Eric hurried to catch up with him. "Yeah. Scared the living daylights out of me. Made me not want to go to church with Mum that weekend either."
Tom frowned. "I thought in the end it was all about good triumphing over evil?"
"Yes, well, evil did a pretty good job of having its own way, as I recall. Maybe they got him in the sequel, but I wasn't going to watch it."
Tom shook his head as they approached the side gate. "It's a good job we joined the police to stop such things then, isn't it? Tell you what, if the dog's possessed, then I'll take the lead, okay?"
"I don't think you'll be much use against the second coming," Eric grumbled with a half-smile. "I have faith in your abilities, but that might be pushing it."
Tom laughed, trying the latch on the gate and finding it unlocked as the neighbour had said. The gate and adjoining fence to the rear was at head height. Tom wondered if there was some residential stipulation in the terrace that the front of the properties must be maintained in identical fashion, keeping the same windows, fence heights and so on. At the rear, these rules were waived. The garden was much the same at the back as the front. Overgrown to such an extent that you could barely see the fence panels marking the boundary. The path to the rear door was passable though, probably being the main door used by the occupant to come and go by.
"Ah… bloody hell!" Eric said.
Tom looked round to see Eric steadying himself by holding the gate post with his left hand and examining the sole of his right shoe.
"What?"
"I've trodden in dog sh—"
The rear door was yanked open and a man appeared, scowling.
"You're trespassing!"
Tom smiled, withdrawing his warrant card from his pocket once again, holding it aloft.
"Robert Rutland?"
"What of it?" he asked, maintaining his expression.
"We'd like a word. May we come inside?"
Rutland eyed him up and down. Then he turned to Eric, currently busy wiping his foot in the long grass growing to the side of the gate.
"He'd better not stink my house out with that," Rutland said, disappearing back inside.
Chapter Fourteen
Tom followed Robert Rutland into the house with Eric carrying out another couple of sweeping passes of his foot in the long grass before he, too, entered the property. The cottage was deceptively spacious on the inside. The low pitch and overhanging eaves implied the house would be small, compact and with low ceilings. The reality was far from it. Although room dimensions were generous, the kitchen they were standing in was cluttered. The sink was full of dirty crockery with a saucepan balancing precariously at the top of the stack, half filled with water and a dried brown residue lining the sides. Every inch of space on the worktops was filled by used plates and bowls, unsealed food packets and vegetables. Many of the latter were almost unidentifiable, having turned black or discoloured and grown mould spores to such a degree that a CSI tech would struggle to name them.
There was an unrecognisable smell in the air, also stale and unpleasant, which snagged at the back of your nose and mouth. It was a lingering odour that triggered the senses. The irony of Eric having to clean his shoes before entering was not lost on Tom. Rutland stood in the centre of the kitchen, hands on hips.
"Do you want a cup of tea?"
"No, thank you," Tom said. A battalion from the Parachute Regiment couldn't force him to eat or drink in this place. Not without booster vaccinations first.
"In that case, we don't need to stay in the kitchen. Damned depressing being in here, right enough."
Rutland led them out of the kitchen and into the rear sitting room. The change of location did little to improve their surroundings. The room had a dining table and six chairs at its centre. An open fireplace was set into one wall and a picture rail delineated the change in colour scheme. Below the rail the walls were a dark shade of crimson and above would once have been white or possibly cream but was now yellowed by wood smoke and, judging by the smell in the air, frequent use of a pipe. Tom's grandfather, on his mother's side, used to smoke a pipe and it was a distinctive aroma. Unfortunately, here that familiar smell was intermixed with something very different.
Rutland sat down at the head of the table, producing a leather pouch of tobacco and looking around for something, frowning.
"Where's that damn pipe?"
Claws scraping on the wooden floorboards announced the arrival of the dog. Eric need not have worried. It was a Golden Retriever, not a breed known for its aggression, and it was clearly aged. The animal moved with almost robotic movements of the hips, its tongue hanging out and panting hard with the exertion of movement. The dog flopped down on a bed in the far corner, paying the visitors no attention whatsoever.
"Poor girl," Rutland said, noticing Tom watching the dog. "With her cataracts, she probably can't even see you. Lost her sense of smell years ago, too. What with the arthritis, she probably won't make it through another winter."
Rutland got up again, searching the room with his eyes. It was no surprise that he couldn't find anything. The room was packed with freestanding furniture, laden with dust-covered books, newspapers and magazines. There were several glass-fronted display cabinets and shelving around the room dedicated to wild birds. In the cabinets were stuffed birds; evidently a process done years ago because many of them were visibly deteriorating. On the shelves were glass display domes, some containing more birds and others with eggs placed inside nests, much as they might be found in the wild.
He found his pipe on a stack of books alongside the dog's bed. Before returning to the table, he bent over and scratched behind the dog's right ear. She leaned into him,
