Good Decisions and Otherwise by Little Dog

Chapter Six

‘Lucky to get away with it…’ mused Brian as he walked along the footpath that led between his own house and that of Peter and Dawn.

‘No, not lucky, for you did not get away with it. More, I would say that there has been no delay in catching you. We should have this wrapped up in a normal amount of time.’

Little dog had difficulty in keeping up with Brian, who had quickened from his normal countryside pace, energised and motivated as he was, determined now to defend his home, and so when they arrived both stopped to take breath, there dawning before them the scene of the crime. Of course their senses were alert to what had passed, or at least, their imagining of it, for it was here that the robbers had driven up in the dead of night, here the break-in and later on here too the stand-off on the front drive.

All now was peaceful, tranquility was yet maintained in those only other sounds, the sway of the leaves of the trees in the garden and the shimmer of the hedges that lay along the lane, and that of the birds in their song, but such only made the flap and snap of it in the wind more stark. Red plastic sheeting had been taped up to cover the missing window. The red plastic sheeting said here has been crime. It was through that red rectangle the burglars had entered, and through there that Geoff had seen three men in masks emerge in the darkness with his mother and a gun held to her head.

‘It just won't do’ said Brian, and then, to such crooks as he now conceived of, ‘no you may not’.

He proceeded to the front door but then stopped again, thinking better of it, and that really he should have a look around properly before knocking. First to the window, but this time little dog ran ahead, and Brian watched with delight to see him put his head to the ground. Little dog turned around from the front wall of the house, the section below the window through which the burglars had climbed, and barked. Three times he barked out, loudly, and seemingly aimed at the distance.

‘Woof! Woof! Woof!’

‘Is there someone there?’ said a worried voice from behind the sheeting.

‘Peter, Peter, I'm sorry, it's only me’ said Brian. ‘I've brought my dog. Rebecca told me what happened and I had to come over. I am worried.’

‘You can come in then. Will your dog be alright inside?’

‘Yes. Yes he is well-behaved. His name is little dog.’

Little dog then sat quietly and observed as Brian successfully integrated himself with the situation - the occurrence of the event itself, and the relation to it now of Peter, Dawn and Geoff. Indeed he met with them their experience of it in the present, and joined with them in all that remained to be done.

Brian found out exactly what he wanted. He would not be denied in mapping out the limits of what knowledge there was, even if Peter and Dawn were reluctant to recount such details as these, of the men in masks to come through the window in the night, and then the sound of voices in the hall - two London and one foreign - and then on the stairs and then on the landing, of the bedroom door opening, and then the brandishing of guns, and then screaming and shouting. All of this culminated in Peter being forced to open the family safe and then to collect those other valuables that remained outside, and after that they were both tied up.

Peter and Dawn were reluctant anyway to see that it mattered, for what could Brian possibly do, and both maintained the view that the robbers would not come back, as Geoff had scared them off. Geoff was there. Geoff looked uncomfortable about the idea of having scared the robbers, but he also agreed that the job had not gone well, and that whoever it was would be better off in staying away.

‘You’re not expecting them to come back are you?’ asked Peter. ‘By a whisker's breadth did they make their escape. Now surely you wouldn't. At that point you would stop, not again you should say, for we will be caught.’

But Brian was not so sure about the logic of what was suggested, and anyway, he and little dog were in pursuit of the criminals, wherever they were, whatever it was they now thought to do with their time, and there was much to go on. He understood however why the police had not yet named suspects or made arrests, for although their investigation had advanced, such progress was along sheep trails, and the paths soon petered out, or met only an impasse of one sort or another.

The van for example had been unlocked by a spare set of keys, apparently, assuming that it was not the customer himself who had driven it to Peter and Dawn's, for there was no evidence of forced entry. On the other hand there was evidence of a break-in at the offices of Frank's Removals, but the keys had either been replaced afterwards or not taken in the first place. The jacket on the other hand did belong to the customer, the man who had hired the van, but he swore that he had lost it, having looked for it everywhere, including the van. He suggested now that he must have left it at Frank's Removals, and denied vigorously the idea that he had missed it in the van, even though it had been found on the passenger-seat floor. When he checked, he insisted, it was definitely not there.

