“She doesn’t…” He bit his lip.
“What?” He wasn’t going to answer; she pressed him. “What, Gabriel?”
“I’m not sure she likes being patted.”
“No? Well, in that case you chose her name well—she’s very patient.” But she had the grace to leave the dog alone.
She saw the pair of them out. Her office looked over Norbold’s Jubilee Park, a view she enjoyed, even if most of her clients were too wrapped up in their own troubles to appreciate it. “Next Wednesday, yes?”
“Yes.”
Behind the pince-nez Laura Fry’s sharp eyes were concerned and almost affectionate. “I’m always afraid that you won’t come. That you’ll decide therapy is for wimps and you can manage without. That you’d rather manage without. You’ve thought about it, haven’t you?”
He wouldn’t lie. “I was never much good at sharing. Even … before.”
“I know that. I know these sessions are a trial to you. All I can tell you is, you are getting better. Stronger. I can see you getting stronger.”
“Yes? Then why—” He stopped.
“Why what?”
He looked across the expanse of the park, the trees in their fresh spring livery, so he wouldn’t have to look at her. “Then why do I feel afraid all the time?”
He was a client, and Laura Fry didn’t weep for clients. She helped them instead. She said softly, “Because the wounds are still raw. Because the situation is unresolved. Because not knowing is worse than knowing the worst. Because not enough time has passed yet for you to pack the hurt and the uncertainty away where you can get on with your life without constantly tripping over them. Because you need”—she looked at the dog, now tugging with gentle insistence at her lead—“patience. You won’t always feel how you feel today.”
He nodded, and walked away and didn’t look back. Not until he judged she’d have gone back inside did he wipe his sleeve across his eyes.
* * *
Jerome Cardy was heading for the motorway. From there, all England was before him. He should have done this before. He could call, explain. She could join him. They’d be safe. Anywhere but Norbold, they’d be safe.
He almost made it. He could actually see high-sided vehicles on the motorway overpass, to his right and maybe a mile ahead, when the police car swung out of a side street and into line behind him, and his heart shot into his throat.
For ten or fifteen seconds, driving with infinite care and watching it in his rearview mirror, Jerome tried to tell himself it was a coincidence. A patrol car, patrolling. That everyone experiences a momentary anxiety when a police car comes up behind them, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s just doing what it does, showing the flag and deterring people from dropping litter and murdering their neighbors.
But at the end of those ten or fifteen seconds the police car didn’t turn away and vanish as mysteriously as it had appeared. It turned on its siren and flashing blue light, and when Jerome looked back in dread, he saw the officer in the left-hand seat signaling him to pull over.
There was no time to think. Either he did as he was told or he made a run for it. No one who knew him, no one who knew what had happened at the junction, would have thought there was any question about what he would do. But then, almost none of them knew what he was facing. What falling into the hands of Norbold’s police would mean. And the motorway was less than a mile away. All England waiting …
Like the woman in the silver hatchback, Jerome was a law-abiding citizen. It went against every tenet to run from the police. If there’s been a misunderstanding, you stop and sort it out. Running only makes you look guilty. He swallowed. He passed a hand across his mouth. And then, acting on purest instinct, the instinct for self-preservation, he floored the accelerator.
Once again luck was not with him, so the escape attempt was over almost before it had begun. It was the middle of the evening—people heading out formed a bottleneck at the approach to the motorway. Traffic slowed to fifteen miles an hour. You can’t make a dash for freedom at fifteen miles an hour, but neither was he prepared to risk lives by driving up onto the pavement or against the traffic flow. Jerome Cardy clenched his fists on the wheel, wiped the sweat off his brow with his cuff, and, feeling sick, pulled over.
CHAPTER 2
H
ALF A MILE AWAY,
in a shady corner of Jubilee Park where the steps of the war memorial provided the youth of Norbold with a convenient stage to drink themselves stupid, a small gang of teenagers was indulging in a bit of dummy baiting.
It wasn’t that they nurtured any particular dislike for the man with the white dog. They didn’t even know his name. They saw him most days, but he didn’t bother them. He didn’t seem to bother anybody. All they knew of him was that he walked his dog in the park every morning and every evening, rain or shine, and muttered to himself as he went.
