The Crow Road (49 page)

‘Oh, wacky and transparent as ever,’ Helen said. They started talking about Zürich and London, and I sat down on the slope of slated roof, behind them. I pulled the airmail package out and opened it carefully. Verity looked back at me and smiled briefly, before turning back to Helen and Lewis to share some joke about the Hard Rock Café. My hands felt clammy as I slid the sheets of paper out of the thick white envelope. This is daft, I thought. It probably is gibberish, or Rory’s job application for that travel programme presenter’s job; a CV for the TV. Nothing important, nothing revelatory.

The first sheet was a letter from the good Doctor, arcane with acronyms and abbreviations, telling me how he’d deciphered the binary mush he’d been sent and turned it into what I held in my hands. He sounded like a likeable guy, but I kind of just glanced at the letter. I went on to the print-out.

There were about fifty or sixty pages of single-space laser print. The first twenty or so pages were taken up with pieces I recognised: articles and poems and the nameless play Rory had apparently decided to cannibalise for the end of Crow Road. Then came three passages of prose.

I glanced up at the others; Helen and Verity were still talking, Lewis was looking through the binoculars towards Gallanach. I started reading, and my mouth went dry.

I raced through each of the passages, my eyes bulging, hands shaking. The voices of the others, the cool December air and the chill slates under my backside seemed like they were all a million miles away, as I read what Uncle Rory had written.

... That was how the first passage began. I finished it and realised my mouth was hanging open. I closed it and started, dazed, the next passage:

‘Holy fucking shit,’ I whispered, when I finished it. Suddenly my hands felt very cold. I looked at the slates I was sitting on, then over at the dome of the observatory, gleaming in the low winter sun.

‘You okay, Prentice?’ Verity said, frowning at me from the battlements.

I nodded, tried to smile. ‘Fine,’ I gulped. I turned to the third and last passage.

... And on through to the end:

 
And that was all. I looked up, brain reeling.

‘Yo,’ Helen said, looking through the binoculars. She bent at the knees and put her mug down on the stones under her feet, then rose smoothly again.

‘You see him?’ Verity said, turning, still hugged within Lewis’ arms, to look out over the battlements.

‘Could be,’ Helen said. She handed the field glasses over to Lewis.

‘Yeah, might be,’ he said. It was Verity’s turn next with the binoculars.

I swallowed a few times, put the sheets of paper back in their envelope. I stood up and walked over to the others, in a kind of trance.

Verity shook her head. ‘Na, I can’t see the damn thing.’ She handed the glasses to me. ‘You’re looking pale, Prentice. You sure you’re okay?’

‘Fine,’ I croaked, not looking at her. I took the binoculars. ‘Thanks.’

I’d seen the speck unaided by that time. Once I’d found it again the binoculars enlarged the dot into the frontal silhouette of a high-winged light aircraft, flying more or less straight towards us, its body pointed a little to the south west to compensate for the wind. It waggled in the air a little as it flew down the glen, encountering a gust high above Kilmartin.

‘Christ,’ Lewis said. ‘It’s a Mig on a bombing run; everybody down!’

I handed the glasses back to Helen, who didn’t look particularly amused. She frowned at me. ‘You okay, Prentice?’

‘Fine,’ I said.

‘You should have loaned your dad your jacket,’ Lewis told Helen.

‘Doesn’t fit him,’ Helen said, binoculars at her eyes. I watched the dot of the plane drift closer towards us through the northern sky.

‘You were in a sleeping bag,’ I heard Lewis say softly to Verity. He was holding her from behind, chin on the crown of her head. I must have missed what they’d said earlier. I felt weird; I was glad the battlements were too high to fall over if I fainted.

Verity smiled. ‘I remember. We were all smoking and playing cards and taking turns to look at the stars, and we got the munchies.’ She frowned. ‘There was Diana and Helen, and ... what was that guy’s name?’ She glanced round and up at Lewis. ‘Wayne somebody?’

‘Darren somebody,’ Lewis said. He accepted the glasses from Helen, held them with one hand and balanced them on Verity’s head. ‘Hoy, stand still.’

‘Sorry,
sir,’
she said.

‘Darren Watt,’ I said. The plane was closer now but harder to see; it had dropped below the level of the hills behind and was no longer silhouetted against the sky. You could still see it with the naked eye, though. It glinted, once.

Verity nodded. Lewis tutted in exasperation. ‘He was the gay guy, wasn’t he?’ Verity said.

‘Yup,’ Lewis said. ‘Sculptor. Good, too; fucking shame, that was.’

‘Oh God,’ Verity said. ‘Of course, he died.’

‘Bike crash,’ Helen said, scooping up her mug of cooled wine from the flagstones, and draining it.

The plane was flying over Gallanach now. I thought I could hear its engine. I remembered standing here once with mum, years ago. Fergus and dad were shooting at clay pigeons in a field to our right somewhere, and I remembered hearing the flat Crack ... Crack noise of the guns, and thinking they sounded just like one plank falling on top of another. Blam! indeed.
Remember, remember ...

Verity laughed, making Lewis tut again. ‘You were doing your radio impressions,’ she said, ‘that night. Remember?’

‘Of course,’ Lewis said.

‘Why was I in a sleeping bag?’ Verity said, frowning at the approaching plane.

‘You were in the cupboard.’ Helen smiled. She waved out across the chill afternoon air above Gallanach. I looked back at the plane, which was switching its lights on and off.

‘Oh,’ Verity said. ‘Yeah; the wee cubby hole.’

‘Ah ha,’ Helen said, as Lewis waved too, still watching through the binoculars, now elevated above Verity’s head. ‘But it was really a secret passage.’

