Cerberus Takes a Break

 

As old dogs go, there won’t be many – if any - who are older than me. The name’s Cerberus, and I’ve been the guard dog of Hades for eternity. I have my den on the bank of the River Styx, right next to where Charon the boatman lands the shades of the departed. I am well aware that there has been much speculation up top about exactly what I look like, namely how many heads I’ve got and whether or not I’ve got serpents coiled round my neck, but I know what I am and you lot can just carry on guessing – until such time as you meet me for real, that is.

I really enjoy my work, which is basically letting the departed know what they’re in for down here. If you’ve led a decent sort of life, you just get a growl or two, but the real nasties are in for a somewhat less pleasant experience. The word “shade” should not be taken too literally – when my jaws are fastened round your ankle the pain is far from imaginary! I just love hearing the screams when my teeth crunch on bone, and I’ve crunched some real beauties in my time.

Let me see, there was Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Donald Trump – oh no, that last one’s not dead yet, is he? Don’t worry, I’ll be ready for him when he is. And the same goes for Nigel Farage.

I really love it when an American tele-evangelist comes my way. Do you know the type I mean? These are the guys who con vast numbers of people into parting with their cash so that the evangelist can live a life of luxury and buy a fleet of private jets, by promising their “flock” that they will have their diseases cured and take a short-cut to Heaven when they pop their clogs. You should see the expression on the face of the average tele-evangelist when Charon deposits one at my side of the River Styx – you might almost think they had other ideas about where they would end up.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing this note is to tell you that I’m about to take my annual leave. Charon decided some time ago that letting me nip upstairs to your world every now and then was in his best interest. Although, as I said, I love my work, the diet of nasty people’s ankles is ever-so-slightly monotonous and I can get a touch crabby without a bit of variety. It was when he found me chewing a hole in his boat that he suggested I take a break every now and then. So this is fair warning that Cerberus, the dog from Hades, is about to get some fresh air.

I will confess that I tend to gorge myself when I’m on my hols. I apologise to the world’s foxes for the blame they get for raiding hen houses and slaughtering the inmates – half the time that’s me having an extended chicken supper.

And all that extra food produces masses of extremely sticky and smelly dog poo. I tend to perform wherever I can guarantee the presence of a human foot within the next half hour.

But my chief delight on being free to charge all over the place is to make the acquaintance of as many lady dogs as I can and leave them in the family way. I tend to choose partners that look a bit like me to start with, so my genetic material stands a good chance of producing pups with a similar attitude to mine. All those dogs that people describe as “hell hounds” are usually exactly that - their daddy was the original hound from hell.

Did you ever wonder how Arthur Conan Doyle got the idea for the Hound of the Baskervilles? One of my offspring gave him a nasty shock one night down a back alley in Edinburgh, that’s how!

I try not to make these trips into a busman’s holiday – scaring people to death is an occupational hazard, and I’m sorry to say that one look at me quite often has that effect. That is why I try to stay out of sight as much as possible, and I always prefer it if people get their first view of me when I’m on duty down below. On the other hand, I have been known to deliberately seek out the occasional tele-evangelist for the sole purpose of hastening the inevitable.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a deputy in Hades, so my holiday absence means that the work tends to pile up and I have a really busy time of it when I get back. That is why these breaks, necessary though they are, have to be on the short side. No matter – there’s still plenty of life in the old dog, as many a lady rottweiler can testify!

 © John Welford

Should She Open It?

 

Queen Cleopatra had a problem. Her birthday was coming up in a week’s time and a host of presents had already arrived at her palace in Alexandria. She knew that most of them would be from Mark Antony, who was away fighting various battles, and she also knew that it would be a pity to spoil the surprise by opening them early.

On the other hand, she was curious and excited beyond measure, knowing that the love of her life was always both generous and original in his present giving. Last year he had excelled himself with the do-it-yourself pyramid-building kit, consisting of all the stones individually wrapped, together with at least three slaves per stone to do the actual shifting and lifting. Shouting at the slaves counted as do-it-yourself as far as the average Egyptian monarch at that time was concerned.

