Let Sleeping Dogs Die (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 12

  Bognor said nothing. Instead he backed into a gateway a hundred yards beyond Chateau Handyside, and turned the engine off. Finally he said, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Nothing much. It looks like what it is: a small company which specializes in transporting dogs about the place.’

  ‘Do you think I should go in?’

  ‘Not much point in coming all this way just to look over the front gate.’

  ‘No.’ He paused. ‘I tell you what though. You stay here and if I’m not back in half an hour, get hold of Parkinson and tell him what happened.’

  ‘Aren’t you being rather melodramatic?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  He got out and sauntered back down the lane. It was still warm and the recent dry weather had baked the mud and dung on the tarmac to a dry crust. The only sound was birdsong, which as usual he couldn’t identify, and the dull hum of traffic from the main road. When he reached the bungalow he looked at his watch. He would give it twenty minutes. There was a brass dolphin on the door and Bognor took its nose and banged twice. He thought he saw a corner of lace curtain twitch in the room immediately to his right. Then, a moment later, the door opened and Cecil Handyside stood before him clad entirely in blue denim and wearing a single brass curtain ring in one ear.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said, making no gesture of welcome whatever. From behind his feet there came a snuffling noise like a pig rooting and Bognor glanced down briefly and remembered that he was supposed to breed pugs as a sideline. There was only one pug with him at the moment. He wondered where the rest were.

  ‘I’d like a talk,’ said Bognor.

  ‘It’s Sunday.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m tied up.’

  ‘It won’t take long.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to telephone?’

  ‘I wanted to have a look at your operation for myself,’ said Bognor, easily. He had the impression that Handyside’s nerve had failed.

  ‘I’m only just back from Heathrow,’ said Handyside, ‘and what with one thing and another I’m really very busy.’

  ‘Could I have a quick look round?’

  Handyside sighed with exaggerated exasperation. ‘I said it’s Sunday. There’s no one else here. We don’t work on Sundays. I’m all on my own. There’s nothing to see.’

  ‘I’d still like to see it,’ he said, ‘I mean your vans for instance, I’d like to see inside one.’

  Handyside looked pained. ‘If you insist,’ he said, ‘but it’s a bloody waste of time.’

  They looked in one of the vans, which was a conventional small Ford with a grille behind the driver’s seat and a few wire cages scattered in the back. Then Bognor insisted on looking into one of the sheds. Handyside agreed but with even more reluctance. He was now increasingly fidgety and kept glancing at his wrist to see the time. He talked very little but kept emphasizing the straightforwardness of his business, and said most of his animals were sent by sea since there was no hurry for most. Air freight charges were much greater. Apparently the main problem of sea travel was that dogs were frequently allowed to jump on hatch covers during the voyage. When the vessels reached port the hatch covers were removed but the dogs in true Pavlovian style continued to leap at them and fell down into the hold killing themselves. He’d lost a great many dogs like that. Bognor laughed slightly and Handyside looked pained. Just as he finished the explanation there was a noise of a car outside. Then another car. Then two together. At this point Handyside looked very agitated indeed and ran out to the yard. By the time they arrived the car or cars had gone.

  ‘I really must ask you to leave now,’ said Handyside. ‘I have a lot to do.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t work on Sundays.’

  He frowned. Bognor persisted. ‘Just two final questions,’ he said. ‘First, what were you doing at Heathrow?’

  For a second Handyside looked very worried indeed. ‘Sending off a dog, of course,’ he said.

  ‘Whose? Where to?’

  ‘I can’t discuss that sort of thing, Mr Bognor. It’s confidential. I picked the dog up from a client in Windsor, crated it and took it on to the airport. That’s all.’

  Bognor wasn’t satisfied but he could check it. ‘The other question,’ he said, ‘is could I please have a look at your ransom note for Raffles?’

  ‘The police have already looked at it.’

  ‘Maybe. I’d like to see it too. Do you object?’

  Again an exaggerated show of reluctance was followed by grudging acquiescence. Still Bognor wasn’t invited in but he saw from his watch that his twenty minutes were almost over. Much better wait on the doorstep. The piece of paper with which Handyside finally returned was a grubby blue sheet covered with letters cut from a newspaper. Bognor held it up to the light to read the watermark.

