The Crow Road

The Range Rover was part of the estate, but the Bentley Eight had been willed to my father. Fergus had changed his will after dad's death — following promptings by the good lawyer Blawke — and so the car and its contents passed to me instead, which came as something of a surprise.

There were various other bits and pieces — bequests to charities and so on — but that was the gist of it.

The lawyer Blawke handed me the keys to the Bentley after the reading, while we were standing around awkwardly drinking small sherries dispensed by a quietly tearful Mrs McSpadden and I was still in a slight daze, thinking, What? Why? Why did he give me the car?

I talked to the twins. Helen just wanted to get away, but Diana had decided to stay on for a while; I agreed to come and help her pack stuff away in a few days time. Fergus's personal effects were going to be stored in the cellar, and of course the glass had to be packed up to be taken to the museum. The twins said they still hadn't decided what to do with the castle long-term, and I got the impression it depended on what Mrs McSpadden chose to do.

I said my good-byes as soon as I decently could. I had intended to take mum's Metro straight back to Lochgair; I'd told Helen and Diana that I'd probably come back that afternoon with mum, to take the Bentley away. But for some reason, when I got out of the castle doors, I didn't go crunching over the gravel to the little hatchback but turned and went back into the Solar and asked if I could take the Bentley to Lochgair instead, and come back for the Metro later.

Diana told me the garage was open, so I walked round to the rear of the castle where the garage and outhouses were. The Bentley sat inside the opened double garage, burgundy bodywork gleaming like frozen wine. I opened the car, wondering why the will had mentioned the contents of the Eight as well as the vehicle itself.

I got in and sat in that high armchair of a driver's seat, smiling at the walnut and the chrome and breathing in the smell of Co

It contained the car's manual — I'd never seen one bound in leather before — the registration documents, and a cardboard presentation box I recognised as coming from the factory gift shop.

I took it out and opened it. There was a paperweight inside, which was what the box was meant to contain, but the big lump of multi-coloured glass was a little too large for the cardboard insert that went with the box. When I looked at the base it was an old limited edition Perthshire weight, not a Gallanach Glass Works product at all.

I left the paperweight lying on the seat and got out, checked the car's boot — carefully, thinking of the end of Charley Varrick — but that was in concourse condition too.

I went back to the driver's seat and sat there for a while, holding the paperweight and gazing into its convexly complicated depths, wondering why Fergus had left this lump of glass — not even from his own factory — in the car.

Then I weighed the glassy mass in my hand, and clutched it as you might a weapon, and took another, evaluating look at it, and realised. It was spherical, or nearly spherical, and probably pretty well exactly nine centimetres in diameter.

I almost dropped it.

I shivered, and put the paperweight back in the presentation case, put that in the glove-box, and — after the car did not blow up when I turned the ignition — drove its quietly ponderous bulk back to Lochgair.

Fergus's memorial service was held a week later, at the Church of Scotland, on Shore Street in Gallanach, mid-Argyll. Kind of a traumatic location for the McHoans, and I wouldn't have gone myself — it would have felt too much like either hypocrisy or gloating — but mum wanted to attend, and I could hardly not offer to escort her.

We put some flowers on the McDobbies" grave, where dad had died, then went in to the church, each kissing the sombrely beautiful twins.

I stood listening to the pious words, the ill-sung hymns and the plodding reminiscences of the good lawyer Blawke — who must be becoming Gallanach's most sought-after after-death speaker — and felt a furious anger build up in me.

It was all I could do to stand there, moving my mouth when people sang, and looking down at my feet when they prayed, and not shout out some profanity, some blasphemy, or, even worse, the truth. I actually gathered the breath in my lungs at one point, hardly able to bear the pressure of fury inside me any longer. I tensed my belly for the shout: Killer! Fucking MURDERER!

I felt dizzy. I could almost hear the echoes of my scream reflecting back off the high walls and arched ceiling of the church… but the singing went on undisturbed. I relaxed after that, and looked around at the trappings of religion and the gathered suits and worthies of Gallanach and beyond, and — if I felt anything — felt only sorrow for us all.

I looked up towards the tower. All the gods are false, I thought to myself, and smiled without pleasure.

I talked to a red-eyed Mrs McSpadden after the service, walking down through the gravestones towards the road and sea, under a sky of scudding cloud; the wind tasted of salt. "Aye," Mrs McSpadden said, in what was for her almost a whisper. "You never think it's going to happen, do you? We all have our little aches and pains, but when I think about it, if I'd just said something when he mentioned a sore chest that night to go to the doctor…»

"Everybody hurts, Mrs McSpadden," I said. "And he had broken those ribs, in the crash. Anybody would have assumed it was just those."

"Aye, maybe."

I hesitated. "Mum said he'd had a phone call from abroad, the night before?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes. Yes, he did. I thought I… Well, yes."

"You don't know who it was?"

"No," she said slowly, though I saw her frown.

"It's just that a friend of mine from university who's abroad at the moment had been going to call Fergus, to ask permission to visit the factory — he's writing a dissertation on the history of glass making — and I haven't heard from him for a while; I wondered if it might have been him, that's all." (All lies of course, but I'd tried to ring Lachy Watt in Sydney and found that the phone had been disco

"Oh, I don't know," Mrs McSpadden said, shaking her large, florid head. A big black bead of glass glittered at the end of her hatpin; a stray strand of white hair blew in the gusting wind.

"You didn't hear anything that was said," I prompted.

"Och, just something about putting somebody up. I was on my way out the door."

"Putting somebody up?"

"Aye. He said he hadn't put anybody up, and that was all I heard. I suppose he must have been talking about people who'd stayed at the castle, or hadn't stayed; whatever."

"Yes," I said, nodding thoughtfully. "I suppose so." I shrugged. "Ah well. Perhaps it wasn't who I was thinking of after all."

Or maybe it was. Maybe if Mrs McS had heard one more word before she'd closed that door, it would have been the word "to'.

"Come to think of it," Mrs McSpadden said, "I'd just been talking about you, Prentice, when the phone went."

"Had you?"

"Aye; just mentioning to Mr Urvill what you'd said about remembering more details of when your house was burgled."

"Really?" I nodded, putting my gloved hands behind my back and smiling faintly at the grey and restless sea beyond the low church wall.