Whit

CHAPTER TEN

The next morning, in the living room, I studied the videotape Boz had been watching.

Boz had recovered his cool and then started laughing at us while the dust was still settling around his bedroom. Declan apologised - to Boz first, I noticed, but then afterwards to me. He repaired the roof as best he could with a couple of posters over the hole in the ceiling and one of the loft's door floor-boards on the other side. Boz slipped into a pair of boxer shorts; he and I cleaned up the plaster. My head was still spinning but I felt somewhat more sober for the experience.

Of the others, only Roadkill seemed to have either heard anything or thought there was aught untoward about what they had heard. I told her Zeb's handiwork had proved fragile, to the sound of Declan banging the hammock nails back into the roof trusses. I felt faint again and - waving away Dec's apologies -climbed back up to the loft, taking my hammock and bedroll with me. I shook it free of dust and re-hung it, then collapsed into it and was asleep within minutes.

Next morning, with a head that felt stuffed with cotton wool and a cough that made me think I was coming down with the cold, I politely asked Boz for the videotape. (We will pass over my attempt by the laying on of hands to cure the sore knee which Declan woke up with and which was probably a delayed result of our fall, but what better proof is needed that all this clutter robs the Saved of their Holiness?) Boz seemed unembarrassed at my request, which was a relief, and went upstairs to get the video cassette. He showed me how to work the videotape player then went to make some breakfast.

The sensation of so deliberately using the video player, the television and their remote control devices - not just sitting in the same room to be sociable while they were used - made my teeth ache. Our rules concerning such matters take the form of disciplines rather than outright prohibitions, and I did experience a kind of excitement in taking command of this seductive, blackly buttoned technology, however my principal emotion was one of tense, fractious unease, and I grew extremely frustrated when the machines did not seem to obey the remote controls. I muttered at the machinery and felt like throwing the remote controls across the room.

Suddenly it occurred to me that this must be how Blands feel all the time. I calmed myself and persevered and before too long everything behaved. The videotape began to play.

The woman was definitely Morag. Her voice sounded Euro-American somehow, but I could hear the Scottish accent coming through every now and again. From what I saw, the video itself had a semblance of a plot but it was patently used merely to provide punctuation for the various unlikely sexual exploits the heroine -Morag, Fusillada - indulged in with both sexes. As for the video's effect, well, I had a chance as never before to admire my cousin's bounteously sleek physique, and cannot say I was left unmoved by the theatrical but obviously unfaked copulatory shenanigans displayed, though quite why the video's makers thought that it was always necessary to show the men ejaculating each time was a mystery to me; the sight, which I had not witnessed before, hardly seemed to warrant the amount of time devoted to it and made me feel slightly queasy.

Nevertheless, all in all, I admit I felt quite hot and bothered as I sat there, and viewed rather more of the production than strictly required to establish Morag's identity. I handed back the tape to Boz over breakfast. He asked did I really know Fusillada DeBauch? I replied that I did and asked him what he was doing that day.

Soho again. Suddenly the location we had been sent to the previous day seemed less like a complete red herring. The revelation that my cousin had - at the very least - a sideline as a worker in the sex industry suddenly made looking for her agent in this area seem quite reasonable, and so we had returned to try again to find Mr Francis Leopold.

Brother Zeb had put his hair into a bushily disorderly ponytail as a disguise; he and Boz - who seemed unduly impressed that Fusillada was my cousin, and, I suspect, hoped we might bump into her - together distracted the large man with the much-be-ringed hands in the foyer of the erotic cinema while I slipped up the stairs between the picture house and the entrance to the Adult Book Shop. The stairs were narrow and steep. Three doors led off the landing at the top, which was lit by one grubby, dirt-streaked window whose outlook was anyway largely obscured by the facade advertising the cinema next door. Round a turn in the landing, another flight of stairs led to the next storey. I peered at the doors. Each had a little sign on it: Kelly Silk, Madame Charlotte, and Eva (S&M).

I ascended to the next floor, where the landing was marginally better lit. Vixen, Cimmeria, FL Enterprises. Ah ha!