But this year there was one box that excited her curiosity more than any other. Like most of Mark Antony’s presents it had come courtesy of the Nile delivery service, and it always amazed her just how much spare papyrus the people at Nile would cram into all their crates whatever the size of the object within. One year she had received a crate that was an exact cubit cube that contained an exquisite lapis lazuli jewel in the shape of a scarab that fitted into the palm of her hand. She sent all the spare papyri to the Alexandria Library in case they could put them to any use.

But she was sure that this box now in front of her was making a noise. She had given Mark Antony a few hints along the lines of giving the palace a complete makeover – maybe a fresh coat of paint, a new set of hieroglyphic inscriptions and the occasional pot-plant on a stand for the room corners. Could this crate possibly contain some sort of water feature, and could it be leaking? That was the best guess she could arrive at, given that it sounded like water escaping through a small hole. It was definitely a hiss.

So that was her dilemma – should she open the box or not? She hated to spoil the birthday surprise but on the other hand if water was hissing out of a crack it would soon make a mess all over the floor. The decision was made. She opened the box.

It turned out to be the last decision she ever made, and it was easily her worst of many. As soon as it was free, a huge cobra snake sprang from the box and fixed its jaws in her neck. The venom did its work quickly and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, was no more.

 

A Few Weeks Before

 

Mark Antony was having a very busy day. One problem with fighting battles, apart from the distinct possibility of getting yourself killed in the process, was all the planning they entailed. Orders had to be sent to all quarters to make sure that the various aquiliferae, signiferae, optii, and tesserariae were in place and doing their jobs properly. He was so glad that he had learned plenty of Latin at school so that he knew what he meant even if nobody else did, and his cases agreed whether or not his underlings did so.

One added complication this time was Cleopatra’s impending birthday. It would be very bad form to forget, and at least he was sure that Nile would deliver everything he ordered on time. If only he could use them to order victory in battle – presumably the troops sent by Nile would have to fight their way out of a papyrus bag before they fought anyone else.

At least he knew what to order from Nile, given the broad hints that Cleo had been dropping for months past. He had a mental list of everything, from several gallons of magnolia paint to all the various houseplants. Being a Roman, he obviously knew them all by their Latin names, but he had to assume that the people at Nile might not and thus dictated his orders to his scribe accordingly.

He therefore had to translate Pennisetum setaceum to fountain grass and Chlorophytum comosum to spider plant. It did not come naturally to him, but it would be terrible to get this sort of thing wrong.

The scribe was having an awful time. As messengers flew in and out of the office, bringing news of troop movements and equipment shortages that had to be sorted out yesterday, he was being given orders by his boss that had to be written out in double quick time. Almost as soon as he started on one message he had to break off and grab a new piece of papyrus to scribble away at another one.

It also did not help that the messages seemed to alternate between instructions to a Praefectus Cohortis relating to troop displacements and to the Nile delivery service for a maidenhair fern to be sent to Queen Cleopatra.

And that was where things came unstuck. The scribe had only just started on a Nile order for an aspidistra when Mark Antony barked out that he was to drop that and write out an urgent requisition for extra dolabrae to be used for digging trenches. Thus it was that when the postal clerk arrived to collect the completed messages he left with one that was far from complete. Unfortunately, the scribe had only written the first three letters of the word aspidistra, and the result was what did for Queen Cleopatra – according to William Shakespeare, anyway.

 © John Welford

William Shakespeare Seeks a New Direction

 

It was early in 1593, during one of Will Shakespeare’s frequent home visits to Stratford after he had based himself in London, that the subject of his ongoing career came up in the conversation.

“So how’s the playwrighting going?” asked his wife Anne.

“It could be better”, Will replied. “I’ve done four history plays, to wit three Henry VIs and Richard III, and I’ve just tried turning my hand to comedy.”

