‘I think I will stay another night here, actually. It’s rather nice,’ he said, opting to give an answer that was wholly true while also avoiding the truth.
There was silence at the other end for a beat until Gary said, ‘You’ve got a case to investigate, haven’t you? Has that brother of mine been helping you again? Selina has been off with sick kids and you haven’t asked me for anything, unless that’s what this call is for.’
‘Not at all, son,’ Albert protested.
‘Then it’s Randall,’ concluded Gary, passing sentence on his younger brother. ‘What bother are you getting into this time, Dad?’
Albert blew out a frustrated breath. ‘No bother, Gary. There’s just a wrongfully accused woman and I am looking to see if I can find the real killer.’
‘Killer!’ blurted his eldest son. ‘Oh, my God, Dad. You’re interfering with a murder investigation!’
Getting grumpy, and wishing he hadn’t made the call, Albert defended himself. ‘I’m not interfering. I’m just looking around a bit. You did read about the thing in Stilton, right?’ Albert felt his children were too harsh with him. To his mind, he’d been rather successful of late.
However, Gary saw a chance to hammer home his point. ‘If you mean, did I read about your dog wrecking the cheese rolling race, then yes, I did. And I saw it on television. And I found an A3 poster of you chasing Rex as he ran off with a whole Stilton in his mouth. It was stuck to my desk when I came to work two days ago, and I haven’t found the culprit yet.’
Albert couldn’t stop himself from sniggering. It hadn’t been funny at the time, but when he watched the footage on the news that night – it made the national ten o’clock BBC broadcast as a human interest snippet - he’d been unable to stop himself from laughing.
Gary was about to get upset, so Albert quashed his mirth, saying, ‘I just called to check in, Gary. I’ll see you in York in two days.’
Albert got another sigh in response. ‘Yes, Dad. Two days. I’m coming in on the midday rocket from London; a two-hour straight shot from Kings Cross to York.’
‘I’ll meet you at the station,’ Albert volunteered. ‘I expect there will be a bar or a coffee shop nearby where I can wait with Rex.’
The phone call ended, and Albert finished his tall glass of cider. In retrospect he probably should have opted for tea or coffee or maybe even a hot chocolate. The temperature was dipping outside; it was a cold autumn day with a stiff breeze kicking the leaves along the street and forming eddies at the edge of buildings where they would dance as if engaging in a game.
Kate’s house was right across town, the directions Victor gave easy enough to follow so he walked right to it without needing to back track. In his long police career, Albert had only needed to force entry to a property on three occasions. Doing so in an urban environment always attracted the attention of neighbours who would call the police as an immediate response. Without a key, he wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to get into Kate’s property. He’d thought about having a look around it many hours ago; it was an obvious place to explore since Joel had possibly been taken from here and Kate was accused of not being here when she claimed to be. Albert’s expectation was that he would come later with Victor, but this worked too.
Using the key, he let himself in, strolling up the path as if he belonged there. If a neighbour saw him, he didn’t think they would call the police, but if they did, he had a key and permission to be inside the premises.
Albert had to nudge Rex to get him inside because he’s stopped halfway across the threshold. Then he left the dogs, unclipping each from their leads so they could explore while he methodically inspected the house for clues.
Rex froze the moment the door opened. The humans had been here, the ones who were in the café yesterday and following them this morning. He sucked in a big sample of air, holding it as he broke the scents down and filed them away. There was no mistaking it, no question in his mind. As he understood it, a human had been killed and Han’s human, the female one, was taken away by the police for doing it. He’d never been able to bend his head around humans’ need to kill each other. Kill for food, yes. Protect your territory, yes, and he accepted that in the course of protecting one’s territory, it might be necessary to kill. However, humans would just bump each other off for no good reason at all. A lot of it seemed to revolve around mating and that was just bonkers.
Rex understood the desire to mate; it was hardwired into him much the same as every other living thing on the planet. Humans made it unnecessarily complicated. Smell available female, go to available female, if female is with another dog, either wait turn or fight dog. Then, get the job done, move on, and forget what the female even smelled like because you can already smell another available female. What was so hard about that?
Pushing his thoughts on the obscurity of human behaviour to one side, he needed to tell his human about the two humans who had been here.
Albert had wandered to the kitchen at the back of the house. From memory, the detective claimed there was blood found there – another mark against Kate. He couldn’t see it, but Kate would have cleaned it up whether guilty or not. Cleaning it wouldn’t prevent the crime