  ‘Basildon Bond,’ said Handyside drily, ‘and the letters are cut from The Times and the Daily Mail.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bognor knew that made it impossible to trace. He read the words. ‘Raffles returned within 24 hours receipt of £10 000’. There followed a name and address of a bank in Zurich together with a lengthy code number which Bognor assumed to be the account. It told him nothing at all and he knew that the Swiss bankers would say nothing either.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘you’ve been very helpful. By the way, do the police think they’ll get your dog back?’

  ‘They’re not optimistic,’ said Handyside.

  ‘Oh.’ Bognor allowed himself the luxury of a supercilious smile. ‘I do hope he was insured.’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  The door slammed shut the moment the words were uttered, and Bognor stared at it speculatively for a second before returning to the farm gate where he’d left Monica. He whistled as he walked, aware to his surprise that the tune was ‘An English country garden’. Odd how one’s subconscious produced apt clichés so easily. It was still as quiet as when he’d walked in the other direction half an hour earlier, though some of the heat had gone. Birds still sang, traffic hummed in the distance and Bognor thought how agreeable it would be to motor slowly back to London, stopping for a quiet pint of ale in a picturesque pub from which they could watch the final overs of a village cricket match on the green.

  He had been musing along these lines when he suddenly realized with a shock that he had passed the gate by which the car was parked. That was odd. He picked a sprig of cow parsley from the hedgerow and frowned. Very odd. Turning round he retraced his steps for a hundred yards until he came to the gate once more. There was no sign of the Mini or of Monica. Still puzzled rather than alarmed, he climbed on to the gate to sit and wait. She must have got bored. Then he remembered the sound of the cars while he and Handyside had been in the shed together. The memory made him anxious but he was still reasonably sanguine. He sat on the gate toying with the cow parsley and wondering whether Handyside had lost his nerve. And if so how much. After another ten minutes he heard an engine and leapt down off the gate ready to upbraid Monica for alarming him unnecessarily. But it was only a Land Rover driven by a burly local. The man raised an arm in ritual salutation and Bognor waved back. He was really worried now. What’s more he was stuck. He couldn’t walk in the direction of the main road because if he did he would have to pass Animal Transport Ltd and he certainly didn’t want to be spotted by Handyside. If he walked the other way he’d lose Monica.

  He was on the point of risking a confrontation with the evil dog transporter when he heard the sound of his Mini. It was instantly identifiable, for it sounded, particularly when driven too fast, like a lawnmower in pain. Just now it was being driven too fast.

  He jumped down off the gate narrowly escaping death as his car skidded to an erratic halt.

  ‘Thank God you’re here,’ said Monica, ‘I was terrified you might have been raped.’ She was flushed and excited.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ His anxiety had quickly become irritation and even envy now that he rea
lized she was enjoying herself. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for ages.’

  ‘Hop in,’ she said, ‘I’ll drive. I’ve developed a taste for it.’

  He hesitated, then opened the door and sat down heavily in the passenger seat. Monica let out the clutch and they jerked off, far too fast. He wrestled anxiously with his seat belt, then turned to her as she attempted to slide round a double hairpin bend.

  ‘For God’s sake, slow down and tell me what you’ve been doing.’

  ‘Giving chase,’ she said, slowing slightly as they grazed the bank. ‘I’m right in thinking that your girl friend has a white Morgan?’

  ‘If,’ said Bognor, ‘you’re talking about Coriander Cordingley, then yes, she has a white Morgan. At least she uses one. Why?’

  They had rejoined the main road now and Monica was driving in a fashion which bordered on the discreet.

  ‘About five minutes after you went off this little white sports car came round the bend …’

  ‘From this road?’

  ‘No, the other way. It must be a short cut. Anyway it slowed as it went past and I could see there was a tarty blonde driving. She looked a bit taken aback to see the Mini and after she’d gone past I saw her look in the mirror. Either she recognized me or the car because she suddenly accelerated like mad. Then she must have done a U turn in the yard because she came racing back past me again as if she’d seen a ghost.’