“That sounds promising,” said Anne. “Everybody likes a good laugh.”

“I agree”, said Will, “but they seem to get more giggles watching Richard III than The Comedy of Errors”.

“Bit of a flop then?”

 “Could be. And then there’s the fact that it needs two sets of identical twins – finding one set of twin actors in London is bad enough, but two?”

“So what’s your plan, Will?”

“I’m thinking of jacking in the theatricals lark”, Will replied. “I need a new direction for my talents, so I’m planning on retraining for a completely new career.”

“Which is?”

“Hitman.”

“You what?”

“Hitman. Paid assassin. There must be plenty of opportunities with all the plots against Queen Elizabeth. Her spies are very good at tracking down the baddies, but they need people to do the actual job of bumping them off. I could do that.”

“But you’ve never killed anyone”, said Anne.

“I've had a few murders in my plays”, said Will. “Richard III was full of them. But you’re right – I need a proper training course in dagger skills and that sort of thing. I’ll have a word with some of my fellow playwrights when I’m next in London – I’m sure they could point me in the right direction.”

So that was what he did. A few weeks later he was to be found at a pub in Deptford, knocking back the ale with Thomas Kyd, Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe. This was a regular get-together when they were all in town. They quite often took part in the pub quizzes and played a game or two of darts before they got too drunk to aim properly and were a danger to any passer-by.

They were all a bit surprised that Will Shakespeare was proposing to give up writing plays, as they all reckoned that he could make a proper go of it if he really took it seriously, but saw no problem with him becoming a paid assassin. Tom Kyd and Kit Marlowe had both written plays that contained a vast amount of violence, not to mention many and various ways of doing somebody to death. If Will wanted a few tips, he had come to the right people.

“Mind you”, said Kit, “You’ll probably want to be a bit less imaginative than some of my characters were. The red-hot poker up the backside technique, as in “Edward II”, although doubtless highly satisfying – for the hitman that is, not the victim – might be a trifle impractical for real purposes. I recommend sticking with daggers – in both sense of the phrase.”

“As it happens,” said Tom, “I just happen to have one of my stage daggers with me. You know – the sort that has a retractable blade. They look so effective when combined with copious amounts of pig’s blood. If I don’t get half the front row passing out with shock I always reckon I’ve failed.”

“You could practice on Kit”, said Ben. “Suppose he’s your target. Just creep up behind him and stab him in the neck. You OK with that, Kit?”

“No problem”, said Kit. “That’s a really good stage dagger, by the way. It looks just like the real thing.”

So Will followed Ben’s instructions and duly plunged the dagger into Kit Marlowe’s jugular. Kit’s response was immediate. He gave a loud cry and slumped forward, with blood spurting all over the place.

“Wow!” said Ben. “That’s just brilliant. I never realized you were such a good actor, Kit. And where did you get all that pig’s blood from? It’s very realistic!”

“Just one little thing, Tom”, Will said. “Didn’t you say that the blade was supposed to retract into the handle? I’m not completely sure that it did.”

“Whoops”, said Tom. “I think you’re right. I might have to take this dagger back to the shop I bought it from. They seem to have sold me a dud. It’s a shame about Kit, though”.

“How can you tell a stage dagger from a real one?” Ben asked.

“Easy”, said Tom. “Stage daggers always have a green band round the handle.”

“This one has a red band.”

“You sure?”

“Certain”, said Ben. “That band is red.”

“Well, what do you know?” said Tom. “I always wondered if I might be red/green colour-blind. Now I have the answer.”

“Might I suggest”, said Ben, “that we put off any further discussion for the time being? I have an inkling that it might not be good for our health to be found in a pub alongside the dead body of a renowned playwright, so let’s make ourselves scarce.”

Once they had done precisely that, and after a few days’ reflection, Will decided that the hitman idea was probably not such a good one after all, especially after he had seen a performance of Thomas Kyd’s “The Spanish Tragedy”, with its constant portrayal of hangings and stabbings, plus a character biting off his own tongue.

