One Dog and His Boy

19 Tracker Dogs

It was Curzon himself who took the call from Kevin on the hillside, and he hung up feeling extremely excited and pleased. What a breakthrough! The boy not only sighted but actually caught: imprisoned in a shed and only waiting to be picked up.

For a few moments Curzon, in his mind, spent the reward money which Donald Fenton would pay him. He wasn’t so sure now about the yacht. A friend of his was building holiday homes on a Pacific island. Incredible houses they were, with five different swimming pools as well as the sea. Come to that, why wait till Fenton came up with the cash? Why not put down a deposit now? Leaning back in his chair, Curzon imagined himself standing on the top diving board, about to do a swallow dive into the turquoise water, while a cluster of beautiful girls in bikinis watched him from below. Then he remembered that Sprocket had to be sent north at once to bring the boy back, and he picked up the phone again.

“Sprocket?” he barked. “I need you straightaway. You’ve got to go up north – the boy’s been sighted.”

“Yes, sir. I know. But I am up north already.”

“Eh? What? What are you talking about?”

Curzon was completely confused. It was true he hadn’t seen Sprocket all day, but he often didn’t see him all day, and as a matter of fact he liked it better that way.

“I’m in Todcaster, sir,” came Sprocket’s patient voice. “I left you a message.”

“Oh, you did, did you? I’m afraid the computer’s down.”

Actually what had happened was that Curzon had found what seemed to him a load of gobbledegook on his screen and simply erased it. He could never remember codes.

“Now listen carefully,” he went on. “The message is from someone called Kevin Dawks. He’s on the road between Hilldale and Grant End.” He read off Kevin’s instructions. “‘No policemen,’ he said. He won’t talk to anyone in uniform. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir. Absolutely. I’ll make my way there at once.”

Sprocket had had a miserable time in Todcaster. After driving through the night, he arrived at the circus to find the stable lad who had phoned him in a raging temper.

“He’s done a bunk,” he told Sprocket. “Must have pushed off last night, but it was him all right, so I want some of that reward.”

After that, Sprocket had questioned various people in the circus, who told him that the boy had gone back to his Aunt Elsa who had sent for him because her brother-in-law had to have an operation.

Anyone else might have given up then, but not Sprocket. Ferreting around, he learned that some children from a care home had come to the circus, and been seen talking to the boy. So he drove to Greystoke House and parked his van opposite the gates.

He had just got out his binoculars and was getting ready to do some serious investigating when a woman knocked on the window and asked him for a cauliflower.

“A nice firm one,” she said, “but not too big. There’s only the two of us now, with my daughter having gone off to London.”

It was quite difficult to get rid of her, and in a way Sprocket blamed himself. If he had disguised the van as belonging to a plumber instead of a greengrocer, there would have been no bother. But though he had worked hard on his plumbing poem as he drove through the night, he hadn’t been able to find a suitable rhyme for toilet. There was “oil it” of course, but if there was one thing people didn’t want near their lavatories it was a lot of oil.

But there was worse to come. No sooner had he fixed his binoculars to his eyes than a fat woman burst through the gates and started threatening him.

“How dare you, you dirty old man!” she yelled. “I’ll have the police after you, spying on innocent children.”

As he drove away, Sprocket had been very upset. He was only twenty-six, and being called old was hurtful. So when his phone rang and he heard Curzon’s message, his spirits soared. Stopping only to adjust his moustache and consult his road map (because the instruction book for the new sat nav seemed to be in Finnish) he set off for the village of Hilldale.

Kevin had come round to find his trousers torn, and both his backside and his nose still painful, but the knowledge that he would soon be a rich man consoled him. And the wretched boy had gone quiet at last; there was no sound from inside the shed.

His first sight of the white van coming up the track made him start to his feet angrily. He didn’t want any bloomin’ vegetables and what did the bloke think he was doing, trespassing like that? But Sprocket’s first words allayed his fears.

“Milton Sprocket, from MMM,” he announced. “I gather you have the boy.”

“I’ve got the boy, but have you got the money?’

“The money will be forthcoming,” said Sprocket grandly. “As soon as I deliver the boy.”

“All right,” said Kevin. “Come on. He’s in the shed there. I had a devil of a time keeping him in.”

“Is he violent?” Sprocket asked anxiously. Children grew up very early these days, he knew, and they were strong. It was all that healthy food they were given to eat, and the exercise they took.

Kevin threw him a contemptuous glance. He unlocked the padlock, loosened the bolt, and stepped back.

Nothing happened.

“Come on out. I know you’re in there.”