I knocked on the door. There was no reply. After half a minute I tried the handle but the door was locked. A siren - ever the chorus to the city's songs - sounded somewhere nearby. I knocked again and rattled the door.

The door to the left, marked Cimmeria, cracked open and a sliver of dark face looked out. I smiled and tipped my hat.

'Good morning,' I said.

'Yeah?'

'Oh, indeed, it is!' I said, gesturing to the window. I glanced back at the door to FL Enterprises. 'I'm, ah, looking for Mr Leopold; is this his office?'

'Yeah.'

I could still only see about two inches of the black face looking at me through the gap between door and jamb. I cleared my throat. 'Ah. Good. Only he doesn't seem to be in.'

'Yeah?'

'Do you know when he might be expected to return?'

'No.'

'Oh dear,' I said, and took off my hat, looking dejected.

The one eye of the Negress I could see moved, her gaze taking in my hair, my face and then torso. 'What you want anyway?' she asked, opening the door a fraction wider.

'I'm trying to trace my cousin, Morag Whit… I think she might be better known as, ah, Fusillada DeBauch.'

The single eye widened. The door closed and it occurred to me that perhaps I had said something wrong. Well, this wasn't proving too fruitful, I thought, gripping my hat to replace it on my head. A chain rattled behind Cimmeria's door, and it swung open. The woman came out onto the landing, glancing around, then stood with her back to her door, her arms crossed. She was small and very black, with tied-back hair. She wore a black kimono which looked like silk. Her head tossed up once, like a horse's.

'What you looking for her for? You really her cousin?'

'Oh, I'm her cousin, certainly; her mother was my father's sister. We're from Scotland.'

'Never have guessed.'

'Really? I thought perhaps my accent would rather give-'

'That was irony, child,' the woman said, looking away for a moment with widened eyes.

'Oh. I beg your pardon,' I said, blushing. I felt awkward, but for some reason I trusted this woman. I decided to trust my instincts. 'Anyway, to answer your first question, I'm looking for Morag because… well, it's complicated, but we - I mean, her family - are concerned about her.'

'Are you now?'

'Yes. Also,' I hesitated, then sighed. 'May I be frank with you, Miss… Cimmeria?' (She nodded.)

'Well,' I said, fingering the rim of my hat. 'The plain fact is Morag is, or was, a member of our church, back home, and we are concerned that she has lost her faith. Of most immediate concern is the matter of a festival that we are to hold at the end of the month - a very important festival, one that only takes place every four years. Cousin Morag was to be our Guest of Honour at that, and now, well, we don't know what to do. The festival is important, as I say, but her soul is more important, and personally I am worried that my cousin has fallen under the spell of some religious charlatan, and judge that ultimately to be the more important business, but I'm afraid it is the question of her attendance at the festival which presents us with the most immediate predicament.'

Cimmeria looked through narrowed eyes, face turned slightly. 'What church is this?'

'Oh,' I said, 'it's the True Church of Luskentyre; the Luskentyrians, as we're usually known. I don't expect you've heard of us. We're a small but active Faith based in Scotland; we have a… oh, I suppose you could call it sort of an ashram, a commune, near Stirling. We believe in-'

Cimmeria held up one hand. 'Okay, okay,' she said, smiling. 'You people Christians?'

'Strictly speaking, no; we regard Christ as one prophet amongst many and the Bible as one holy book amongst many; we believe there is merit and wisdom to be found in all holy teachings. We do believe in love and forgiveness and the renunciation of excess materiality and-'

'Fine. Spare me,' Cimmeria said, holding up her hand again. She nodded at the door. 'So you're looking for Frank?'

I explained about visiting Morag's old apartment block in Finchley the day before, 'Is Mr Leopold her agent?' I asked.

Cimmeria shrugged. 'Agent, manager; whatever.'

'Phew!' I said, grinning. 'On the right track at last!' I hit my thigh with my hat. I can be quite shameless.

Cimmeria laughed and pushed her door open. 'Come on in. You'll have to excuse the mess; this is early for me.'

