He is fiftyish, average height, and scruffy-looking with long salt-and-pepper hair, thinning on top, and pulled back into a ponytail. He wears afaded Ramones T-shirt, black combat trousers, and worn black trainers, and holds a mug of something in a tattooed hand. His gaze goes down to Hugo.
“Fucking hell,” he says, resting his mug on a wall and crouching down to the dog. “Where the fuck have you been?”
Hugo looks pleased to see the man and nuzzles against his hands, his tail whipping back and forth. But Jane can also read a slight confusion in the dog’s body language, a sense that he doesn’t quite know what’s happening.
“What’s his name?” she asks the man pointedly.
“Hugo,” says the man, going back to standing. “He disappeared a few days ago. Thought he’d been nicked. Where d’you find him?”
“Near my house,” she says primly. “On the coast.”
The man looks surprised. “The…?” he starts, but then stops and shakes his head. “Whereabouts, exactly?”
“Brighton,” she says sharply. “Just outside.”
She senses Dexter throwing her a confused look and ignores it.
“Well,” says the man. “Thank you for bringing him back. Is he OK?”
Jane nods. “I took him to the vet. He was a little dehydrated but, apart from that, in good condition.”
“Do I owe you any money?” he asks, a hand going absent-mindedly to his trouser pocket. “For the vet?”
Jane shakes her head. “No,” she says. “It’s fine.”
He takes his hand away from his pocket and nods. “Well, cheers anyway. I appreciate it.” He leans down with a sigh. “Come on, mate,” he says to the dog. “Let’s get you inside.”
“My name is Jane, by the way. And this is my stepson Dexter; he only lives up the road, so if you ever need anyone to look after the dog, take care of him, I know he’d be more than happy.”
Dexter nods enthusiastically, but the man is already backing away, his hand on the gate, preparing to close it again.
“Sure,” he says, “thanks. Like I say. I appreciate it.”
“How long have you lived here?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Ten years? Or so?”
“The jeep? Is it yours?”
“Nah. Belonged to my landlady’s ex-husband. Why? Do you want to buy it? It’s up for sale.”
“Oh,” she says. “God. No. Thank you. I just, er… I just recognized it, that’s all. My dad had one like it. When I was little.”
He nods at her, and then he turns, the gate closes, and the man and his dog disappear from sight.
chapter four
Jane takes Dexter for coffee and cake in Hampstead Village. There is a heavy silence between them.
“Are you OK?” Dexter asks.
Jane cuts her salted caramel muffin into four pieces and puts one of them in her mouth. The sugar hit is immediate and gratifying.
“Not really,” she says. And then she takes a deep breath and she tells Dexter the story of the night she always remembers as the night she nearly died. It’s been her party piece for years. “Did I ever tell you about the night I went back to a stranger’s house, then decided I was about to be drugged and possibly murdered, freaked out, and ran away?” It always got a laugh. In her mind the anecdote had become distilled down to a one-sentence slice of life, but now it’s suddenly expanded back to full size: the feel of it, the chill on her flesh, the dead eyes of the man with no name, his pursed-mouthed beauty-queen wife wordlessly aiding her escape, the bang and scream overhead, the trees rustling in the dark wind as she ran helter-skelter through the Vale and back to the bright lights of the village.
She spares no details now as she describes the incident to Dexter, and his face performs a theater of reactions as she speaks.
“Fucking hell, Jane,” he says when she’s finished. “And it was definitely that house?”
