Running Scared (20 page)

She felt about Bonnie the way I felt about Tig herself, so I understood. Bonnie came towards me and stood right in front of my boots, still looking up at me expectantly. She was mostly white, with a brown patch over the right eye and the ear above it. On that same right flank she had another large brown patch and a brown tip to her tail. On the left-hand side she was white all over – except for the tail tip. Looking at her from the right side or the left was like looking at two different dogs – on the one side a brown and white one and on the other, a white one.

‘What about her food?’ I asked.

‘’Sall right, I brought some.’ Tig delved in the haversack and produced a tin of some dog food or other. ‘She’s no trouble, really.’

My attention had moved to the haversack. ‘I see you’ve brought all your gear. Jo Jo will know straight away when he gets back that you’ve taken off.’

‘Don’t care. I’ve done it now. Can’t go back.’ She looked round. ‘Where do I sleep?’

‘On the sofa.’ I indicated it. She was right. She couldn’t go back and I couldn’t tell her to leave. Like it or not, I was stuck with her.

There was something else I had to draw her attention to right away. ‘That’s the bathroom,’ I said, pointing. ‘You can have a shower. Why don’t you take one now and I’ll make us some sort of supper?’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘It’ll be nice to have the use of a proper bathroom again.’

Bonnie gave a short excited bark.

‘Yes,’ I told her, ‘we can bath you, too.’

While Tig showered, I put bathing Bonnie into practice. I ran warm water into the kitchen sink, scooped her up in my arms and stood her in the pool. She didn’t mind being picked up, but she was doubtful about being stood in the water. She sniffed at it, had a go at drinking it, and then looked at me reproachfully.

‘Sorry, but it’s for all our benefit,’ I told her. I wet her all over and, careful to avoid her eyes, lathered her up with some washing-up liquid. She cringed miserably, her ears flattened and her tail drooped. By the time I’d finished rinsing her off, she looked like a drowned rat.

I’d found an old towel which I wrapped round her and lifted her to the floor. My intention was to dry her off, but she had other ideas about that, wriggled out of my grip and scuttled off. She then shook herself vigorously, waterdrops flying everywhere, showering the carpet and furniture.

‘Oy,’ I ordered. ‘Stop that and come here—’

I set off in pursuit with the towel, but Bonnie was quicker than me, adept at squeezing through small spaces and, just when I thought I could grab her, putting on an extra spurt of speed and slithering through my grasp.

After five minutes of this, I was breathless. Bonnie – who’d regarded the chase as a great game – was wagging her tail and barking at me to keep going.

‘Game’s over,’ I told her, collapsing on the sofa. Bonnie now came over to me and allowed me to pat her. The chase had pretty well dried her coat which was now quite silky, with a tendency in the longer hair to wave. Instead of smelling of grubby dog, she now smelled of lemon fragrance from the washing-up liquid.

‘Hey,’ said Tig, emerging from the bathroom, ‘she looks pretty good.’ Tig was looking an awful lot better, too, with her hair washed and a fresh look to her skin.

I hauled myself off to the kitchen to clean out the sink. I splashed a bit of bleach round to kill any germs or bugs which might have dropped off Bonnie. Then I turned my attention to supper. Having houseguests looked like turning out to be a lot of work.

I’m not a cook and when I opened my store cupboard, I realised I wasn’t much of a housekeeper either. It held half-a-dozen eggs, the rest of the packet of pasta from last week, two tins of beans, a half-squeezed tube of tomato paste and some bread. I made us scrambled eggs and toast.

Tig ate it up appreciatively and while we dined in style, Bonnie gobbled up her dinner from a dented tin dogbowl Tig had brought with her. They were easy to please, I’ll say that.

‘How will your parents take to Bonnie?’ I asked.

Tig looked over the rim of her coffee mug. ‘Well, there might be a bit of a problem with that.’

My heart sank. ‘Problem?’

‘Yes, my mum’s so houseproud, I told you. She doesn’t like animals about the place. She says they shed hairs. So, um, I don’t think I can take Bonnie to Dorridge. I thought, well, you might like her – or you could find a nice home for her. She deserves a nice home,’ added Tig pathetically.

The pathos worked on old gents, not on me. ‘Forget it,’ I said robustly. ‘I am not taking in Bonnie.’

There was a clatter from the kitchen and Bonnie appeared, dragging along her empty tin dish. She dropped it in front of us and barked.

‘There,’ said Tig. ‘She’s telling you she wants a drink of water. She’s ever so clever.’

I went to fill the dish. ‘This is temporary,’ I said to Bonnie as I set it down. ‘You are just passing through, right?’

Bonnie gave an excited little yelp and fixed me with that expectant look. I was beginning to recognise it. It was the canine equivalent of Tig’s Little Nell act. Resist me and have me on your conscience for ever, it said.

‘Don’t push your luck,’ I told her.

We all three settled down cosily for the night, quite soon after supper. It had been a long day for all of us.

As I’ve mentioned before, my bedroom was the adaptation of a former Victorian coal-cellar under the pavement, and reached by a short passage from my basement living room, through the basement itself. The bedroom was, of course, windowless, although some light managed to get in through an opaque toughened glass panel in the ceiling, i.e., the pavement above, which replaced the former metal cover of the coal chute. I retired for the night in this tomblike little room, leaving Tig and Bonnie curled up together on my blue rep sofa in the living room.

Exhausted, I went out like a light. I was woken at some ungodly hour by a hand shaking my shoulder.

‘Fran?’ Tig’s voice came as little more than a breath in the darkness. ‘Wake up and don’t make a noise.’

