Every Living Thing Read online

  “That’s right.”

  “Good, good…but what’s that on your shoulder?”

  “That’s Marilyn.”

  “Marilyn?”

  “Yes, my badger.”

  “Badger!”

  He laughed, a carefree laugh. “Sorry, maybe I should have warned you in my letter. She’s my pet. Goes everywhere with me.”

  “Everywhere?”

  “Absolutely.”

  All kinds of apprehensions boiled up in my mind. How did a veterinary assistant carry out his duties with a wild animal hanging from his shoulder at all times? And what sort of man would roll up to a new job not only with a badger but with a giant dog?

  Anyway, I’d soon find out. I pushed my misgivings to one side and led him out to the car, running a gauntlet of pop-eyed stares from a booking-clerk, two ladies sitting on the platform seat and from a porter who nearly wheeled a load of packing cases into a wall.

  “I see you’ve got a dog, too,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s Storm. Lovely, good-natured animal.”

  The lurcher waved his tail and gazed up at me with kind eyes. I patted the shaggy head. “He looks it.

  “Incidentally,” I said. “With a name like yours I was expecting a Scottish accent and you haven’t got one.”

  He smiled. “No, I grew up in Yorkshire, but my ancestry is Scottish.” His eyes gleamed and his chin went up.

  “You’re proud of that, eh?”

  He nodded gravely. “I am indeed. Very proud.”

  At Skeldale House I showed him his car and helped to kit him out with the essential equipment we all carried—the drugs, instruments, obstetric gown and protective clothing—then I took him up to the flat, where his main interest seemed to be directed not at the interior but at the birds and flowers he could see through the window overlooking the long garden.

  “By the way,” I said. “I should have asked you earlier. Have you had lunch?”

  “Lunch?”

  “Yes, have you had something to eat?”

  “Eat…eat…?” The black button eyes took on a thoughtful expression. “Yes…I’m sure I had something yesterday.”

  “Yesterday! My God, it’s nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. You must be starved!”

  “Oh, no, not at all, not in the least.”

  “You mean you’re not hungry?”

  He seemed to find the question unusual, even irrelevant, and replied with a non-committal shrug of the shoulders.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I’ll slip downstairs and see what I can find for you.”

  In the office cupboard was a large uncut fruit-cake Helen had just baked to go with the cups of coffee we snatched between visits. I put it on a plate with a knife and took it up to the flat.

  “Here you are,” I said, placing the cake on the table. “Help yourself and then you can get a proper meal later.”

  As I spoke I heard footsteps on the stair and Siegfried burst into the room.

  “Calum Buchanan, Siegfried Farnon,” I said.

  They shook hands, then Siegfried pointed a trembling finger at the young man’s shoulder. “What the devil is that?”

  Calum smiled his engaging smile. “Marilyn, my badger.”

  “And you’re going to keep that animal here?”

  “That’s right.”

  Siegfried took a long breath and let it out slowly through his nose, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he continued to look fixedly at our new assistant.

  The young man was talking easily about his experience in practice, his pleasure at coming to a charming town like Darrowby, and about the things he could see in the garden.

  He had started on the cake, but didn’t bother to use the knife. Instead, he crumbled pieces off absently as he spoke. “What a beautiful wistaria! Finest I’ve ever seen. There’s a pretty little bullfinch, and surely that’s a tree-creeper on your apple tree—not many of them about. And my word!”— popping a large chunk of sultana-laden comestible into his mouth—“I can see an albino blackbird over there. What a beauty!”

  Siegfried was a keen naturalist and ornithologist and normally this conversation would have been right up his street, but he remained silent, his eyes straying unbelievingly from the badger to the dog and to the steadily disappearing cake.

  Finally, Calum swept up the last few crumbs with his fingers—I had the impression that he had no interest in what he had eaten—and turned away from the window.

  “Well, thank you very much. I’ll get unpacked now if I may.”

  I swallowed. “Right, see you later.”

  We went downstairs and Siegfried led me rapidly into the empty office. “What the hell have we got here, James? An assistant with a blasted badger round his neck! And a dog as big as a donkey!”

  “Well, yes…but he seems to be a nice bloke.”

  “Maybe so, but very strange. Did you see—he ate that whole bloody cake!”

  “Yes, I saw. But he was very hungry; he hadn’t eaten since yesterday.”

  Siegfried stared at me. “Not since yesterday! Are you sure?”

  “Sure as I can be. He didn’t seem to know himself.”

  My partner groaned and slapped a hand against his forehead. “Oh, God, we should have had an interview before we took this chap on. But he had such glowing references from the university. They said he was outstanding—I thought we couldn’t go wrong.”

  “You never know. He may be good at the job—that’s what really counts.”

  “Well, we’ll have to hope so, but he’s a bloody oddball and I sense trouble.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I had my own misgivings. John Crooks with all his great qualities was, at bottom, just an ordinary nice guy, but there was nothing ordinary about that dark-eyed young man upstairs.

  The telephone interrupted my musings. I took the call and turned to Siegfried. “That’s Miles Horsley. He’s got a heifer calving.”

  My partner nodded, then pursed his lips thoughtfully. After a few moments he raised a decisive finger. “Right, we’ll send the new man. We’ve been wondering if he can do the job. This is our chance to find out.”

  “Wait a minute, Siegfried,” I said. “The young chap’s newly qualified and this is Miles Horsley. He’s an expert—you never get an easy calving there, and it’s a heifer, too. It could be very tough. Maybe I’d better go.”

  Siegfried shook his head vigorously. “No, I want to find out what this fellow’s made of and the sooner the better. Shout him down, will you?”

  Calum received the instructions calmly, whistling softly as we pointed out the farm on the map. As he turned to go, Siegfried fired a parting shot. “This could be a difficult job, but don’t come back till you have calved that heifer. Do you understand?”

  My blood froze but Calum didn’t seem in the least put out. He nodded, gave us a casual wave of the hand and went out to his car.

  After he had left, Siegfried turned to me with a grim smile. “You may think I’m hard, James, but I don’t want him coming back here in half an hour with the story that it’s an unusual presentation and would we take over. No, in at the deep end, I say. It’s the best way.”

  I shrugged. I just hoped the new young man could swim.

  That was around five thirty and by half past seven I was suffering from almost unbearable tension. Pictures of the hapless rookie rolling around on a byre floor, covered in blood and muck, swam through my mind and I found myself looking at my watch every five minutes. I had almost reached the stage of pacing the floor when Siegfried came in, carrying a little dog that had torn its flank and needed stitching. “How did Buchanan get on?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. He’s not back yet.”

  “Not back!” My partner gave me a level stare. “Something’s wrong, then. Let’s get this dog stitched, then one of us had better get out there and see what’s going on.”

  We were both silent as I anaesthetised the little animal and Siegfried began to clean out the wound. I knew we were thinking