four different locks were released and the opening door allowed a Jack Russell to charge forward, intent upon her ankles. She pulled back and raised her bag to club the animal off, but Mr. Pears appeared in the terrier's wake. He blew on something that made no noise, but the dog apparently heard it. He-or was it she?-dropped to the floor at once, panting happily, as if a job had been well done.
"Excellent, Pearl," Pears told the loathsome beast. "Good dog. Treaties?" Pearl wagged her tail.
"She's supposed to do that?" Barbara said.
"It's the startle factor," the dog's owner replied.
"I could've clubbed her. She could've been hurt."
"She's fast. She'd've had you before you had her." He widened the door and said, "Bowl, Pearl. Now." The dog dashed inside, presumably to wait by her dish for a reward. "C'n I help you?" Berkeley Pears then asked Barbara. "How did you get into the building? I thought you were management. We're set to fight a legal battle over this, and she's trying to intimidate us out of it."
"Police." Barbara showed him her ID. "DC Barbara Havers. Could I have a word?"
"This's about the boy in the woods? I've already told them what little I know."
"Yeah. Got it. But another set of ears...? You never know what's going to turn up."
"Very well," he said. "Come in if you must. Pearlie?"-this in the direction of the kitchen-"Come, darling."
The dog trotted out, bright eyed and friendly, as if she hadn't been a nasty little killing machine only moments before. She jumped into her master's arms and stuck her nose in the breast pocket of his tattersall shirt. He chuckled and dug in another pocket for her treat, which she swallowed without chewing.
Berkeley Pears was a type, there was no doubt of it, Barbara thought. He probably wore patent-leather shoes and an overcoat with a velvet collar when he left his digs. You saw his kind occasionally on the tube. They carried furled umbrellas, which they used as walking sticks, they read the Financial Times as if it meant something to them, and they never looked up till they reached their destination.
He showed her into his sitting room: three-piece suite in position, coffee table arranged with copies of Country Life and a Treasures of the Uffizi art book, modern lamps with metal shades at precise angles suitable for reading. Nothing was out of place in here, and Barbara assumed nothing dared to be...although three noticeable yellowish stains on the carpet gave testimony to at least one of Pearl's less than salubrious canine activities.
Pears said, "I wouldn't've seen a thing, you understand, if it hadn't been for Pearl. And you'd think I'd get a thank-you for that, but all I've heard is, 'The dog must go.' As if cats are less of a bother"-he said cats the way others said cockroaches-"when all the time that creature in number five howls morning and night like it's being skewered. Siamese. Well. What else would you expect? She leaves the little beast for weeks, while I've never left Pearl for so much as an hour. Not an hour, mind you, but does that count? No. One night when she barks and I can't quieten her quick enough and that is it. Someone complains-as if they don't all have contraband animals, the lot of them-and I get a visit from management. No animals allowed. The dog must go. Well, we intend to fight them to the very death, I tell you. Pearl goes, I go."
That, Barbara thought, might have been the master plan. She wedged her way into the conversation. "What did you see that night, Mr. Pears? What happened?"
Pears took the sofa, where he cradled the terrier like a baby and scratched her chest. He indicated the chair for Barbara. He said, "I assumed it was a break-in at first. Pearl began...One can only describe it as hysterical. She was simply hysterical. She woke me from a perfectly sound sleep and frightened me to bits. She was flinging herself-believe me, there is no other word for it-at the balcony doors and barking like nothing I've ever heard from her before or since. So you can see why..."
"What did you do?"
He looked marginally embarrassed. "I rather...well, I armed myself. With a carving knife, which was all I had. I went to the doors and tried to see out, but there was nothing. I opened them, and that's what caused the trouble because Pearl went outside on the balcony and continued barking like