Viv gave Number Two the fish-eye, as the canine decided to lollop toward them. Freddy couldn’t breathe. He jerked his head back but it wouldn’t go any farther. Closer and closer came the carnivorous cur, his tongue hanging out in grotesque anticipation of the raw meat embodied by Freddy …
Instead the dog trotted past Freddy and went to Viv. Bending down, she rubbed through the fur on the back of its neck.
‘Just so happens, we’re security,’ declared Number One. He pulled out a greasy wallet, extracted a card and handed it over.
Freddy took the card. His lips were dry, but when he licked them he was even more intensely aware of how close to his own throat were the dog’s jaws. He squinted at the card: it was official, all right, although his vision was blurred by a waterfall of perspiration streaming down into his eyes. Number One appropriated his card from Freddy before it got drenched.
‘Security?’ Viv quizzed, petting the Alsatian.
‘We don’t all wear uniforms, you know,’ Number One reasoned. ‘I mean … Just look at the state of this dump.’ He had a point, Freddy had to admit. ‘Anyway, read the collar.’
Viv checked the Alsatian’s collar: there was a brass strip on it. Engraved on the plate was the word ‘BAS’ and a telephone number. ‘B.A.S?’
‘“Builders’ Associated Security,”’ responded Number One. ‘Ring the number if you like.’
Viv got to her feet and checked with her partner. ‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Do you, Freddy?’
Jack-the-lad stirred a spoonful of sugar into his coffee mug, then sipped it slowly. Carefully, he passed the letter from Section Officer Loach over the steam still rising from the kettle.
Sanjay Shah hurried through the motions of dispensing drinks to the guests. Yet finally when he had finished his last delivery there was an awkward silence, everyone giving all their attention to the drinks in their hands. No one stepped forward to offer a toast.
‘This is a very nice room,’ announced the intended groom’s father, breathing out loudly. His side of the room nodded and murmured in total agreement.
‘That is so …’ concurred Uncle Ram. ‘The cabinet in the corner is one of my personal possessions … as is the fine chair you are sat on.’
With a start, the father of the intended groom moved to vacate the fine chair, but Ram gently restrained him. ‘No, my dear fellow, stay there. You are our honoured guest, and deserve the best chair.’
When the father of the intended groom was returned to the chair, and Uncle Ram returned to his, he resumed. ‘But you were saying?’
‘It is a very nice room –’ the father repeated, ‘and may I say the young lady is very pleasing also.’
‘And healthy,’ Ram added, doing his finest to emphasize her better qualities.
‘I have all my own teeth,’ Anjali submitted.
Uncle Ram closed his eyes in resignation. What was he to do with her? He opened his eyes to the intended groom’s father, who gave him a wan smile. ‘She likes to joke, you know,’ Ram offered weakly.
‘A sense of humour is good … now and then.’
The thin young man with the very large nose sniffed a long and wet snuffle. Anjali handed him a Kleenex.
Specials Viv Smith and Freddy Calder were just passing in front of the high wall enclosing the builder’s yard. At last he could begin to breathe a little easier and try to calm down and relax.
‘All this time, and you never mentioned you had this thing about dogs.’
The hair on the back of Freddy’s neck stood up again. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he shuddered. ‘And just … don’t say …’ But he caught himself short.
‘Dog?’ Viv obnoxiously and insensitively suggested.
‘… that word,’ he concluded. ‘Okay?’
Viv gave thoughtful consideration to his soulful request, remembering his state of terror only a few moments ago.
‘Well … we almost made a dog’s breakfast of it back there.’
On the other side of the wall in the builder’s yard, two chaps were loading brick on to a small lorry.
‘You know …’ began Number Two, ‘one of these days we’ll pull this trick once too often.’
‘Naw. It works the oracle every time.’
‘What’d you show ’im?’ asked Number Two.
‘National Insurance Card,’ he chuckled, shaking his head at the sucker born every minute. ‘Listen. He was so scared of the dog, I couldn’t shown him the Daily Mail. Anyway, that’ll do for the night.’
After completing the job, Number One turned and whistled softly into the night.
‘Where the bleeding ’ell is that dog? ’Ere boy. Come ’ere, Bas.’
The Alsatian came running, jogging happily to the lorry.
‘Good boy, Bas.’
Manning the control room, WPC Sheila Baxter leaned in on her microphone. ‘Panda Victor. What is your E.T.A.?’
Driving the panda, Toby gave Loach a sour glance, nodding that Loach should answer the call.
Loach buttoned the car radio. ‘We’ll be there in a couple o’ minutes. Over.’
‘A couple o’ minutes?’ jeered Sheila’s voice from the radio. ‘You said that ten minutes ago. What you got in your tank – a tortoise? Our complainant is getting very stroppy, chaps.’
Toby wrenched the gears in a misguided effort to dodge the traffic and get there faster than humanly possible.
Even though her voice was coming through the radio, it was clear she was speaking in a confidential tone. ‘Oh, by the way, Loach. I tried to raise Dutrow, but no luck so far.’
As if he didn’t have enough to worry about without trying to go outside the proper channels to get a message to Detective Inspector Dutrow from a prostitute. Avoiding Toby, he stared out through the windscreen at the dark road ahead, wondering at his own willingness to travel to the ends of the earth to lend a hand to someone who had nearly chewed his thumb off of it.
Time had stopped. Anjali worried not only that the antiquated ritual of two families negotiating her future would never end, but that their great expectations were to make this merely the prelude to an eternity of such occasions. She could not help but study the thin young man they had chosen to be her husband, and her lover, trying to imagine a lifetime of intimacy with this stranger. Did he ever stop sniffing, even when asleep? She noticed that he had reduced the Kleenex to confetti, prompting her to venture a question during the next inevitable lull in the conversation.
‘Speaking about health … Does your son have an allergy perhaps?’
A deathly silence permeated the sitting room crowded with otherwise supposedly living persons. Her intended husband’s father did not respond to the question – perhaps pretending that no one had heard it, and therefore it had not been spoken – and instead pressed on with unyielding determination, staring doggedly at Uncle Ram.
‘A substantial dowry was mentioned, I believe.’
Anjali feigned innocence as well, though at an awkward moment. ‘I only ask in case there is something in the room which may be affecting his sinuses.’
Her interruption made