He moaned and his tail dropped between his legs. ‘Get after them! Don’t let them catch him!’ He stumbled around shaking his head in a dazed way.
I dived into the alleyways separating the piles of damaged cars and pursued the pursuers. I could see the Guvnor ahead, climbing on to the bonnet of a car. He was grabbed from behind, but he kicked out with a vicious boot, knocking the unfortunate policeman on to his back. He scrambled up higher on to the roof of the car, then on to the bonnet of the car on top. If he crossed this pile of junk, it would take him close to the surrounding fence and he would be able to jump into the street below. The wreck he was climbing on to was unsteady, and it tottered precariously for a few sickening moments, nearly causing him to slither back down into the yard. He held tight and the car steadied itself. He began to climb again.
Two policemen began the ascent after the Guvnor while others headed in different directions in the hope of cutting him off. I couldn’t just stand by and let them take the Guvnor; Rumbo had a loyalty to him and that meant I had too. I caught the seat of one of the climbing plod’s trousers nicely with my teeth. I bit and pulled and he came tumbling down. He kicked out at me and beat me with his fists, but I was in a fury and hardly felt the blows.
Rumbo came in snarling and snapping, and the struggling policeman was forced to call on his companion for help. The dogs were tearing him to pieces, he screamed.
Well, we were being a bit rough, but we weren’t savages (to tell the truth, it was a bit of a lark at that stage).
The second policeman jumped from the car bonnet into the melee and tried to separate man and dogs, flailing at us with his fists. This only made Rumbo more cross and he diverted his attention to the new assailant. More policemen were arriving by the second and I could see we’d stand no chance against such odds.
‘It’s no good, Rumbo!’ I called out. ‘There’s too many!’
‘Keep fighting, squirt,’ he replied between mouthfuls of flesh and cloth. ‘It’s giving the Guvnor a chance to get away.’
It was no good. I felt a hand grasp my collar and I was yanked off my feet and thrown across the alleyway. I landed heavily against the boot of a car and fell to the ground badly winded. I gasped for breath and saw Rumbo receiving similar treatment. It took two policemen to deal with him, though.
By this time the Guvnor was on the roof of the second car and I could see him looking wildly around. He was being converged upon on all sides by blue uniforms and he yelled down defiantly as the police below began to climb up after him again.
‘Look out!’ one of them shouted. ‘He’s pushing the cars over!’
The policeman scrambled for safety and I saw that the Guvnor had stepped over on to the roof of the next semi-crushed car and was using a foot as a lever against the one he’d just left. It was already dangerously balanced and it didn’t take much to send it toppling. The only thing was, the car the Guvnor was perched on toppled after it.
And worse, Rumbo had dashed forward again to ward off the pursuing policeman.
He couldn’t have known what hit him; that was the only merciful thing about it. One minute he was crouched low, baring his teeth at the police, the next he had disappeared beneath a tumble of crushing metal.
‘Rumbo!’ I screamed, and dashed forward even before the crashing cars had had time to settle. ‘Rumbo! Rumbo!’
I dodged around the twisted metal, trying to see beneath it, trying to find an opening to crawl through, willing my friend to be miraculously alive, refusing to accept the inevitable.
The thin stream of dark-red blood that came from beneath the cars jolted me into the truth of the situation: there was no chance at all for Rumbo.
I howled, the kind of howl you sometimes hear on an empty night from miles away; the cry of an animal at its lowest point of misery. Then I wept.
The Guvnor was in agony, his arm trapped deep between the two wrecks. He was lucky, though: it could have been his whole body.
A hand took me by the collar and dragged me gently away from the metal tomb, and I felt sympathy flowing from the policeman as he led me towards the front of the yard. I was too upset to resist. Rumbo was dead, and for the moment so was my will. I heard one of the officers tell someone to get an ambulance quickly; there was an injured man back there. I saw two men in plainclothes bringing the metal case from the hut and nodding towards another man questioning Lenny. Lenny was angry now, talking beligerently as he was held from behind by two uniformed men.
‘Who done it then?’ he was asking. ‘Who fingered us?’
‘We’ve had our eyes on this place a long time, son,’ the man before him replied. ‘Ever since one of our boys spotted Ronnie Smiley’s car in here awhile back. We all know what Ronnie gets up to, don’t we, so we thought we’d wait awhile and let things run their course. Very interesting when we saw the stolen van coming in, then the car. Even more so when they didn’t come out again — until this morning, that is.’ He laughed at Lenny’s obvious displeasure. ‘Oh don’t worry, it wasn’t only that. We’ve had suspicions about this yard for a long time now. Wondered where your governor got his money from. Now we know, don’t we?’
Lenny just looked away sullenly. The plainclothes policeman spotted me being led away.
‘Funny thing is,’ he remarked, ‘the constable was only investigating a couple of thieving dogs when he spotted Smiley’s car. Take after their master, don’t they?’ He nodded at the man holding firmly on to Lenny and they pushed him towards one of the police cars at the entrance to the yard. Before Lenny departed he gave me one last penetrating look that made me shiver inside.
And it was then that I knew where I was going. It pushed its way through befuddled layers and struck me almost physically.
I twisted my neck and snapped at the hand that held me. The startled policeman quickly drew his hand away — and I was loose. I bolted for the street and once again I was running, running, running.
But this time I had somewhere to go.
PART TWO
Twelve
How do you feel now? Is your mind still closed to my story, or are you wondering? Let me go on; there’s a few hours before dawn.
My journey to Edenbridge was a long one, but strangely I knew the way as if I’d travelled that route many times before. When the town had been mentioned in the yard it had evidently planted a seed in my mind, and it was a seed that suddenly grew and sprouted. I wasn’t sure what the town meant to me, whether it was where my home was or if it had some other significance, but I knew it was the place to go, the place to start from. What other alternative had I anyway?
I must have run for at least an hour, narrowly avoiding being run down by uncaring traffic more than once, before I reached a piece of waste ground where I was able to grieve for my lost friend in private. Creeping under a dumped sofa, its stuffing more out than in, I sank to the ground, resting my head between my paws. I could still see that trickle of blood running from beneath the rusted metal, forming a pool in a small dip in the earth and creating a miniature whirlpool, a vortex of Rumbo’s life. Animals can feel grief just as deeply as any human, perhaps more so; they have limited ways of expressing their sorrow, though and their natural optimism usually enables recovery more quickly, there’s the difference. Unfortunately, I suffered both as a human and an animal, and it was heavy stuff.
I stayed there until long into the afternoon, afraid and bewildered once again. Only my loyal companion, hunger, roused me into movement. I forget from where I scrounged food, just as I have forgotten a great deal of that long journey, but I know I did eat and was soon moving onwards. I travelled by night through the city, preferring the empty quietness of the streets, the activity of the day making way for the quiet prowlings of night
