Mad Dogs and Scotsmen by Gerald Hammond

Author:Gerald Hammond
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2019-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Throughout our confrontation with the supposed hard men, Michael Coutts had lurked in the background, silent and more or less forgotten until the moment when he produced the threat which finally cowed the men into abject submission. When I came down off my second adrenalin high of the day and remembered his intent presence I half expected him to dash immediately to a phone. Mentally, I began to review the possible inducements which might postpone the more damaging of his revelations. But apparently he was unique among journalists. For one thing, his word was good. He seemed both amused and sympathetic. He drew me aside, but his only comment was a suggestion that we get the shotgun out of sight before the police arrived.

We left Isobel in charge again, without the shotgun but with the padlock still in place, Irma for moral support and Coutts as a witness, while we had a council of war in the kitchen, apprised Henry and Hannah of developments, slaked our dry mouths with tea and decided that our only possible course was a full disclosure to the police of everything except the brandishing of firearms. Those incidents, we agreed, had never happened. The Dickson vanished with the dart-gun into my gun safe.

In response to my phone call, a car full of uniformed constables arrived to take over the immediate responsibility from Isobel. It was followed hotly by Inspector Tirrell.

Old Irma had by then been withdrawn outside the compound and we skipped as lightly as we could over her part in the affair. We had had no business introducing her into the quarantine area in the first place, but the Inspector’s mind was not thinking along the lines of the Animal Health Act 1981, or, it seemed, the Rabies (Importation of Dogs, Cats and Other Mammals) Order 1974 (as amended). The two captives, once they saw how fearlessly we handled the poor old bitch, never recognized their opportunity to make trouble for us.

Tirrell went through the motions of questioning us individually in the sitting room as a basis for formal statements to follow, but his manner was not censorious and it was clear that he was more amused than shocked by the incidents of the flying slug, the puppies’ meal and the bluff with Irma. When he had extracted every scrap of information we had gleaned about the whole business – or at least those details we were prepared to disgorge – he called us together in the sitting room, Mike Coutts included, and spoke less formally.

‘The facts seem to be clear,’ Tirrell said. ‘Your inferences are rather less so. What a pity that you saw fit to question the men yourselves!’

‘Could you have got more out of them?’ Beth demanded.

‘Probably even less,’ Tirrell admitted. ‘But I’d have made sure that anything I did get out of them would be admissible in evidence.’

That was unfair. ‘We’ve given you a little information,’ I said indignantly. ‘None of it except the admissions, for what little they were worth, came directly from those men, so whatever you can get out of them should be admissible.

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