The following morning I was back watching Picasso’s place, though it was well into the evening by the time he drove away in his Transit. Time to go up and have a look.
His front door had a lock on it like something you’d see in a dungeon. I couldn’t pick it. Cylinders and modern mortises are about my limit. His back one had a cylinder. And it wasn’t his only line of defence. A monster was roaming the downstairs, a cross between a big dog and an even bigger big dog. Huge slobbery mouth on it too. Didn’t fancy it. It had jaws that’d bite clean through your wrist.
Now as you well know, the best way to deal with a dog is to put your boot up its arse. But not when its arse is as high off the ground as your own. I’ve used a device the makers call ‘Scare Away’, though I don’t carry it with me. It’s about the size of a car battery and gives out a sonic pitch only dogs can hear. Makes them act like they’re hearing terrible news and back off. It works only on nine out of ten dogs though. This one might’ve been the tenth.
I used it on an old woman once. She lived next door to a bank job I was setting up. We needed her kitchen wall for the purposes of gaining entry. And, in keeping with my no-fuss methods, she had to be out of the house. Fortunately her husband had just dropped dead and she was all alone with their faithful Kerry Blue Terrier. So I installed the ‘Scare Away’ treatment in their bedroom. The dog wouldn’t enter it. She thought it was her hubby’s spirit. Dogs being able to see spirits that we can’t. Because only the dog could hear it, it kept her awake night and day howling. She had to go and stay with her daughter for rest and recuperation. And came back and found a big hole in her wall. Of course, you’re probably saying to yourself: why didn’t he just hit her over the head with something? I would have, but I wanted to try out my experiment.
Another way to fend off dogs of course is to use a warden’s loop or maybe a dart gun or a shield – one that looks like a big upside-down cheese grater. They lunge at you and cut their paws to bits on it. Handy if you like grated paws. The best method I’ve seen is an electric screen. Poultry farmers use them to keep foxes away. Basically it’s a panel about the size of a sprung single-bed base. The old type, electrified by way of a built-in battery. You need to wear protective rubber gloves when you’re handling it so you don’t get a wallop. But I shot the fucker instead. Nah, I rarely carry a gun. Guns are against the law. The tongue in that cellophane bag Picasso carried in his tool bag and Winters taking Greg Swags’s German shepherd had got me thinking I’d come up against a dog. I tossed in a piece of meat laced with dope I’d bought from a vet.
‘There, girl, eat that.’ Five minutes and it was dreaming it’d found the biggest bone in the world.
I went in, stepped over it and had a look upstairs. Other than a darkroom, which contained no photographs, it was just bedrooms. Nothing worth telling you about, except that in the downstairs living room there was a framed photo of him on a horse. Which clinched what I had in mind for him. The last thing I needed was a killer who was afraid of horses.
A door to a flight of stone stairs that led down to a basement was open. If Lucille was still in one piece, she had to be in it. Which meant I couldn’t let her see me. She’d know someone was about though: as soon as I hit the halfway mark, more dogs started snarling. They sensed I wasn’t their owner, and she must have too, because she started calling out: ‘Hello, hello, help me,’ all that. I think I got her hopes up.
I came straight back out. I’d only brought enough meat for one dog. She was alive. Knowing that would do for now. As I say, there’s always an extra angle if you go looking for it. And like all angles, some people don’t see them. But I’m not some people. I’d found one, and, with any luck, it would allow me to deal with my family and get this whole thing with Chilly Winters arresting his daughter for it over and done with. And the upshot of that would be that Greg would be released. Everybody happy. Except Lucille and the Donavans of course. Still, you can’t please everyone.
I was going to make good use of Picasso at the riding stables is what I’m saying.
So I went out there. It was a Thursday night, and I knew that on Saturday night my sister Amy would be out dancing, usually in the village hall, though that shindig she’d been talking to Cormac about would do just as nicely. It sounded as if it was further away, a bigger outing than usual – in Dublin maybe. She’d be home even later then. I’d already picked up what I needed so I went for it.
That prize-winning mare of Anne’s was in a field behind Amy and Edna’s cottage. I parked along the road and walked up Conor’s drive with a bucket of feed nuts. I’d mixed follicle-inducing stimulants with them. The mare came over when I shook the bucket. I leaned in through the fence, tipped it out on the grass and stood back. She got tucked in.
I did exactly the same the following night. Then the next morning I was back at Picasso’s. Again he stayed home all day, until about eight o’clock, when he drove off in his Transit.
I went in, same story with his bitch (doped her) – only this time I’d brought a little something for him. A surveillance laptop with a built-in phone – though not the one he’d appeared on – a riding crop, a horse’s hood and a bee-keeper’s outfit.
Then I went downstairs.
The dogs weren’t the only ones making noise: such a clamour. A kind of frantic rustling. It had to be coming from Lucille’s cell. There were four cells running along a corridor at the bottom of the steps. The first two were open; the others were bolted shut.
This time there could be no mistake. She would definitely know that someone other than Picasso was down there with her.
She’d hear me as I crept past her cell, under the hatch so she wouldn’t see me, to the fourth, where the dogs were. It had an internal door.
This time she really called out. Never stopped. ‘Hello, please help me,’ crying and begging. Sorry, Lucille, I haven’t come this far to be put off now. I’d ignored her crying when she was a baby, and I could ignore it again.
So Picasso had his own private little jail. Wonder what kind of warden he was. There were a few more bone crunchers to contend with. I fed them what Sleeping Beauty upstairs was dreaming on, and checked the first two cells while they dozed off.
Each of the cells contained a big wooden crate the size of a coffin. The timber on the inside of the one I lifted had been gnawed. The bottom was caked in shit, matted with black hairs. I heard squealing and scratching below my feet, coming from under the flagstones. Rats they sounded like. So that’s what I’d been hearing rustling in Lucille’s cell. Wouldn’t fancy doing time in there.
I went into the dogs’ cell, stepped over them and opened the door that led down a flight of wooden steps into an artist’s studio. Recreational activities for the inmates – I didn’t think so. What a carry-on. I’d never seen anything like it. Human hands in the freezer in case he felt peckish, a dog’s tongue in frozen saliva. So I was right about that. It was the one he took with him when he didn’t feel like walking the rest of it.
The second room was a gallery. I’m no connoisseur, but I’d’ve given odds no art expert had ever seen paintings like his before.
The bones in the dogs’ cell more or less confirmed how his victims were paid in return for sitting for him. I’ll leave that to your imagination. If you haven’t worked it out, you haven’t got any. Let’s just say the inmates who had literally given him a hand were no longer in residence, and I doubt they’d been paroled. Every enterprise has its little waste-disposal problems. Saved him digging graves and buying dog food.
Not that I’d ask him to confirm that. Though I did have questions for him.
After I’d made sure that Anne’s mare had reacted to those follicle-inducing stimulants, I was going to invite Picasso out to meet the family. The wonders of modern technology. I’d a spot of email in mind for him when he came back. That’s why I’d left him the laptop, logged on to the internet and ready to go. A slow way of communicating but effective. I could’ve rung him of course, but this had a better angle to it. Either way, he’d know that if he didn’t do what he was told, Chilly Winters’d be asking him if he had a licence to run his own private prison.