‘Her cat,’ said Therese. ‘I am sure that he and Carolus will be friends.’
Carolus was an immaculately coloured, very imperious King Charles spaniel. I wondered. Carolus was rather accustomed to having his human to himself. So was Bellamy, probably. Though his name was propitious. Bel ami. Beautiful friend.
‘Sister Mary’s got everyone looking for a dog,’ chimed in Cherie. ‘I met some of her homeless in the street. They were looking for a smallish sort of border collie.’
‘I hope they find him,’ I said.
‘If he’s in the city, they’ll find him,’ Cherie assured me. ‘They go everywhere. No one notices the homeless; people’s eyes slide right over them, as though being homeless is catching.’ The edge of bitterness was understandable; Cherie had been homeless herself for a period. It can’t have been anything but difficult. It might even have been devastating. I didn’t know. I had never asked.
‘Oasis muffins and teacakes,’ said Goss, putting the desired items into paper bags. Goss was good at these sorts of interruptions, even when she was speaking, not texting. They were the spoken equivalent of KTHXBAI. ‘Have a nice picnic!’
‘We’re nearly sold out,’ I commented, looking around at the denuded shelves. I always knew we were sold out when I could see the whole of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, a print of which is hung on the side wall. The strange fleshly fountain was spurting. I wondered about that Hieronymus sometimes.
‘I can do the banking and close up,’ offered Goss, ‘if you want to slip upstairs and see if everything’s all right.’
‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘But what leads you to believe that it mightn’t be?’
‘Jason said you had a zombie.’
‘At the beginning,’ I agreed. ‘He’s looks much better now.’
‘They do that to fool you so they can eat out your brains,’ Goss told me solemnly. ‘You be careful!’
I promised I would.
I do not know whether anyone has explained the concept of fiction to Goss, or if she would believe them if they did. As far as she was concerned, zombies existed. Well, anything that tried to eat my brains was going to find themselves flattened with a skillet. I had just the pan, made of cast iron and long-handled, for a good swing. Zombies, indeed.
I took a sourdough loaf I had reserved for myself and the remaining muffins and went upstairs.
There were two men sitting at the kitchen table but no zombies.
‘I come bearing muffins,’ I announced. ‘More tea?’
‘That would be kind,’ said the soldier. ‘You’re a verra guid baker!’
‘Thank you.’ I put on the kettle and looked at Daniel for a cue.
He put his phone back in his pocket and frowned. ‘Alasdair has lost his dog, Geordie,’ he said gravely. ‘A sort of spotted border collie.’
‘That’s a shame,’ I said. And it was, but it hardly seemed like a matter of life and death.
‘We were together in Afghanistan,’ explained the soldier in his quiet, broad Scots. ‘He’s a trained sniffer. Bombs, drugs. He go’ a medal. Then when … when I was taken oot, they let me take Geordie with me. We were discharged from the army in Townsville. I wasn’t gonny risk him in a plane, because they don’t pressurise cargo holds. Ah’ve been drivin’ doon here for weeks. Nice and slowly, gettin’ used to bein’ … no’ a soldier.’
‘Go on,’ I encouraged.
‘So, I go’ to the city, we’re bidin’ in a hostel in King Street. I was just takin’ him for his evening walk when I were beltit from behind. I fell, an’ Geordie …’
‘Ran away?’ I suggested.
His eyes flashed, his fists clenched. ‘He wudn’t run away. He stayed with me through aw of it, the explosions and the gunfire. He was taken. He was taken from me!’ His voice was rising. Daniel put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Of course he didn’t run away,’ he said in a soothing rumble. ‘Now, you need to rest. Everyone is out looking for Geordie.’
‘I walked aw night,’ whispered Alasdair. ‘Callin’ him. He only knows the Gaelic words. That’s why they retired him wi’ me.’
‘You walked all night and you had a blow to the head,’ confirmed my adored one. ‘Now you’re going to lie down in the spare room and rest. Meroe’s given you a charm. You won’t dream.’
‘I won’t?’ he asked, very quietly.
‘You won’t,’ I assured him. ‘She’s the most powerful witch in these parts. When she bespells something, it stays bespelled.’
He clutched the charm. ‘It smells like thyme,’ he said, which had such an exquisitely painful double meaning that I turned around to look out the window while Daniel found Alasdair an old tracksuit and made up the spare bed.
When he was done the soldier rose and made his way to the guest room, then paused with his hand on the door. ‘You’ll call me …’
‘The very second I know something,’ said Daniel.
The door shut. We heard a weary sigh, followed by a creak as he climbed into the bed. A comfortable one. Of all creatures, Jekyll, who must have followed me upstairs, pawed at the door. She probably wanted to sleep on his boots.
‘All right, fetish kitty,’ I told her, and opened it enough for her to slip inside.
‘Did you say muffins?’ asked Daniel.
We took our tea and muffins into the parlour, so that Alasdair could sleep in peace.
‘All right, tell me what’s going on,’ I demanded.
‘Lost dog,’ he replied, straight-faced.
I gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘Why is this dog so important?’
‘I’m waiting for a bit more info from a few friends, but Alasdair bears all the marks of a man who was tortured. At a guess, he was hung by the wrists with his toes just touching the ground – the Pathan like that one. You can relieve the pain in your arms only by increasing the pain in your feet. After a few hours, the patient suffocates. The diaphragm cannot relax.’
‘Like crucifixion,’ I said. I had read a book about an archaeological investigation into crucifixion and I really wished I hadn’t. If you’re nailed to the cross and hanging up, you have a choice between taking the weight off your feet and hanging by your hands, or easing the pain in your arms and hands and having your feet in excruciating agony. But the suffering lasts longer than the Pathan method. That’s why Pilate was surprised when the messengers came to him to say that Christ was dead. His first response was ‘What, already?’
Daniel looked blank. Of course. Being a Jew, he only knew the first bit of the Bible.
‘Never mind.’ I waved a discussion of theology away. ‘So he was captured and tortured. But clearly he was either rescued, or released, or he escaped, because here he is.’
Daniel scrubbed both hands through his dark hair. ‘I suspect he was invalided out of the service with PTSD.’
‘Post-traumatic stress disorder?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Nightmares, flashbacks, hyperawareness, delusions. High risk of suicide. The only thing he loves enough to live for is his dog.’