“I don’t think so.”
Clapper seemed moderately surprised. “Know anything about cadaver dogs?”
“Dogs that locate bodies? Not much. I’ve been on cases where they’ve been used, but they’ve already done their work by the time I get involved.”
“Well,” Clapper said comfortably, popping the lid of his cigarette box and dragging one out with his lips, “you’re about to learn everything you ever wanted to know about them.” He lit up and took a drag. “And then some.”
The pilot’s estimate of three and a half minutes was on the money, but there was a twenty-minute holdup during which the launch was forced to putt back and forth offshore while the short, narrow stone quay was occupied by two farm tractors with flatbeds unloading the day’s deliveries-everything from milk and bread to a sofa (not new) and a television set (likewise)-from the daily supply ferry. When the unloading was finished, the tractors had chugged off in a dusty haze, and the ferry had backed out and departed, they pulled up alongside the quay and the pilot threw a rope over a nearby stanchion.
“We won’t be long, Ron,” Clapper said, climbing out onto stone steps worn concave by four hundred years of friendly visitors and unfriendly invaders. “Time enough for a pint at the Turk’s Head, if you don’t dawdle.”
The pilot nodded soberly. “I shall take your sage advice, Sergeant.”
The tide was at its highest, with a thin sheet of water sloshing over the uneven old stonework, so they had to watch their step. Gideon was again struck with Clapper’s stately man-on-the-moon walk. In an odd, elephantine way, he was extremely graceful, totally in balance. Maybe it was the low center of gravity that hippy, pear-shaped form gave him. At the foot of the quay, where they stepped onto the land of the one-square-mile island itself, there were a few metal signs tacked onto an unpainted shed. All except one were for family-run guest houses and bed-and-breakfast places (there were no hotels on St. Agnes, Clapper said); the other was an advertisement for where they were going:
Bed-and-Biscuit Canine Boarding Establishment
Lowertown Farm Road
Tel 422380
Minimum Stay One Week
Proprietor Mr. Truscott Hicks
“Truscott Hicks,” Clapper explained as they began walking up the path from the quay, “knows more about dogs than any man I’ve ever met. He was a famous dog trainer in the seventies. Wrote a few books, had his own show on the telly, gave courses all over the world, and so on. Well, about the time he got tired of that, his son-a copper up in Barnstaple at the time-told him about how they were starting to use dogs to detect firearms, explosives, drugs, and so on. Trus took an interest, took some courses on the Continent and on your side of the Pond, and made himself into a first-rate expert. First paid canine consultant of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, founding member of the Canine Forensics Association, and so forth and so on.”
They were passing the Turk’s Head Pub that he’d mentioned to their pilot (Turk’s Head being a common name for pubs, deriving either from a type of seafarer’s knot or, with more grim connotations, from the Crusades, depending on whom you asked) and a couple of men, sitting at an outdoor table over their pints, waved.
“See who’s here, Alf. What brings you to our fair part of the world, Constable Sergeant? A bank robbery? A triple murder? An anarchist plot to blow up the parsonage?”
“Just out and about enjoying the fresh air, lads,” Clapper said pleasantly. “Lovely day, innit?”
At the Turk’s Head they turned left off the road onto a footpath that skirted the low bluffs above the beach. “Shorter this way,” the sergeant said. “Now where was I? Well, I myself first met Trus, oh, about five years ago. I called him in on a case when I was…” He faltered. “Well, you see, this was-”
“When you were a detective chief inspector in Plymouth?” He was getting along well with Clapper, and he thought this might clear the air even more.
Clapper tucked in his chin but didn’t break stride. “Someone’s been talking out of school,” he muttered. “PC Robb, would that be?”
“He’s proud of you, and proud to be working with you, Sergeant. And I understand why. You’ve had a hell of a career.”
“And did he tell you why I’m spending the remainder of this illustrious career as a sergeant in the most remote outpost of England?”
“He implied there’d been, uh, differences with administration.”
Clapper laughed, not disagreeably. “I’d say that describes it.”
Gideon responded in kind with one or two humorous accounts of his own struggles with administration in the groves of academe, and by the time they arrived at another modest “Bed-and-Biscuit Canine Boarding Establishment” sign at the head of a curving lane, they had slipped without noticing into first names.
The lane curved down toward the water and ended at the front steps of a green-roofed, white farmhouse on a gorse-and heather-covered bluff, below which was a small, white beach strewn with driftwood and edged by grassy dunes. The small sign on the front door said, “Please ring and enter. Be sure to close door behind you.”
They did as instructed, finding themselves in a small foyer at the foot of a half-flight of stairs, and bringing instantly down on themselves a pandemonium of frenzied barking, yapping, and yipping-moderated by a single wise, resonant whooof -that seemed to come from every corner of the house. There followed the patter of many feet on wood flooring, and a pack of eight or ten small dogs-terriers, pugs, toy spaniels-threw themselves in what seemed like pure, noisy, gleeful ecstasy against the baby gate at the top of the stairs, barking away. A second later a huge Great Dane padded up behind them-the whoofer-and towered over them, adding his own deep voice to the chorus.
From down the hall came a soft, neutral voice: “Quiet.” Nothing authoritative or threatening, not really a command at all, just a courteous request, but the barking stopped the way a switched-off radio stops. “Sit.” And with an audible thump, as abruptly as if their back legs had been swept out from under them, every one of them went down on its haunches (the Dane accidentally sat on a Yorkie, which caused a brief commotion) and stayed there, heads smartly turned to the left, from whence the voice had come, as if posed for a cute doggie calendar photo.
A moment later, a mild-looking man of seventy appeared behind the dogs, preceded by the sweet, cloying odor of pipe tobacco from the ancient briar that was held loosely between his teeth. Gideon’s immediate impression was that he was looking at someone who was about as contented as a human being could get. With his gray, thinning hair, his polished-apple cheeks, his schoolish spectacles, and his not-so-expertly hand-knitted vest, in the neck of which the knot of a plain blue tie was visible, he might have been a retired Oxford don. From the way he smiled down at his charges, it couldn’t have been more clear that he was living his sunset years exactly as he wished to, surrounded by the companions of his choice.
He plucked the pipe from his mouth and smiled kindly down at them. “Mike Clapper! Sergeant Mike, the very man, as I live and sneeze. Come all this way just to cheer up his poor old mate, struck down by the cruel and remorseless hand of age.”
“Come on business, Trus,” Clapper said briskly.
Hicks rubbed his hands together. “Well, then!”
“Not that there’s any money in it for you, you understand.”
“The story of my life,” Hicks said with a sigh. “And this young fellow must be the renowned Professor Oliver, whose monograph on exhuming skeletal remains has been my bible on the subject for many years.”
“Thank you,” said a flattered Gideon. “Actually, it was more Walter Birkby’s monograph than mine. I was the junior author on that one.”