The Crow Road Read Online Free

Ritchies.
    Anyway, Urvill family gossip had it that Verity might be coming to her senses regarding Rodney’s removal, and it was a positive and encouraging sign that she had turned up here without the geek in tow. I thought about approaching her. Maybe when we got back to the castle.
    I also thought about talking to James, but little brother was leaning against the crematorium wall looking bored but cool in his borrowed great-coat, earplugs in, getting his Walkman fix at last. Still mainlining The Doors, probably. For a moment I almost missed my elder brother, Lewis, who hadn’t been able to make it back for the funeral. Lewis is better-looking, smarter and wittier than I am, so I don’t miss him often.
    I was standing beside Uncle Hamish’s Jaguar. Maybe I should just get into the car. Or find somebody else to talk to. I could feel that an attack of awkwardness - the kind of episode I am unhappily prone to - was imminent.
    ‘Hi, Prentice. You okay?’
    The voice was deep and throaty but female. Ashley Watt strolled up, put her hand on the side of my shoulder, patting. Her brother Dean was just behind. I nodded.
    ‘Yeah. Yeah; fine. How’s yourself? Hi, Dean.’
    ‘Hi, man.’
    ‘You just back for this?’ Ash asked, nodding her head at the low grey granite of the crematorium buildings. Her long fawn hair was gathered up; her strong, angular face, dominated by a blade of a nose and a pair of large round-lensed glasses, was concerned and sad. Ash was my age, but she always made me feel younger.
    ‘Yeah; back to Glasgow on Monday.’ I looked down. ‘Wow, Ash; I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a skirt before.’ Ash always wore jeans. We’d known each other since we’d used to crawl around on the same carpets together, but I couldn’t remember seeing her in anything else but jeans. Yet there were her legs all right; pretty good-looking ones too, under a knee-length black skirt. She wore a big naval-looking jacket with the cuffs turned over, and black gloves; medium-high heels made her the same height as me.
    She grinned. ‘Short memory, Prentice. Recall school?’
    ‘Oh, yeah,’ I nodded, still looking at the legs. ‘Apart from then, though.’ I shrugged, smiled warily at her. I’d gone through a protracted Unbearable stage while I’d been at high school - it had lasted from my first day through to about fourth year - and the most vivid memory I had of Ash from that time was when I and her two brothers had carried out a highly successful snowball ambush on her, her sister and their pals as they’d walked back from school one dark evening. Somebody’s snowball had broken that long sharp nose of Ashley’s, and I suspected it had been one of mine if for no other reason than because as far as I knew nobody else had been deploying snowballs whose ballistic properties had been enhanced by the judicious reinforcement of their cores with moderately sizeable chuckie stones.
    Her nose had been reset, of course, and we’d got on better since we’d each left school. Ash frowned a little, her slightly magnified grey eyes searching mine.
    ‘I was sorry to hear about the old lady. All of us were.’ She swivelled briefly to Dean, standing lighting up a Regal behind her. He nodded; black jeans and a dark blue crombie that looked like it had seen better decades.
    I wasn’t sure what to say. ‘I’ll miss her,’ I said eventually. I’d been trying not to think about it, ever since I’d heard the news.
    ‘Was it a heart attack, aye, Prentice?’ Dean inquired through his cloud of smoke.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘She fell off a ladder.’
    ‘I thought she did that last year,’ Ash said.
    ‘She did; off a tree. This time she was clearing the gutters. The ladder slipped and she went through the conservatory roof. She was dead by the time they got her to the hospital. Shock from blood-loss, apparently.’
    ‘Oh, Prentice, I’m sorry,’ Ash said, and put her hand on my arm.
    Dean shook his head and looked