planning for the evening before the conference began. He was surprised. In his experience, Arabs didn’t like dogs, regarding them as barely a step up from vermin.
The handler led one of the Labradors out of the pen on a lead, and walked to the kennel building, where she left the dog tied to a post and went inside, emerging a minute later carrying a couple of decoys and a large rag. Behind her another dog followed obediently, without a lead. It was bigger than the Labradors, and short-haired, with a rich chocolate coat and a white-and-brown speckled face.
‘This is Kreuzer,’ the handler said, walking towards the edge of the adjacent lawn, a wide grassy square of several acres, dotted by the small greens and sand bunkers of the pitch and putt golf course. ‘He’s a German pointer. Give him one smell of something and he’ll find it half a mile away.’
She stopped and called the pointer to her. Kreuzer came up and sat obediently, his keen face looking up awaiting his orders. The handler took the rag she held in one hand and passed it once, then twice, in front of Kreuzer’s nose. She stood back, then handed the rag to Oskar, Naomi’s sidekick. ‘If you go across the field I’ll distract the dog.’ She pointed towards the distant trees across the expanse of lawn. ‘Hide it wherever you like.’
As Oskar set out, she turned around and faced the kennel building in the opposite direction. Kreuzer obediently did the same. Danny stood beside her and they talked for a minute, while Dougal wondered what was going on. He looked across to the trees and saw Oskar go round a clump of rhododendrons then emerge again, no longer holding the rag.
The handler turned around as Oskar rejoined them. ‘Now watch this,’ she said, and gave a sharp high whistle. At once the German pointer began moving agitatedly in circles, its nose held high in the air as it sniffed carefully. Suddenly it turned and raced at high speed across the grass, heading straight for the shrubs where Oskar had been. The dog charged right into the middle of the dark foliage and was lost from sight; when it came out seconds later, it had the rag in its mouth.
‘Bravo!’ shouted Naomi, as the dog trotted back with its find.
The handler nodded with satisfaction. ‘Good enough?’ she asked Danny, who was watching the dog intently.
‘Let’s try the decoys,’ Danny said, pointing with one arm in the direction of the small lake near the entrance drive.
‘Okay,’ said the handler. ‘I’ll just get the Labrador.’ As she walked off, Danny looked at Dougal. ‘There is no need for you to stay with us,’ he declared.
‘Oh,’ said Dougal, taken aback. ‘I’ll be getting back then. You know how to find me if you need me.’
Danny started towards the lake before he could even shake his hand. Graceless kind of bloke, thought Dougal, as he walked back to the hotel and his office. I don’t mind if I never see him again.
But he did, that very evening, as Dougal drove home to the small grace and favour cottage he lived in on a neighbouring estate. He had just left the hotel grounds and was passing the equestrian centre when he saw the Israeli, under the cover of some trees. He was talking urgently to a girl – a pretty girl with strawberry blond hair who was certainly not haggard-looking Naomi from the delegation. There was something about the look on the Israeli’s face that made it obvious he knew this girl; he wasn’t just casually saying hello. As he drove past, Dougal saw the girl’s face in his headlights, only fleetingly, but enough to recognise her at once – it was one of the waitresses in the hotel’s Italian restaurant. A foreign girl, very attractive. Janice? Something like that. Danny, you sly bastard, thought Dougal, not without a note of envy.
FORTY-TWO
She had been a forward kind of girl ever since she was small. Her father had died when she was four, and after that it had been her mother and little Jana all on their own. Her mother had told her you get nowhere by being shy, and from an early age she had been comfortable with adults – especially men, for it was men she mainly met. She’d started helping in the Moravian tavern where her mother worked almost as soon as she could read; taking her cue from her mother, she would talk easily with the customers, tease them when they wanted to be teased, play coquette when they wanted her to be a Shirley Temple. She’d even imitate the saucy way her mother spoke to Karl, the tavern owner, though it wasn’t until she was nearly twelve that she realised her mother’s duties included more than being a barmaid.
Moravia and her home town seemed a million miles away now. Her mother had been bitter when she’d told her that she was off to work in the West. ‘You can take the girl out of Ostrava,’ she’d warned, ‘but never Ostrava out of the girl. You will be back.’
Fat chance, thought Jana now, comparing the opulent surroundings of Gleneagles with her all-too-vivid memories of the smoke-filled, sour beer-soaked confines of the tavern that had been home. She worked hard in the restaurant here, but no harder than she had at home, and the pay was a fortune by Moravian standards; she’d even sent some money to her mother. She was fed well, and she got every seventh day off. Other waitresses complained about the quarters in the staff hostel behind the hotel, but to Jana they seemed positively luxurious.
True, the social life was a bit limited: the pubs in nearby Auchterarder were not exactly lively or even particularly friendly, especially when the locals heard her foreign accent. The other staff at the hotel were perfectly nice, but she didn’t have much in common with the girls, many of them Poles, and the boys were too young for her taste.
Not that she was looking for a serious romance. ‘You think you will find a knight in shining armour to sweep you away?’ her mother had demanded. ‘You think that’s what happens to waitresses and chambermaids?’
Of course she didn’t think that, though funnily enough the knight had appeared. He hadn’t exactly said he was going to sweep her away – but Sammy was a good lover, and he had said they’d see each other again.
And sure enough, he had texted her that he was coming back. But she was still surprised when she had glimpsed him, walking across the lawn towards the tennis courts that afternoon. She’d been tempted to call out to him, but didn’t when she saw that he was with some others -including young Dougal, who had tried to chat her up that night at the staff’s darts evening. He was sweet and not bad looking, but much too young for her.
There was a woman with Sammy, but she felt no need to be jealous. She was a real old frump.
Jana kept her mobile phone on while she served lunch and at three, while she was still clearing up after the late customers, there had been a text message.
There was no sign of him on the road outside the equestrian centre and she waited impatiently. Then from a clump of dark fir trees at one side of the building came a low whistle. She moved cautiously towards the trees until she could make out a lean figure standing underneath a branch. Her heart lifted as she realised it was Sammy.
‘What are you doing in there?’
‘Shhhhh,’ he replied, stepping out from underneath the trees. He merged into the background in his black jeans and a grey turtleneck, but she could see his face clearly. Once again she thought how handsome he was.
‘What’s the matter? Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?’ she demanded huffily.
‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘But we need to be careful, for your sake as well as mine. I’m here on business this time, with colleagues, and if they saw me with you it would be a bit hard to explain. They’re very strict about this sort of thing. I could be suspended, or even worse.’
‘Oh,’ she said, now sharing his concern.
A car accelerated on the road behind her and Sammy started, moving quickly back into the shelter of the trees. She followed more slowly and the car’s headlights just touched her as it passed. They stood under the bough of a tall spruce. She felt like a teenager on a furtive rendezvous. There was something thrilling about the whole encounter.
‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ she said a little petulantly.
‘I didn’t know myself, honestly. I only arrived last night. Anyway I’m here now,’ he added firmly.
‘How long are you staying?’
‘Only until tomorrow, I’m afraid.’
‘Well, at least that gives us tonight.’
‘Don’t you have to work?’
‘You’re in luck. I’ve got the night off.’ She had managed at the last minute to switch nights off with Sonja, one