Silence. Kevin made his way into the shed – and came out again.

“He’s done a bunk, the little …”

The language Kevin used surprised Sprocket. Some of the words he simply did not know, although he was a poet.

“He was in here,” said Kevin when he had sworn himself to a standstill. “It was him all right.”

“I don’t doubt it. He was seen in Todcaster last night.”

“I won’t be beaten by a squirt of a boy,” said Kevin. “But it’s all right, I know a friend who’ll help us find him. Come on. You can leave the van here.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to see Colin. He’ll put Darth and Terminator on the job. The boy won’t get away from them, I promise you.”

Darth and Terminator were dogs. Sprocket had to tell himself several times that that was what they were. They were not hellhounds, not monsters out of a hideous dream, but as the beasts growled and slavered and threw themselves against the wire fence of their enclosure it was hard to believe. When Kevin had explained that they were going to get hold of Colin’s tracker dogs, Sprocket had been nervous but excited. He hadn’t taken the course on tracking with animals at his detecting college because it cost extra, but he knew all about bloodhounds, with their wrinkled faces and melancholy eyes, who could follow the scent of any human being.

But Darth and Terminator did not have wrinkled faces and they did not have melancholy eyes. They were grizzled, short-haired beasts, squat and barrel-chested with small ears and slightly bandy legs. And they were vicious. The pit bull in their ancestry was easy to see, but there were other strains there, and the whole animal, as Colin explained, was a high-powered machine for tracking anything in flight and running it to the ground.

As Colin let them out of their enclosure and snapped on their leads, Sprocket allowed himself a question.

“They wouldn’t harm the boy, would they? I don’t think the reward will hold good if he’s damaged at all.”

“Na, they’re trained to a tee,” said Colin, spitting on to the grass. “They’ll hold a runaway down but they wouldn’t bite him. Unless I told them to tear him apart.”

While the terrifying animals were loaded into the back of the pick-up, Kevin put Sprocket in the picture. “There’s no one knows more about tracking with dogs than Colin,” he said.

It seemed that Colin had brought the sport of urban hunting to Todcaster. With Darth and Terminator, and a gang of friends with similar dogs, he went out at night after foxes who had come into town to raid the dustbins. Having no coverts to hide in, the foxes were easy prey.

“People wrote in and made a fuss,” said Colin. “Didn’t like their children finding headless foxes on the way to school.” He laughed – a deep rumbling sound that shook his swollen belly. “Darth won’t eat the back legs. He’s a picky eater, is Darth.”

They reached Kevin’s lock-up and the dogs bounded out. Sprocket gave Colin Hal’s handkerchief and the dogs sniffed round the shed. Then suddenly they burst into excited cries and raced off up the hill.

“Told you,” said Kevin. “He’ll have taken to the moors.”

The next hours were a nightmare for Sprocket, panting after Darth and Terminator as they strained at the end of their leads. The dogs kept up a steady pace and as they ran there came from their throats an eerie, half-crazed baying – a sound to freeze the blood.

“You’re sure they won’t harm the boy?” Sprocket repeated from time to time, remembering the headless foxes.

“Gentle as lambs they’ll be, when they’ve got him,” said Colin.

And Sprocket could only say again that for a boy brought back in pieces in a bin bag nobody would pay a penny.

The hunt went on. They stumbled through bogs, and over piles of last year’s bracken. The weather was changing. A sharp wind had blown in from the sea, followed by the first spots of rain, and it was now that Sprocket felt a chill on his upper lip and realized that the worst had happened. Somewhere on the way he had lost his deeply loved moustache.

And still the terrifying beasts raced on.

Then, when Sprocket thought he could not go another step, the dogs checked, sniffed hard, circled … and suddenly took off in a different direction with a series of wildly excited yelps.

“They’re getting close,” shouted Colin over his shoulder. “I’m going to let them go.”

He slipped off the leads and the slavering beasts were off at speed, their noses down, sounding off in triumph.

“This is it! They’ve found him! There – behind those trees,” shouted Colin. “Come on!”

He ran after the dogs and Kevin and Sprocket followed him. As they came into the copse, they saw that Colin was right. The hunt was over.

Darth and Terminator stood opposite each other, both tugging at something they held in their teeth, each dog claiming whatever it was as his own.

The men came closer and saw what it was. A blue face flannel.

It was not a good moment. The dogs showed no wish to go on with the hunt. As far as they could see they had done their job. They went on playing tug-of-war with their trophy while deep growls rumbled in their throats. Then when the flannel came away in two halves, they settled down to devour their prize.

