She sensed that Vogel was an unusual copper as well as an unusual man. They called him the Geek at Charing Cross, but not without grudging respect. The name was a twisted tribute to his intelligence and his ability to sift through endless layers of facts and figures and come up with connotations and conclusions that no one else could.
It turned out that Vogel wasn’t on duty until noon that day, so Michelle dropped him an email outlining her concerns about the various events that had befallen her friends. She concluded by asking if he would do her the favour of having a quick look at the Marlena incident and maybe keep an eye on the missing-dogs scenario.
She then took off for another edifying day in the division she so disliked. There was a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, and she was on point duty for the rest of her shift. That meant aching feet and zero job satisfaction: just another day in Traffic.
David Vogel picked up her email shortly after coming on duty. He read it through carefully, but at speed. His lips twitched, just as Mike Carter’s had done, at the Mr Tickle story. Vogel was not without a sense of humour, though this was not generally recognized within the Met because it was so much gentler than that of his colleagues. He pondered for a moment or two. A pair of mystery pranks, an act of apparent wanton vandalism, two dogs going missing on the same day at the same place, a possibly deliberate attack on an elderly woman... Vogel was intrigued, just as Michelle had predicted. However, a mountain of paperwork sat on his desk. Twice as much data again awaited his attention on screen. The minutiae of a complex fraud case that nobody had yet been able to untangle. To most police officers, indeed most people, sifting through this lot would be a horrible chore. To David Vogel it was a delight. He loved paperwork. He relished the opportunity to seek out details others had overlooked. Loved discovering what lay behind an apparently meaningless jumble of bald facts and figures. Shortly before switching off his computer and heading home the previous evening, almost three hours after his shift had officially ended, he’d thought he might be close to a breakthrough. He couldn’t wait to get stuck in again.
Mr Tickle would just have to wait, he told himself, with the smallest stab of regret. Besides, there might be nothing to it. The dogs would probably turn up unharmed and without explanation, as dogs did, and there might be no link whatsoever between the other events. He simply didn’t have the time to do anything about it at present. He did, however, send an email to Dispatch saying that these matters had come to his notice, and asking could he please be kept informed of any developments.
At three in the afternoon, Jessica Harding, a bright young PC working in Dispatch, called his extension.
‘Looks like there’s been a development in that case you’re interested in, Sarge,’ she told him. ‘Some Big Issue seller just found the remains of two dogs in a rubbish bin on Long Acre. He told a passer-by who called us. Apparently they’ve been badly mutilated.’
‘Are we sure they’re the same two dogs?’ asked Vogel.
‘Well, they need their microchips checking, assuming they have them, but the descriptions match,’ PC Harding replied.
Vogel had already begun calling up the relevant report: ‘A chihuahua and a Maltese terrier,’ he read from his screen. ‘The breeds are right then?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Jessica Harding. ‘In as much as anyone could tell. Sounds like they’re in a terrible state. Their sexual organs have been removed, their eyes gouged out, tails cut off — that sort of thing. The Big Issue seller went into shock and had to be taken to hospital, and, according to the response team, the man who called us wasn’t in much better shape either. The chihuahua’s head’s been more or less hacked off and—’
Vogel interrupted. Unlike former sergeant Mike Carter, David Vogel liked dogs. He had a border collie called Timmy at home, and if anything like that ever happened to Timmy, Vogel feared what he might be capable of doing to the perpetrators.
‘All right, Harding, I get the picture,’ he said. He was about to end the call when a thought occurred to him. ‘Has anyone notified the owners yet?’
‘Not yet,’ responded Harding.
‘Good,’ said Vogel. ‘I think we should ask PC Michelle Monahan to do it. She knows them, apparently. And she knows the background to all this. They’re going to be shocked rigid, whoever tells them, but she may be able to get more out of them.’
‘Isn’t she Traffic?’
Vogel sighed. ‘She’s still a police officer, Jessica,’ he said. ‘And she was previously in CID.’
‘Right. OK. I’ll tell my boss you’re handling that side of it then, shall I?’ asked Harding.
‘Yes.’ Vogel was no longer really listening.
He ended the call and, trying to ignore the queasiness in the pit of his stomach, sat and thought for a moment or two before contacting Michelle’s team leader to ask if he could borrow her for a special task. Like Michelle, David Vogel didn’t believe in coincidences. And he was beginning to get a bad feeling about the increasingly sinister and unpleasant sequence of events which he now felt impelled to investigate.
Eight
And so it was Michelle who broke the news to the boys. She called round to see them after she’d finished traffic duty at the palace. First George, then Tiny and Billy. By then it was early evening, and she found all three men at their homes, as she had hoped.
George burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying.
‘This shouldn’t have happened,’ he said. ‘Not to those dear little dogs. Whatever else is going on, this shouldn’t have happened.’
Michelle made soothing noises, which was about all she could do.
‘They must have suffered, they must have suffered so,’ muttered George through his tears.
Michelle could find no words to argue with that. She was aware of the condition both dogs had been in when they were found, and although she tried to spare George that knowledge, her friend insisted on being told. No wonder he was so upset, thought Michelle. And she too dreaded to think what the two little dogs must have gone through before death had eventually brought them release.
Realizing that George was on the brink of hysteria, Michelle made sweet tea and forced him to drink it. The tea didn’t appear to do a lot of good. She reckoned he needed something stronger. She found a bottle of supermarket brandy in a kitchen cupboard and poured him a large glass which he swallowed quite obediently. Then she sat with him.
It took more than an hour before she felt able to leave George. Even then she only did so because she feared that if she didn’t go to Tiny and Billy soon, they might find out from some other source. Reluctant to leave George on his own, she popped next door to ask his neighbour, Marnie, the elderly woman George had once told her looked upon him as a surrogate son, if she’d call round and keep an eye on him.
Marnie, it turned out, was in a wheelchair — to Michelle’s embarrassment, as she’d never met the woman before and yet here she was asking her a favour, albeit on George’s behalf.
But Marnie, whose eyes welled up when Michelle told her as gently as she could that Chump had been killed, was eager to help.
‘Oh, that poor little dog,’ said Marnie. ‘Don’t you fret, dear. I can get next door all right in my chair. ’Bout as far as I can go nowadays without help. But don’t worry, I’ll look after my Georgie. He does enough for me, that boy, I can tell you.’