The audience reaction was so enthusiastic that Will determined to go one better, which was why he returned to playwrighting and produced the graphically grisly “Titus Andronicus” not long afterwards. The rest, as they say, is history.

© John Welford

The Angry Stone

 

Salisbury, 20^th October 2020

“You’re doing a good job there”, said Dave to Tommy. Tommy was not going to disagree, but it was clear from the expression on his face that something was bothering him.

Tommy was a master stonemason, doing restoration work at the Cathedral, and Dave was his supervisor. They were currently replacing a series of stones that formed a decorative parapet high above the ground. Each new stone was shaped and carved in the masons’ yard that was almost certainly where the original masons had done their work 700 years previously.

As each new stone was completed it was loaded aboard a hoist that that carried it up to its location, and that was how the old stones had been brought down to the yard so that they could be copied exactly, with the ravages of centuries of weathering made good.

“So what’s on your mind?” Dave asked.

“It’s this stone”, Tommy said, pointing to the weather-worn stone that he was currently working on replacing.

“What about it?”

“I get a strange feeling every time I go near it”, Tommy said. “It’s as though it’s trying to tell me something.”

“Stones can’t talk”, Dave said.

“This one can. It’s telling me to be very careful.”

“You always are, “said Dave, “there isn’t a mason in this yard who takes more care over their work than you do.”

“I don’t mean that that sort of care”, said Tommy. “I get a sense of fear when I go near it, as though something terrible is going to happen. And I know it sounds strange to say, but that stone is angry.”

“Angry?”

“That’s not all”, Tommy continued. “I’ve noticed something very odd about this stone, in a purely physical sense.”

“What do you mean?”

“As you know”, Tommy said, “the old masons used to put their mark on every stone as they finished them. That’s how they got paid – a certain amount for each stone they ‘signed’ on completion. Well, all the stones on the parapet, up to this point, were signed with a W mark. The mason was clearly assigned the job of working his way along, with each stone being identical.

“But this is the last stone with the W mark – all the ones further along have a different mark, and they were not worked anything like as well. Even with the weathering, you can see that the quality dropped off after the W stones ended.

“And there’s more. You see this spike here? There are three decorative spikes on top of each stone, and every one has weathered to just about the same degree – apart from here. This spike has broken clean off.”

Dave had to agree. Even after 700 years of wind and rain it was easy to see that something had happened to this stone that set it apart from all the others. All the work on the parapet up to that point had clearly been of excellent quality, apart from this one stone, the last one that bore the W mark. Why – if a spike had broken off - would the builders have put this stone on the parapet? “W” was clearly a man who took great pride in his work, so why would he have allowed an inferior piece to be used? It made no sense.

 

Salisbury, 20^th October 1320

“Another beautiful piece of work, William”, said Brother Geoffrey, as he surveyed the latest creations being completed in the masons’ yard.

“I thank you, Brother Geoffrey”, said William, who had been working at his trade for more than thirty years and was widely regarded as the most talented mason in the country. That was why he was entrusted with the most finely detailed work.

“I do my work for the glory of God and I put a piece of my soul into every piece I carve. Nothing short of perfection is good enough for this great cathedral.”

“Well said,” said Brother Geoffrey. “And is this stone ready to be lifted up to the parapet?”

“Indeed it is”, said William. The men are about to haul it into place. Stay with me awhile and watch as it rises to where it will stay for hundreds of years.”

So the two men watched as the newly finished stone was lifted onto a cradle that had thick ropes attached to it. The labourers hauled at the ropes , which wound round a block-and-tackle arrangement high above them, and the stone lifted off the ground. This was something that the well-muscled men had done many times before, and they had no reason to think that anything different would happen this time, but that was where they were wrong.