'I doubt it can match the mess created last night in the squat where I am staying while in London…' I said, accepting her invitation.

Twenty minutes later I joined Boz and Zeb in the same cafe Zeb and I had retreated to a day earlier. They both appeared unharmed and in good spirits.

'All right, chaps?'

'Yeah. Fine. Cool. You?'

'We're okay, I-sis.'

I sat down between them, getting Brother Zebediah to move over. 'I had tea,' I told them, 'with a very nice lady called Cimmeria whose real name is Gladys; she told me that Mr Leopold is indeed Morag's - Fusillada's - agent and manager, and that he was here just yesterday, but that he has had problems with… Vat?' I said, looking inquiringly from one to the other.

'VAT.' Boz nodded slowly, then sipped carefully at his coffee. 'Value Added Tax, I-sis.' He tutted and shook his head, seemingly unimpressed with the concept.

'Indeed,' I said. 'Well, apparently Mr Leopold has been experiencing difficulties with this VAT for some time now and is currently helping Customs and Excise with their inquiries.'

'Huh. Well. So,' Zeb said.

'So,' I said, 'Cimmeria - Gladys - told me that she thought Mr Leopold lives in the county of Essex, in a village called Gittering, near Badleigh, and thinks that that was where he took a number of the papers and files he previously kept in the office. She suggests we try there. What do you say?'

'Essex!' Zeb said, with an expression on his face which, given we were sitting in a cafe in central London, might have been better suited to accompanying the word 'Mongolia?' delivered in the same tone of voice.

'I-sis; you think your cousin might be there?'

'Well,' I said, 'apparently some of the scenes for certain of Fusillada's videotape productions were shot in Mr Leopold's home there, which is called La Mancha. Cimmeria - Gladys - knows this because some of her friends have been there to take part in them. So, as Morag is no longer living at the flat in Finchley, I suppose it is not impossible she is there, though we have no guarantee, of course.'

Boz thought about this. He looked very big and bulky in baggy black trousers and an expensive-looking black leather jacket. He wore a black peaked cap; it was back to front so that people behind him could read the white letter X. 'What the hell,' he said. 'I wasn't doin' nuthin' much today anyway. And I heard about Essex girls, eh?' He delivered what looked like the gentlest of pulled punches past me to Brother Zebediah's arm; Zeb rocked in his stool and looked pained. He forced a smile while he rubbed his arm.

'Suppose. Yeah. Shit. Essex. Shit.'

'Let's make tracks!' I said, jumping off my stool and unable to resist nudging Zeb in the elbow. He looked startled and stared concernedly at his elbow. Boz slurped on his coffee.

We took a bus to Liverpool Street station and a train from there to Badleigh. Not having anticipated a journey outside the capital, I had not brought my Sitting Board, so Zeb and I stood in the aisle by Boz's seat. Boz read a paper called the Mirror. I whiled away the time for Zeb by reading him parts of passages from the Orthography and asking him to recall what words came next. He was shockingly poor at this, though that may have been because completing the pieces of text would have required talking in sentences of more than one word and he had obviously quite got out of that particular habit.

At one point, when Boz had gone to the toilet for 'a quick toke' (which I took to be Jamaican slang for a bowel movement, given the amount of time he was away), I asked Zeb, 'Why does Boz wear his cap back to front?'

Zeb looked at me as though I had asked him why Boz wore his shoes on his feet. 'It's. Like. Baseball cap,' he said scornfully.

I thought about this. 'Ah,' I said, really none the wiser.

The city went on and on; every time I thought we had finally left the metropolis behind, the patch of greenery I'd based this assumption on would turn out to be a park or an area of waste ground. Eventually, however, while I was engrossed in the Orthography (Zeb had gone off to the toilet some time earlier) the city gave way to countryside, and when I next looked up we were sliding through a level landscape of fields and narrow lanes, dotted with buildings, villages and towns, all sliding quickly past under a sky of small clouds. I felt some relief at having left the vast busyness of the city behind, as though my clutter-smothered soul was finally drawing something like a clear and unobstructed breath again.

