Emotionally Weird(96)

‘What do you want anyway?’ he asked gloomily. ‘Not money, I hope, the cow’s cleaned me out. Well, don’t just stand there,’ he added, ‘give me a hand.’

The filing-cabinet turned out to be lighter than it looked because it was empty.

‘I thought I’d get a woman,’ Chick said, contemplating the filing-cabinet as if he was thinking of actually keeping a woman in it, ‘to file and type,’ he said, ‘that sort of . . . stuff.’

I thought about recommending Andrea’s typing skills to him but she’d just finished carrying Proteus up four flights of stairs and was lying on the floor, panting, with her eyes shut.

‘Make yourself at home, why don’t you?’ Chick said to her, stepping over her prone form to reach a poke of chips in the in-tray on his battered desk. ‘I didn’t know you had a kid,’ he remarked to me, offering a cold chip to Proteus.

‘He’s not mine.’

‘You should be careful,’ Chick said. ‘Kidnapping’s a crime.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Terri said, ‘it’s funny you should mention that.’

The Sewells rented a big semi-detached house called ‘Birnham’, perched halfway up the slopes of the Law. Getting in was no problem; Chick had picked the lock on the back door before we’d even got Proteus out of the car. I wondered how noticeable four adults and a baby would be breaking into a house on a quiet street. Very noticeable, probably.

‘And you’re sure they’re not here?’ Andrea hissed for the hundredth time.

‘No, I told you,’ Terri said impatiently. ‘I heard them say they were going to Edinburgh. And they were leaving the dog.’

~ How convenient for the plot, Nora murmurs. If you can call it plot.

Andrea had been in favour of taking the role of getaway driver and staying outside in the Cortina, but eventually had to admit, under Chick’s relentless interrogation, that she had no idea how to drive.

Inside Birnham, we entered each room cautiously, speaking in the hushed whispers of church-goers (or burglars).

‘This feels so . . . illegal,’ Andrea said.

‘That’s because it fucking is,’ Chick said, ‘and if I go down for stealing a dog that doesn’t even run for money, someone’s going to pay, I tell you.’ This last remark seemed to be addressed to me but I ignored him.

‘His bark’s worse than his bite,’ I reassured Andrea, who was regarding Chick with horror, never having been exposed to him before. Terri was sniffing the room for musk and spoor of dog. ‘He’s definitely here,’ she said with the conviction of a medium.

I had never been in such a clean house, it was like being in a showhouse or the home of a robot. All the décor was in muted shades of magnolia and there wasn’t a single thing out of place, not a cup unwashed or a cushion unplumped. We tiptoed around the place like cat-burglars – or, to be more accurate – dog-burglars.

In the bedroom the Sewells’ night clothes were lying neatly on the end of the bed, maroon pyjamas for him, a lacy honeymoon-type garment for her. I placed Proteus on the eiderdown – a thick quilted-satin affair that was asking to be reclined on, and I couldn’t overcome an irresistible urge to lie down on it next to where Proteus was drowsily sucking his thumb. I would undoubtedly have fallen asleep if Hank/Buddy hadn’t suddenly bounded out from nowhere in a paroxysm of barking and bared teeth, like a hound from hell.

Chick and Proteus both started screaming while Andrea tried to faint, but Terri dropped to her knees and held her arms open like a beseeching martyr so that I was convinced she was going to be torn to pieces; but luckily at that moment Hank/Buddy recognized her and fell into her arms. (A girl in love is a frightening sight.)

‘Ah, true love,’ Chick said sarcastically. ‘Right, mission accomplished, can we go?’ he said, hustling everyone out onto the landing, just in time for us to hear the most unwelcome sound imaginable – the noise of the key turning in the lock downstairs.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,’ Chick said expressively.

‘Maybe it’s burglars,’ Andrea whispered. I didn’t bother pointing out the odds against two sets of burglars breaking into a house at the same time and instead, trying to stay in the shadows, I peered tentatively over the banister rail into the stairwell below, where Martha and Jay were depositing piles of Jenners’ carrier bags on the terrazzo and looking around for the sight of their dog running to greet them. Which he was unable to do because Terri had him pinned to the ground with her entire body.

‘Where’s Mummy’s little pooch?’ Martha cried and Jay shouted, ‘Buddy boy, where are you, boy?’ to no avail as Terri had wrapped her hands round Mummy’s little pooch’s muzzle so that the only bit of his anatomy able to greet his owners was a mute tail. Jay suddenly bounded up the stairs – too quickly for any of us to react – and stopped in surprise when he reached the top stair and saw the little party waiting to greet him. He frowned, trying to make sense of it.