  ‘The ghost of Whately Wonderful, perhaps. I wonder if poodles are given to haunting? Or Dandies come to that?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Anyway she was obviously extremely anxious not to be recognized so I thought I’d go after her. Luckily the roads were very windy and I more or less kept in touch until Micheldever, then it got straight so she escaped. Jolly fast, those little Morgans.’

  ‘And what,’ asked Bognor, realizing that he sounded like Parkinson, ‘were you going to do if you had caught her? Not that you had any chance in this old crate.’

  ‘Given her a piece of my mind,’ said Monica truculently. ‘No, seriously, I’d simply have asked her what the hell she was so ratty about. I mean her behaviour was highly unorthodox and it needed explaining. I should have asked for an explanation.’ She pouted and Bognor laughed.

  ‘I’ll bet it was to do with Raffles,’ he said. ‘That man is getting edgy. Still, if I’d murdered a kennelmaid I’d be edgy. I wonder what else she knew.’

  Monica smiled. ‘I think it’s time you had a lucky break in this case,’ she said.

  The break came that evening, late. They’d stopped off for a drink by the Thames at Cookham and then gone round the corner for dinner at Bel and the Dragon. At home, all thoughts of dogs were banished by the last of a bottle of Hine and the first movement of the Pastoral. They were happily snuggled on the sofa when, as the first notes of the second movement began, the telephone shrilled a discordant accompaniment.

  ‘Sorry to trouble you at home and at the weekend but it’s Watherspoon.’

  It took Bognor a few seconds to remember who Watherspoon was. The name itself seemed insufficient excuse for the disturbance.

  ‘Watherspoon from the Kennel Club,’ said Mr Watherspoon, aware of Bognor’s amnesia.

  ‘Of course,’ said Bognor. ‘Very nice to hear you again. What can I do for you?’ Out of the corner of his eye he was dimly aware that Monica was undressing. He found the idea disturbing.

  ‘It’s about the chewing gum dog,’ said Mr Watherspoon, ‘the one that’s been kidnapped. We’ve got some facts. It appears to have turned up in Copenhagen.’

  ‘Copenhagen?’

  ‘Yes. I thought you might be interested. You see Percy Pocklington’s in Copenhagen for the Danish championships. I thought there might be a connection … in view of what we discussed before.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bognor was trying hard to concentrate, aware that Watherspoon’s news was important but also that Monica, who’d had more to drink than he’d realized, was now naked.

  ‘How do you know about Raffles?’

  ‘We had a call from one of our contacts. There’s nothing about Danish dogs he doesn’t know, though he’s a bit commercial for our taste. Apparently their biggest advertising agency was approached. It was all done very discreetly but there’s not much question that the dog they’re trying to sell is Raffles.’

  ‘Will they buy? I mean, the dog’s stolen.’

  ‘There’s no extradition treaty in the world that applies to dogs. Besides they won’t buy him as Raffles. They’ll pretend it’s a quite different animal. That won’t matter. It’s a trained TV performer, and everyone will recognize it from the chewing gum ads. They go all round the world.’

  Bognor renewed his efforts of concentration, made even more difficult by the fact that his naked girl friend was sitting on his knee now, and kissing his left ear lobe. She was too old, he reflected, for this sort of caper, and too pudgy. Still, it was disconcerting. He pushed her away.

  ‘Is your man sure?’

  ‘As sure as he can be. The markings are very unusual. Like so many of these things it would be impossible to prove it in a court of law, but he’s virtually certain.’

  ‘Has he seen it?’

  ‘Yes. He’s retained by the agency. Well, he’s retained by everyone in Denmark when it comes to dogs.’

  Monica had gone to the bedroom in a sulk. Concentration was easier. ‘He’s not dealing with Pocklington?’

  ‘That would be too much to hope for,’ said Watherspoon. ‘I think your friends are cleverer than that. The dog’s with a breeder near Odense called Larssen. Larssen, of course, is an old friend of Pocklington’s. In fact he’s the Danish representative of the Dog-lovers’, but you can’t make much out of that. Almost everyone in dogdom is an old friend of Pocklington’s.’

