Too Soon a Death: A Scottish mystery where cosy crime meets tartan noir: Borders Mysteries Book 2 by Janet O'Kane Page B

water for them both and a fold-up drinking bowl for Mac as well as the usual lip-salve, tissues and mobile, necessitating the preparation of a small backpack before every outing. And what to wear was a constant challenge. Preferring to go off-road for all but the briefest of walks, she couldn’t risk bare legs or do without sturdy footwear, but pulling on trousers and struggling to do up walking boots often left her overheated and exasperated.
    After ensuring both house and garage were secure, she led Mac a short distance up the road then released him and watched him race along the grass track which went down one side of a field of barley. At the far corner, rather than keep going round the field he took a sharp right and vanished into a patch of woodland. Zoe called, ‘Wait for me,’ and he reappeared, tail wagging as though urging her to catch him up, but by the time she reached the trees, he was again nowhere to be seen. Unconcerned, she followed the path they often took, enjoying the shade.
    She was about to walk back into the bright sunlight when she heard squeals and barking off to her left. Mac tore out from behind a group of conifers, followed by a huge, unfamiliar dog which passed her in a blur of mottled brown coat and flapping jowls. With just a few metres between the animals, the second dog terrified Zoe. If it caught Mac, he wouldn’t stand a chance. She shouted, ‘No!’ and hurried after them.
    The field ahead was planted with oilseed rape. Used to seeing the landscape swathed in yellow when the crop was flowering, she’d been surprised to witness recently how the straight, green stalks eventually became fibrous and tangled, creating impenetrable jungles which must surely be harvested any day now. She watched helplessly as Mac tunnelled into the rape in an effort to escape the bigger dog which, after a moment’s hesitation, ploughed in after him. Calling wouldn’t help; all she could do was wait and hope Mac’s size gave him an advantage over his pursuer.
    She forced herself to sit on a prone tree trunk in the shade for nearly half an hour. Her bottle of water was soon empty but she still felt thirsty. Noises coming from the rape field had long since died away; the only sound she could hear now was birdsong. She tried to force images from her mind of Mac stranded in the middle of the field, unable to find his way out or, worse, caught up in the undergrowth with the Hound of the Baskervilles bearing down on him. Finally, she pulled out her mobile. She didn’t have his personal number but Patrick had told her last night that he was on call, with emergencies being transferred to him between midnight and ten this morning, when his colleague would take over for the rest of the weekend. She doubted he could offer any practical advice, but she needed to talk to someone, to share her anxiety. Had it been later in the day she would have texted Kate, but she was unlikely to be up and about at this time.
    Despite the early hour, Zoe had to shade her mobile’s screen with her free hand. It showed three missed calls, all from blocked numbers, all coming in just after one in the morning, but no message had been left. Distracted by her concern for Mac, she wrote these off as drunken misdials, and scrolled through her contacts until she found the vet’s number. She had just hit the green handset symbol when a noise made her look up.
    Mac stood a few feet away. He whined again. The garland of stalks and seed pods trailing from his head would have been comical had his right eye not been closed and a cut on his nose dripped blood. Cancelling the call and abandoning her mobile on the tree trunk, Zoe rushed over and dropped to her knees, simultaneously hugging and checking him for serious injury. As she fussed over him, constantly asking, ‘Are you alright, boy?’ Mac’s tail started to wag, although his eye remained closed. Not wanting to risk another encounter with the other dog, which might emerge from the