The stone had nearly reached the level of the parapet, where other workers were waiting to catch hold of it and swing it into place, when everyone heard a sharp crack and watched in horror as the timber that supported the block-and-tackle split in two and everything supported by it started to fall back towards the ground. The men who had been hauling the ropes gave a warning cry, but it was too late – the stone and the accompanying equipment landed straight on top of the mason and the monk, killing them instantly.

 

Salisbury, 4^th November 1320

Once everyone had recovered their senses after the terrible loss of William the mason and Brother Geoffrey, decisions had to be made as to what should happen next.

Simon, the clerk of works, was conscious that the work was taking much longer than it should have done, partly because there had been several other accidents in recent weeks including a number of fatalities. These were mainly due to men falling from high places, sometimes because the high wooden scaffolding had been poorly assembled or the timbers had not been strong enough for the weights they were then expected to bear. The latest tragedy had been just one more misfortune and there would surely be many more.

However, the work had to progress, and time could not be wasted.

That was why he was determined to get William’s final stone back on to the parapet as soon as possible. This had meant re-assembling the scaffolding that held the block-and-tackle and getting everything back into place. The preparatory work had now been done and it was time to get hauling.

However, there was a problem, as was pointed out to Simon by Bernard, the mason who had taken over William’s role in the masons’ yard.

“We can’t use William’s stone”, he said.

“Why on earth not?” Simon replied.

“Just look at it. When the stone fell it not only killed William but it was damaged – this spike broke off half way up. William would never have allowed a stone like this to be used – we need to a carve a new one from scratch.”

But Simon would not listen. As far as he was concerned, it was perfectionists like William who were a major cause of the delays that were so burdensome to him. Not only would William’s now less-than-perfect stone be used, but corners would be cut in future – the spikes would be as plain as possible with no hint of decoration of the kind that William had been so expert at.

 

Salisbury, 4^th November 2020

William had been right – there was a piece of his soul in that stone, and it was not at all happy with Simon’s decision.

During the intervening centuries, the narrow gap behind the parapet had become the home of peregrines which delighted in using the cathedral as a launch pad for swooping down on unsuspecting pigeons and other luckless prey. Nests were built every year and young birds raised to follow the tradition of their parents. However, it was noted by birdwatchers who trained their binoculars on to the parapet from below that there was one place where the peregrines never built a nest – there was one stone behind which no young birds were ever raised.

But today all that would change. Tommy’s perfect replacement stone was now in place and a piece of William’s soul could depart after 700 angry years.

© John Welford

Ladders and Snakes

 

It was a sunny day in August. Twins Jack and Hazel, aged 10, were tired of hanging around at home, playing boring games like snakes and ladders, and decided to take a walk on the heath that was a short bus ride away.

“We might see some lizards”, said Jack. “And maybe snakes”.

“Snakes?” said Hazel. “I don’t like snakes, and I don’t just mean the ones that aren’t ladders”.

“Real snakes are fine”, said Jack. “Have you ever seen one?”

“Only on TV”, said Hazel. “Snakes can bite you, and you might die”.

“Only adders can bite you”, said Jack. “And even if one does it won’t kill you”.

“I’m still not all that happy about it”, said Hazel.

The two of them wandered off down a sandy track with heather and gorse all round them. Hazel watched where she put her feet with great care, just in case she trod on an adder.

“So where do you expect to find lizards and snakes?” she asked her brother.

“They like warm, sunny places on days like this”, he said. ”Let’s see if we can find some rocks that have got nice and warm”.

They searched around for a few minutes without success, with Jack being much keener on turning over the few rocks that they found than Hazel was. All of a sudden she stood upright with a worried look on her face.

“I can smell something”, she said. “I think it’s smoke”.

“Smoke?”

“Yes. Something’s burning”.

“Where?”

“Behind us. Over there. Look - I can see a fire”.

“That’s miles away”, said Jack. “Nothing to worry about”.

“If you say so”, said Hazel, but she didn’t sound all that convinced.

