One Way Ticket (4 page)

5 Who Let The Dogs Out

The naked septuagenarian inside my
aunt’s bedroom had obviously just bent over to pick up his trousers, so it was
an unfortunate view that met my eyes.

“Oh, my God!” I screamed, nearly losing my
grip on the pan, and my breakfast.

The man screamed as well and, turning, grabbed
for the counterpane on the bed (there was that 1970s décor again). Aunt June
appeared in the doorway and started screaming too.

The best thing seemed to be closing the
door before the man flashed any more, so I did. “Aunt June, there’s a naked man
in your bedroom!”

“Well, we didn’t realise you’d be home in
the middle of the day, I made you a packed lunch this morning.”

“I ate it on my way to work,” I mumbled,
suddenly feeling a little ill. Obviously, I had disturbed something here.
Something very disturbing.

“That’s my friend, Kostas Kassiotis. We’re
seeing each other.”

“Yes, well, I’ve just seen quite a lot of
him too.” I went back into the kitchen and put the frying pan down. “I’m sorry,
I didn’t mean to disturb you and your… gentleman friend. I didn’t realise you
were… did… otherwise I wouldn’t have come home.”

“We didn’t hear the car, until it was too
late.”

“Right.” I can’t deny it wasn’t a shock to
find out my 73 year old aunt was still… up for it, especially in the way I
found out, but I was here as her helper not her keeper. “Perhaps we’d better
get some signal system going so I know not to come in? When you’re busy. Perhaps
you could tie something round the front door handle, maybe?”

“Yes, alright, I’ll look something out,” she
told me as she fiddled with a pile of plates. Poor Aunt June hadn’t looked me
in the eye since I’d seen Kostas’ eye.

“I’ll get going, leave you to it.”

“Aren’t you going to have your lunch?”
Aunt June indicated the half made sandwich I’d left by the fridge.

My insides did a little wobble. I’d seen
enough old meat and veg this lunchtime. “No, don’t really feel like it now.
I’ll see you later. About four o’clock. If it’s going to be any earlier I’ll
ring first. Say goodbye to your friend for me.”

I got in the car quickly and pulled away
before I discovered any other naked persons on the premises (you never know
nowadays).

Aunt June, the sly devil, who’d have
thought? I’d stupidly assumed my aunt led a sexless life, mostly because of her
age. How wrong I was.

“That was a quick lunch,” Addi remarked
when I arrived at work.

“Yes, suddenly found I wasn’t very
hungry.”

“I hope you haven’t been discussing the
case with your aunt?”

“She knows more about it than I do. Says
it’s the sister.”

“She’s probably right. Here are some notes
from that missing dog case. Can you type them up, please?”

“Missing dog?” Hardly front page stuff, in
fact it was a bit of a letdown after being on a murder investigation. “Haven’t you
got any more fraudulent cheque cases or Nigerian email scams instead?”

“No, sorry.”

It wasn’t even a cute dog, just some
strange, cross-breed spaniel-poodle thing. There were far too many of these
boring cases to my mind, the local criminals were obviously not trying hard
enough.

Thoughts of my aunt’s sex life were thankfully
banished as the missing dog was followed by two stolen jewellery cases (both insurance
scams if I’m any judge), a lost camera (same), and a building permit dispute, before
I packed up my papers and clocked out for the day.

On the car journey home, I decided to
handle what had happened at lunchtime in the time honoured English fashion and
never mention it to Aunt June again. Happily, it seemed she had decided the
same.

“Any news on Tina?” Aunt June asked as I
joined her in the kitchen, something delicious smelling sizzling on the stove.

I looked enquiringly at her.

“The dead woman, this morning.”

“Oh.” Lunchtime had pushed all thoughts of
that out of my mind. “No. Didn’t seem to be much going on, probably haven’t had
the test results yet. You’re not worried about it, are you?”

“Me? Why would I be worried?”

“I’m not saying you should. I’m saying
don’t be.”

“Good.” She went back to stirring her pan
for a while. “I’ve been thinking Jennifer…”

I braced myself. In my experience, those
words, especially when spoken by a family member, only ever precede some
particularly bad news.

