Jess sat up, her confusion fading. If Sergeant Russell said that there was a problem, there always was.
‘How can I help?’
‘I’ve a domestic out at the Simmonses’. It seems Ethel and Barry are having a go at each other-again-but it’s got a bit out of hand. They’re both injured and that damned mutt of Ethel’s-you know the Rottweiler?-won’t let anyone near her. Can you come?’
‘I’ll come. How badly are they hurt?’
‘I don’t know,’ the sergeant admitted. ‘All I know is Barry’s unconscious and I can’t get near Ethel. I’ve called Doc Mountmarche and he’s on his way. The sooner you’re both here the happier I’ll be.’
‘Give me five minutes.’
Jess dressed fast, pulling on jeans, sweater and leather shoes. She grabbed leather gloves from the wardrobe and considered.
She had a flexi-rod which usually enabled her to handle aggressive dogs-a rod with a loop at one end which, when slipped over the dog’s head, could be tightened fast, thus holding the dog at more than teeth’s reach from the handler.
Maybe…
She thought-and then packed tranquilliser and a couple of barbs. In a case like this, a tranquilliser dart might be more effective.
There was an hour to go before her two little animals were due to be fed and they were getting stronger every day. If they missed one night feed it wouldn’t kill them.
OK.
She took a deep breath, the adrenalin surging at the thought of what lay ahead. At the thought that somewhere out in the night Niall Mountmarche would be gearing up for the same emergency as Jess.
Niall Mountmarche has nothing to do with the way I’m feeling, she said to herself crossly as she made her way out to the car.
Liar.
Niall Mountmarche had everything to do with it.
He beat her to the Simmonses’.
The Simmonses lived in a ramshackle house on the edge of town. It was a dump. There was rubbish-everything from last week’s shopping bags to a couple of old car bodies-strewn around the grounds.
Mrs Simmons was a good-hearted woman who’d been walked all over by an aggressive husband in the thirty years of their marriage. Jess had seen a little of her. She kept a horse in stables at the rear of the house and many times Jess suspected that she spent the housekeeping money on her horse and her dog-not herself. The woman looked as if she was suffering from malnutrition.
Ethel had given up on keeping either herself or her home presentable.
Barry Simmons wasn’t suffering from the same malnutrition as his wife. Barry was heavily overweight, mostly brought on by too much booze. He was supposed to be a fisherman but his evil temper meant that he was now almost unemployable.
He was hardly one of Jessie’s favourite people.
So what had happened tonight?
Jess pulled up on the road outside the Simmonses’. The police car had its lights shining directly at the house and the flashing light on top of the car was still beaming iridescent blue. The ambulance was parked behind it. Niall had decided the vehicle was more use staying with him and had taken it back to the vineyard. He must have driven it here.
The house itself was in darkness, though there seemed to be a lantern of some sort glinting close to the front door. A couple of neighbours were standing well back from the house, whispering among themselves. They watched Jess from a safe distance, their stance proclaiming clearly their desire to remain uninvolved.
From the house came low, menacing growls. Ethel’s dog?
Why wasn’t the Rottweiler outside?
Where was everyone?
Jess collected her gear and picked her way cautiously through the rubbish-strewn yard-keeping a weather eye out for stray Rottweilers as she went. A huge black shadow launching itself at her throat from the darkness was hardly a great way to spend a night.
Or to end a night…
She didn’t make it to the front door. As soon as Jess passed the worst of the overgrown garden she found where the action was. To the left, against the wall of the building and behind a tangle of bushes, was Barry Simmons, Sergeant Russell-and Niall.
Barry Simmons looked dead.
Jess stared down at his unconscious form. What on earth had happened?
There was a chainsaw lying on the ground and a gaping, jagged hole sawn roughly from the wall of the house.
‘Sergeant Russell?’ Jess said tentatively and the policeman glanced up from Barry Simmons’s inert form and clambered speedily to his feet.
‘Jess…Thank God you’re here.’ It sounded as though he really meant it.
‘What’s happened?’ Jess stared down to where Niall was working on the prone body of Barry Simmons. The big man was sprawled limply on the grass, his massive frame unmoving.
‘He’s alive,’ the policeman said quickly. ‘He’s drunk as a skunk, though, Jess-and Doc Mountmarche reckons he’s electrocuted himself.’
‘Electrocuted…’
Niall looked up then, his expression drawn and grim in the light of the lantern beside him.
‘His pulse is strong enough, Jess. There’s a nasty burn on one hand-but nothing that should kill him. It’s my guess it’s alcohol that’s keeping him knocked out.’
‘But what happened?’ Jess asked again. She stared at the hole in the wall. Here was Ethel’s Rottweiler. The big dog was staring out through the jagged cavity, snarling at all of them. If he wished he could lunge at any minute.
He could take a piece out of any one of them.
‘The neighbours say there was a huge domestic earlier tonight,’ the policeman told her, keeping one eye firmly fixed on the dog. ‘It seems Ethel locked Barry out. Barry went down to the pub, got himself tanked and came home to a locked house.’ He gestured to the hole in the wall. ‘So he thought of a brand-new way of getting into a locked house.’
‘By chainsaw?’ Jess asked incredulously.
‘By chainsaw. Chop a ruddy great hole in your wife’s bedroom wall. And while you’re doing it, chop through the electric wiring as well.’
‘Clever.’ Jess looked down at the dog. ‘Is there live wiring in the hole?’
‘We turned the electricity off to the whole place. The service people are on their way.’
Jess looked again at the dog-and then down at Niall. ‘How can I help?’ she asked him.
Niall shrugged and rose. ‘Give us a suggestion about the dog.’ He looked down at Barry with an expression of distaste on his face. ‘Barry’ll live-whether he deserves to or not after such a damned fool stunt I need to see Ethel.’
‘She’s still inside?’
‘She’s been hurt,’ Niall told her, ‘but I don’t know how badly. Sergeant Russell shone his flashlight through the window. She’s in there and she’s alive. He saw her move-but she’s on the floor and she’s not responding. We can’t get in because of the dog.’
‘I could shoot the mutt,’ Sergeant Russell said grimly. ‘Not through the hole in the wall-that would risk putting a bullet into Ethel-but if we break the window then I could get a bullet into the dog before it took a piece out of me. But…’
‘But Ethel loves her dog,’ Jess protested gently. ‘And it’s done nothing wrong. It’s been trained to protect her and that’s what it’s doing. She won’t want it dead, as well as everything else that’s happened to her.’
‘Too bad if she’s bleeding to death.’
‘Can you see if she’s bleeding?’
‘No.’ The policeman shook his head. ‘I can’t see much at all. We daren’t turn the electricity on again to give us power.’
‘The electricity can’t have killed her,’ Niall told Jess, ‘if she was moving afterwards…’
‘She looked like she was crawling back behind the bed when I saw her,’ the policeman explained. ‘I called out to her and she just sort of went limp. And then nothing…’
‘Where’s the window?’ Jess asked.
She looked closely at the dog’s snarling face through the hole, considering her options. To snare the dog with the flexi-rod through the hole in the wall was almost an impossibility. The dog just had to move back every time the rod went near-and as for clambering through the hole…