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 Walking the Dog by Smilodon Chapter Nine

   I walked back to the cottage through the fading light.  A man and a boy
were making their way down to the beach.  They were festooned with the
arcane gear of beach fishermen.  Long rods, tackle boxes, paraffin lamps
and the like seemed to hang everywhere and they were making heavy weather
of it, trudging through the soft sand.  The boy was animated, obviously
excited.  His father, for such I supposed the man to be, was patiently
plodding in the child's wake.  I looked up and tried to spot my guardian
but Liam couldn't be seen.  All the same, I knew he was there.  It was both
reassuring and terrifying at the same time.

   I had been trying to work out who had killed Mickey the Mouth.  I didn't
like the man much but wouldn't have wished him dead.  The obvious suspects
were the Chechens, if that was what they were.  Cornell's ikon story seemed
to have been fabricated for our consumption.  He knew of the link between
Frau Meyer and Angela and learned of the sale.  He probably guessed that I
would keep digging, discover the link and then back off to protect Angela.
It was subtle and would have been effective apart from that false start
involving Angela's father.  I couldn't believe the currency story.  It just
didn't fit.  There was only one conclusion I kept returning to.  Angela's
father was alive and someone wanted to find him rather badly.

   I decided to keep my speculations to myself.  It was just a gut feeling.
I hadn't a scrap of evidence but whenever my thoughts turned down that
track, the little warm prickling sensation at the back of my mind grew
stronger.  The evening was as calm and still as the day had been.  The
clear skies promised another hard frost and the temperature was dropping by
the minute as the sun dipped to sleep behind the land.  I stopped for a
moment just to take it in.  I breathed in the promise of the night.  My
mind quietened.  The spinning thoughts slowed and died, one by one.  I
looked for a moment of tranquillity.  Resentment crept over me instead,
catching me unawares.  I suddenly found myself thinking, 'why me?' This was
soon followed by the old childhood saw 'it's not fair!' No sooner had the
phrase formed in my mind, the spell was broken.  I could laugh at myself
again, mocking the self-pity.  After all, I now had Angela.

   She was coming out of the studio as the dogs and I came in.  Magic
launched his soggy length towards her and she knelt to fuss him.  Trotsky
looked in an interested fashion, too aloof to prostitute himself for an
ear-scratching.  She smiled up at me.  " Hello, my Martin," she said and my
heart gave a funny lurch.  She was dressed in some sort of loose-fitting
overalls and her hair was scraped back and held at her nape with a band. 
Some loose tendrils of hair had escaped and she blew them from her face
with puffed cheeks.  Magic's tail was thumping manically against the wall.
The tail of a flat-coated retriever is lethal to anything at retriever-rump
level other than reinforced concrete.  Angela sighed and rose.  She sniffed
at her armpit unselfconsciously.  "Phew, I smell like an old bear," she
said and grinned.  "Time for a shower."

   We took that shower together.  I washed her hair and then minutely
washed every inch of her, first with the soap and then with kisses.  I
wanted to make her come then and there but she eased away from me gently.
"Later," she said.  She giggled at my erection and then proceeded to 'wash'
it enthusiastically.  I groaned as my semen spilled out over her hand and
spattered her thigh.  Her eyes were soft with emotion, as if I'd given her
an expensive gift.  She languidly washed the pearly drops away then leaned
her head on my chest.  I held her close for a brief space as the water ran
down over us.  It was a perfect moment of peace in a strange and disturbing
day.

   Over a plain dinner we discussed Angela's forthcoming commission for
Frau Meyer.  By tacit agreement, we did not discuss the death of Mickey the
Mouth or any other of the day's events.  It was still all there, though, a
spectre at the feast.  I think we were all too worn down by the experience
of living inside an enigma to face it yet again.  Angela decided that she
would honour her intention stated when we first met.  She would 'do'
Trotsky.  A completely naturalistic piece, she promised.  No tortured soul
clawing its way through the twisted bronze.  She threatened to do the twins
but they refused with a laugh.  "Sorry, darlin', we don't get our kit off
for anyone but our wives," Niall had replied.  Angela had been surprised;
she didn't know they were both married.

