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 shot-gun 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. Canny have this sort aw thing going on in Lochgair, ye know. Be Glasgow people, Ah tell ye. Be Glasgow boys.’
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.
Back at university, I attended lectures - hobbling a little on my cut feet - and I studied, though I had headaches on the Monday and the Tuesday night. I made sure Mrs Ippot’s house was securely locked each night, and closed all the shutters. I rang mum three or four times each day. Mum said Fergus had sent a huge bouquet of flowers to the house, when he’d heard what had happened. He’d phoned from Edinburgh and advised getting an alarm system fitted, and knew a firm in Glasgow who’d do it cost price, as a favour to him. Wasn’t that sweet of him? Oh, and I hadn’t forgotten she and Fergus would be coming to Glasgow for the opera at the end of the week, had I?
I said of course not.
I put the phone down, numb, my thoughts racing in a kind of aimless short-circuit as I wondered what on earth I was going to do.
And, naturally, I followed the war like a good little media-consumer.
The clichés were starting to come out. It was hardly possible to open a newspaper, turn on a television or listen to a radio programme without having rammed down the relevant orifice some witless variation on the facile adage concerning truth