Badleigh proved to be a flat town with a split personality: a village-like old town with low, erratically streeted buildings to one side of the railway line, and a cubical landscape of medium-rise brick and concrete on the other. One building I thought at first must still be under construction proved on closer inspection - as the train slowed and we got ready to get off- to be a multi-layered car park.

'He says it's three miles, I-sis,' Boz told us, after talking to the man in the ticket office.

'Good!' I said. 'A stroll.'

'No way, man,' Boz said, grinning from behind dark sunglasses. 'I call us a taxi.' He loped off to the exit.

'For a mere three miles?' I said, aghast, to Zeb.

'City,' Zeb said, shrugging, then appeared to think. His face brightened briefly. 'Lanes,' he said, with a hint of pride, I thought. He nodded happily. 'Lanes,' he said again, and sounded pleased with himself.

'Lanes?' I asked.

'Lanes. Narrow. No pavements. Cars. Speeding. Walking. Dangerous.' He shrugged. 'Lanes.' He turned and walked to the doors, beyond which Boz could be seen getting into a car.

'Lanes,' I muttered to myself, feeling obliged to join my two comrades.

'Well, I'm sorry, dear, but you can't kneel on the seats.'

'But I could put the belt round me!' I said, struggling to pull the restraining seat-belt out far enough.

'That's not the point though, love, is it? The regulations say that my fares have to be seated. If you're kneeling you're not seated, are you?'

'Could I sit on the floor?' I asked.

'No, I don't think so.'

'But I'd be seated!'

'Yeah, but not on a seat; you wouldn't be seated on a seat, know what I mean? There something wrong with her, mate?'

'The child's eccentric, man; she's from Scot-lan'. I'm sorry. Hey, I-sis; you got the man here thinkin' he got some sort of lunatic in the back of his car here-'

'Well, I meant like piles or sumfing, actually…'

'-he goin' to be askin' us to get out an' walk if you don't settle down. Sorry, man; you just start the meter rollin' now; we get this sorted.'

'Look,' I said, 'haven't you got some sort of board or something hard I could sit on?'

The taxi driver looked round at me. He was a hunched little chap with alarmingly thick glasses. 'Sumfing hard to sit on?' he said, then glanced at Boz. 'See; told you.'

He reached down the side of his seat and handed me a large book. 'Here we go; the A to Z; will that do?'

I tested it; the battered hardback flexed a little. 'It will suffice. Thank you, sir.'

'All part of the service,' he said, turning back. 'Nuffink to be embarrassed about. Had the same problem myself once, 'cept you don't usually see people young as you wif it, do you?'

'No,' I agreed as we started off and I belted myself in, too flustered to follow what he was talking about.

The car smelled powerfully of a cheap, sharp perfume. We passed the three miles to Gittering being regaled with graphic tales of our driver's multiple hospitalisations and various operations.

'Attractive. Ranch style,' Zeb said, staring with admiration at the large house beyond the gate separating road from driveway. At the far end of the drive, La Mancha was a white bungalow complex with roofs at various angles and large windows backed by closed curtains. The gardens looked well tended, although somebody had abandoned a gaily painted horsecart in the centre of the lawn, there was a new-looking plough standing on a strip of grass across the drive from the lawn, and a brightly decorated cartwheel lay against the side of the house. It looked terribly clean and tidy to be a working farm.

There were various signs on the shoulder-high white wooden gate; one said, 'La Mancha', another said, 'Private Property -Keep Out', and another said, 'Beware Of The Dog', and had a colour picture of the head of a very large dog on it, just in case the reader was under any illusion concerning what dogs looked like.

'This is it,' I said, looking through the bars of the gate for a slide or staple that would allow us to open it.

'Whoa,' Zeb said, tapping the 'Beware Of The Dog' sign.

I slid the gate's bolt and started to push it open. 'What?' I said. 'Oh, don't worry about that; they probably don't have any dogs. Besides,' I told my two uncertain-looking companions as I held the gate open for them, 'I have a way with animals, especially dogs.' I closed the gate after us, then took the lead and headed for the house.

