The Crow Road

"What an astronomical imagination you have, Diana," I said. "Getting enough oxygen up on Mauna Kea, yeah?" I gri

"Just a pet theory, Prentice." She finished polishing the ewer. "Better than believing in," she said, and handed me the elaborately carved jug, "crystals."

"Well, that's true, in a very un-Californian way, isn't it?" I filled the inside of the ewer up with little polystyrene beads from another giant sack, a broad smile on my face as I remembered.

She cried out and the crystal sang in reply.

Later, we exchanged signals.

"Help me fold these sheets, will you?"

The day after all the excitement at Lochgair, I sat at the dining table with what looked like a turban on my head. It was a towel wrapped round one of those sealed liquid containers you freeze and put in cool boxes.

I signed the statement.

"Thank you, sir."

"Davey, stop calling me 'sir', for God's sake," I breathed. Constable David McChrom had been in my class at school and I couldn't bring myself to call him 'officer'. His nickname had been Plooky, but that might have been carrying informality a little too far.

"Ach, second nature these days, Prent," he said, folding the papers and standing up. He looked depressingly fresh and well-scrubbed; joining the police force seemed to have done wonders for his skin condition. He lifted his cap from the table top, turning to my mother. "Right. That's all for now, Mrs McHoan. I'll be getting back, but if you think of anything else, just tell one of the other officers. We'll be in touch if we hear anything. You all right now, Mrs McHoan?"

"Fine, thanks, Davey," mum smiled. Dressed in jeans and a thick jumper, she looked a little dark around the eyes, but otherwise okay.

"Right you are, then. You look after that heid of yours, okay, Prentice?"

"As though it were my own," I breathed, adjusting my towel.

Mum saw him out.

The CID were still in the study, looking for fingerprints. They'd be lucky. I looked out of the dining-room window to where a couple of policemen were searching the bushes near the kitchen door.

My, we were being well looked after. I doubted a roughly equivalent fracas in one of the poorer council estates would have attracted quite such diligent and comprehensive investigation. But maybe that was just me being cynical.

My head hurt, my feet hurt, my fingers hurt. All the extremities. Well, save one, thankfully. Most of the damage came from the central light fixture in the study ceiling. It was part of that — a large, heavy, brass part of it — which had hit me on the head, and it was the shattered glass of its shades which had cut my feet as I'd stumbled around the study. My fingers hurt from the impact of computer keyboard and steel tyre-iron.

The desk drawers had been levered open. The back of the desk's matching chair had taken the full force of a blow with the tyre-iron, the light fixture had been hit accidentally by the same implement and the ceiling rose damaged, the Compaq's keyboard was wrecked and the kitchen door needed a new lock. I felt I could use a new head.

Nothing had been stolen, though I'd noticed that all the papers I'd been looking at earlier that night — and which I'd left scattered round the couch — had been neatly gathered together and piled on one end of the desk, under a paperweight. The envelope I'd left in the desk's top right drawer that morning was still here. The police didn't open it. Apart from the damage, and that one contrary act of tidiness, it looked like our attacker had taken nothing, and left behind him only the petrol and the tyre-iron.

I wanted to phone Fergus; ask him how he was. Good night's sleep? Any aches and pains? But mum had been fussing over me after Doctor Fyfe had said I'd need watching for a day or two and I wasn't being allowed to do very much. Somehow I lacked the will, anyway.

They'd asked me if I had any idea who it might have been, and I'd said No. I didn't say anything to my mother, or anybody else, either.

What could I say?

I was certain it had been Fergus — his build had been right, and even though I'd been dazed, I swear he did hesitate when I spoke his name — but how was I supposed to convince anybody else? I shook my head, then grimaced, because it hurt. I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid, not even thinking that he might try and steal or destroy whatever evidence he thought I had. "Is this something you've read?" I whispered to myself, remembering what Fergus had asked me. "In your father's papers, after his death?"

Jeez. I felt myself blush at my naïvety.

Mum continued to fuss, but I got better through the day.

After the CID boys finished in the study, I photocopied all Rory's papers — though I had to drag a chair over to the photocopier and sit down to do it — then, before the police left, and after much pleading, got mum to drive into Gallanach and deposit the parcelled originals in the bank. She came back with a new lock for the kitchen door. I hadn't been able to persuade her that a little holiday — in Glasgow, maybe — would be a good idea, so while she was away I rang Dean Watt and asked if he and Tank Thomas fancied coming to stay at Lochgair for a few days. Tank was a quiet and normally docile friend of the Watts', two metres tall and one across; I'd once seen him carry a couple of railway sleepers, one over each shoulder, without even breaking sweat.

James — who'd earlier been appalled that he'd only missed the first two periods of school while the police interviewed him — arrived back at four, glowing with glory. Apparently his part in the night's events — which I'd thought consisted largely of sticking his head round his bedroom door and being told to get back in again (and doing as he was told, for once) — had gained something in the translation at school; I suspected the gains involved the single-handed beating-off an attack by an entire gang of ninja assassins while mum and I slept.

I told mum about Dean and Tank, but she wasn't having it, and rang Dean up to cancel the protection I'd arranged. The police had promised to keep an eye on the house over the next few nights, after all; a patrol car would check up the drive. This didn't sound like much good to me, but mum seemed reassured.

Old Mr Docherty, a leathery-faced octogenarian with wispy white hair who was one of our neighbours in the village, arrived at tea-time and offered to come over with his shotgun and sit up all night. "Ah've nuthin tae steal maself, Mrs McHoan, and Ah'd rather make sure you and the bairns were all right. Ca

Mum thanked him, but refused. He seemed happy when we asked him to help us fit the new lock on the kitchen door. Lewis was all set to come up from London when we told him what had happened, but mum persuaded him we were fine, really.

Fretting for something else to do, I rang up Mrs McSpadden at the castle and related all that had happened, and twice told her how I suspected the raider had been after Rory's papers, which I'd copied and deposited in the bank. "In the bank, Prentice," she repeated, and I could hear her voice echoing. "Good idea."

I asked after Fergus and Mrs McSpadden said he was fine. He and his friends had been out fishing that day.

To my own amazement, I slept soundly that night. James said lights came up to the drive twice. I had to go and see Doctor Fyfe that day, and mum insisted on driving me into Gallanach, despite the fact I felt fine. Doctor Fyfe gave me permission to go back to Glasgow that evening, providing I took the train and stayed with friends.

I stayed the extra night instead, and left by car in the early hours, taking Rory's diaries and the copies of his papers with me. I phoned Mrs McSpadden from Glasgow and told her that, too, and discovered that Fergus had gone to Edinburgh for a couple of days. On impulse, I told her I'd remembered something more from the attack, and I'd be going to the police in a day or two, once I'd checked on something.