to re-establish an old dog with a new handler. Always better to start afresh. The dog did look quite old, greying like a human being, and Flynn guessed it would be around the nine year mark, if he did his maths correctly. However, its eyes remained sharp and keen, watching him enter the house and turn right into the lounge.
‘Nice doggy,’ he said.
‘His nickname was Lancon Bastard,’ Tom said. ‘But he’s a doddering old softy now, on his last legs, literally. He’s called Roger, of all things,’ he added tiredly and Flynn picked up that he wasn’t keen on the beast. ‘Grab a seat. I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘Great.’ Flynn sat on the settee, glancing around at the furniture and fittings in the bay-fronted room. Everything looked expensive. The soft leather three-piece suite, the forty-two-inch TV mounted on the wall over the fireplace, the surround sound to go with it, a Bang and Olufsen sound system and a series of watercolours that looked original. Through the front window he saw that the snow had thickened and stuck, already some depth to it, and he worried if he was going to be able to get out of the village today. Whilst he was thinking this, Roger was framed in the doorway, observing him.
Flynn turned his head slowly and smiled cautiously. ‘Hello, Roger,’ he said quietly. He could hear Tom in the kitchen, mugs being placed on work surfaces, the tap filling the kettle.
‘Where’s your mum, then?’ Flynn asked the dog. The ears twitched, so did the tail — in a friendly way, Flynn hoped. He held out his hand warily, hoping it wouldn’t be seen as a piece of meat to be chewed on. ‘You going to say hello?’ The dog didn’t move, but the tail wagged and the ears flickered uncertainly.
Tom appeared behind the dog, placed the sole of his slipper against its back hip joint and pushed the animal roughly away. ‘Shift, dimwit,’ he said and came into the living room bearing two mugs. He handed one to Flynn, then sat in an armchair. The dog, cowed by the push, stayed in the hallway, looking in.
‘So, Tom, how’s it going? How’s married life?’ Flynn asked brightly.
Tom’s mug had almost reached his mouth and stopped under his bottom lip as he considered the question. He looked through slitted eyes at Flynn and said, ‘OK,’ non-committal.
‘Good, good,’ Flynn said. He sipped his coppery-tasting brew. ‘Where is the lass, then? Out working?’
Tom shrugged. ‘Yeah, probably… haven’t actually seen her in a couple of days… shifts and that… ships that pass in the night.’
‘So you don’t know where she is?’ Flynn tried to phrase the question as unthreateningly as possible.
‘No, I don’t. I’ve been working a big case in Lancaster, so I’ve been doing all the hours that God sends. We’ll collide eventually, then we’ll be in each other’s hair for days,’ he laughed. ‘That’s how it is — cops who get married. Not easy.’
‘Yeah, guess you’re right.’
Tom looked across the room at Flynn, waiting. Flynn sipped his tea, feeling extremely uneasy. ‘Look, as a friend,’ he said, now trying not to sound too patronizing, ‘you sure everything’s OK between you?’
‘Has she phoned you? Is that why you’re here?’ Tom snapped. Before Flynn could answer, he went on, ‘Everything’s fine, OK? So, nice to see you and all that, but I need to get ready to get back to work. Need a shit, shave and a shower. You finish off your tea, let yourself out. Sorry you had a wasted journey.’ He rose to his feet and swept past Flynn, then up the stairs. Flynn watched him open-mouthed, then clamped his lips shut with a clash of his teeth.
The dog sat at the open door, ears back, tail swatting sideways, back and forth across the carpet behind him.
‘Some people, eh?’ Flynn laughed, and thought, Definitely not the same Tom James I met last year on holiday. Maybe that’s what marriage does to a person… hm, it did to me.
Flynn stood up and went into the kitchen, passing within inches of Roger’s big wet nose, hoping he wasn’t one of those sly dogs that let you in, then refused to let you out. He swilled his mug, then came back into the hallway. Ahead of him was the front door, to the left the lounge and to the right a door marked ‘Office’, leading through to the police station bit of the house. He glanced upstairs. He could hear Tom moving around and the sound of a shower being turned on. He looked at the dog, still sitting in the hallway, but having swivelled around ninety degrees to keep an eye on the stranger.
