‘Naughty dog, naughty dog,’ Mrs Rottecombe scolded him. ‘You are a very naughty doggie.’
To Butcher, now on top of the branch and scrambling on to an even higher one, there was something insane about those words. Naughty that fucking dog wasn’t. It was a canine crocodile, a four-legged mantrap, and he was going to see the brute was put down fast and, he hoped, painfully.
Mrs Rottecombe turned her attention to Pickles who, being a bitch, lacked a scrotum. Instead she seized the nearest weapon, a plant label which announced that the roses were Crimson Glory. Carefully wiping the horse manure and earth off the plastic (she didn’t want dear little Pickles to get tetanus or any more terminal lockjaw than she was already displaying), she lifted the bull terriers tail and jabbed. If anything, Pickles’s reaction was more immediate than that of Wilfred. She let go of the Flashgun Kid and shot across the rose bed into the deepest shrubbery to lick her wound. Mrs Rottecombe replaced the metal label and turned her attention to the savaged cameraman.
‘What do you think you’re doing here?’ she demanded with a haughty lack of concern for his injuries that would have taken Flashgun’s breath away if he had had any to spare. Flashgun didn’t think, he knew what he was doing there. Dying. He looked up at the ghastly woman and managed to speak.
‘Help me, help me,’ he whimpered. ‘I’m bleeding to death.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Rottecombe. ‘You’re trespassing. If you choose to trespass on private property, it’s your own fault if you get bitten. There’s a sign by the gate. It says quite clearly ‘BEWARE OF THE DOG’. You must have seen it. You ignored it and trespassed and attacked a perfectly harmless family pet and then you are surprised when it defends itself. You are a criminal. And what is that other fellow doing up in my tree?’
Jones’s eyes rolled in his head. A woman who could call the murderous brute which had been on the point of gnawing his leg off ‘a harmless family pet’ had to be clean off her fucking head.
‘For Christ’s sake…’ he began but Mrs Rottecombe brushed his prayer aside.
‘Name and address,’ she snapped. ‘Both your names and addresses.’ Then realising she was still in her dressing gown, she turned towards the house. ‘And just you wait where you are,’ she said as she went. ‘I intend to call the police and have you both prosecuted for trespass and cruelty to animals.’
The threat was too much for Flashgun. He sank back on to the horse manure and passed out. It was left to Butcher Cassidy, now three branches further up the tree, to protest.
‘Cruelty to animals, you fucking bitch,’ he shouted at her as she led the chastened Wilfred into the house. ‘You’re the one who’s going to be done for cruelty. We’ll fucking crucify you. You see if we don’t. We’ll sue you for everything you’ve got.’
Mrs Rottecombe smiled and patted Wilfred. ‘Good dog, Wilfie. You’re a good dog, aren’t you? Nasty man kicked you, didn’t he?’
She went into the house and fetched a tube of tomato puree from the kitchen. Holding him by the collar she poured the stuff on to his back. Then she led him out into the garden again and left him underneath the oak tree. He was still there when the ambulance came and shortly afterwards the police. There was blood from Butch’s ankle all over the ground under the tree and quite a lot on Wilfred’s back where it added authenticity to the tomato puree. Mrs Rottecombe had achieved her object. In an emergency she was a resourceful woman.
Chapter 14
The Shadow Minister for Social Enhancement sat in the grass against the wall with his head in his hands. He knew now he should never have come home a day early. He was equally certain about his marriage. He should never have come within a mile of the damned woman who could let loose those terrible dogs on two reporters. The sounds of snarls and screams, not to mention the knowledge that there was an unconscious man, his head covered in blood, lying on the floor of the garage convinced him of that. Harold Rottecombe had no intention of being an accessory after the fact of the poor devil being there and possibly even of his murder. If that lot hit the headlines, as it was almost bound to now, his position not only as Shadow Minister but also as an MP would be ended. And it was all the fault of that insane bitch. He should never have married her. A new thought struck him. There had been something genuine about her horror when she’d returned from the garage which almost convinced him she hadn’t put him there. Cut that ‘almost’. She really hadn’t known he was in there. In that case someone else was responsible. Harold Rottecombe searched for another explanation and found one. Someone was out to ruin his career. That was why the newspapers had been informed. Anyway it was too late to do anything about that now. The first thing he had to do was to get back to London by train. There was no way he could drive. A glance over the wall showed him the group of journalists and the TV men down at the bottom of the drive. They would be there all day and the police from Oston would undoubtedly come to the house. He couldn’t use the train station there. He’d have to get to Slawford to catch the train to Bristol and London. The town was outside his constituency and he’d be less likely to be recognised there. Against that it was a hell of a long way to have to walk.
On the other hand there was the river. It flowed through Slawford, and along the wall he could see the roof of the boat-house and a far better method than trudging for ten miles across fields occurred to him. He’d take the rowing boat and go downstream.
Behind him Ruth was putting her skills in tying people up to good use on Wilt. Having made sure he wasn’t dead or dying she had bound his wrists together with several turns of Elastoplast which wouldn’t leave any obvious marks like rope, and removed his jeans. Then she dragged him over to the Volvo estate, in the process getting some of Wilt’s own blood on to the Y-fronts, and by using two planks rolled him with great difficulty into the back. Next she tied a handkerchief across his mouth so he could still breathe, and covered him with newspapers and several cardboard boxes. Finally she took his knapsack and jeans, locked the garage doors and returned to the house to wait for Harold to return.
After half an hour she called his name but there was no reply. She went out into the garden and looked over the wall. There was a patch of crushed long grass where he must have sat but no sign of him. He had evidently taken fright and scurried away. It was just as well. She had to deal with the reporters at the gate. They could wait for a bit. She wanted to see what was in the knapsack. She went back to the garage and by the time she’d been through the bag she was completely bewildered. Wilt’s driving licence gave his address as 45 Oakhurst Avenue, Ipford. Ipford? But Ipford was away to the south. How come the wretched man had ended up in her garage? Like everything else it made no sense. On the other hand, if she dumped him somewhere near Ipford he’d have a job explaining what he had been doing without his trousers in a sleepy place like Meldrum Slocum. For ten long minutes Mrs Rottecombe sat and considered the problem before making her decision.
An hour later she went down the drive with Wilfred and Pickles and showed the group of media people there the supposed wounds the brutes from the _News on Sunday_ had inflicted on Wilfred.
‘They trespassed on private property and tried to break into the house and then when Pickles caught them they were foolish enough to kick her. You can’t do that to an English bull terrier and not expect the little darling to defend herself, can you, sweetie?’ Pickles wagged her tail and looked pleased with herself. She liked being petted. Wilfred was far too heavy to pick up but his hindquarters were impressively swathed in bandages. ‘One of the men attacked him with a knife,’ she explained. ‘That was a really horrid thing to do.’