They carried on searching for another ten minutes or so, after which Jack gave a shout of triumph as he turned over a rock and saw what was unmistakably an adder with a zig-zag pattern down its back.

“Look”. he shouted, “I’ve found one. Quick, look here before it slides away”.

But Hazel was far more concerned with what she could see behind them, which was the heath fire a lot closer to them than it had been before, now that a breeze was blowing the fire in their direction.

“Jack”, she called out. “Forget the snake, we need to get out of here, fast”.

Jack took one look and had to agree with his sister. The two of them started running, but had a nasty shock when they realised that the smoke from the fire was closing in around them and making it difficult to breathe.

“Jack”, Hazel shouted. “This is awful. We need to get above this smoke. There’s a tree there - let’s climb up it”.

The tree, a solitary pine, looked to be their best hope of escaping the smoke, but it soon became clear that this plan was not going to work. There were no low branches to give them a handhold or foothold, and therefore no way of climbing up it.

“If only we had a ladder”, Jack said, but Hazel was conscious of the fact that a tree was probably not the best bet for safety when a raging fire reached it, whether not a ladder was handy. They had no choice but to keep running, coughing with the smoke as they did so.

Then Jack saw something that made him stop in his tracks.

“What are you doing, Jack?”, said Hazel. “We need to keep going”.

“It’s the snakes”, said Jack. “Look at them.”

“We’ve got no time for that now”, said Hazel. “Forget them, keep running”.

“No”, said Jack. “Those snakes know something. We should follow them”.

Jack had a point. The two adders he could see certainly seemed to have a purpose in mind as they slithered through the heather in the direction of a large rock that was just about visible through the swirling smoke. Jack and Hazel watched as the snakes made for what appeared to be quite a large hollow in the sand underneath the rock. Jack could see that this must be where the snakes knew they would be safe, and that this could be their own best hope for escaping the fire.

“Come on”, he yelled to Hazel, “there’s room for us as well in that hole”.

With the smoke in her throat, Hazel had no breath with which to argue, so she joined her brother in crawling underneath the rock. They found that the smoke was very much less dense down below ground level.

“Where did the snakes go?” she asked.

“I think they found a crevice right at the back”, Jack said. “Besides, would you rather be nipped by an adder and have to go to the doctor or be burned to death?”

Hazel could see Jack’s point, and that following the snakes was clearly the most sensible thing to have done. At least they would both live to tell the tale, knowing that there are times when snakes are more useful than ladders.

© John Welford

 

Gang Aft Agley

 

Rick had most of the plan worked out, but he just needed to think out a few details. As he sat over a coffee at Chieveley Services he reckoned that he was just about there.

He was heading south on the A34 from where he lived near Leicester to his mother’s old home in Southampton, where he was due to meet his sister Pauline, who lived in Bournemouth. Their mother had died some months before at an advanced age and the two siblings were engaged in the long and cumbersome business of sorting out her affairs and selling the property.

Today’s task was deciding what to do with the many possessions that their mother had acquired over the years, both before and after she had been widowed some thirty years before. She had been an avid collector of what she supposed were antiques and works of art, with her purchases being very much at the lower end of the market, mostly at charity shops and car boot sales.

As a result, her house was crammed full of what Rick was happy to call assorted junk, and Pauline agreed with him. Today’s task was to sort out what each of them wanted to keep and what could safely be returned to the charity shops.

However, as far as Rick was concerned, it was not quite as simple as that. This was because of what he had found at the house on a previous visit. When going through piles of papers in a filing cabinet – mostly old bank statements and receipts – he had come across an envelope addressed “To Pauline and Richard”. Pauline had not been there at the time – she had gone to the shop to buy a few things for lunch  - so Rick opened the envelope and read the letter it contained. It was dated only three months before their mother had died, as was apparent from the shaky – but still readable – handwriting.

