, we'll confine our interest to the middle group. To save you wasting time and mental energy I may as well tell you that all the photographs have been examined but, as far as can be seen, nobody has shiny hands, so if Knifeman figures here he had already removed the gloves, which makes sense really considering he's trying to blend in at a wedding celebration.

‘We'll take a look at anyone who is absent from the early photographs but appears suddenly in the later shots.

‘Now, we have already put numbers to the characters and we'll try to give them all identities whenever we can. And by that I mean everybody, not just youngsters in jeans, because anybody may be a witness and they'll all have to be interviewed in due course.'

‘And,' said the collator gloomily, ‘it will be my pleasure to tabulate everybody's movements to discover who may be able to confirm the alibi of each of the suspect youths over an uncertain period. Isn't life wonderful?' Secretly he was looking forward to a task that could be approached methodically; one that would produce end results that would be seen and appreciated; and which would keep him well away from his wife's demands for as long as it could be spun out.

Jane stood and approached the wall of photographs. ‘May we have the lights up, please?' she asked. ‘And can you lend me a large magnifier? Where do you want me to write the names and numbers?'

She settled down for an hour's labour. At her suggestion Mr Nicholson took the telephone directory and one of the constables the laptop and they added phone numbers and addresses when they could. Jane was surprised to discover that she could recognize more than half of the densely packed crowd.

Upon reaching the last photograph on the whiteboard, Jane stretched her back and rolled her shoulders, relieved to have finally finished her arduous task. She noticed that Ian was busy on a phone call, so she said a quick goodbye to the collator and the constable who'd been helping her, and made her not unwelcome escape.

‘I
suppose,' Jane said to her husband that evening, ‘that if there's some weirdie going around threatening people with a sharp knife Ian has to do something about it. And if he's got no other starting point I suppose he has to tackle it whatever way he can. It does seem to me that he's taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut but I don't know what else he could do. He may be getting a kick out of conducting a murder enquiry in miniature, but if it keeps a dozen officious busybodies from haunting the streets and persecuting motorists then it has my support. It just takes up rather a lot of
my
time and mental energy.'

‘Hello,' said Roland. ‘You've changed your tune. Have you been parking on double yellows again?'

‘Only once.' The washing up was finished. Jane, rather red about the face and ears, turned and leaned back against the kitchen worktop, her legs really stiff now after being on her feet with little let-up over the past few hours. ‘Doctors get away with parking wherever the car happens to stop. Well, I'm a doctor and my patients are animals who can't even pop into the pharmacy for their own medicines.'

‘Nice try, but I doubt if you'll ever get away with it.'

‘Both the traffic wardens have dogs. I'm just waiting for the day that one of them tries to cross the road and gets run over and I'll take my time walking from the official car park.'

Roland chuckled. ‘You won't and you know it,' he said. ‘You could no more leave an animal in pain than you could flap your arms and fly. You'd park beside the injured dog and its owner would prosecute you. How did you get on with Ian's identification parade?'

Jane moved back to a hard kitchen/dining chair. She thought of suggesting a move to the sitting room where she could collapse into a comfortable leather armchair, but the sky had cleared and a low evening sun was slanting in and making the kitchen glow. The sitting room would be dull and probably cold. ‘I've got to hand it to Ian,' she said. ‘He kept it methodical; and his new collator was right on the ball. I managed to put names to about half the faces in the photographs and our local bobbies added some more. I've identified the young boy's mother, you know the boy who brought in the badly injured puppy on our wedding morning, so they're going to rout out the boy and interview him, just to make sure he's not the culprit, but I'm fairly confident he's not. Anyway, the collator was jumping around, picking up on the people who had been there all morning and knocking them off the list. How he kept track, when each photograph might show ten or twenty people, I don't know; but he seemed to manage. Then I was invited to pick out the physiques and head shapes most resembling what I had said about my attacker, and there I got stuck because my memory was fading to the point that I had stopped being sure what were real memories and which were me remembering things I'd thought since. Am I making sense?'