‘Was it?’ Verity asked, glancing at Helen.

‘Yeah. Di and I used to take the bit of wood off at the back and get into the attic. Wander all over.’

‘Anything interesting in there?’ Lewis asked. The plane was in a shallow dive, angling towards us a few hundred metres away.

‘Just pipes and tanks,’ Helen shrugged. ‘There was a loft door into mum and dad’s room.’ She smiled. ‘When we started getting interested in sex, we used to pretend we’d get up there one night and see if we could catch them at it, but we were too frightened.’ Helen laughed lightly. ‘Had us giggling ourselves to sleep a few nights, though. And anyway, Ferg had put a bolt on it.’

The little white Cessna roared overhead, waggling its wings. Lewis and Verity and Helen all waved. I stared up, seeing the single tiny figure waving in the cockpit. The plane banked, circled round the hill the castle stood on and came back over, lower, engine loud and echoing in the woods beneath.

I made myself wave.

Oh dear fucking holy shit, I thought.

The plane waggled its wings again, then straightened out over Dunadd as Fergus took the Cessna - his Christmas present to himself - back north to its home at Connel.

‘That it?’ said Verity.

‘Yup,’ Helen said.

‘What did you expect?’ Lewis asked. ‘A crash?’

‘Oh ...’ said Verity, heading for the door to the stairs. ‘Let’s get back in the warm.’

Blam!
Remember, remember.
Amman Hilton. Look -! JUST USE IT Kiss the sky, you idiot ...

‘Prentice?’ Lewis said, from the little door. I looked over at him. ‘Prentice?’ he said again. ‘Wake up, Prentice.’

I’d been staring after the departing plane.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yeah.’ On still shaky legs, I followed the others down from the wind-blown battlements and into the warm bulk of the great stone building.

 
 
 
‘So the televisions weren’t going wonky at all,’ I said, still struggling to understand.

‘That’s right,’ Rory said. ‘It just looked like it, to me only.’ He plucked a long piece of grass from beside one of the standing stones and sucked on the yellow stalk.

I followed suit. ‘So it was in your head; not real?’

‘Well ...’ Rory frowned, turning away a little and leaning back on the great stone. He folded his arms and looked out towards the steep little hill that was Dunadd. I stood to one side, watching him. His eyes looked old.

‘Things in your head can be real,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘And even when they aren’t, sometimes they ...’ he looked down at me, and I thought he looked troubled. ‘Somebody told me something once,’ he said. ‘And it sounded like it had really hurt him; he’d seen something that made him feel betrayed and hurt by somebody he was very close to, and I felt really sorry for this person, and I’m sure it’s affected them ever since ... but when I thought about it, he’d been asleep before this thing had happened, and asleep again afterwards, and it occurred to me that maybe he’d dreamed it all, and I still wonder.’

‘Why don’t you tell him that?’

Rory looked at me for a while, his eyes searching mine, making me feel awkward. He spat the blade of grass out. ‘Maybe I should,’ he said. He nodded, looking out across the fields. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ He shrugged.

 
 
 
I stood there, back at the same stone my Uncle Rory had rested against, a decade earlier. I’d left the castle and driven here to the stone circle shortly after we’d come down from the battlements. There was still plenty of time to get back to Lochgair for dinner before I had to set off for Glasgow, and Ash.

I leant against the great stone, the way Rory had when he’d talked about the man betrayed, the man who’d seen - or thought he’d seen - something that had hurt him. I looked ahead, out over the walls and fields and stands of trees. I shivered, though it wasn’t especially cold.

‘See?’ I said, quietly, to myself.

Maybe Rory had been looking at Dunadd that day, as I’d assumed at the time. But beyond Dunadd, just a little to the right on this line of sight, I could see the hill where Gaineamh castle stood, its walls showing blunt and steel grey through the naked trees.

 
 
 
‘Prentice!’

‘... Yeah?’

‘Food! Come on, it’s getting cold!’

Mum had been calling from the bottom of the stairs. I was sitting at the desk in the study, curtains open to the darkness, just the little desk light on, its brass stalk gleaming, its green shade glowing. I looked back down from my reflection in the dark computer screen, first to my watch - still half an hour before I had to leave to pick up Ashley - and then to the thin, battered-looking pocket diary lying opened on the desk.

 
I saw her hair first, shining tight-tied in a spotlight somewhere down the domestic arrivals concourse. I hadn’t seen Ashley Watt for about six weeks, after that night in London when I’d seen but not talked to Rupert Paxton-Marr. Ashley was dressed in the same business-like suit she’d worn that night, and carried a big shoulder bag. Her smile was broad.

‘Ash. Great to see you.’ I hugged her, lifting her off her feet.

‘Woo!’ she laughed throatily. ‘How ya doin, Presley?’

I winced, dramatically, but still offered to carry her bag.

‘Prentice; you read a couple of things your uncle wrote and suddenly you’re accusing people of murder? Come on.’

‘Haven’t you looked at the files Doctor Gonzo sent over?’

‘Of course not; not my business, Prentice.’ Ashley sounded indignant. ‘Oh; before I forget,’ she said, reaching for her jacket on the back seat and digging into a pocket. She took out a little three-inch Sony disk and handed it to me. ‘Present from Colorado. Yours to tinker with.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, putting the disk in my shirt pocket. ‘I might, too; the spelling mistakes have been annoying me.’ I moved my head. ‘The stuff’s in that envelope on the back seat.’

‘You don’t want me to read it
now,
do you?’

‘There’s a torch.’

‘Am I allowed to finish building the spliff first?’