3 Inspector Hobbes and the Gold Diggers Read Online Free PDF Page B

particularly likes soup.’
    ‘Soup?’
    ‘Correct. He’s getting on a bit, and finds it easy to digest and much more palatable than blood. No doubt he’ll cook one for us tonight.’
    ‘Umm …’ I said, ‘what sort of soup?’
    ‘He usually goes for the meatier varieties, such as oxtail.’
    ‘Good,’ I said, slightly reassured, having had a horrific vision of him serving up a large bowl of something warm, red and frothy and passing it off as cream of tomato soup.
    Although I did have a vague memory of Sid’s visit, I couldn’t picture him, yet my mind insisted that he was tall and slim, with slicked back hair, sharp teeth and a strange accent. Still, I told myself, he was only a vampire, so why worry? After all, I knew a family pack of werewolves quite well and, although they occasionally made me nervous, especially at night, particularly around full moon, they’d never hurt me, or, so far as I was aware, anybody else. They hadn’t even bitten the postman. The worst I could say about them was that they had once given me fleas, and I’d still not completely recovered from the ignominy of being tricked by Mrs Goodfellow into sharing a flea bath with Dregs, who’d also been infested. Besides them, I’d eaten crumpets with the Olde Troll and was slowly learning not to give in to prejudice and to take people, of no matter what persuasion, on their individual merits.
    Hobbes, finishing his tea, downed his mug, loped from the kitchen and returned a few moments later. ‘Those reporters are still out there and showing no signs of moving on, so we’ll need to get past them.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘I’ll think about it, but not now. I’m going to take forty winks. It’s been a long night and day.’
    As he left, Dregs approached, sat by my side and tried to persuade me to take him for a walk. My attempts to ignore his hypnotic gaze soon crumbled.
    ‘Oh, alright then,’ I said.
    Jumping up, thrashing his tail, he fetched his lead from the hook, waited for me to clip it to his collar and dragged me to the front door. In my naivety, I hadn’t expected to spark much excitement, since I obviously wasn’t Hobbes and looked relatively normal. I was wrong. As soon as I opened the door, we were confronted by cameras, flashing lights and thrusting microphones. However, Dregs’s earlier actions had earned him a right of passage, and he only had to growl for the crowd to part, leaving a clear route. A nervous-looking Jeremy Pratt, dried slobber on his trousers the only evidence of his canine encounter, lurked towards the back of the mob as, ignoring the questions and the cameras, I let Dregs lead me to Ride Park.
    Thankfully, no one followed us far and Dregs and I were able to pass an enjoyable hour or so. He chased squirrels, without ever getting near one. For him, all the fun was in running free and barking up the wrong tree. I mooched along, feet sore from the long trek, my leg muscles still aching, and appreciated the late afternoon sunshine, the buzz of insects and the changing tints of the trees, trying not to think about later, but wishing I’d asked Hobbes more about the robbery. I also wondered if I’d be on television again. I hoped not.
    Despite my best intentions, one question kept buzzing round my head, as annoying as a wasp at a picnic: could a vampire really be as safe as Hobbes had suggested? I tried to believe him, to convince myself he wouldn’t really put me into a dangerous situation, at least not on purpose. I knew, of course, that if I ever got into danger, he was the best person to get me out of it, but I was far from comfortable with the idea of visiting a vampire, even one with a preference for soup. Despite recognising my fear was based entirely on prejudice, my knowledge gleaned only from horror films, it was, nonetheless, genuine.
    At length, all the squirrels having been treed, the evening approaching, and the temperature dropping, I called Dregs, clipped him to his lead and returned home,