I hung up and watched the man and the woman boxing. The woman was masked, and what was visible of her face looked flushed, strands of hair sticking to her gleaming forehead. The man was wearing a fitted glove with an outsize palm, sort of like a baseball mitt, that the woman was hurling punches into.

There was the little flat pfft of each hit, followed by the larger PAP of the hit’s echo.

‘See,’ I heard the man say. ‘It’s that sound when it connects right. That sound never lies.’

I rang Caber. He picked up and I explained what had happened, how I had taken a ­call –­ though I refrained from telling him who the call was from or what it was ­about – and how Linus, in the space of what seemed like a few seconds, had dug a hole out of nothing at the end of the garden and escaped.

Caber listened, he let me speak, then he let out a low, measured sigh.

‘How long has he been missing?’

‘It’s been . . . almost two hours now,’ I said. ‘I’ve been looking for him the whole time.’

‘Two hours? Why didn’t you call me sooner?’

‘I know. I should have.’

Caber did not speak immediately. His silences were tormentingly complete. You could read any terrible thing into them. I was glad I could not see his eyes, their palely burning regard like another order of silence.

‘I asked you to do one thing, Sean,’ he said, with wounding mildness.

‘I’ll keep looking.’

‘I’ll start packing,’ he said. ‘I can get back to the city by tonight.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You just . . . watched him dig a hole and run for it?’

The woman threw a hook that connected with particular meatiness, the crack of that hit reviving a dormant instinct in Buddy. He swerved his head and growled in the direction of the boxers. I stroked the ­suede-­soft flesh of his ear until he settled again. Apart from his missing sibling, I believed it was the ­crowd – the sudden, restored presence of all these ­people – that was disconcerting him.

‘It happened so quick,’ I told Caber. ‘I just didn’t think he’d bolt for it like that.’

‘That’s the thing about dogs, Sean,’ Caber said. The line was as bad as ever, his voice thin and remote in my ear, blistered with static, barely there. ‘You can domesticate them all you like, you can turn them into the most loyal and obedient creatures on earth, but all it takes is you not paying attention for one second, just one second, and ­whssht – like that, they’re gone.’

THE 10

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