“…let’s have a day out somewhere on your
next day off. We haven’t done much since you’ve been here.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t what I had been
anticipating. “Okay. I thought you said the weather wasn’t good enough to go
anywhere.” The grey clouds of the day before had been looming again this
afternoon.

“It’s not going to get any better, is it? And
you have the car. Let’s go up into the mountains, shall we?”

“Yes, that would be nice.” I couldn’t help
being a little suspicious of Aunt June’s sudden change of heart, but I wasn’t
going to reject a day out, perhaps she was feeling guilty about the incident
(never to be mentioned again) earlier.

 “Good, that’s settled.” She dished up the
minced lamb, tomatoes and olives she’d been simmering with a pleased look on
her face that made me feel like I was a piece of cog, just slotted into place.

“That woman’s gone off with the
ticket inspector again,” one of the admin girls from an office down the
corridor had just announced the next morning when Sergeant H walked into the
office and cut her short. It was starting to become irritating that he kept
interrupting some of the best gossip around.

“Where’s Constable Markou?” H asked us,
prompting the girl to scurry back to her office.

I shook my head at him. “Don’t know,” I
said. Vara said the same.

“When he comes in, tell him I’m looking
for him. He has another report.”

I’d noticed Addi appeared to go missing
sometimes. At first, I’d thought he was out on a case, but lately I’d been
wondering if those cases were the kind you drive to the airport, with their
owner and get paid for it. He seemed to like sailing close to the wind.

When he turned up half an hour later, Vara
gave him the message and he wandered off to find Sergeant H. Only a few minutes
had passed before he was back with a piece of paper and a scowl.

“Another missing dog!” he said. “What is
it with you British and your dogs? In Cyprus, if a dog goes missing it goes
missing. We don’t expect the whole police force to be out looking for it.”

 “Hmm, well in Britain a lot of people do
look on them like children,” I explained.

“Yes, I’ve seen pictures of dogs dressed
in costumes. What’s that all about?”

“Just something for you to look forward to
when the craze strikes here.”

I was alarmed when he sank down on my
desk. He must really hate dog outfits. “Why do I get all the crap cases?” he
moaned.

It was tempting to offer my theory about
his unexplained absences, but I could sense it was a rhetorical question.

“What about the old lady that died the
other week, Tina Lloyd?” I asked hopefully. It was probably the biggest case
the department had but, after my initial involvement, I hadn’t heard any more
about it.

“Dem and Yiannis have been assigned.”

They had their own admin staff so I
probably wouldn’t get to see any of the reports.

“They get all the good stuff,” Addi
carried on, “and I get stolen dogs.” He waved the paper at me angrily.

“Perhaps it’s a gang stealing valuable
dogs?” Vara suggested, hopefully.

“No, another mongrel.”

“Stealing for animal experiments?”
Katerina, who’d snuck back in from the other office, chirped up. “Could be
happening across the whole district?”

Addi shook his head. “It’s no use trying
to cheer me up.”

I prised the paper out of his hand whilst
it was still readable. He was right, it wasn’t a pedigree dog but another
strange cross-breed. “You know, these funny types could still be worth
something. There was a tv star carrying something similar to this around the
other week. It was in ‘Like!’”

“What is ‘Like!’?” Addi asked.

“A trashy magazine for people obsessed
with celebrities. It’s imported from Britain.”

The others looked at me.

“My aunt gets it,” I told them, my voice
sounding more defensive than I liked. “It’s her one weakness she tells me.” (We
know that isn’t true.)

“And you think this dog was valuable?”

“To saddos who want to copy their
favourite celebrity. Maybe. It’s like the one that went missing last week.”

I had to explain the word ‘saddo’ to him.
And the idea of people wanting to copy celebrities. Even then it was like
talking to a brick wall. Annoying, as I was convinced I was onto something. It
could be more than a couple of dogs, who knew how long it had been going on?
There could be a huge underground market in stolen pets, not spotted because
they weren’t pedigrees.

Determined to prove my point, I drove home
before lunch to find the magazine. After last time, I rang first to make sure
the coast was clear. No answer, so my aunt was probably out with her dazzling
social life again.

