Post Mortem, Gary Bell [best fiction novels .txt] 📗

a wayward schoolboy and watched the dog sleep soundly on its blanket in the cage.

‘Isaac Reid?’ Zara said. ‘When did you meet him?’

‘I haven’t yet. The information came from paper instructions. We’ll be meeting him in Belmarsh for a conference later this week.’

‘We?’

‘Well, if you want – I need a junior, and you’ve got to admit that we make a great team.’

‘Hmm.’ My attempts at flattery did nothing to lighten her mood. ‘So,’ she said, ‘because of paper instructions from a prospective client that you’ve never met, you decided to break into private premises. Premises that you suspected were being guarded by rare, vicious fighting dogs.’

‘Well, yes. It sounds a lot dafter when you put it like that.’

‘Daft?’ She clicked her tongue. ‘You could’ve been disbarred.’

‘I know.’

‘You could’ve been arrested.’

‘Yes.’

‘You could’ve been killed. Did you ring the police?’

‘No. There’d be too many questions. The animals would’ve been put down. I couldn’t do it.’

She leaned her face closer to the bars, studying the pattern of scars, watching the dog’s back quiver slightly as it rose and fell, rose and fell.

‘Did you hurt him?’ she asked. I didn’t answer. When she eventually turned to face me, her expression was as cold and hard as a stone on a riverbed. ‘I hope you did.’

Footsteps approached from behind. We’d been standing alone in a room lined with cages along one wall, not entirely unlike that place in which I’d found the dog last night, except that this one smelled of antiseptic and the patients were all heavily sedated. The cages were stacked on two levels with the smaller animals on top. Most of the animals wore bandages and cones around their heads.

‘Dogfighting,’ the vet said as we both turned to face her. She wore an intense shade of red dye in her neatly tied hair, but otherwise looked very formal in her scrubs and stethoscope, flicking through the file she’d left us to go and retrieve. ‘They call the fights urban rolls when they’re at amateur level like this. Gangs host them in parks, warehouses, fields. This one here is the bait dog, most likely the runt of a separate litter bred for sport. Tied up like a punchbag for the other dogs to cut their teeth on. Somebody’s been at her mouth with a rasp file, blunting her teeth to stop her fighting back. You say you found her running stray?’

‘Yes. I was the one who dropped her off with the emergency vet last night.’

‘She’s had a lucky escape then. Trainers usually prefer to get every last bit of value out of their bait dogs, right up until they’re in pieces. She’s about two years old, we think, which makes her ancient for the world of dogfighting.’

‘What will happen to her now?’ Zara asked.

‘She’s suffered a lot of puncture wounds in her life, as you can tell, and from the scar across her neck I suspect that her jugular has been lacerated at some point. She’s completely deaf in her damaged ear, and the missing lip can never grow back. Severely dehydrated, undernourished, exhausted … That’s just the physical damage. As for the psychological … a dog like this will always be difficult to rehome. She’s wary of people, terrified of other dogs, and almost certainly going to pose a risk to any other animal, possibly even children. You did the right thing getting her here, and we’ll re-evaluate her progress overnight, but I’m sorry to say that the most likely result will, as I said on the phone, be euthanasia.’

‘I see,’ I replied limply. I hadn’t been sure that my interfering with Werner could’ve done much good, but I’d at least felt justified since saving this animal’s life. Now, knowing it would likely be for nothing, the feelings that had bolstered my walk to work seemed vacuous.

‘I think I know a place,’ Zara said. ‘A place she could go.’

I turned to Zara and shook my head. ‘Not with you. It’s too much to put on yourself, and I don’t think that a shared house would be the right place for her.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘I was thinking of somewhere quieter, where she isn’t likely to be disturbed by friends or excitement. Somewhere boring.’

‘Boring?’ I replied. ‘Where do you think is – oh …’

I sighed. Frankly, I should’ve seen it coming.

6

I managed to nab a parking space only a few yards down from my door, which was a fortunate rarity. Zara took the carrier bags from the boot while I negotiated the long, cumbersome flatpack box out of the back seat and up under one armpit.

‘Do you think we left the windows wide enough?’ she fretted, peering back towards the passenger seat. ‘Because you know what they say about dogs in cars …’

‘You’re thinking of hot cars,’ I said, glancing up at the cool blue sky. ‘I’m more worried about what’s going to happen to that leather if we don’t get a move on. Let’s just hope those blankets hold out.’

Zara bent forward, resting the carrier bags on the toes of her Doc Martens, and swept the thick layer of fine hairs the dog had spent the drive shedding onto her lap. ‘I didn’t realise you lived at this end, so close to Regent’s Park! La-di-da!’

It only occurred to me then that, in the eighteen months of living here on Gloucester Place, I’d never had a visitor. That made me uncomfortable. Apart from collecting my car from further up the road this morning, even Zara had never come close.

‘Perhaps you ought to wait out here,’ I said.

‘How come?’ She stared up at the faces of the identical, immaculate town houses. ‘Worried what the neighbours might say?’

‘Oh, no. I’m just not used to entertaining guests.’

‘Ah, come off it. You’ve picked me up and dropped me off at my place loads of times, and I think we can agree that I live in a proper shit-tip. You’re seriously going to stand there and get all humble about some swanky town house in Marylebone?’

‘Swanky?’ Hanging