Deception by Ken McClure Read Free Book Online Page B

propped up the man’s bicycle on the garden wall and opened her front door to call out, ‘Andrew!’
    Andrew, her husband, hearing the note of anxiety in her voice came to the door, newspaper in hand, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘Good God, what on earth’s happened?’
    ‘ Sam’s hurt bad. We have to get him to a vet.’
    Moira’s husband went to get his jacket and she turned to the man holding Sam. ‘Mr? . . . ’
    ‘ McDougal. Lawrie McDougal.’
    ‘ Mr McDougal, I can’t begin to thank you for all you’ve done. I just don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along.’
    The man shuffled uncomfortably under the weight of praise and handed over the dog to her. ‘Don’t mention it. I just hope your dug’s going to be all right, missus.’
    Moira smiled and waved to him as he cycled off and her husband appeared with the car keys in his hand. Moira sat with Sam on her knee as they drove along to Blackbridge less than two miles away. ‘Let’s hope he hasn’t gone out for the evening,’ said Andrew.
    ‘ If he has, Mr McDougal said there’s a vet in Edinburgh with a round the clock call-out service.’ said Moira.
    They drew up outside the vet’s house in Blackbridge, an old sandstone building in a street running parallel to the main one. The vet, James Binnie, worked from home, his surgery being a low concrete extension tacked on to the back of the house. As most of his work was concerned with farm animals, this sufficed for the few domestic pets he had to deal with.
    Andrew knocked on the front door, cradling the dog in his arms. Moira stood by his side, still wearing her bloodstained blouse. The door was opened by Binnie himself, a small man in his early forties slipping into the bespectacled, bald anonymity of middle age. He was wearing slippers and had a glass of something in his hand. ‘What the dickens . . .’ he exclaimed at the sight that met him.
    ‘ It’s my dog, Sam,’ said Moira, speaking in the flat monotone that shock had induced in her. ‘Rats went for him.’
    ‘ You’d better come round,’ said Binnie, pausing to put his glass down on some surface behind the door and lifting his jacket from a hook there. He led the way round the back of the house, squeezing between a wall and a mud-spattered Volvo estate that was parked there. Andrew followed, lifting Sam up to clear the Volvo’s door mirror. Moira brought up the rear.
    The fluorescent lights of the surgery stuttered up to full illumination and Sam was laid gently down on Binnie’s examination table. Moira patted his flank reassuringly while Binnie started to take a look at his injuries.
    ‘ You’ve certainly been in the wars, wee man,’ he said, examining Sam’s snout and getting a whimper of protest from the puppy. ‘We’re going to have to stitch these cuts, I’m afraid. He moved on to Sam’s paw, getting louder protests this time as he sought to establish any bone damage. ‘Well, I think you’ve been lucky there, wee man. Nothing broken but we may have to send you into the vet school to have these tendons properly seen to. In the meantime we’ll get you cleaned up, stitched and I’ll give you a couple of jabs against infection.’
    Moira breathed a sigh of relief at what the vet was saying. It all translated into a simple truth. Sam was going to be all right.
    ‘ I think you better sit down, said Binnie to her as he noticed her wobble slightly and clutch the side of the table.
    ‘ I think maybe you’re right,’ agreed Moira, now smiling for the first time. She sat down beside Andrew who was leaning forward, elbows on his knees as he watched the proceedings.
    ‘ I take it, he went for the rats,’ said Binnie as he cleaned Sam’s wounds.
    ‘ I don’t know. I’m not absolutely sure,’ said Moira. ‘I threw a stick for him and it went into the canal. One minute he was standing at the edge, looking at it, the next thing I knew, one of the things was biting his face.’
    ‘ The canal?’