The Crow Road Read Online Free Page A

mystified. ‘Ah thought she had a heart attack.’
    ‘She did have one,’ I nodded. ‘About five years ago; got a pacemaker fitted.’
    ‘Maybe she had a heart attack while she was up the ladder,’ Dean suggested. Ash kicked his shin. ‘Oo-ya!’ he said.
    ‘Excuse Mr Sensitivity here,’ Ash said. ‘But like I said: we were all really sorry to hear, Prentice.’ She looked around. ‘Haven’t seen Lewis here; could he not make it?’
    ‘He’s in Australia,’ I sighed. ‘Being funny.’
    ‘Ah.’ Ash nodded, smiling faintly. ‘Well, that’s a shame.’
    ‘For the Australians, perhaps,’ I said.
    Ash looked sad, even pitying. ‘Aw, Prentice -’
    Dean prodded his sister in the back with the hand he wasn’t rubbing his shin with. ‘Hoi; what was that about yon guy ye bumped into in that jacuzzi in Berlin? Said ye were goantae tell -’
    ‘Oh yeah ...’ Ash turned from frowning at her brother to frowning at me, took a breath, then let it out. ‘Hey; you fancy a pint later, Prentice?’
    ‘Well, maybe,’ I said. ‘I think we’re ordered up to the castle for drinks and a bite to eat.’ I shrugged. ‘This evening?’
    ‘Okie-dokie,’ Ash nodded.
    ‘A jacuzxi?’ I asked, looking at Dean and Ash in turn. ‘Berlin?’
    Dean grinned broadly and nodded.
    Ash said, ‘Aye, Prentice; watchin the wa’ come doon. And a shocking and decadent tale it is, too, let me tell you. See you in the Jacobite about eight?’
    ‘Right you are,’ I said. I leaned close and nudged her. ‘What jacuzzi?’
    I saw the expression on Dean’s face, then heard the noise, then watched Ashley’s gaze rise from my face to fasten somewhere over my left shoulder. I turned slowly.
    The car came screaming up the crematorium drive, leaves swirling into the air behind. It was a green Rover, and it had to be doing sixty. Probably exceeding the previous speed record within the crematorium grounds by a factor of at least three. It was heading more or less straight for us, and braking distance was running out fast.
    ‘That no Doctor Fyfe’s car?’ Dean said, as Ash grabbed my sleeve and started to pull me back, at the same time as the Rover’s engine note fell from its wail, its nose dipped and the rear end wavered as the tyres tried to bite the moist tarmac.
    ‘I thought he had an Orion,’ I said, as Ashley pulled Dean and me past the rear of Uncle Hamish’s car and onto the grass. Everybody in the crowd outside the crematorium was watching the green 216 as it skidded to a stop, avoiding a head-on collision with the Urvill’s Bentley Eight by only a few centimetres. The tyres rasped on the tarmac. Doctor Fyfe - for indeed, that was who it was - jumped out of the driver’s seat. He was as small, rotund and be-whiskered as ever, but today his face was red and his eyes were staring.
    ‘Stop!’ he yelled, slamming the door and running for the chapel entrance as fast as his little legs would carry him. ‘Stop!’ he shouted again; a little unnecessarily, I thought, as everybody had quite entirely stopped whatever they’d been doing some time before his car had even begun braking. ‘Stop!’
    I still insist that I heard a muffled crump at this point, but nobody believes me. That was when it happened, though.
    The sensitive morticians who run the Gallanach Corporation Crematorium usually wait until night before they burn the bodies, to avoid the possibility of resulting smoke-plumes sending overwrought relations into unsightly paroxysms of grief, but Grandma Margot had specified that she wanted to be incinerated immediately; her cremation was therefore genuinely under way as we stood there.
    ‘Ah!’ said Doctor Fyfe, stumbling just before he was intercepted before the door of the chapel by a concerned undertaker. ‘Ah!’ he said again, and crumpled, first into the undertaker’s arms and then to the ground. He was on his knees briefly, then turned and sat down, clutched at his chest, stared at the granite flagstones