  ‘That’s all fascinating,’ said Bognor, meaning it. ‘I’m tempted to fly out and have words with your Mr …’

  ‘Winterfeld. Jorgen Winterfeld. I’m sure we can arrange that.’

  ‘Fine. We’ll see. I’ll ring in the morning if I may.’

  He put the receiver down. A trip to Copenhagen might be rather jolly. Acres of naked flesh and willing ladies. The thought of it all reminded him of Monica and with a twinge of guilt he remembered that he’d snubbed her. He had better go and make up to her.

  He was just beginning to make up to her when once more the phone rang. ‘Leave it. I love you,’ said Monica, gripping his ear in her teeth and refusing to let go. He bit her back harder than he’d meant, and she gave a little yelp. ‘Pig,’ she said, releasing him. ‘That hurt.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘duty calls.’

  It was another break this time, though coming so soon after Mr Watherspoon’s phone call it was a break of a perplexing nature.

  ‘Handyside,’ said a voice, which seemed to have gained a lot of poise and assurance since Bognor had last heard it, ‘I thought I’d let you know we’ve found the missing Raffles. You’ve been so touchingly concerned for his welfare that I thought you should be among the first to know.’

  ‘How did you get my phone number?’ asked Bognor, irritated.

  ‘You’re in the book. Only one London Bognor has the initial S.’

  Bognor swore under his breath. He’d asked the Post Office to make him ex-directory but they constantly forgot. He would have to change his number.

  ‘I’m delighted,’ he said. ‘How did you find him? What happened?’

  ‘Some children discovered the poor old boy just wandering the streets of—Fulham—I think it was. They recognized him at once, of course. His markings are quite unmistakable.’

  ‘So where is he now.’

  ‘They turned him over to the Richmond Dogs’ Home. I’m going to pick him up tomorrow morning. I thought we’d have a little celebration so I’ve asked the press along to witness the happy event.’ He was drooling self-confidence now. It made him positively unctuous. ‘Perhaps you’d like to join us? Eleven o’clock. Champagne perhaps? It would be so nice to see you again.’<
br />
  Bognor flinched. ‘Eleven o’clock at Richmond Dogs’ Home. I’ll be there.’

  ‘Super,’ said Mr Handyside. ‘Good night.’

  After this fond adieu Bognor sat holding the receiver in his hand while he pondered. When he put it down and went back to the bedroom he was still as bemused as before.

  ‘This afternoon,’ he said, ‘we had no Excelsior Chewing Gum Dogs. Tonight we have two. How do you explain that?’ He sat on the end of the bed and picked at his toenails. ‘I’s very curious. I think I may have to go to Copenhagen.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, come to bed,’ shouted Monica. ‘I’m fed up with waiting, and I’m no longer interested in your bloody dogs.’

  7

  PARKINSON WAS NOT ENTHUSIASTIC about Denmark.

  ‘The only reason you want to go there,’ he said, with deplorable predictability, ‘is to see disgusting films. Memoirs of a sex mad dentist; Danish blue. Before we know where we are you’ll be telling me that your precious Mr Handyside is selling dogs to the pornography industry.’

  ‘I should think that’s highly probable,’ said Bognor, who had once been shown a lurid booklet in which people were depicted in unrepeatable and improbable poses with Alsatians. Parkinson ignored the remark.

  ‘Before we have any expensive ideas about foreign travel,’ he said, ‘I suggest you travel to Richmond, which I believe is accessible by the Underground railway, or Southern Region or by one of London Transport’s attractive red omnibuses, and establish the identity of the animal there. Your return fare should be no more than 50 pence which is the sort of budget I regard as appropriate.’

  ‘How will I know if it is Raffles or not?’

  Parkinson withered him with one of his looks.

  ‘Even I, Bognor, would recognize Raffles, the Excelsior Chewing Gum Dog. Even I am aware that it is unusual, to say the least, to find a white bulldog with a black eye patch and a black foreleg and a precisely marked black crescent on its chest. And even I know that even if such a dog were to have a double it is highly unlikely that such an animal would be able to sniff out Excelsior Chewing Gum in preference to the gum manufactured by anybody else. Let alone chew it.’