We were halfway down the drive when we heard the deep-throated barking. We all stopped. A huge hound came running round the side of the building, looking very much like the one on the sign at the gate; it was brown-black, its head was huge and there was spittle already flying from its jowls as it came powering towards us. It looked about the size of a foal.

'Jeez!'

'Run! I-sis; run!'

I glanced back to see Zeb and Boz - who was still looking back at me - heading smartly for the gate.

I felt calm. I had faith. And I really did have a way with animals. I thought for a moment, weighing up the situation. Behind me, the dog barked again; it sounded like a dinosaur with a bad cough. I started to run.

A way with animals does run in our family; when my Grandfather persuaded Mr McIlone to become his first apostle and moved in to the farm of Luskentyre, he discovered a gift for working with cattle and horses; he was always able to calm them when they were distressed and often able to tell what was wrong with them even before the vet arrived.

My father inherited the same talent, and was largely in charge of the sheep and cows at High Easter Offerance even before he left school, though our Founder thought that animal husbandry was beneath an Elect. Still, Salvador could refuse his son nothing, a trait that seems to have been made transferable to other Elects and become an article of faith, I'm glad to say (certainly I have benefited from it), and so my father was allowed to indulge his vocation for farming to his soul's content.

I do not share my father's love of animals, though I like them well enough and have inherited both a modicum of the facility for empathising and working with them to which he fell heir from my Grandfather, plus an ability to Heal them.

When I was happy that Zeb and especially Boz were convinced I was following them as they sprinted for the gate, I stopped, spun round onto the grass and went down on all fours with my forearms extended in front of me. I crouched there on the grass, looking up at the giant dog as it bore down on me; I sort of flopped forward a little, bouncing up and then down, arms still extended, backside up in the air. The dog looked confused, and slowed as it approached; I repeated the movement and to my enormous relief the beast dropped back to a walk and made snuffing, huffing noises. I repeated the gesture once more. The dog hesitated, looked around and then padded forward. I made the same movement - it's dog for Let's Play - and lowered my eyes when it growled at me. When I looked up again its tail was wagging. It came up to sniff me.

I have, as I have said, a gift. If a large dog comes running at most people, running smartly away is probably by far the best idea.

Whatever; a minute later I was squatting on the grass, patting my new slobbering, panting friend and looking at Zeb and Boz, who were on the far side of the gate, staring at me.

'Y'all right there with that thing, I-sis?'

'So far,' I called. 'I wouldn't come in just now though; I'll see if it's happy with me standing up, then I'll head for the front door.'

The beast growled when I made to rise; I could have sworn the ground shook. I decided that dignity must bow to expediency, and so crossed to the front door on all fours, with the huge dog padding contentedly at my side. I reached up and rang the doorbell. The hound barked loudly, its voice echoing in the open porch, and then it ran away back the way it had come, disappearing round the side of the house. I stood up.

It was some time before the door was half opened, by a tall young man with streaked blond hair whom I immediately guessed was not Mr Leopold; somehow the way Cimmeria: had talked about him, and even the place where he had his office, did not tally with the bronzed, fit-looking fellow standing in front of me; from the vertical half of him I could see he was wearing a peaked cap (like Boz's, worn the wrong way round), a T-shirt and jeans.

'Yeah? What you want?'

'Ah; good afternoon. My name is Isis Whit.' I put out my hand. The young man looked me in the eyes, his brows furrowed. 'Pleased to meet you,' I said, taking off my hat with my other hand and smiling. I used my eyes to indicate my hand, and cleared my throat delicately. The young man went on scowling at me; my hand went unclasped. 'Excuse me, sir; I am offering to shake hands. I had been given to understand that good manners extended to this part of the country.'

He frowned even more deeply. 'Wot?'

'Sir,' I said sharply, presenting my hand almost in front of his face.

Perhaps it is simply that persistence pays with such people; he looked at my proffered hand as though seeing one for the first time and finally, tentatively, put out his own hand and shook it.

