Кит Мори - Deathly Wind

McArdle was a dog lover. He especially loved big powerful animals like these. He appreciated their strong muscles, their loyalty and the verve with which they attacked life. They were both bitches; mother and daughter. Dallas was the youngest and seemed capable of swimming forever. Tulsa had been just the same when she was young, and even now amazed McArdle by being able to keep up with her daughter. Especially on this late afternoon, after she had seemed so off colour in the morning and had vomited up her morning meal. He had thought she was coming down with a bug.

‘Fetch, girls! Fetch!’ he yelled, lobbing a large stick as far as he could.

The dogs charged in together and after a couple of lolloping splashes were soon out of their depth and were swimming in pursuit of the stick. The laird of Dunshiffin watched the progress of the big black and tan heads, yelling encouragement to them both. He delighted in the fact that they were both revelling in the competition. They reached the stick together and turned, each with an end in their mouth as they started to swim for shore.

Then the younger Dallas growled and managed to wrench the stick from her mother.

‘G’wan, Tulsa, don’t let her get away with that!’ McArdle shouted.

Dallas edged away and Tulsa seemed to put on a spurt as well. Then she gave a strange yelping bark and stopped. Dallas swam on, growling and working the stick into her mouth, her powerful teeth biting into the wood.

Tulsa’s head momentarily disappeared beneath the surface of the loch.

‘Tulsa!’ McArdle cried, as Dallas reached the shallows and bounded out of the water with the stick.

Tulsa’s head resurfaced again and McArdle began to heave a sigh of relief. Then her head started to sink again, but she spluttered and started to swim on weakly. Dallas, confused, stood in the water and barked continuously.

‘Come on, you stupid bitch!’ the laird screeched. ‘Come on!’

Once again the head started to sink and McArdle finally realized that his beloved dog was in real danger of drowning. He peeled off his jacket and tugged off his shoes, then went racing into the water, launching himself into a dive. As a youngster in Govan he had learned to swim competently. Now with a powerful crawl he swam as he had never done before, intent on saving one of the few living creatures that he actually felt anything for.

Ahead of him he saw the dog’s head spluttering as it attempted to swim on. And then he was on her. He grabbed her thick studded collar and immediately turned onto his back and began hauling her back towards the shore. A part of his mind reflected upon those life-saving classes that he had taken as a youngster, but never expected to use. And certainly not on saving a dog.

Tulsa was a dead weight by the time he reached the shore, and he himself was in a state of near panic.

‘Shut the hell up!’ he cried at Dallas, who was barking and running around in the shallow water in a frenzy.

He manhandled Tulsa through the shallows, immediately conscious of her weight increasing dramatically as they arrived on solid ground. He pulled her onto the pebble beach and stared, unsure of what to do next.

Then Tulsa began to convulse.

Katrina Tulloch bit her lip and rose from the dead body. She removed the earpieces of her stethoscope from her ears and coiled the instrument in her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Mr McArdle, but she’s gone!’

McArdle stared at her through tears. He swallowed back a lump in his throat. ‘How the hell? She was only eight, for God’s sake?’

Katrina looked down at the Rottweiler’s corpse lying in its own excrement, aware of the howling of Dallas, the younger dog in the back of the nearby 4 x 4. She had been in the vicinity when the laird’s call had come through via her automatic redirect to her mobile.

‘She was a powerful animal,’ she said. ‘Looked healthy enough and no obvious signs of death. Had she shown any symptoms in the last day or two?’

‘She’d been off her food a bit. She puked up food this morning.’

‘Anything else. Cough, weeing more? Any diarrhoea?’

McArdle shivered slightly as he stood in his sodden clothing. ‘Aye, as a matter of fact she’s had a bit of diarrhoea lately and seemed thirstier than usual. Oh, and Jesmond, the butler, was complaining about her slobbering on his precious hall floor.’

Katrina bent down and pulled open the dog’s lower jaw. She sniffed, then rose looking puzzled.

‘What’s wrong?’ McArdle snapped.

‘I thought I smelled garlic. Dogs don’t usually like that.’

‘Tulsa would eat anything,’ McArdle replied dismissively. ‘But what killed her?’

‘I won’t be able to tell anything else without doing a post-mortem.’

The laird shook his head. ‘No! You are not cutting up my Tulsa.’

Katrina shook her head sympathetically. ‘I can understand that, but what about some blood tests? I can run a screen and might be able to come up with an answer.’ She pointed to his wet clothes as involuntarily he shivered again. ‘And I think you’d better get home and get into some dry clothes, Mr McArdle. You don’t want to go down with something yourself.’

‘I’ll be OK. I’ve phoned for my boys to come and bring me some clothes. Can you take the blood here and now?’

Katrina hesitated. ‘I suppose so; it’s just that it might be easier if I took her body back to my surgery. If you want I could arrange for her to be cremated.’

McArdle shuddered rather than shivered this time. ‘I’m taking her back to the castle. She didn’t know it for long, but she seemed to like it well enough. Besides, I know that Dallas there will be feeling it, so burying her in the grounds seems right.’

Katrina went back to her van and got out her venepuncture kit and a few specimen bottles. She bent down by Tulsa’s body. ‘Did she have any different food in the last few days?’

‘She always has the best, and whatever extra scraps the boys give her. Why, what are you thinking?’

‘Just wondering if she could have taken something bad into her system.’

He glared at her. ‘Do you mean poison?’

‘I meant food poisoning, actually. But I suppose we’d need to consider if she could have eaten anything else. You don’t have rat poison down at the castle, do you?’

He turned away as she sank the needle into a vessel and pulled back on the syringe, dark purple blood oozing back into the plastic cylinder.

‘Are you a wee bit squeamish, Mr McArdle,’ Katrina asked matter-of-factly.

McArdle’s reply was curt. ‘I’m squeamish about nothing! And I’m scared of nothing.’

‘I didn’t mean anything,’ she replied apologetically. ‘You’ve had a shock, what with having to pull her out and everything.’

‘Never mind that,’ he replied. ‘What you were just saying though? About poison. Could someone have poisoned my dog?’

‘I can’t say without the results.’

‘But it is possible?’

‘Yes. If she was convulsing, like you said.’

The noise of a fast car coming along the road was followed by a screech of brakes and a skidding of wheels on gravel as a black Porsche Boxter ground to a halt. Liam Sartori and Danny Reid jumped out.

‘You OK, boss?’ cried Liam, as they jogged down to the loch side.

‘God! Is that Tulsa?’ Danny Reid asked. ‘Crikes, I am sorry to see that, boss.’

‘And is this the vet?’ asked Liam Sartori, eyeing Katrina admiringly. ‘Do you need a hand, dear?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t call me “dear”,’ Katrina returned, frostily. ‘And yes, I am the vet – and no, I don’t need any help.’

Sartori held his hands up in mock defence. ‘No offence meant.’