It was only as he reached the entrance to his mews that a more disturbing thought came to him. If Karl Arrowood learned the truth, perhaps it was not his own safety about which he should be concerned.
Bryony Poole waited until the door had closed behind the last client of the day, a woman whose cat had an infected ear, before she broached her idea to Gavin. Sitting down opposite him in the surgery’s narrow office cubicle, she shifted awkwardly, trying to find room for her long legs and booted feet. “Look, Gav, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
Her boss, a bullet-headed man with shoulders that strained the fabric of his white lab coat, looked up from the chart he was finishing. “That sounds rather ominous. Not leaving me for greener pastures, are you?”
“No, nothing like that.” Gavin Farley had taken Bryony on as his assistant in the small surgery just after her graduation from veterinary college two years ago, and she still considered herself lucky to have the job. Hesitantly, she continued. “It’s just, well, you know how many of the homeless people have dogs?”
She had his full attention now.
“Is this a quiz?” he asked skeptically. “Or are you hitting me up for a donation to the RSPCA?”
“No … not exactly. But I have been thinking a good bit about the fact that these people can’t afford care for their animals. I’d like to do some—”
“Bryony, that’s extremely admirable of you, but surely if these people can afford a pint and a packet of ciggies they can bring a dog in for treatment.”
“That’s unfair, Gavin! These people sleep in the street because the night shelters won’t take their dogs. They do what they can. And you know how much our costs have risen.”
“So what can you possibly do?”
“I want to run a free clinic every week, say on Sunday afternoon, to treat minor ailments and injuries—”
“Does this have something to do with your friend Marc Mitchell?”
“I haven’t discussed it with him,” Bryony replied, her defenses rising.
“And where exactly did you think you’d hold this clinic?”
She flushed. “Well, I had thought Marc might let me use his place …” Marc Mitchell ran a soup kitchen for the homeless—“rough sleepers” the government liked to call them, as if they had voluntarily chosen to take a permanent camping holiday—down the bottom end of the Portobello Road. Of course there was the Sally Army further up, but in the business of providing for the needy there was no such thing as competition. There was never enough to go round. Marc gave them a hot lunch and supper, as well as whatever basic medical supplies and personal items he could get. But perhaps most important was his willingness to listen to them. There was an earnestness about him that encouraged the baring of ravaged souls, and sometimes that in itself was enough to start a person on the road to recovery.
“And how exactly did you intend to pay for the supplies and medications?” Gavin asked.
“Out of my own pocket, to begin with. Then maybe I could ask some of the local merchants for donations.”
“You might get a bob or two,” he conceded grudgingly. “I don’t imagine having mange-ridden dogs hanging about outside one’s shop draws in the customers. But say you can get this off the ground. What are you going to do once you form a relationship with these people, then they begin to show up here with a badly injured dog, or an animal with cancer?”
“I—I hadn’t thought …”
Gavin shook his head. “We can’t cover catastrophic care, Bryony. We just survive as it is, with the increase in rents and your salary. There’s no room for noble gestures.”
“I’ll deal with that when I come to it,” she answered firmly. “If nothing else, I can always offer them euthanasia.”
“And pay the cost out of your own pocket? You’re too noble for your own good,” Gavin said with a sigh of resignation as he finished the chart and stood. “I suspected that the first time I saw you.”
Bryony smiled. “But you hired me.”
“So I did, and I’ve not regretted it. You’re a good vet, and good with the clients, too, which is damn near as important. But …”
“What?”
“It’s just that we walk a fine line in this business between compassion and common sense, and I’d hate to see you cross it. It will eat you up, Bryony, this feeling of never being able to do enough. I’ve seen it happen to tougher vets than you. My advice is, you do the best job you can, then you go home, watch the telly, have a pint. You find some way to let it go.”
“Thanks, Gav. I’ll keep that in mind. Promise.”
She mulled over his words as she walked the short distance from the clinic to her flat in Powis Square. Of course she knew where to draw the line; of course she realized she couldn’t help every animal. But was she taking on more than she could manage, both emotionally and financially? And how much was she motivated by an unacknowledged desire to impress Marc Mitchell?
They’d become good friends in the past few months, often meeting for dinner or a coffee. But he’d never displayed what Bryony could really interpret as romantic intentions, and she thought she’d convinced herself that she didn’t mind. Marc, unlike Gavin, had not learned to draw the line between work and home. His work was his life, and she suspected there was no room left for anything more demanding than friendship.
The pang of disappointment that thought caused her was so intense that she shied away from it. She just wanted to help the animals, that was all, and if it so happened that it brought her a bit closer to Marc, so be it.
Inspector Gemma James left the Notting Hill police station at six o’clock on the dot, an occurrence unusual enough to cause the desk sergeant to raise his eyebrows.