“Dear Pauline and Richard”, it began, “I know that my time is short and that you will have to deal with everything I have left behind. My will leaves all my possessions to you jointly, and I know that there is almost nothing there that is of particular value, but there is one item that just might be.”

Rick’s eyes lit up when he read that bit.

“This is a sketch that I picked up at a car boot sale many years ago. It is not of a particularly pleasant subject, which is why I never had it framed and mounted on a wall alongside all the other prints and daubs that you can see. Apart from anything else your father hated it, calling it ‘Tarts on the Game’ – I apologise for his language, he could be quite coarse at times – so I put it in the loft, where it has been almost ever since.”

“About six months ago I was reading a book about the artist Picasso, and it had a picture of one of his best-known paintings – so it said, although it was new to me – and I suddenly recognized it as another version of the sketch I had stored in the loft. The painting is called ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ and it features five semi-clothed women who were apparently prostitutes on a street in Barcelona. It seems that this painting was one of the first Cubist works of art and it is very famous for that reason.”

“But to me it was just like ‘Tarts on the Game’, with a few differences. I got the sketch down from the loft – this was when I felt a lot better than I do now - and compared it with the picture in the book. There was no doubt in my mind that this could have been a preliminary pencil sketch that Picasso made before getting to work on his painting – I could see where shapes had been partly rubbed out and slightly different ones superimposed on top of them.”

“In other words, this could be a genuine work by Picasso and worth a great deal of money. I have no idea how it ended up in a car boot sale, but it is now mine and will soon be yours. I hope this treasure will make up for all the rubbish I am leaving you with.”

Rick’s first thought had been to tell his sister about this letter as soon as she came back. His second thought had been to do nothing of the sort. Pauline knew absolutely nothing about the letter or the Picasso sketch in the loft. If there was a fortune to made here, why split it between two people when there was absolutely no need to do so? He therefore slipped the letter into his pocket when he heard the door open as Pauline returned from the shop.

As Rick sat over his coffee at Chieveley Services he watched as a guy he supposed was a truck driver – going by the huge all-day breakfast he was ploughing into after drowning it in brown sauce – tapped away at his phone in between mouthfuls. It looked as though he was playing a game of some sort and making a fist in triumph as he moved up to the next level.

Rick could have done the same as he put the last pieces of his plan into place. He would offer to clear the loft, knowing that Pauline would never go there due to her horror of spiders, and quietly slip the sketch into one of the boxes of items that he wanted to keep. To be frank, there was unlikely to be much that took his fancy, but he needed to choose a few items in order to hide the sketch from Pauline’s view.

His main problem would be what to do with the sketch after that. How do you sell a genuine Picasso in Leicester? He reckoned that it had probably been stolen at some point and would be on a Police register of sought-after artworks. That was the missing piece of the plan – he needed to find a channel through which the sketch could be fenced without any connection being made to him. As he sat there he suddenly remembered a conversation he had had some weeks before with a work colleague about an acquaintance of his who had recently been released from jail after serving a sentence for art theft. That chap would surely know about how to fence stolen artworks? Maybe Rick could make some discreet enquiries and see where things went?

As he set out back on the road towards Southampton he was a lot happier in his mind about how things would go. He would get the sketch, take it home, and arrange to sell it to some Middle Eastern sheikh or Russian oligarch via a dubious underworld channel.

But there was a huge hole in his plan. This took the form of a massive juggernaut that was coming up behind him, its recently breakfasted driver still playing a game on his smartphone and utterly unaware that the traffic ahead was slowing down to a crawl.

Had he lived, Rick would have been interested to know that the juggernaut driver in question had criminal connections of his own and regularly undertook trips to Europe – as he was due to do now – to smuggle stolen works of art hidden in his cargo.

© John Welford

The Hole

 

It was not long after Okami arrived last year that we became aware of her delight in digging holes. She is a border collie, on the small size for her breed, but very friendly and a bundle of energy.