There was no scarf tied round the door
handle and, to my relief when I went inside, the villa was empty, so I set to,
looking through the pile of magazines by the sofa. After a few minutes, I heard
the front door close then a man’s murmur and a woman’s giggle.

“I’m in here,” I shouted, hoping to stop
them before I witnessed anything else I’d regret.

My aunt put her head round the living room
door. “Oh, Jennifer. You’re here, are you?”

“I just nipped back to find an article in
one of your magazines. Don’t mind, do you?”

“No, of course not. Kostas has just come
round for… lunch.”

My hands frantically flicked through the
remaining pile as I suddenly felt the need to leave as quickly as possible.
“Ah, here it is.” I grabbed the magazine and stood up. “I’m not stopping. Hello
Kostas. Must get back to work.”

My aunt took the magazine out of my hands.
“Sally Matthews? What d’you want an article about her for?”

I’d forgotten old people + nosiness = a
lot of time wasted.

“The dog her hairdresser is carrying.
Couple of them have gone missing around here.”

“That is a dog? I thought it was an old
wig.”

“Put your glasses on. It’s a
cockapoo…doodley thing. A couple of these crossbreeds have gone missing lately,
I reckon there’s a dog stealing thing going on.”

“Oh, rubbish. That’ll be Reg Trantor. He
gets a bee in his bonnet if he thinks owners aren’t treating their pets right.
He’s probably staged an intervention, he was trying to get me to take a dog at
bingo last week.”

“I hardly think it’ll be that, Aunt June,”
I told her, pityingly, “I can’t see these dogs being fenced at bingo night.”

“A small wager?”

So, my aunt wanted to add gambling to her
list of vices?

“Alright. A fiver?”

“Done. Now Kostas, where were we?”

I left the building as fast as my legs
could carry me.

I was not a happy bunny when I
returned home that night.

“That was cheating,” I complained as my
aunt prised the five euro note from my fingers.

“How?”

“You knew that man had taken the dogs.”

“Reg Trantor? Well, I didn’t think he’d
pulled them out of fresh air. So, it wasn’t a big organised crime thing after
all? No Russian gangs preying on poodles and Chihuahuas?”

“Ha, ha, ha.”

When questioned by Addi, the ‘thief’ had
broken down in tears about what he called the terrible treatment of the dogs by
their owners because they’d been left alone in the daytime. He’d never heard of
‘Like!’ magazine. I wasn’t about to give my aunt any more satisfaction.

“Has Reg been arrested?” she asked.

“Cautioned. Friend of yours, is he?”

“Now, now, Jennifer. No need to be a sore
loser. I expect they were pleased at work, weren’t they?”

Addi had been thrilled. He was hoping that
was an end to missing dogs for a while.

“I still think it was withholding
evidence.”

“Local knowledge is what they call it, I
believe. They don’t offer a reward for these things, do they?”

“I’m afraid not. Why? What other crimes
are you keeping secret?”

“None. You just can’t help coming across
things when you’ve lived here as long as I have, and know as many people.”

“Maybe you should have gotten the job at
the police station, not me.”

“Oh no, dear. I’m sure you’re doing a
marvellous job.”

Humpf. I’d been had by an old lady. Worse
still, one I was related to. All evidence pointed to Aunt June being much more
capable than I had given her credit for. I would have to watch my step. Worryingly,
Addi seemed to have worked out how capable Aunt June was as well. He’d
mentioned a couple of times how useful it would be to have someone who knew
what was going on. It seemed like a bad omen to me.

It was mid afternoon a couple of days
after the dog napping case when Addi appeared at my desk with another incident
form.

“A robbery,” he announced. “I have to go
talk to the CrossGlobal committee. You’re to come with me.” I grabbed my things
and followed him out.

It was hard to believe my first journey in
his car, when he’d brought me from the airport, had been less than two months
ago. It seemed more like a lifetime since I’d been working. As we headed off to
the next town, I wondered where Addi kept his taxi meter when he was on
official business.

“It’s in the glove box,” he said, noticing
me looking at the dashboard.

“That’s handy. I thought about giving taxi
driving a go myself. I guess you didn’t have any problems getting the character
certificate.”

“No.”

“I don’t think I would have gotten one.”