It was enough. They were between about fifteen and nineteen years old, they’d given up on school not because—as they’d told friends and family—it was stupid but because they’d come to believe that they were, and they didn’t see any way that their lives were ever going to improve. On top of that they’d run out of cider. One of them grinned a vacuous grin and nodded at the man with the dog, and the others hauled themselves off the stone steps and followed. Partly to see what happened, partly to make sure that something did.
Gabriel Ash didn’t so much mutter to himself as talk to his dog. If this was indeed a sign of madness, a great many of us would be eating our meals with plastic cutlery, but in fact it’s nothing of the kind. It can be a sign of loneliness. Or just that your social circle is such that there’s more satisfaction in talking to a dog.
Patience saw the group approaching before Ash did. She turned toward them with a low growl. She wasn’t a big dog, but there was a lean athleticism to her that emphasized those features hounds have always been bred for: speed and bite. The boys broke stride before they came within range of the long muzzle, which was nothing more than teeth covered by a curtain of lip, currently lifting at one corner.
“Hey, dummy—your dog’s growling at me!”
Gabriel kept walking and didn’t look around. He didn’t want trouble. He’d already had all the trouble one man could cope with.
“Hey, dummy, I’m talking to you! Your dog’s growling at me. What you going do about it?”
He still didn’t look around. “Take her home,” he said quietly. “Right now.”
“Shouldn’t have brought it out in public, a dangerous dog like that.”
“She isn’t dangerous, and she’s on a lead.”
“That’s a pit bull terrier, that is. Them’s illegal.”
Another voice, oddly reasonable: “No, it’s a lurcher.”
The boy who had spoken first turned on the one who’d joined in. “Who asked your opinion? Anyway, what’s a lurcher?”
“It’s a sporting dog. Gypsies use them to chase rabbits. Mostly got a bit of greyhound and a bit of terrier in them.”
At least he’d diverted attention away from Ash. His friends were staring at him as if they thought that knowledge, any knowledge, was a dangerous thing. “What makes you such a frigging expert?”
“My granddad used to breed lurchers. That one’s got a bit of pointer in it. He’d have called it a ‘gentleman’s lurcher.’”
The older youth was shaking his head darkly, perplexed and disapproving in equal measure. “You’re a constant frigging wonder to me, Saturday. Mostly, that I’ve known you for nine months without punching your frigging lights out. Now, find me a stick. I’ll teach this dummy to bring his dangerous dog into our park.”
The boy called, apparently, Saturday took a step back, shoving his fists deep into the pockets of his battered jeans. “You don’t need a stick. Just thump him. Like you usually do.”
“I need a stick,” said the older boy with a kind of heavy insistence, “because before I thump him I need to put that thing out of action. Get it?”
Saturday’s eyes flared unhappily. “My granddad says, ‘Only a coward takes a stick to a dog.’”
“Yeah? Well, I’ll thump your granddad as well, then, all right? Now find me a stick.”
“No!” But before his rebellion cost him too much, he added hurriedly, “But I’ll hold the dog while you thump him. That do?”
The older boy looked at Patience, looked at Saturday, looked at Ash. “You’ll hold the dog? That dog?”
“Yeah.”
“While we thump him?”
“Yeah.”
“What if you let it go?”
“I won’t.”
“What if it bites you?”
Saturday considered. “Thump him quickly. If it bites me, Trucker, damn sure I’m letting go.”
“Oh, for frig’s sake!”
But Saturday was already moving toward Ash, one hand out for the lead. “Give me your dog, mister,” he said softly. “Otherwise she’s going to get hurt.”
Ash held his gaze for a moment. He looked like the rest of them—maybe sixteen years old, thin, and none too clean—but there was something in his eyes, a spark of humanity, that made Ash think maybe he could trust him. After a moment he proferred the lead.
Saturday nodded and took it. “Come on, girl, you come with me. Your dad’s going to be … busy … for a minute or two.” He led her—growling and whining her protests, digging in her long paws and leaning all her weight into her collar—behind the group as it split and then gathered around the man.
He’d told Laura Fry that he was afraid all the time. But perhaps this wasn’t what he was afraid of. Or perhaps he’d lived with the fear long enough to learn a kind of fatalism. He made no attempt to evade what was coming, either to escape or to fight back. He stood with his head bowed and his hands spread slightly from his body, and he waited.
