moron?"
Woozily, Weird focused. "Two," he groaned.
"See? He's not even concussed. Amazing. I always thought he had concrete between his ears. It's just his ribs, Mondo. All the hospital will do is give him some painkillers."
"But he's in agony. What's he going to say when he gets home?"
"That's his problem. He can say he fell down some stairs. Anything." He leaned in again. "You're just going to have to grin and bear it, moron."
Weird pushed himself upright, wincing. "I'll manage."
"And what are you going to be doing?" Alex demanded as he slid behind the wheel of the Allegro.
"I'll give you five minutes to get clear. Then I'm going to set fire to the car."
Thirty years on, Weird could still remember the look of shock on Alex's face. "What?"
Ziggy rubbed a hand over his face. "It's covered in our fingerprints. It's got our trademark all over the windscreen. When we were just scribbling on windscreens, the police weren't going to bother with us. But here's a stolen, wrecked car. You think they're going to treat that like a joke? We've got to burn it out. It's totalled anyway."
There was no possible argument. Alex started the engine and drove off without a hitch, looking for a side road to turn around in. It was days later when Weird finally thought to ask: "Where did you learn to drive?"
"Last summer. On the beach on Barra. My cousin showed me how."
"And how did you get the Allegro started without keys?"
"Did you not recognize the car?"
Weird shook his head.
"It belongs to 'Sammy' Seale."
"The metalwork teacher?"
"Exactly."
Weird grinned. The first thing they'd made in metalwork was a magnetized box to stick to a car chassis to hold a spare set of keys. "Lucky break."
"Lucky for you, moron. It was Ziggy that spotted it."
How different it all could have been, Weird mused. Without Ziggy coming to the rescue, he'd have ended up in custody, with a police record, his life blown apart. Instead of abandoning him to the consequences of his own stupidity, Ziggy had found the means to save him. And he'd put himself on the line in the process. Setting a car ablaze was a big deal for an essentially law-abiding, ambitious lad. But Ziggy hadn't hesitated.
So now Weird had to return that and many other favors. He'd speak at Ziggy's funeral. He'd preach repentance and forgiveness. It was too late to save Ziggy, but with God's good grace he might just save another benighted soul.
Chapter 23
Waiting was one of the things Graham Macfadyen did best. His adopted father had been a passionate amateur ornithologist, and the boy had been forced to spend long tracts of his youth killing time between sightings of birds sufficiently interesting to warrant the raise of binoculars to eyes. He'd learned stillness at an early age; anything to avoid the vicious edge of his father's sarcasm. The wounds of blame cut just as deep as physical blows and Macfadyen would do anything in his limited power to dodge them. The secret, he'd learned early on, was to dress for the weather. So although he'd spend most of the day enduring snow flurries and cold gusts of northerly wind, he was still comfortable in his down parka, his waterproof fleece-lined trousers and his stout walking boots. He was most grateful for the shooting stick he'd brought with him, for his observation post offered nowhere to sit except gravestones. And that felt like bad manners.
He'd taken time off work. It had meant lying, but that couldn't be helped. He knew he was letting people down, that his absence might mean missing a crucial deadline. But some things were more important than hitting a contract payment date. And nobody would suspect someone as conscientious as him of faking it. Lying, like blending in and stillness, was something he did well. He didn't think Lawson had entertained the slightest flicker of doubt when he'd claimed to have loved his adopted parents. God knows, he'd tried to love them. But their emotional distance coupled with the constant attrition of their disapproval and disappointment had worn away his affections, leaving him numb and isolated. It would have been so different with his real mother, he felt sure. But he'd been deprived of the chance to find out, leaving him with nothing but a fantasy of somehow being instrumental in making someone pay for that. He'd had such high hopes of his interview with Lawson, but the incompetence of the police had yanked the ground from under his feet.