“It’s going to be a rough night,” said Colin, turning up his collar against the rain. “We’d better get some shelter and try again in the morning. They’ll pick up the scent again soon enough.”

“What sort of shelter?” asked Sprocket nervously.

He was right to be nervous. Half an hour later they came to a bothy that Kevin knew about. It was nothing more than a rough, windowless hut with an earthen floor covered in sheep droppings. The wind roared through the cracks in the building. Water trickled down the walls.

Kevin and Colin did not seem to be bothered. They took out their hip flasks of whisky, belched, told a few stupid jokes, and were soon in a drunken sleep.

But for poor Sprocket, huddled in his jacket and as far away from the dogs as he could get, there was no sleep. He had never been so wretched in his life. He had put a few biscuits into his pocket before he set off – the plain kind with no disturbing raisins or nuts which might scratch the lining of his stomach – but whenever he tried to put one in his mouth either Darth or Terminator came and fastened their teeth round his wrist till he had handed it over.

As the miserable hours passed and the rain beat down on the roof, Sprocket did his best to console himself. Perhaps if he brought the boy back safely, Curzon would allow him to come upstairs sometimes. Perhaps he would even let him have an office next to the beautiful Fiona. And perhaps too the awful writer’s block which had attacked him would lift and he would be able to write his plumbing poem.

But it did not seem likely, and as the wretched night wore on there was worse to come. In a corner of the hut he heard the sound of one of the dogs being extremely sick. Shining his torch on to the ground, Sprocket saw – in a pool of vomit, the remnants of the blue flannel, and beside it, covered in slime but still quite recognizable, his much-loved and sadly missed moustache.

Hal and Pippa, as they stumbled through the wildness of the night, would have been grateful even for a leaking, windowless bothy in which to shelter. They were in the middle of the moor and hopelessly lost.

At first they had made good progress, navigating by the sun. Hal had even hoped that they might get to the coast that day. But very quickly the weather changed, the sun disappeared, and then came the darkness and the rain.

Both children had been brought up in town. The blackness of the night overwhelmed them. It was not just an absence of light, it was a malevolent force, and the rain did not come down only from the sky. It came from all sides, blown by the ceaseless wind. It ran down inside their anoraks; it drenched their shoes. And Hal was also suffering from delayed shock. That hour spent locked up in Kevin’s shed had shaken him more than he realized at the time. He began to think that they would never reach the cottage by the sea – that they were doomed to fail.

“If we stop now we’ll probably die of exposure,” said Pippa. “I never understood what that was, but I do now.”

“We’ll probably die of it whether we stop or not,” muttered Hal.

They stumbled on, over boulders, across streams that were hardly wetter than the ground beneath their feet, and the faithful dogs followed. From Li-Chee, shorn of his pelt, came noises that were not very lion-like. He gave small snuffles of distress, and when Pippa picked him up he buried his nose in her jacket. The others padded on resolutely. Fleck was keeping up well; he seemed to have grown up since he had saved Hal from Kevin’s clutches. And the dogs looked out for one another. If one of them for a moment vanished in the darkness, the others waited.

When they first saw a glimmer of light they hardly dared to believe it. They knew that people in the last stages of exhaustion see things that are not there. But the light was real. It grew stronger – and as they beat their way towards it they saw that it came from a tall, imposing building.

“It looks like a castle,” said Pippa.

“Probably belongs to an ogre,” murmured Hal. “Who else would live in the middle of nowhere?”

But whoever it belonged to, they had to go forward, and with the dogs pressing close behind them they made their way towards a great door. Even if whoever lived there was going to turn them in – even if he was going to eat them – they had no choice except to beg for shelter.

The bell clanged inside the great building and they waited. They were going to press it again when a slit opened in the door and a face appeared.

The face vanished and for a while nothing happened. Then slowly the door drew back and they saw a tall, hooded figure who stood there in silence.

“Please—” began Pippa. But she got no further because an awful thing now happened. Otto, the wise and gentle dog whom they would have trusted with their lives, had gone mad. A rumble came from his throat, and before they could stop him he reared up and with the full force of his weight, he landed with his paws on the shoulders of the hooded man.

The children started forward, horrified. This was the end of all their hopes of sanctuary. Then they saw what Otto was doing. He was licking the man’s face. The rumble in his throat had become a kind of purring, and his tail went so fast that it had become a blur.

The hooded man allowed himself to be greeted like this for a few moments. Then gently he removed Otto’s paws and came towards them.

“You are welcome, my children,” he said.

“Can we bring the dogs in?” asked Pippa. The tall man smiled.

“If you could not bring dogs into this place it would be strange indeed.”