She had not been with us long before the first hole appeared. This was in a flower bed, nowhere near anything we wanted to continue growing, so we had no problem with it. However, the next hole was in the middle of the lawn, and that was certainly a problem. Not only did it look awful, but it posed the constant threat of turning an ankle if one stepped into it – and that is indeed what happened more than once.

Of course, we tried filling it in, but that did not last long. The next day all the infill would be out again, so we gave up trying. We consoled ourselves with the notion that she would eventually grow out of the habit, but we were wrong on that one.

The fact is, she loved just having a hole in the lawn, apart from the pleasure she gained from the digging of it. She could drop things into the hole and then fetch them out again. She devised a form of doggie golf – nudging a ball towards the hole and then patting it forwards with her nose from increasing distances. She was soon scoring holes in one from up to three feet away.

Oh well, we thought, if it keeps her quiet and we watch where we put our feet, maybe having a hole in the lawn is not such a terrible thing after all.

If only we had known how things would turn out.

It must have been about three months ago when we spotted that the hole was getting bigger. As Okami dug, less and less of her could be seen above the surface. She – like virtually all border collies – has a prominent white tip to her tail, and before long this was all we could see, wagging furiously as she scrabbled away. Then even that disappeared as the hole got both deeper and wider.

It wasn’t just balls and toys that went down the hole. Other things from the garden were dropped in – flowerpots of increasingly larger dimensions, then whole plants – small ones to start with, then quite substantial shrubs and bushes. We knew things were getting serious when the wheelbarrow vanished followed by the garden furniture – a couple of folding chairs then a table and a substantial wooden bench.

It was obvious by now that we no longer had a lawn with a hole it. We had a hole with a fringe of lawn round it.

Things got really bad when the fridge disappeared. We knew at this stage that Okami must have had help of some kind. It had taken two guys with a trolley to get the fridge into the house, so it was just plain impossible for a small border collie to get it out of the kitchen and into the hole all on her own.

We reckon that she must have been planning all this for weeks in advance. We had thought that all those little doggie conversations during her morning walks when other dogs came up to play and exchange sniffs of rear ends were just innocent greetings, but there was clearly much more to it than that.

This became clear when we realized that other dog-owners in the village had reported their dogs to be missing. Not only had Okami vanished from view, but so had every other dog within a half-mile radius. They must have been responsible for carrying our fridge out of the house and depositing it down the hole, then jumping down after it. The fridge contained lots of cold meat, such as chicken, beef and ham – all excellent sustenance for a team of hole-digging dogs. Many of the dogs must have brought other supplies with them, as several losses of Sunday joints and barbecue reserves were reported along with those of the dogs themselves.

The really odd thing was that nobody ever saw any of this activity taking place. Okami and her mates were so clever at hiding their tracks and doing all this when nobody was watching. Clearly we have underestimated the resources of the average dog to an alarming degree.

We knew that the hole must have been getting really deep when the village suddenly became deprived of every ladder that wasn’t securely locked away, and even some that were. Not only that, but the digging dogs must have realized the need for a secure structure to support the ladders. That was why builders were amazed to find, on turning up to work after one weekend, that every roof repair and house extension project in the village had lost all its scaffolding. Not a single pole or board was to be seen – the whole lot had vanished.

Of course, the Police were contacted and we were happy enough to tell them about the huge hole in our garden. They said they would look into it, which they duly did. Like us, all they could see was inky blackness and hear a very distant sound of panting and scrabbling.

We had given up all hope ever seeing our dog – let alone our fridge – again, until one morning when I glanced out of the window just as the top of a ladder appeared out of the hole. A succession of dogs then scrambled out of the hole – dozens of them – with Okami being the last to emerge. They were all filthy dirty but extremely pleased to be back above ground. There was much barking with delight and wagging of tails.

The something else appeared out of the hole. It was a human head, closely followed by the rest of the human. He had a broad grin on his face and was carrying a crate of Foster’s.

“G’day!” he said. “Anyone fancy a tinny?”

 © John Welford