Ken McClure - Deception

He was almost on the point of giving up when he saw them. The first one had been badly gnawed at — presumably by its fellows, but the second corpse seemed to be in better condition. He took out the plastic bag he’d brought with him for the purposes of transporting it and made to pick the animal up by the tail. He let out an involuntary yell when it suddenly turned its head and bit him on the finger. He snatched his hand away, wisely resisting — but only at the last moment — the temptation to put his finger in his mouth. Rat bite fever he could do without.

Instead, he forced the wound to bleed, allowing the blood to clean it out. At least he now understood why this rat was in better condition than the other: it was still alive!

In the torch beam he could now see that the animal’s back had been broken by blows from the bicycle pump but it was still breathing, although unable to move anything save its head. He didn’t want to cause any further physical damage to it, mainly because it might interfere with pathological examination he was going to request, so he resolved to put it out of its misery by asphyxiation. He unwrapped the handkerchief that he’d put round his finger and used it to cut off air to the animal’s mouth and nose until it was dead. It was a very unpleasant few minutes and Binnie felt nauseous throughout. When the rat was dead, he held it up by the tail and dropped it into the plastic bag before starting back for home. By now, he was wishing that he’d never set out on this course at all. He could have been sitting at home, watching television with a whisky in his hand.

He had almost reached the clearing where he would leave the towpath to rejoin the road when he suddenly had the unpleasant feeling that he was not alone. At first it was only a feeling, although it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but then he heard rustling sounds coming from the hedgerow on the far side of the clearing. He kept moving, and then he was sure he heard someone say, ‘Ssh!’

In a way it was a relief to hear it. It told him that he was not the target of muggers or whoever was hiding there. They seemed to be waiting for him to pass, hoping to remain undetected. As he walked past and left the clearing to rejoin the road he caught a whiff of... something in the air. What was it? Something ordinary, an everyday substance that he couldn’t put a name to because it was out of context, then he realised what it was. It was petrol!

In an instant he knew what was going on. The people hiding in the hedgerow were lurking at the eastern edge of Peat Ridge Farm. It was obviously their intention to set fire to the GM crop growing there. He hurried down the road to his house and called the police before he did anything else. His wife, Ann, came out into the hall and looked at him as if her were mad. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

‘It’s been quite an evening all in all,’ he replied, putting down the phone and trying to affect a smile. ‘I’ll have to dress this,’ he said, holding up the finger with the bloodstained hankie round it. ‘There’s going to be an attack on Ronald Lane’s place. There are some people hiding in a ditch up by the canal. They’ve got petrol with them.’

‘Looks like you came to blows with them.’

‘No, a rat did this,’ said Binnie. ‘This one.’ He held up the plastic bag containing the dead rat. ‘Pop it in the fridge, will you? There’s a love.’

‘My God, it was never like this on, All Creatures Great and Small,’ said his wife.

‘Whatever happened to cuddly kittens and robins with broken wings?’

‘Maybe I should give Ronald Lane a call as well,’ said Binnie as an afterthought. ‘The police might not get there in time. As if to prove him wrong, the sound of a police siren reached them from the distance. ‘I’ll do it anyway’ said Binnie. ‘Lane should be aware of what’s going on. How was your sister, by the way?’

‘Fine,’ replied Binnie’s bemused wife, as she watched him disappear out the door into the hall again. ‘She turned green and burst into flames last Thursday.’

‘Good,’ came the reply from the hall as a preoccupied Binnie picked up the phone and dialled Lane’s number. He had no sooner passed on the warning to Lane than he thought he’d better tell Tom Rafferty as well. He would be wondering what all the commotion was about.

The male voice that answered did not belong to Rafferty. ‘Who wants him?’

‘James Binnie, the vet.’

Rafferty came on the line and Binnie told him what was happening. ‘I think the police are going to get there on time,’ he said.

‘Pity,’ said Rafferty.

‘It’s about time you two resolved your differences,’ lectured Binnie. ‘The pair of you have split the village.’

‘I was going to call you in the morning,’ said Rafferty ignoring what Binnie had said. ‘Khan’s not very well. I’d like you to take a look at him.’

‘What’s the matter with him this time?’

‘His behaviour’s getting worse,’ replied Rafferty. ‘He’s getting really vicious, even to me, if you know what I mean. He damn nearly took my hand off when I put down his food bowl this morning.’

Binnie smiled. ‘Khan has never exactly been Lassie, has he Tom?’ he said.

‘I know he’s always been a bit of a handful, like,’ admitted Rafferty, ‘but Rotweilers aren’t meant to be lapdogs, are they? And it’s different now. He’s getting worse, I know he is.’

‘He’s probably getting old and crotchety like the rest of us Tom. But no matter, I’ll pop over and take a look at him tomorrow. Good night.’

A man’s voice said something in the background that Binnie couldn’t quite make out — something about having had long enough, he thought — and the phone clattered down and went dead. Binnie looked at the receiver in his hand and said, ‘And good night to you, sweet prince.’

Binnie returned to the living room and was about to start explaining to his wife what had been going on when an explosion rent the air. They both rushed outside and saw an orange glow to the southwest. ‘There goes the petrol,’ said Binnie. ‘They must be destroying the evidence: they’ve not had time to pour it on Lane’s crop.’

I just hope no one got hurt,’ said Ann Binnie.

‘Amen to that,’ said Binnie.

Steven drove up to Scotland on Friday. The plan was to spend Saturday with Jenny and the others and then drive over to Blackbridge on Sunday where he would take a look around and maybe speak to a few people before travelling home again. When Saturday dawned with clear blue skies and unbroken sunshine, Steven persuaded Sue to let him take not only Jenny, but her children too, away for the day so that she and her husband could have some time to themselves — a pretty rare event these days. They could go up to Glasgow perhaps, do some shopping and have lunch somewhere nice.

Sue agreed, but only after insisting that she would make up a picnic for them and making sure that Steven had a note of her mobile phone number just in case anything went wrong. The good weather dictated he should take the three children off down the Solway coast where they could build sand castles, dig tunnels and do the things that families did at the beach.

He listened to the excited chatter of the children in the back of the car on the way down and was pleased to hear that Jenny had been accepted by the other two as their sister, the continual fighting testified to that. He himself was always careful to bring presents for all three children when he came to visit. He didn’t want to be the kind of father to Jenny who just appeared from time to time bearing gifts while opting out of all the hard parts of parenthood but to a certain extent this was what was happening and events were being dictated by circumstances. While this was the case, he would try to be a part — a pleasant one, of all three children’s lives. As for the future, he couldn’t see that far ahead. In fact, he couldn’t see much further than tomorrow morning when he would drive up to Blackbridge and start working again.