Albert was glad to see his son, and sorry he’d missed his calls. ‘My battery is dead,’ he showed him the phone with its lifeless screen. ‘Sorry, kiddo. Any luck finding Alan?’
Gary shook his head. ‘None at all. The team have split up, but also called in help. I’m expecting their chief inspector to turn up any moment.
CI Doyle chose that moment to arrive with his constable on his shoulder as usual. They were hurrying because they’d lost sight of the old man and his dog and got caught behind a family pushing their grandparents along in wheelchairs.
‘Ah, here they are now,’ said Gary. ‘I think they were sending someone to his house as well.’
Albert rubbed the tip of his nose. ‘I think Alan is here. Mr Crystal is heavily invested in today’s outcome.’
Gary wanted to know what his father meant by that, but Rex was tugging at his lead and Albert was on the move again.
Rex chose to guess where he might pick up the target’s scent. It lingered everywhere in the museum, which wasn’t helpful, but it was also faint and fading – Rex could tell the difference between a residual scent and the source. In the marquee, he sampled the air, reaching out with his strongest sense to filter out all the background smells and found a trace of the moped scent again. Annoyed, he pushed it to one side to focus on his job. If the target was here, Rex would find where he had been and from there, in theory, be able to track him. His human had stopped to talk to his son, which gave Rex a chance to close his eyes and examine the air.
When he found what he wanted, his eyes snapped open and his legs started moving: it was go time.
Albert felt the lead go taut just a half second before his arm was yanked forward. If he didn’t go with it, he was going to stumble and fall. Rex was doing what he’d been asked to – he was tracking Alan Crystal.
Moving through the crowd inside the marquee, the dog was on a mission, weaving through legs and around people with a determination that made Albert bump off half the people he needed to pass. After apologising to a dozen people and almost falling over a pushchair, Albert had to dig his feet in and haul Rex back to slow him down. ‘I can’t go that fast, Rex.’
Rex didn’t want to slow down; he was excited by the game and looking forward to his reward. However, appreciating that his human was no longer a pup, he slowed his pace, using the extra time to check around for more of the moped smell. What he got instead was blood. Just like last night, the metallic tang of blood hung heavy on the air. It wasn’t close by, but it was there, it was fresh, and it was human. It also hadn’t been there a moment ago.
What Albert noticed as they made their way through the press of people in the marquee was that they weren’t really moving through them at all. It was more a case of moving with them as the crowd moved of its own accord, all more or less in the same direction.
Going with the flow, Albert and Rex, together with Gary, the chief inspector and other police officers who had spotted them and tagged on, were swept through the marquee, past the stage, and out through a now open flap at the back to the grass outside where people were gathering.
Someone nudged Albert’s shoulder on their way outside, squeezing through a gap too small for them to fit but making it through anyway. It was a man in his twenties he saw, one arm trailing behind to where he held the hand of a pretty young girlfriend. ‘They actually did it!’ he gushed to her as they passed him.
The young woman mumbled an apology as she too rushed through the narrow gap. What they had actually done confused Albert for a moment, until his brain caught up to inform him the two hours of baking time had elapsed, and the world’s biggest Yorkshire pudding attempt was a success.
A small platform could be seen ahead of them. It wasn’t there earlier – it was where the trucks with all the pudding mix had been for the pour – yet the hastily erected stage now contained several elated-looking bakers, Sarah from the event committee, and the man from Guinness. The man from Guinness was shaking hands with Dave 2 for the cameras, flashes popping to illuminate them in the mid-afternoon glow.
Rex tugged at Albert’s arm, trying to pull him to the left. The blood and the target scent were both in this direction. He leaned with his low body weight as his human leaned the other way to stop him. Obediently, Rex stopped his tugging, pausing his search so his human could do whatever it was he was doing.
Albert had wanted to get into the pictures being taken, yet it no longer seemed important in the wider scheme of what was happening. Despite that, Albert found himself staring at a poster erected to the side of the small stage.
‘Dad, what’s happening?’ asked Gary, wondering why his father was holding Rex back.
Albert gritted his teeth. The poster was a blown-up version of a photograph in the museum, the shot of the previous world’s largest Yorkshire pudding. He needed to get a closer look at it but there was no way through the crowd, and he needed to let his dog continue tracking.
He didn’t bother to explain why he had stopped, choosing instead to make a mental note to check it shortly when the chance arose. With a click of his mouth, they set off again. ‘Find him, Rex. Good