He was a grown man; even now he was probably the match of any of these youths. But they were eight, and they hemmed him in so tightly that no one passing on the road or on foot through the park would have seen what was happening.
So there really was no need for the first blow to come from behind. That was Trucker, of course. Though Saturday couldn’t actually see him through the press of backs, it was always Trucker who struck the first blow, and usually from behind. He winced, bracing himself against the dog’s urgent efforts to free herself.
Ash thought he was ready. He knew he was going to take a beating. But a lot worse things had happened to him, and part of him didn’t even care.
But he was wrong. He wasn’t ready for the direction the assault came from, the lack of any warning, or the sheer vicious force of the blow. It took him in the small of the back and dropped him, gasping, to his knees, and down there it was only a matter of moments before they started using him as a football. He curled up tight, trying to take the worst of the assault on his arms and legs, but eight is a lot of people. Sixteen fists and sixteen feet. Half a minute of it and he couldn’t have risen to save his life. A minute more and there might have been nothing left to save.
Even Saturday, who’d seen it before, was startled by the mindless violence of the attack. He knew Trucker had a nasty temper and the others would follow where he led, but he hadn’t known they were capable of murder. In his head, in one of the long, terrible seconds while he watched, he amended that to
we
. If he hadn’t been holding this dog, he’d have been in there, too, doing what the rest of them were doing. Beating a man senseless. And then, if nothing came to stop them, beating him to death. For nothing. No reason, except that they were bored.
He looked about him, for once in his life hoping that a police patrol might cruise by. There were more of them than there used to be—it was called “zero-tolerance policing,” and apparently it went down well with the tax-payers—but not here, not now. The only other person in the park was an old lady walking a Westie, and she was shuffling away in the opposite direction as quickly as her lisle stockings would carry her.
Which left him and the dog. He thought about it for another crippling second; then he shrugged. “See what you can do,” he whispered, and dropped the lead.
Then, with a flash of foresight, he let out a yell. “Ow! You … bitch! Sorry, Trucker, she got away from me.…”
Impossible to judge if this attempt to cover himself had been registered, because before he had the last words out the loosed dog struck into the melee like an Exocet missile with teeth.
These are civilized days. Even the wolves around our hearths are for the most part pretty well behaved, with the result that most people have never seen a real, serious, mean-it dog attack and have no idea the destructive force of the canine mouth. Tacticians who talk about bringing power to a point could hardly find a better example than in the dentistry of the domestic dog. The canines, up front, sharp and penetrating to wound and grip; the serried ranks of the carnassials, farther back, where the shearing power of the jaw is greater, angled and honed to strip flesh off bone and then to splinter the bone. Two or three times a year, due to bad breeding, bad handling, or maybe just badness, somebody’s dog leaves the reservation—stops begging for biscuits, running after Frisbees, and Dying for England—and rips a child’s throat out. And everyone expresses horrified astonishment. But that’s what a dog is: a killing machine. You only have to look at the anatomy. The wonder is not that once in a blue moon it fulfills its potential, but that it happens so incredibly seldom. That an animal that could quite literally take your hand off almost always chooses to lick it instead.
The lurcher bitch Patience made the transition from faithful pet to apex predator in the time it took her to cross ten meters, which was about a second, and she arrived fangs-first at the wall of vicious aggression surrounding her owner.
A human backside is only soft flesh lightly upholstered. Her teeth met in the middle.
In another second the accompanying sound track, which had been grunts of effort and hoots of derision, turned to howls of pain and frantic yells of “Gerritoffame!” A space opened up as the gang abandoned its murderous sport and redirected its energies to self-defense. A few of the braver ones swung a leg at the flashing dog, but they were far too slow, presenting only another target for her to snap at in passing. The space widened, the little mob lost focus and organization, and then suddenly they were fleeing, overtaking one another in the desire to put distance between themselves and the furious animal. Saturday ran with them. A few seconds more and there was only Gabriel Ash, lying on the ground, bloody and unmoving, and Patience, prowling a defensive circle around him, long jaws panting wide, the white hairs still erect between her shoulder blades.