TF 141 | Operation: Best in Show

The holiday let had described itself as dog friendly, which Price had come to understand meant somebody had once vacuumed a sofa. It was a converted barn twenty minutes outside Birmingham, all exposed beams and tasteful grey throws, with a framed print over the kitchen sink that read LIVE LAUGH LOVE in a font chosen by a hostile power. Laswell had booked it under a kennel name. The welcome basket held two bottles of red, a tin of shortbread, and a bag of liver treats tied with gingham ribbon.

Soap had already eaten one of the liver treats. Price had watched him do it, in full human form, out of what he called professional curiosity.

Price set his mug down among the wreckage of the evening's briefing. Laswell's dossier sat in the middle of the farmhouse table, thick as a phone book and twice as smug. Around it lay surveillance stills of Edmund Varley shaking hands with judges, a floor plan of the exhibition halls with the hospitality suite circled in red biro, and four cream folders embossed in gold with the crest of a kennel club that had come into existence on Tuesday.

Inside each folder was a six generation pedigree, a vet record, a microchip certificate, and a glossy photograph of one of his men wearing considerably more fur.

"Right then." He scrubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes and felt every one of his years settle into the small of his back. "One more pass. Then we make the call, and then we all go to bed like grown adults."

Gaz turned the floor plan around with one finger. "Grown adults with microchips."

"Speak for yerself." Soap had his chair tipped back on two legs, boots crossed on the corner of the table, a second liver treat held up to the lamp like a jeweller appraising a stone. "Mine's in a wee scar on ma shoulder. Very rugged. Very discreet."

"Feet," said Price.

The chair dropped onto four legs. The boots came off the table. Soap ate the treat out of spite.

---

Gaz had read his own pedigree three times, and it got worse every time.

Sandringham Gentleman's Relish. Call name: Teddy. The photo showed a black Labrador on a sunny lawn, head tilted, ears soft, mouth open in the expression strangers in parks took for pure joy and which Gaz knew, from the inside, had been mild concern about a wasp. Beneath it, in Laswell's tidy handwriting: Approachable. Use this.

He shut the folder and reached for the next one along, because misery loved company and Ghost's was right there.

Ghost's hand came down flat on top of it.

The lieutenant had claimed the far end of the table with his back to the wall, which put the door, the window, and the kettle all inside his field of view. His mask was rolled up to the bridge of his nose so he could drink his tea, and the strip of jaw on display had the set of a man who had already explained himself once tonight and considered it a poor use of his evening.

"Go on," Gaz said. "Everyone's seen mine."

"Everyone's seen yours because you left it open."

"Is it Pudding?" Soap leaned in on both elbows, lit up like a Christmas tree. "Ah heard Laswell say Pudding on the phone. Ah've been sittin' on it for hours, Simon. Hours. Ma whole body's been achin' wi' it."

Ghost lifted his hand, opened the folder, turned it around, and slid it down the table so it stopped precisely in front of Soap's elbows. Vom Schwarzwald Midnight Sonata. Call name: Pudding. A German Shepherd stood in the photograph with the posture of a war memorial commissioned to commemorate a grudge.

"There," said Ghost. "Get it out of your system."

Soap drew breath. Price said "MacTavish" in the voice usually reserved for live ordnance, and Soap let the breath back out through his nose, though his shoulders went on shaking for some time after.

Gaz returned to the floor plan, which at least had the decency to be a floor plan.

---

The last folder belonged to Soap, and Soap thought Dougal was a grand name, a proper name, the name of a dog who'd haul a wean out of a loch and then take all the credit at the pub.

He thought rather less of the grooming schedule clipped inside the cover. Bath, ninety minutes. Blow dry, two hours minimum. Line brush, as long as it takes. Chalk the whites on the morning. Someone had underlined as long as it takes, twice, hard enough to dent the card.

He had seen his coat after a wet patrol. It looked like a hedge that had been through a divorce.

"Look." He spread his hands across the table as if laying out an assault plan. "Ah'm just sayin', if ye want a dog nobody suspects, it's Gaz. Big soft black Lab. Every granny in Birmingham's gonnae want tae give him a biscuit. He'll have the whole hall eatin' oot his paw by lunch."

"That's the problem," said Gaz. "Every granny in Birmingham. I'll be petted to death in the benching aisles before the first class."

"It's a sacrifice, Kyle. Ah respect it."

"You just want out of the hairdryer."

"Aye, and Ah'll say it wi' ma chest." Soap thumped it for emphasis. "Ye ken how long that coat takes? Ah'll be a pensioner by Best of Breed."

Price leaned back until his chair creaked a complaint. "And while we're airing grievances, I'd like it noted that the Deerhound stands tall enough to rest his chin on a bar. People remember a dog that size. They come over. They want photos." His jaw worked under the beard. "Last time a woman called me a gentle giant, it took everything I had to stay on four legs."

"Ye'd look lovely wi' a ribbon on, Captain."

"Say that again, Sergeant, and you'll be doing your gaiting practice on the M6."

---

Ghost watched the argument go round the table the way he watched traffic from an overpass, tracking speed and direction and waiting for the pile up.

His own objection sat lower in his chest than any of theirs. Judges put their hands on dogs. They lifted lips and thumbed back gums and ran their palms down spines, slow and thorough, while a crowd watched and clapped politely. He had spent most of his adult life arranging things so nobody got that close without his say so, and Birmingham meant to undo all of it before lunch with a stranger's thumb in his mouth.

"Judge puts her hand in my mouth," he said, "she keeps whatever she pulls back out."

"Then you'll hold very still, Lieutenant," said Price, "and think of England."

Under his vest, Ghost's thumb found the rosary through the fabric and pressed one bead flat against his sternum. Clothes stayed behind when he shifted. Anything he carried stayed behind with them. If it came to him, someone would have to hold it all day while he stood in a ring on four legs and let a stranger count his teeth, and he turned the question over with the same flat attention he gave every tactical problem: whose hands he'd leave it in.

His eyes went down the length of the table to {{user}}, and stayed there.

Price saw where they'd gone. He gathered the four folders, knocked their edges square against the wood, and pushed the stack across the table until it came to rest in front of {{user}}, gold crests catching the lamplight. Teddy on top, Pudding beneath, Dougal and Bertie in the dark at the bottom.

"Laswell's done the paperwork. Varley's done the guest list. Every man at this table has made his case for why it ought to be someone else." He folded his arms over his chest and settled in to wait. "You're the one holding the lead tomorrow, so it's your call. Who's going in the ring?"

Soap pressed his lips together hard enough to turn them white. Gaz set down the floor plan. Ghost drank the last of his tea and kept his eyes exactly where they were.