He crossed the kitchen in two big, squelching strides and flung open the
back door.
Then he understood.
His dog lay on her back in the middle of the little concrete yard. The
knife was still in her-the same knife he had sharpened too much this
morning. Tony knelt beside the mutilated corpse. The body looked
shrunken, like a balloon with a leak
A string of soft, blasphemous curses came from Tony’s lips. He stared at
the multiple cuts, and the bits of cloth between the dog’s bared teeth
and whispered: “You put up a fight, girl.”
He went to the garden gate and looked out, as if the killer might still
be there. All he could see was a large pink wad of chewed bubblegum on
the ground, casually thrown away by a child.
Obviously, Ma had been out when it happened, which was a mercy. Tony
decided to clear up before she got back.
He got a spade from the outhouse. Between the yard and the garden gate
was a small patch of poor soil which the old man used to cultivate
intermittently. Now it was overgrown. Tony took off his jacket, marked
out a small square of ground, and began to dig.
The grave did not take him long. He was strong, and angry too. He trod
the spade viciously and thought about what he would do to the killer if
he ever found him. And he would find him. The bastard had done it out of
spite, and when people did things like that they had to boast about it,
either before or afterward, otherwise they would have proved their point
to nobody but themselves, and that was never enough.
He knew the type.
Somebody would hear something, and tell one of the boys in the hope of a
reward.
It crossed his mind that the Old Bill might be behind it. It was
unlikely: this was not their style.
Who, then? He had plenty of enemies, but none of them possessed both the
hatred and the guts to do a number like this. When Tony met somebody
with that much front he usually hired the bloke.
He wrapped the dead dog in his jacket and placed the bundle gently in
the hole. He shoveled the earth back in and made the surface even with
the flat of the spade. You didn’t say prayers for dogs, did you? No.
He went back into the kitchen. The mess was awful. There was no way he
could clean it up alone. Ma would be back any minute it was a bloody
miracle she had stayed out this long. He had to have help. He decided to
ring his sister-in-law.
He went through the kitchen, trying not to spread the blood around. It
seemed an awful lot of blood, even for a boxer dog.
He went into the parlor to use the phone; and there she was.
She must have been trying to reach the phone.
A thin trail of blood led from the door to the body, lying stretched
full length on the carpet.
She had been stabbed only once, but the cut had been fatal.
The look of horror frozen on Tony’s face changed slowly as his features
contorted, like a squeezed cushion, into an expression of despair. He
raised his arms slowly upward and pressed his palms against his cheeks.
His mouth opened.
At last words came, and he roared like a bull.
“Ma!” he cried. “Oh God, Ma!”
He fell to his knees beside the body and cried: huge, loud, racking
sobs, like the cries of a child in total misery.
Outside in the street a crowd gathered around the parlor window, but no
one dared to come in.
THE CITY TENNIS CLUB was an establishment which had nothing to do with
tennis and everything to do with afternoon drinking. Kevin Hart was
often struck with the implausibility of its title. In an alley off Fleet
Street, squeezed in between a church and an office block, there was
hardly room to play table tennis, let alone the real thing. If all they
wanted was an excuse to serve drinks when the pubs were shut, Kevin
thought, they could surely have found something more credible, like