   "That leaves Martin," said Liam.  "You could just twist some of those
bronze rods into a big knot of spaghetti and say it was a portrait of a
lawyer's mind." This sparked off a series of 'Lawyer Jokes' at my expense.
I responded with Irish Jokes, which Angela insisted had originally been
Russian Jokes.  We then got to plumb the depths with old Essex Girl Jokes.
Angela needed some translations as the significance of Ford XR3i's was lost
on her.  No joke is funny when you have to dissect it so the evening
petered out with Angela still plaintively pleading with me to explain why
the answer to "How does an Essex girl turn off the light before sex?" was
"She shuts the car door."

   Niall and Liam had rigged up camp beds for themselves in the Studio. 
They complained that sleeping in the parlour was 'too noisy' and winked
suggestively.  Angela coloured up a nice bright shade of red as she caught
their meaning.  The head of the brass bedstead must have been hammering on
the parlour wall, the two rooms being adjoining.  "Apart from that," said
Niall, "your dogs fart abominably.  At least, Liam claims it was them." We
could hear their good-natured banter receding as we readied ourselves for
bed once more.  I knew they would take it in turns to keep watch through
the night, after the events of the day.

   Angela once more tumbled me into our private world of soft embraces and
thrilling touches.  We made love twice before sleeping.  The first time a
gentle, loving, lingering journey to ecstasy, the second a raunchy,
passionate gallop doggy-style, with Angela gasping harshly in Estonian as
orgasm wracked her for the third or fourth time that evening.  I haven't
been with that many women, but Angela's capacity for orgasms was a brand
new experience for me.  She seemed to hit a plateau and then, out of the
blue, she was scaling the peaks, hardly dropping down between one pinnacle
and another.  Sometimes, she seemed to be coming almost continuously with
no break discernible between one climax and the next.  I loved it.  There
can't be any better tonic for a man's ego than to have his woman trembling
in a constant state of orgasm.

   Afterwards, we lay chatting about it.  Angela laughed at my wonderment.
"Sometimes," she said, "It never happens at all.  If I'm tired or if I feel
low, there is nothing.  But when I feel safe and loved, my Martin, then,
poof!  I am like a string of firecrackers, one explosion following another.
But you must not mind if it doesn't go that way every time.  Sometimes, I
might want just to make you happy and that will be enough for me." I didn't
really understand but claimed I did.  It seemed the wisest thing to do.

   Angela drifted off to sleep.  She seemed now to have adopted a
particular position, head on my chest, one leg flung over me.  I have to
say I loved it.  My mind would let go, however.  It was a roiling mass of
thoughts and theories that echoed round and round in my over-tired brain.
It was maddening; whenever I felt I just might be dropping off, this
thought would re-emerge to the forefront of my consciousness like a line
from a song that you can't get rid of.  'He's alive!  He's got to be
alive!' To this day, I have no idea from whence this conviction had come.
It was a certainty, as irrefutable as the dawn.  Angela's father was at the
bottom of this.  I didn't know who had died in Gothenburg wearing his
identity but I knew we would find no answers there.  He'd covered his
tracks well enough to fool British Intelligence and we weren't in their
league.

   I tried to think of something else, something dull and neutral, like
tax, but it didn't work.  When I eventually fell asleep it was through
sheer exhaustion.  I woke several times during that night.  Once I heard a
muttered exchange as Liam relieved Niall on watch and felt guilty.  I ought
to be taking my turn.  Then I felt guilty that, if I did so, Angela would
be left alone.  I salved my conscience with the thought that I was
protecting her.  It was still dark when I woke for the last time.  I heard
one of the twins in the kitchen, filling the kettle.  There was also the
thump-thump sound of Magic's tail wagging against the floorboards.  A voice
was speaking; I couldn't hear the words but could tell, by the inflection,
that someone was talking to Magic.  The wagging thump intensified.  It
sounded like the dog had just conned someone into providing an unscheduled
early breakfast.  The pure familiarity of the sound relaxed me and I slept
properly at last.

