I looked across at Bowman. He had found the horse's blanket and wore it over his shoulders, so that he looked like an old woman. Had he made the plan to net me? Who was the true governor here? The Scotsman? Or the man in the driving seat - the silent lawyer?
A thought came: I had been the one to suggest giving chase when the Scotsman had walked away up Bouverie Street. How could Bowman have known I would do that? But it was not really a mystery. Bowman had been on the point of making the suggestion himself. He had played with the window of the magazine offices. There had been no reason to open it on such a day of cold; instead, it had been the signal to the Scotsman to set off.
I looked up at this fellow who had led me such a dance.
'What are you called?' I asked him.
'Haud yer tongue,' he said, head tilted back. He was still staring as Bowman muttered, 'He's called "Small David".'
'Why are you called Small David?' I asked the man.
'Dae ye have any objection to the name?'
'It is not accurate.'
We were coming to a fork in the road.
'You're about the largest man in this cart,' I said, and again the half-smile seemed to develop underneath that moustache.
A white cottage marked the junction; deer antlers hung on the end wall. The Scotsman did not give a glance, but continued staring at me.
'He's called "Small" because he's big,' Bowman said.
'It's humour,' said someone; and I realised that the lawyer in the driving seat had at last spoken up. Having done so, he evidently thought he might as well continue.
'County Sutherland,' he said, half-turning around towards me. 'A country very different from the levels of the North Riding, Detective Stringer.'
He was as handsome as he had looked in the photograph, but strangely rigged out: half poor farmer in looks, half gentleman. Beneath his ulster he wore a good black suit, but with a dirty black guernsey under that. At his throat, he wore a black comforter and a green silk necker. And he had the wrong boots on for this place: town boots of thin leather. His face put me in mind of somebody. I looked quickly between him and the young man, Richie.
The lawyer was the father of Richie.
Beyond the white cottage, we turned on to a higher road. A white cloud was rising slowly behind the mountains ahead as the snow came down fast. The railway was out of sight below, but I knew it must be blocked by now.
A few seconds beyond the house, we had to pull into the hedgerow to let another cart by that contained another lot of muffled-up men. They looked respectable enough, but none of us raised our hat. The way was now becoming rougher; the stones rolled under our wheels, and underneath the snow.
After another few minutes of being shaken to bits in the cart I realised that the Scotsman, Small David, was staring at me again. I said, 'Why are you looking at me like that?' In reply he spat out something that sounded like: 'Why are ye?' 'What's the programme?' I asked the company after another long interval.
No reply from anyone.
Chapter Twenty-five
At first, I took the cottage we were approaching to be nothing but a wide stone wall. It was some way up a mountain, part of the grey blur beyond the snow.
'I know you're watching the chimney, Small David,' said Richie Marriott.
'Why's there nae smoke, laddie?'
'We're low on firewood and peats, Small David.'
'And ye're low on brains,' he said, but there was perhaps some affection there; these two were cronies, who conspired over the heating of the house.
'I can't manage that flue in the scullery, David, and that's all about it,' said the son.
Everyone jumped down; I followed. It was not so much a garden, more like an island in the sea of heather. Two rusty long-handled shovels leant against the low stone walls; a rain barrel stood at one corner, barely higher than the wall. You'd call it a one- storey house, only it was lower than that. As we approached it, the Scotsman nodded from me to Marriott, saying, 'He stays here the neet if ye insist, but then it's o'er the burran wi' him.'
The lawyer was walking the horse towards a broken-down barn a little further up the track that had brought us to the house. The house looked over a white, misty valley - threatened to roll down into it. Whether this was the same valley we'd run along in the train or another, I couldn't tell, for I could not see. I could just make out through the blizzard a steeper hill rising above the one on which we stood; black clouds flowed across the tops like a spillage of oil. The day was nearly done, and the world was closing down to this house and these men. The snow was a foot thick as I stepped out of the cart, and I knew that I was held prisoner by the weather as much as the revolver. I suddenly thought of my interview for promotion at Middlesbrough. I would not be there after all, and the fact was a very good demonstration of the strangeness of life.
Small David walked up to the door of the cottage, on which a note was pinned, reading: 'Shut this door after you. This means YOU', with the last word underlined.
He kicked it open with bullet-like force, and entered the house.
'What's "over the burran"?' I asked, following him in.
In the smoke-filled scullery we had now entered, he turned sharply about towards me:
'Ye spoke just now of Gilbert Sanderson,' he said. 'He's o'er the burran.'
'Steady now, David,' said Marriott, who stepped in behind the two of us, having settled the horse.
Small David was at the stove that squatted in the centre of the room, cursing to himself, and trying to fettle the fire. The lawyer held a pitcher of water; he stood at the stone sink - which was as big as a horse trough, and took up about a third of the room - washing his hands as thoroughly as circumstances permitted. Then he turned to me:
'I am currently negotiating to save your life, Detective Stringer.'
If nothing else, his beautiful lawyer's voice had survived whatever decline had brought him to this house.
'Negotiating?' I said. 'Who with?'
Bowman, now also alongside us, cut in, saying, 'With Rob Roy there, of course', while nodding towards Small David, who was still crouching at the stove. 'And I want you to know that I hope he succeeds.' He was addressing me in the haze of the cold kitchen, but not looking at me. He knew he had done a low thing. He had stopped short of friendliness ever since I'd known him; he'd always been cagey, and he'd been all wrong on the chase from St Pancras. If he'd been straight, he'd either have jibbed at the business or got keen on it; he'd done neither.
'I had no choice but to bring you here, you know,' he said, as though the whole disaster was somehow my fault. There was one small window in the scullery, and I craned to look through it. Seeing what I was about, Marriott said, 'Don't try a breakaway, Detective Stringer. Or Small David will be upon you in an instant.'
I remained at the window, but it was only a bluff: the glass was thick with ice and I could see nothing - and the sight of that blank- ness made me feel I could barely breathe.