Peter Corris - Beware of the Dog

‘One’s enough.’

‘I can’t believe this. We’re talking about a dog. We’re human beings…’

‘Yes,’ she said bitterly. ‘We are, and just think what we’ve been doing-what I’ve done, what Robert’s done. We’re wonderful aren’t we, we human beings? So kind, so loyal.’

I could sense the madness rising in her again. ‘OK, OK,’ I said quietly. ‘Think of it this way. We’re all animals together. The lot of us. Particularly you and me in these cages. Animals fight for their survival.’

‘That’s nonsense. That’s…’

The sound of the Land Cruiser’s engine stopped her. It approached fast, motor roaring, headlights blazing and steam jetting from the exhaust. In the surge of hope I’d had I’d forgotten about the cold. Now it gripped me again and I could feel my joints stiffening and my body cooling as if I were dead already. Crosbie pulled up with a showy skid on the bricks. He stopped a few metres from the cages with the lights full on us. There was something roped to the bonnet. I squinted above the beams. It was the yellow dog. Its battered head hung loose and wet over the right mudguard.

Crosbie switched off the engine but left the lights on. He jumped down and pulled the pistol from his pocket. He slipped on the wet bricks, cursed and strode away to turn off the hose.

Paula said, ‘Even a dog that ugly shouldn’t have its head beaten in.’

I didn’t say anything. The point didn’t interest me. I was going to die in a worse way than I had imagined, and I’d imagined some pretty bad ways.

Crosbie came back and stood in front of the cages. ‘Well, there he is, my dear little step-sister. Your precious Rudi. I always wondered about you and Rudi Number One. Did you jerk him off or did you go all the way?’

Crosbie’s laugh was drowned out by Paula’s. She shrieked and howled and beat her feet on the floor. Crosbie took a step back. Then he yelled, ‘Shut up, you mad bitch!’

The lights were dazzling me, distorting everything. He was a dark, distant figure, twitching with agitation. I was a sitting duck. Even if I retreated to the rear of the cage I’d only be three metres away from the gun and transfixed like a spotlighted rabbit. I stayed up there by the bars.

‘Why did you kill Nadia?’ I said.

Crosbie pointed the pistol at my head. ‘She was a slut, a whore.’

Paula’s voice was breathless after her fit of laughter. ‘And she wouldn’t fuck you.’

‘Shut up! It was a sort of accident.’

‘Lamberte and Karen weren’t an accident though,’ I said. ‘How did you manage that?’

I didn’t really care. I just wanted to keep him talking. While he talked I drew breath. You don’t talk to a dead man, not for long.

Crosbie took a clasp knife from his pocket and unfolded a long blade.

I watched, fascinated. What the hell is he going to do with that?

He seemed almost to be in a daze as he cut the ropes tying the big dog to the Land Cruiser. The body flopped onto the wet bricks. He put his foot against it and slid it across to the front of Paula’s cage. ‘I found out about Karen and Patrick,’ he said dreamily. ‘I just couldn’t stand it. Verity’s the only person in the whole family who’s got any goodness in her and look what was happening. Her husband and her sister…’

Paula chortled. ‘Who wouldn’t fuck you, would she, Bobbykins? Didn’t want your smelly little dick in her. Like me.’

‘That wasn’t all I wanted,’ Crosbie said. ‘I wanted what we never had-love, warmth, understanding. Not those fucking boarding schools and tennis lessons and riding lessons and

‘Poor little rich boy,’ Paula mocked.

‘I tried to talk to Karen. I tried to tell her about Nadia. She said she’d go to the police if I didn’t leave her alone. I had to kill her.’

‘How?’ I said quickly. I wanted to anticipate Paula’s next piece of derision, although I could see no hope in our situation. Crosbie was upset and shaky but power is power and a victim is a victim, unmistakably.

‘She laughed at me. She told me she was going up to the mountains with Patrick and that she’d talk things over with him. They planned to blackmail me, and Paula was in it with them.’

Paula spat at him through the bars. ‘You’re wrong, Robert. But I did see Karen a few weeks ago. She told me you’d finally showed that you were as crazy as Nadia, as crazy as the rest of us.’

Very deliberately, Crosbie put two fingers of his free hand into the blood and brain tissue of the dead dog. The stuff was almost frozen but his fingers came out wet. He daubed it on his face like an Commanche going into battle. He crouched, sprang to his left, brought the pistol up and pointed it through the grill at Paula. I admit it: my first thought was, If he shoots her he can’t shoot me. But I screamed at him, trying to draw out the moment, the second, the instant.

‘How did you do it, Robert? How?’

‘I learned electronics at Sydney Technical College and explosives in the army reserves. I broke into Karen’s flat and planted the device in her overnight bag. She kept it half-packed with a transistor radio and a camera and stuff. It was easy. She told me when she was going. I calculated when she would arrive. It was easy.’

‘A clean sweep,’ I said. ‘After you kill Paula. Mind you, there’s still Verity.’

His head snapped round towards me. His deep set eyes were small, dark points in his pale, smudged face. He looked like a badly made-up clown. The angle stopped me from seeing it, but indications were that he kept the. 38 trained steadily on Paula’s face.

‘Not Verity,’ he said.

I was frozen to the bone, itchy and dying by inches, but Crosbie’s agonies were sustaining me in a bizarre, unfathomable way. He dabbed more blood and grey goo on his face.

‘Why not?’ I said.

Paula’s screech cut through with intensity and passion. ‘Because she does it with him. Don’t you see? Little Bobby and Verity have been doing it since they were kids. Tell me, Bobby. Is she the only woman you’ve had? The only one? You’ll never get another, will you? You can’t kill her. Not Verity. Not your only love. Not your only cunt.’

‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! No! No! I would never. I couldn’t.. ’

‘Couldn’t is right,’ Paula crowed. ‘Couldn’t-that’s the problem, eh, Bobby?’

Crosbie seized the bars of the cage and tugged on them. A ring on one of his fingers shrieked against the metal. ‘I’ll kill you,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll kill you now. Now!’

The big black and tan dog must have made its leap from five metres away. It was nowhere in sight and then it was on top of Crosbie, throwing him sprawling to the ground and tearing at him with its paws and teeth. Crosbie screamed and tried to seize its head but the dog snapped at his hands and kept digging its claws into his body. Crosbie tried to roll away but Rudi was too big, too heavy, too motivated. He tore off an ear and then sank his teeth deep into the flesh of Crosbie’s neck. The man went limp. The dog chewed on him a bit and then lifted its head.

‘Rudi,’ Paula whispered. ‘Oh, Rudi.’ She extended her hand through the bars. Confidence.

The dog eased itself up off Crosbie and padded across to Paula’s cage. She made soothing noises and fondled his ears and muzzle.

‘Good boy, Rudi. There’s a good boy.’

I must have been holding my breath the whole time. I let it out loudly and the dog’s head turned in my direction. Its growl lifted the hairs on my scalp and made me want to crawl to the back of the cage.

‘No, Rudi. No, darling. It’s all right, boy. He’s a nice man.’

The headlights blazed, the bricks were slick with Crosbie’s blood. The dog I’d killed lay splayed out, one of its paws almost touching Crosbie’s head. I shivered and felt my body weaken as if my blood was turning sour. The wind had lifted and the cold was intense.