   When I eventually woke up, it was full daylight and Angela was sitting
naked on my chest.  Her full breasts fell towards me and I lifted my head
to gently kiss a nipple.  She leaned forward more to offer herself to me
and I suckled like a newborn babe.  It wasn't particularly arousing but it
was enormously comforting.  I suppose that says something about my
affection-deprived childhood.  If it does I don't give a toss.  I enjoyed
it and so did she.  We must have carried on like that for several minutes.
I was just getting interested in taking matters further when there came a
knock at the door.  We were summoned to breakfast.

   I shaved while Angela showered and then showered while she dressed.  We
arrived in the kitchen almost together; I can move fast when I've a mind
to. As we all ate, Niall indicated the morning copy of the Daily Telegraph.
Michael Cornell had made the inside page.  Saddam Hussein still had all the
headlines to himself.  I scanned the article quickly.  It didn't tell us
much new except that he had been killed on Monday morning at around six
o'clock.  Police were appealing for anyone who might have seen something
suspicious in the area.  Cornell was described as a senior civil servant.
He had been killed on his doorstep, the cause of death: a single stab wound
to the throat.  The milkman had found the body and called the police.  The
only other detail of interest was that a Foreign Office spokesman stated
Michael Cornell had been on leave of absence from his position at the time
of the murder.  There was some veiled speculation that sex had been the
motive; it was hinted that Cornell might have been gay.



   I wondered aloud to the others as to who had planted that piece of
disinformation.  According to Bernie at least, Mickey the Mouth was very
much a ladies' man.  Liam and Niall were holding a conversation sotto voce.
My raised eyebrow brought them up sharp and Niall said, "Professional job.
Amateurs slash or hack.  It takes practice and a bloody cold heart to do
someone in with a single thrust.  This is no crime of passion." Liam nodded
his agreement.  "Question is," he said, "Whodunit, the Russians or Mickey's
erstwhile employers?  That little planted 'gay' thing smacks of Vauxhall.
Stupid bastards still think it's a stigma." "It is, if you read the
Telegraph," I replied.  Angela looked at me questioningly and I explained.
"Very right-wing, middle aged, middle class newspaper." She shrugged.  "In
Estonia also," she said.  I tried not to feel a faint liberal glow.

   "Gets bloody messy if it was the Vauxhall funnies," Niall said.  You
couldn't put it more succinctly than that.  If Cornell had been taken out
of the game by the Security Services, well, we were 'up shit creek in a
barbed-wire canoe,' as Liam put it.  I almost groaned aloud with the weight
of it.  Angela looked from one face to another and saw how seriously we
were all taking this possibility.  Her chin came up and there was steel in
those fabulous eyes where I was just becoming accustomed to find love. 
"They cannot kill us all," she said simply.  Looking at her defiant
expression raised all our morale.  "By Christ and all His saints, that they
can't!" Niall roared, "bugger them all and their donkeys too!" And we
grinned like schoolchildren plotting their next prank.

   Liam and Niall decided it was time to call for reinforcements.  "You
won't know they're there.  It's only a couple of mates from Hereford." I
explained to Angela that he meant ex-SAS men, a number of whom are
recruited to the Special Air Service from the ranks of the Parachute
Regiment.  Liam went off to make a call and Niall disappeared to patrol the
area once again.  Angela and were left alone in the kitchen with the dogs.
Magic wagged idly and Trotsky looked at me with an enquiring air, as if he
understood the situation and was awaiting his orders.  "I don't think you
two will be much help," I told them.  Magic seemed to agree and lay down
again, eyeing the breakfast things in case we had missed something. 
Trotsky made a rumbling noise in his throat and came to stand by Angela. 
She had obviously made a friend.  She patted him absently and he licked her
hand, the height of affection, from a husky.