‘What d’you think?’ he said. The dog wagged its tail. Flynn took that as a yes, so he tried the office door and found it open.
‘What gets me,’ Henry moaned, ‘is that no matter how good and advanced technology gets, nature always has the last laugh.’ He shook his mobile phone and considered lobbing the useless thing into the snow. He didn’t, but was finding it increasingly frustrating that there was no signal to be had on his, or Donaldson’s, phone. They were sheltering under the lee of a rocky outcrop, out of the winds that had continued to strengthen and bring thick curtains of snow with them. Donaldson was huddled beside him, unable to even mouth a response as his illness became progressively worse.
Henry had drunk the last of his coffee and taken some from Donaldson’s flask, swapping the hot drink for a bottle of water, basing the transaction on the belief that it was important for Donaldson to keep his pure liquid intake up to compensate for the stuff leaving his body. Coffee wouldn’t be much good for him, even though they were entering a phase that Henry thought would be a balancing act. Donaldson needed to keep up his fluids, yes, and water was the best, yes, but he also needed to keep warm as the temperature dropped, and a few mouthfuls of coffee could help that. Maybe. Coffee, though, didn’t always have a beneficial effect on the bowels.
Henry finished his high-energy cereal bar that tasted of card, then stood up. The harsh wind blew into his face, so he dropped back down again, unfolded his Ordnance Survey map and tried to plot their current position using that and the woefully inadequate compass.
‘Where are we?’
Henry blew out his cheeks and placed a gloved finger on the map. ‘Here,’ he said confidently.
Donaldson did not even glance. ‘Let’s push on.’ He got up unsteadily, swung his rucksack on to his back, then doubled over in agony.
The office was pretty sparse. Desk, two chairs and a sturdy, old-fashioned filing cabinet. There was a cordless phone on a base on the desk, next to a charger for police radios. Pretty dull, even as offices go. Flynn glanced one more time up the stairs before putting his finger to his mouth, saying ‘Shush’ to the dog, and stepping through the door.
Items of female uniform, including a hat, were hung on a series of hooks on the wall. There was a message log on the desk, a ring binder in which every call-out was recorded by hand, whether it came from a member of the public ringing in directly, calling into the office in person, or a telephone or radio message received from the divisional comms room at Lancaster, the main station covering. Flynn knew it was procedure to log everything. He opened the binder with his fingertip, noticing there were two batteries in the charger, both with the green ‘fully charged’ lights glowing, and an actual radio next to this. Personal radios were issued to each individual officer now and Flynn assumed this was Cathy’s own radio, although it could have been Tom’s.
‘Mm,’ he said at the back of his throat. So wherever she was, he thought, she wasn’t in uniform and didn’t have her PR with her… maybe. Flynn wondered if she and Tom had argued and she had stormed out and was now holed up with a relative or in a hotel somewhere, licking her wounds. It was only speculation, nothing more, Flynn admitted to himself. He could be wrong on all counts. Perhaps Tom simply didn’t want to discuss a deeply personal situation. Flynn could empathize with that.
A blank block of message pads was crocodile-clipped to the left side of the message log binder, with several days’ worth of messages inserted on to the steel rings on the right-hand side. Flynn started to peek at the top message, which was handwritten — he assumed, by Cathy.
‘I thought you were leaving.’
Flynn jerked around to see Tom standing at the office door. He had been able to come silently down the stairs, his approach masked by the sound of the shower. He was still in his dressing gown. ‘And you’ve no right to be in here.’
‘Have you two had a fight?’ Flynn asked, unperturbed.
‘None of your business,’ Tom stated.
‘Fair do’s.’ Flynn raised his hands in defeat. ‘But I take it you do know where Cathy is?’
Tom pointed towards the front door of the house, saying nothing.
Flynn took the hint and sidled past Tom, who was almost as big as he was. He patted the dog on the way out and as he stepped out into the cold afternoon, the door was slammed behind him. Without a backward glance he
