‘Hey, boy,’ he called, getting the dog’s attention with his friendly tone.
Rex trotted toward the man who was now down on one knee and showing his empty hands.
‘You found a stray, boss?’ asked one of his firefighters, hanging out of the truck when the engine coughed and sprung to life.
Raising his voice to be heard, he said, ‘This is no stray. Look at his coat. He’s beautiful. Well fed too.’ Feeling his neck fur, he found the collar hidden within it and read the tag. ‘Rex.’
Rex turned his head, giving the human a lick on his chin in greeting.
From above them all, a window on the first floor opened and another firefighter leaned out. ‘Hey, boss. There’s a call from dispatch about a loose German Shepherd in the area. It’s something to do with the accident they want us to sort out.’
Station Officer Hamilton looked back down at the dog. ‘I guess that’s you then, fella. We’d better get going though. We have to cut someone from their car.’
The fire fighters had just been called to an accident less than half a mile away from their station where the police needed their specialist equipment and rescue techniques to deal with a man trapped inside his mangled car. The likelihood that they had the lost dog in their possession was high enough for them to lift him into the truck and take him along.
Their guess proved right as the dog started jumping and bouncing around on the end of his lead the moment they opened the door to the fire truck. His human was here; Rex could smell him!
Albert spotted him easily; it was hard to miss the firefighters trying in vain to calm the overexcited giant dog in the cab of a fire truck.
‘I guess Rex belongs to you,’ said Station Officer Hamilton with a laugh, leaving the truck behind to meet the dog’s owner.
Albert managed to combine a chuckle and a sigh. ‘Has he been any bother?’
His question drew another laugh from the station officer. ‘We did nearly crash twice because Rex wanted to see where we were going, but once we got his collar attached to a lashing point it was okay.’
Rex arrived dragging a burly firefighter behind him as, with single-minded determination, he made his way back to his human. Albert clicked the fingers of his right hand as he moved it upwards through the air. Rex obediently jumped onto his back legs and placed his front paws on Albert’s shoulders. Albert had to brace himself against the weight, but he found this was easier than crouching or bending.
He ruffled Rex’s fur and gave the dog a hug. The station officer was already backing away. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I am needed elsewhere.’ He turned and jogged away before Albert got a chance to thank him, and when he returned to the ambulance to check on Rosie once more, the sad young mother in her tatty shoes was already gone.
The crowd of onlookers had gotten bored and drifted away, and even the police were packing up. Alan Crystal had given his statement and gone on his way without Albert seeing him go or getting the chance to ask him about the large amount of money and his desire to omit telling the police about it.
It felt like a mystery to solve, but Albert was an old man in an old and unfamiliar city. He was here for the weekend because there was a big Yorkshire pudding baking competition, not to involve himself in solving what might have been a random mugging. Pushing thoughts of the last hour from his mind, Albert set off for the station again. It was time for a cup of tea.
Waiting
Sitting at a table for two in a café opposite York train station, Albert was troubled by the plate before him. More accurately, it was what sat on the plate that troubled him, even though it had been his selection.
Albert thought of himself as a man of simple tastes; he ate the same dishes repeatedly and had done his entire life, rarely stretching his tastebuds or challenging himself with something new.
He succumbed to peer pressure in the eighties and tasted a curry one night. He enjoyed it, he somewhat begrudgingly admitted, and had visited Indian restaurants since, he only ever ate the one dish though: a chicken Madras.
So the café menu boasting sweet Yorkshire puddings, was almost too much for his poor brain to handle. On his plate was a chocolate profiterole but one made not with choux pastry, but with a Yorkshire pudding batter. Yorkshire puddings were a savoury dish and, so far as Albert was concerned, that ended the conversation. Yet faced with a new challenge, he chose to remind himself that he was on a culinary tour of the British Isles and selected the sweet treat even though he felt deeply suspicious about it.
He got one for Rex Harrison too – a bacon and egg one in his case. Rex harboured no such suspicions and ate it in one bite. Sitting next to his human, Rex’s head rose a foot above the table, placing his mouth in line with the cake thing on his human’s plate. His human did not seem inclined to eat it, which Rex was only too happy with – he would take one for the team, so to speak, and save the old man from it.
Albert silently scolded