   Two pairs of startlingly pale blue eyes were staring at me.  I looked
from the woman to the dog and back again.  I made some feeble joke about
their swapping eyes while I was asleep, just to confuse me.  Angela gave me
a weary smile.  The strain was showing in tight lines around her mouth.  I
had a glimpse of the woman she would be in, say, twenty or thirty years. 
Tension ages you.

   On instructions from the twins we stayed indoors all morning.  The dogs
weren't that happy about it but I admit I was relieved.  Around lunchtime
Liam came in accompanied by two hard-looking men in their late thirties. 
They weren't that tall but had a spare muscularity.  Their eyes were
distant and carried a vague aura of danger.  He introduced them as Steve
and Bill.  Steve was slightly the taller with cropped sandy hair and
freckles.  Bill was stockier and had a marked 'Five O'clock Shadow' on his
prognathous jaw.  The effect was to make him look slightly simian but those
dangerous eyes held a lively intelligence.  He smiled at us; muttered "How
do?" Steve simply nodded, his face impassive.

   "Get yourselves something to eat," said Niall, indicating the kitchen
with a slight head movement.  "Briefing in here in fifteen minutes." In
less than ten minutes they were back.  Liam pulled what looked like a wad
of rubbish out of the pocket of his Barbour.  "I think we can assume we're
under surveillance," he said.  His voice was crisp and authoritative.  He
saw me start to ask the question and cut in.  "I think I found where
someone has been lying up.  This stuff wasn't there last night." Bill came
forward and poked through the rubbish.  He sniffed at a piece of crumpled
silver foil.  "Chocolate," he said, "very careless." There was some
cellophane and a single cigarette butt.  In place of a filter tip it had a
tube of cardboard.  "That's a Russian cigarette!  " Angela exclaimed.  "
Quite right, Miss," Bill replied.  Steve said nothing but grimaced.

   Liam and Niall established a patrol routine.  Bill and Steve would go
out after dark to do a 'sweep' at some distance from the house.  In the
meantime, the twins would follow the same routine as the day before.  If
the watchers thought they had been spotted, they would be more on their
guard.  Angela asked if it was safe for us to walk the dogs on the beach.
Liam agreed it was, provided we stayed well away from the dunes.  We would
be fine out in the open, he opined, and any way, they would all be watching
over us.

   The tide was out as we walked that afternoon and we left deep bootprints
in the muddy wet sand.  The low sun sent streaks of bright fire into pools
of seawater and they flickered where the wind ruffled the surface with a
soft, lover's touch.  It was one of those bright, fierce days where you
feel you can almost see the cold in the freezing air.  We were well wrapped
up but still Angela's nose and my ears were turned scarlet by the icy
breeze.  I love those days, dry, hard and brilliant.  They invigorate me.
The dull, damp, cheerless days that typify an English winter are all
depression and drabness that seem to seep through your coat and into your
spirit.  The clear, dry frosty days are a rarity and I welcome them; even
in their chill, they seem to carry the promise that the warmth of summer
will return.

   We didn't talk much.  I think we were both too preoccupied with our own
thoughts.  The sense of danger was palpable now.  Cornell's death put a
different complexion on things.  We knew we were in good hands with the
twins but the two ex-SAS men lent a brooding presence.  There was something
about the way they moved or held themselves when at rest that spoke
volumes. Their world was one that comfortable, middle-class men in early
middle age might fantasise about but, faced with the reality, shied away
from.  I felt a sense of impending crisis.  Something was going to happen
and it would be soon.

   For her part, Angela seemed to have found some inner reserves of
strength.  She exuded defiant determination.  Regardless of what was
coming, she made her preparations for her new commission.  Maybe it was to
keep herself from dwelling on our predicament but it seemed more like she
was waving two fingers at fate as if to say "Do your worst.  Only art is
real - the rest are phantasms." I wished fervently that I had some
all-consuming avocation to seize my attention.  My focus was on keeping her
safe.

   Magic and Trotsky were unconcerned by such considerations.  Chasing
sticks or stalking seagulls was occupation enough for them.  Their joyous,
carefree spirits lifted ours after a while.  We walked back to the cottage
considerably lighter at heart than when we left.