'There, that wasn't so difficult now, was it?' I said, setting my hat back on my head at a jaunty angle. The young man's frown had lifted a little. 'I'm very sorry to disturb you and your fine dog, but I'm looking for a young-'

'Where's Tyson?' he demanded, his frown deepening again.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Tyson,' he said. He looked over my head to the lawn, eyes swivelling. I hazarded a guess at who Tyson was.

'The dog? He's fine, and in good voice.'

'Where is he, then?'

'He escorted me here to the door and then ran back round the side there when the bell went.'

'Wot you want?' he asked suspiciously, letting the door swing further open to reveal that he was holding a long, polished wooden stick.

'Gosh,' I said. 'What's that?'

He gave me a look not dissimilar to the one I'd received from Zeb on the train when I inquired about the directional orientation of Boz's cap. 'It's a baseball bat, innit?' he told me.

It crossed my mind to ask whether he was holding it the right way round, but I just nodded appreciatively. 'Is it really?' I said. 'Well, as I was saying, my name is Isis Whit; I'm really looking for my cousin, Morag Whit. I was told that Mr Francis Leopold is her manager and that he lives here, so I'm sort of looking for him. It's just that my family is rather worried about Morag and I'd really like to-'

'Spain,' the young man said suddenly.

'Spine?' I asked, mishearing.

'Spain,' he repeated. 'You know; the country.'

'Mr Leopold is in Spain?'

The fellow looked troubled. 'Well, no.'

'He's not in Spain.'

'No; we was supposed to go, like, but…' His voice trailed away and his gaze wandered over my head somewhere.

'Customs and Excise?' I ventured chirpily.

'How you know about that?' he asked, scowling as he focused on me again.

'Ah, bad news travels fast, doesn't it?'

He was looking over my head again. He nodded. 'Who's that, then?' He hefted the baseball bat.

I looked round to see Boz and Zeb in the driveway, advancing tentatively. Zeb waved. 'The skinny white one is my cousin, Zebediah,' I told the young man. 'The big black one is our friend Boz.'

'What they want, then?' the fellow said, slapping the baseball bat into the palm of his hand. At that point I heard Tyson barking. Zeb and Boz promptly turned tail again and ran for the road; Tyson appeared, racing after them, but broke off the chase halfway up the drive as the men scrambled over the gate. The dog barked in a perfunctory manner, then came swaggering across the lawn towards us, pausing only to collect a small rubber ball which at first I thought he'd swallowed but which proved to be lodged wetly between his massive jaws. He joined us in the porch and dropped the ball at my feet. I squatted on my haunches and Tyson let me chuckle him under his chin, snuffling.

'How you do that?' the young man asked, seemingly mystified.

'I have a way with animals,' I explained, stroking Tyson's back and smiling at the hound.

'You wot?' he said, his voice suddenly high.

'I have a way with animals,' I repeated, looking up at him.

'Oh,' he said. He gave what could well have been a laugh. 'Right.' He patted Tyson on the head; the beast growled. 'Anyway,' he said. 'She's not here.'

'Who? Morag?' I asked, rising carefully and keeping one hand on Tyson's back; I could feel the animal vibrating but there was no audible growl.

'Yeah; she's not here.'

'Oh dear. Where- ?'

'She's gone.'

'Gone. Really? Well, she would be, wouldn't she? I suppose… Wh- ?'

'To an elf farm.'

'Ha-ha; I didn't quite catch that… ?'

'She's gone to-'

At that point a telephone rang somewhere behind him. He looked back into the hall, then at me, then at Tyson. 'Telephone,' he said, and swung the door until it was almost closed. I heard him say, "Ullo?' then, 'Yeah, 'ullo, Mo,' and for a second I was filled with confusion, wondering what my Uncle Mo was doing phoning here, before I realised; it was probably Morag!

