Albert fielded the question. ‘Just going to the gents,’ he revealed with an embarrassed smile. ‘Can’t hold it the way I used to be able to.’
The cop couldn’t come up with an argument to stop the old man; he didn’t want to deal with some old codger having an incontinence issue. However, he did point at Dave 1. ‘Why’s he going?’
‘He’s my helper,’ Albert lied ambiguously, basically daring the young police officer to ask which part of the task he required help with.
The cop had no desire to find out. ‘Yeah, okay. Come straight back, please.’ He joined to chase criminals and be a hero, not worry about old men and their dodgy bladders.
‘I think I’ll just wait here,’ said Gary, looking about to see if there was somewhere he could sit. When his father returned, he was going to insist they leave. The local detectives wouldn’t resist his request to leave the scene and it looked like they were about to arrest Beefy anyway.
Outside, they crossed the soggy grass toward a pair of shipping containers. They were both closed but not locked. Dave 1, away from the ears of the police, decided to get chatty. ‘I think most of us were out here when the shout came. It was Beefy who found him. He sent us out to get a fresh pallet of ingredients for the next few batches of batter. You might think it would ruin being made up so far in advance of baking it, but the batter works better, and rises farther, when it has been left to rest for a few hours.’
Albert learned something, for he had never made the batter in advance when trying to make the pudding at home for himself. Had that been Petunia’s secret too?
‘Best leave the dog outside,’ said Dave 1. ‘It’s all very well having the dog in the marquee where we can separate him from the food preparation area, but we shouldn’t let him go in here with the ingredients.’
Albert looked around for something to hook his lead on to, but they were in a field. He would have to traipse back to the marquee or fifty yards to a van to find something he could fix Rex to. Accepting defeat, he held the end of the lead in front of Rex’s mouth. ‘Can you hold this, Rex?’
Rex, surprised by the request, felt his eyebrows rise, but obediently opened his mouth. What was his human up to?
Trusting that they would only be inside for a few seconds, Albert said, ‘Stay, Rex,’ while Dave 1 wrestled the right hand door open, then followed him inside. The container had light and power and was refrigerated to maintain the dairy products stored within.
None of that was of particular interest to Rex. The moment his human was no longer in sight, he turned around and started following his nose. He wanted to find the moped. His human would probably be displeased that Rex wasn’t outside when he next looked, but Rex was choosing to exploit a small loophole in the command ‘stay’ because his human hadn’t been specific about where he should stay.
That it was dark had no effect on Rex’s sense of smell. If anything, the reduction of human activity in darkness made it easier to sort and follow scents. It still confused him that humans, like his human’s pup, could fall over in the dark, but he knew they refused to use their strongest sense, foolishly trusting their eyes despite claiming it was too dark to see.
With his eyes closed and his nose in the air, he located a direction for the moped scent and began a loping canter to get to it.
Inside the container, Albert was helping Dave 1 to count the eggs. This was the refrigerated container Dave 1 had explained. It housed the milk, eggs, oil, and salt. The last two ingredients didn’t need to be kept chilled, but there was no room in the second container which was full to the brim with flour. The eggs were in caterers’ packs of hundreds, stacked one atop the other. Dave crouched right down to make sure the bottom boxes were both full and intact and was about to get up when he stiffened. Albert saw it, wondering whether the man had seen a large spider and was about to scream.
Instead, Dave 1 reached out with his left hand to pluck something from the floor. It was a button, Albert saw. ‘What have you got there?’
Dave 1 stood up with the button resting in his palm. ‘Just a button,’ he said. It wasn’t just a button though; it was a very ornate button with a three-dimensional cameo face of a woman on it. Such a thing wasn’t what you found on an everyday item of clothing, and it was large – more than half an inch across, so it was also not the sort of button one might find on a man’s shirt either.
Albert stared at it. ‘Could it have come from someone’s coat?’ he asked.
Dave 1 turned it over, his expression curious. ‘No. No one has buttons on their baking clothes, and no one would come in here in their normal clothes.’
A voice from the entrance startled them both. ‘Gentlemen, I thought you were going to the restroom.’
Albert, his heart pumping madly for a couple of beats, saw the face framed in the doorway was the young police officer he lied to about his destination. He compounded his earlier lie with another. ‘We decided to check on the supplies. With Mr Pumphrey encased in a load of batter, we were worried whether we would still have enough for the record attempt.’
The police officer either wasn’t bothering to listen or had no interest in what Albert was saying. ‘Are you done?’ he demanded to know in a bored tone.
Albert
