Bella, sensing a newcomer among her congregation, pricked up her ears. Her head was superbly proportioned, tones of sable and gold mingling in her coat to glamorous effect, her brown eyes vigilant but soft in the half-light. She was so finished; so completely herself. The only response to her presence-and one that Marty willingly granted-was awe.
Lillian peered though the wire, introducing Marty to this mother of mothers.
“This is Mr. Strauss, Bella,” she said. “You’ll see him now and again; he’s a friend.”
There was no baby-talk condescension in Lillian’s voice. She spoke to the dog as to an equal, and despite Marty’s initial uncertainty about the woman, he found himself warming to her. Love wasn’t an easy thing to come by, he knew that to his cost. Whatever shape it came in, it made sense to respect it. Lillian loved this dog-her grace, her dignity. It was a love he could approve of, if not entirely understand.
Bella sniffed the air, and seemed satisfied that she had the measure of Marty. Lillian reluctantly turned from the cage to Strauss.
“She might even take to you, given time. She’s a great seductress, you know. A great seductress.”
Behind them, Whitehead grunted at this sentimental nonsense.
“Shall we look over the grounds?” he suggested impatiently. “I think we’re done here.”
“Come back when you’ve settled in,” Lillian said; her manner had defrosted noticeably since Marty had shown some appreciation of her charges, “and I’ll put them through their paces for you.”
“Thanks. I will.”
“I wanted you to see the dogs,” Whitehead said as they left the enclosures behind, and started at a brisk pace across the lawn to the perimeter fence. That was only part of the reason for the visit, though; Marty knew that damn well. Whitehead had intended the experience as a salutary reminder of what Marty had left behind him. There, but for the grace of Joseph Whitehead, he would go again. Well, the lesson was learned. He’d jump through hoops of fire for the old man rather than go back into the custody of corridors and cells. There wasn’t even a Bella there; no sublime and secret mother locked away in the heart of Wandsworth. Just lost men like himself.
The day was warming: the sun was up, a pale lemon balloon drifting above the rookery, and the frost was melting from the lawns. For the first time Marty began to get some sense of the scale of the estate. Distances opened up to either side of them: he could see water, a lake, or river perhaps, shining beyond a bank of trees. On the west side of the house there were rows of cypresses, suggesting walkways, fountains perhaps; to the other side, a banked garden surrounded by a low stone wall. It would take him weeks to get the layout of the place.
They had reached the double fence that ran right around the estate. A good ten feet high, both fences were topped by sharpened steel struts that curved out toward the would-be intruder. These were in turn crowned with spirals of barbed wire. The whole construction hummed, almost imperceptibly, with an electric charge. Whitehead regarded it with evident satisfaction.
“Impressive, eh?”
Marty nodded. Again, the sight woke echoes.
“It offers a measure of security,” Whitehead said.
He turned left at the fence, and began to walk its length, the conversation-if that it could be called-coming from him in the form of a series of non sequiturs, as if he were too impatient with the elliptical structure of normal exchanges to bear with it. He simply threw statements, or clusters of remarks, down, and expected Marty to make whatever sense he could of them.
“It’s not a perfect system: fences, dogs, cameras. You saw the screens in the kitchen?”
“Yes.
“I’ve got the same upstairs. The cameras offer total surveillance day and night.” He jerked a thumb up at one of the camera’s floodlights mounted beside them. There was one set on every tenth upright. They swiveled back and forth slowly, like the heads of mechanical birds.
“Luther’ll show you how to run through them in sequence. Cost a small fortune to install, and I’m not sure it’s more than cosmetic. These people aren’t fools.”