I glanced down at Tyson and smiled. The dog growled. I put one finger to the edge of the door and pushed very gently so that it appeared the door was being blown open by the breeze. The young man was a couple of yards inside the hall, by a small table on which the telephone sat. He still held the baseball bat. He frowned at me. I grinned vacuously, then stooped and picked up Tyson's rubber ball. The ball was old and worn and porous; the beast's saliva felt cold and slimy as it oozed to the surface of the rubber toy. I threw the ball out onto the lawn. Tyson took off after it.

'Yeah, got it,' the young man was saying into the phone, and glanced down at a little cube of paper notelets by the side of the telephone. 'Fine. No. Yeah. Na, no word,' he said, turning so that he had his back to me. He lowered his voice. 'Yeah, actually there's somebody here just now, askin' for you…' I heard him say, as a panting noise and a hefty thud on the outside of my left thigh announced Tyson's return. I kept my eyes on the young man as I went down on my haunches and retrieved the sodden ball.

'Can't…' the young man said. He turned back to look at me. 'What you say your name was again?'

'Isis,' I said.

He turned back, hunching slightly. 'Isis,' I heard him say. Next second he jerked straight. 'Wot?' he barked, sounding angry. 'You mean it's this one? You mean it's this bastard 'ere; this one?'

I didn't like the look or the sound of this. A plan I had been turning over tentatively at the back of my mind suddenly thrust itself to the fore and demanded an immediate Yes or No.

I didn't really have to think about it. I decided the answer was Yes, and threw the soggy rubber ball into the hall.

The ball squelched on the carpet just behind the young man and bounced past him further down the hall; Tyson pounced in after it and shouldered the fellow out of the way, making him bang his leg into the telephone table.

'Aow, fack!' the young man said. He recovered his balance by clunking the baseball bat against the wall.

The saliva-saturated ball rolled into a distant room; Tyson thundered after it. 'Call yer back!' the young man said, and threw down the phone. Tyson skidded and disappeared from view. There was an expensive-sounding crash from the room. Tyson!' the young man yelled, sprinting after the hound.

'Tyson! You cant!' he screamed, charging into the room and disappearing from view. I slipped in through the door as more crashes and oaths resounded from the room concerned. I had been hoping the young fellow would just put down the phone, thus giving me a chance to talk to Morag, assuming that had indeed been her calling, but the handset was back in its cradle. I picked it up anyway, but heard only the dialling tone.

'You facker; come 'ere!' The hall floorboards shook to the sound of something like a sideboard falling over. I looked at the little cube of notelets by the side of the phone, the one the young man had glanced at when he'd said, 'Yeah, got it', a minute or so earlier. There was a telephone number written there.

I glanced down the hall, just as the young man appeared in the doorway, holding Tyson by his studded collar and waving the baseball bat at me. His face looked somewhat florid. Tyson had the ball clamped in his teeth and seemed pleased with himself. 'Right!' the young man yelled, jabbing the bat towards me. 'You; Ice, or whatever your fackin' name is; aht the ahse, now!'

I was already retreating. Then the fellow added, 'And Mo says to stop boverin' her, or else, right? You'll get a slap, you will.' He glanced down at Tyson, who seemed to have become vicariously upset as well by now and was glowering at me, growling sonorously. The young man let go the beast's collar. 'Get the bint, my son.'

Bothering her? I was thinking as Tyson dropped the ball and leaped towards me with a furious snarl.

Somehow I didn't think that my way with animals was going to prove effective this time. I stepped back into the porch and swung the front door closed behind me. Then I turned and ran.

I cut across the lawn to the drive; I heard the door open behind me and the young man yelling something; then all I could hear was barking. Boz and Zeb stood at the gate, eyes wide; I got the impression as I raced up the drive that the two men were getting ready to help me over the gate. 'Out the way!' I yelled, waving one arm. Thankfully, they moved, one to each side. I got to the gate a second before Tyson and vaulted it cleanly, staggering as I landed but not falling. Tyson could probably have jumped it too, but contented himself with slamming into the woodwork and making it shudder; he continued barking furiously. The young man was charging up the drive, shouting and waving his baseball bat.

I gathered myself, looked from Zeb to Boz and nodded down the road. 'Race you to the station,' I panted.