Then of course there was the window - exactly how the robbers had broken in was a critical point, for on it depended the security of Brian's own home, and Brian's family. Were they equally vulnerable, or might they take action against the potential threat? Brian was dismayed to learn that the wooden window frames had required no more than crowbars, but Peter was embarrassed to admit that the wooden frames had been new, and anyway apparently rotten. Brian was very glad to know that he had not used the same supplier, but the worst of it was that Peter knew their owner, just as - Brian now discovered - he also knew Frank, and it was here that Brian's blood began to chill, for this was not to be the project he had imagined on setting out.

‘I don't like to talk about it' said Peter, ‘and it is sensitive Brian so please respect that, but one of the main reasons I don't like to talk about it is that I went to school with both Frank and Stuart. Well, here is where it gets complicated, and I can't go around making accusations in public, certainly not, but it may have something to do with it, for there has been a degree of dislike between Frank and I for many years. To cut a long story short things took a turn for the worse when I heard that he was to stand for election as councillor, in High Wycombe, where his office and all the vans are. Do you know what he wants to do? He wants to be elected as councillor, for that new populist party, you know the one, so I said I'd stand against him. My business is in High Wycombe too, and I won’t have it. I won’t have Frank working for that crew, poisoning the town, and turning everyone against each other.’

‘So you think that Frank organised the burglary of your home to stop you?’ asked Brian.

‘I didn't say that Brian, and I couldn't. I said I can't go around making accusations, but it may have something to do with it. I’ll leave you to think about it, but it is one reason I have for the idea that they won't come back, won't come for your houses. I suspect it is personally motivated, perhaps you might say politically motivated, so hopefully you needn't worry.’

The conversation then continued for an hour, in which time Peter talked diffusively, mapping out tangential relations between thìs point of crisis, at which he had recently arrived, and the story of his life, mentioning such occurrences as he considered suggestive of the event. Brian listened with sympathy, and more for that, being quite so unfamiliar with the full detail of Peter’s life, he could not help but worry that his judgement was affected by the strength of the act against him.

Eventually Brian began to look forward to the time when he might leave, and on this basis his departure was soon announced. He had intended next to speak to the neighbours, thinking that he should find strength in numbers, but now he wanted nothing more than to head straight for the police, in part to add to the perspective of Peter's a stricter sense of investigative reason. Although there was complexity to the matter, Brian was yet committed to his own simple composition, categorical truth to be issued - guilty and not guilty, such based on sound empirical method.

When Brian was finally on his way back home he repeated to himself, and occasionally to little dog out loud, the line of Peter's account. After formalising the statements of which it was comprised, so that he might see the whole at once and move with ease between the constituent parts, he was obliged to stop, sitting down on a bench with a view to see out his consideration of this mysterious case.

The first point was the customer. The evidence began with his van, and with his jacket, both of which were found at the scene of the crime. For him to have been one of the robbers implied that his wife had agreed to provide a false alibi, which was not difficult to imagine, and then that he had unlocked the van for himself, driven to Frank's, there gone through the motions of a break-in, met up with the others, driven to Peter and Dawn's, and then left the van behind, with his jacket in it. His claim to have lost the jacket was then a lie, designed to deflect any suspicion towards Frank's Removals.

For it not to have been the customer required a different explanation. Perhaps an employee of Frank's had taken the keys from the office, knowing where the hired vans sat for the evening, and taken one in particular on the job. In that case, either the customer had genuinely left his jacket in the van, or someone else had put it there. It did not seem so unlikely that the customer had missed the jacket in the van, but it was a stretch to see that an employee of the company had stolen it, or found it, and then planted it, for surely they would not have planned on leaving the van behind. It could be true however that the customer had left his jacket at Frank's, and that one of his accomplices from the business had brought it along in order to return it.

On top of this there was the issue of the long-standing enmity between Peter and Frank, which had culminated in a face-off at the local election. Of course it was his company, and that with Peter's testimony made Frank, alongside his customer, another key suspect, but exactly the relation remained obscure.

But it was a difficult case, Brian admitted to himself reluctantly, and that is exactly what the police told him when he arrived at the station later that afternoon.