I was awake in an instant, every instinct straining. I couldn’t see Tig but knew she was there by the bed. I also heard the sound of something struggling and realised she must be holding Bonnie in her arms.

‘What is it?’ I sat up and swung my legs to the ground. My foot bumped against her leg and she moved back. The struggling sound was renewed together with a muffled whine.

Tig shushed the little dog and I guessed she had one hand clamped over Bonnie’s muzzle to stop her barking.

‘Someone’s trying to get into the flat,’ she whispered.

Chapter Eleven

Together we edged back into the living room where enough light seeped through the basement window from the streetlamps outside to reveal Tig’s silhouette. In her arms Bonnie wriggled like a creature berserk, desperate to be allowed to do her job and see off any intruder.

He, the visitor, was at the basement window. The curtain was drawn and all we could see was his fuzzy outline and upraised arms as he worked his way round the frame. These were old houses and didn’t, alas, have double-glazing, just old-fashioned single-paned windows in a wooden frame. He must have recced beforehand and had probably thought entry would be a doddle. Now he was probably realising that safety catches must be in place on the inside.

I felt slightly sick and was glad I’d wedged the medicine cabinet in the garden window. He’d have squeezed his way through there in a few seconds. The thing was, who was he?

‘Do you think it’s Jo Jo?’ I whispered, not that I thought it really was. But there was an outside chance.

Tig dismissed it. ‘No . . . he doesn’t know I’m here. That guy at the window’s not big enough for Jo Jo, anyway. Is it that bloke you were so scared of the other day?’

Tig hadn’t been so wrapped up in her own problems that she’d forgotten the fright she’d given me when she’d stopped me in the street.

‘Sorry,’ I murmured. ‘Should have warned you this might—’

Tig hadn’t got a free hand but used her elbow to jab me painfully in the ribs as a sign to keep quiet. We waited.

He’d moved away a little from the window but had now returned and began to do something down in the right-hand corner of the window pane. There was a faint squeaky scratchy noise.

Bonnie, frustrated to the point of madness, tried to tear her muzzle free of the restraining hand and renewed her efforts in Tig’s arms, both of which were now tightly wrapped round the terrier’s frantic body.

Whoever he was, he was a pro and had come prepared. He was cutting a hole in the glass. Tig leaned towards me and put her mouth to my ear.

‘When he gets his hand through, you pull back the curtain and I let Bonnie go, right?’

I nodded, though she probably couldn’t see it. There was a pause in activity at the window pane and then a soft tap. The small circle of glass fell inward but was prevented from falling to the ground and shattering noisily by the sticky tape he’d fixed to it to prevent this. He knew his stuff. We watched, horrified yet fascinated, even Bonnie stopped wriggling. Through the thin curtain, we saw a hand emerge through the hole into our space, and fingers feel about for the safety catch. It was like one of those old horror movies, you know,
The Mummy’s Hand
, but I was beyond being merely scared, I was almost paralysed with fear.

He’s not in yet, I reassured myself. And there are two of us, three with Bonnie.

‘Now!’ breathed Tig.

I leaped forward and yanked back the curtain. Bonnie, released, exploded out of Tig’s embrace, flew at the hole in the window pane and sank her teeth into the searching hand. There was a scream of surprise and pain from outside. I dashed to the wall and switched on the light.

He was pressed against the window, his face contorted in pain and rage, but I recognised him as the little fellow who’d come to the shop. He was mouthing oaths in some foreign language, possibly Spanish or Portuguese. I’m not well up in either of those, but I knew it wasn’t Italian. I could see his small white teeth and his eyes were like a wild animal’s. I thought, this is the man who killed Gray Coverdale, and if he gets in here, he’ll kill us for sure for doing this to him.

He was trying to get his hand back through the hole, but Bonnie, true to her terrier instincts, didn’t let go but hung on grimly. Blood was dripping down the windowsill. Suddenly he pushed his hand forward, instead of trying to tug it back towards him, then jerked it viciously back again. It must have hurt him, but it hurt Bonnie too as her nose crashed into the cut edge of the glass. She yelped and fractionally loosened her grip.

Tig and I both yelled at her to let go. We didn’t want her injured. Further confused, she dropped to the ground. The man pulled his free hand back through the hole a split second before Bonnie recovered enough to grab it again. Gripping injured fingers to his chest, he bolted out of the basement. We could hear the soft thud of his feet running away along the pavement.

Tig was kneeling on the floor trying to examine Bonnie’s nose. Bonnie, cheated of her victim, was yelping and squealing, in no mood to stand still for a medical. She got loose and hurled herself at the front door, barking furiously.

We dragged her away and calmed her down. The side of her muzzle was scratched but she was otherwise unharmed. The blood on the windowsill was the intruder’s. Serve him right.

‘I’m really sorry, Tig,’ I said. ‘I should have explained things to you before you came here.’

‘What’s going on, then?’ asked Tig. She disappeared into the kitchenette and could be heard switching on the kettle. We’d both come down in the world but we’d both been brought up on traditional lines and knew the golden rule: whatever the emergency, get the tea brewing.

Bonnie ran back and forth beneath the window sniffing at the carpet and from time to time, putting her paws on the sill and sniffing along there. She was reliving her victory over the would-be intruder in her mind. Probably, like many humans, she was garnishing it with a few extra heroics, although to my mind, she’d been quite heroic enough.

‘The other evening,’ I explained to Tig when we’d got our mugs of tea and settled down on the sofa on top of Tig’s sleeping bag, ‘a man was murdered out there, in my basement.’

Tig sipped at her tea and eyed me through a fringe of hair. There was a new air of friendliness about her. She’d woken up next to a body: I’d come home and found one on my doorstep. We had something in common.

‘Why?’ she asked.