Crow Boy (13 page)

‘Annie is to have one of these every morning and one at night – it's written on the box here – and she's to keep doing so until all the pills are gone. Entrust nobody else with this task, Lord Kelvin – these pills are more precious than diamonds.'

Lord Kelvin nodded. ‘I shall see to it personally,' he said.

The Doctor looked at Douglas. ‘Put away the irons,' he said, ‘we'll no' be needing them today.'

The look on Douglas' potato-like face was one of disappointment. This was the second time he'd prepared for such a treatment only to have it cancelled on him. With no water to quench the iron, he left it in the coals and proceeded to wrap up the other instruments.

Lord Kelvin was looking at the packet doubtfully. ‘It's hard to believe that it could be so easy,' he said.

‘Then prepare to be astonished,' said The Doctor. ‘As I was, the first time I witnessed this miracle.' He turned away. ‘And now, if you will forgive my haste, we must away to my other patients. People who must endure more robust cures than young Annie. I bid you good day, Lord Kelvin – and I shall call on you tomorrow to see how things are progressing.' He looked at Tom and Douglas. ‘Come along,' he said. ‘We've tarried long enough and there's yet more work to be done!'

Seventeen

Back in the coach, The Doctor removed his mask to reveal Hamish's sweating but delighted features. He took a leather purse from his cloak and shook the contents out into a gloved hand.

‘Twenty shillings!' he exclaimed, delightedly. ‘Twenty shillings for nothing more than a bit of play-acting! And a thousand pounds to follow. I'll be a wealthy man yet!'

Tom studied him in disgust. ‘You're pretty pleased with yourself, aren't you?' he observed.

The Doctor's smile vanished instantly. ‘What if I am?' he snarled. ‘What's it to you?'

‘Well, for one thing,' said Tom, ‘by rights, half of that money should be mine.'

The Doctor laughed dismissively. ‘How do you make that out?' he cried.

‘If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't even have the pills. You wouldn't know about the clean bedding and the lavender and . . . you wouldn't have even heard of Doctor Wikepedia.'

The Doctor scowled. ‘But I have the expense of housing and feeding you,' he replied. ‘Not to mention the valuable apprenticeship you'll be getting.'

Tom sneered. ‘An apprenticeship in how to blackmail people,' he said, ‘Oh, don't worry,' he added, ‘I don't want any of the money, not when it's been ripped off like that.'

‘Ripped . . . off?' The Doctor looked confused. It clearly wasn't a term he was familiar with.

‘Yeah. I think it's disgusting what you just did to that poor bloke. OK, so he's rich, but charging him for pills that cost you nothing in the first place, that's really scuzzy. And making up that other case, so you could drive up the price?'

The Doctor fixed him with a look. ‘What makes you think I made it up?' he growled.

‘Oh, please! Don't even try to lie about it. Nobody else knows you've got the pills. If you're the real Doctor Rae, I'll eat my shorts. You're just some scally trying to pull a fast one.'

The Doctor returned the coins to his purse and carefully replaced it in his pocket. ‘What's a scally?' he murmured.

‘It's a crook, a lowlife, a scumbucket,' snarled Tom.

‘And that's what you think I am?'

‘Yes,' said Tom, ‘and–'

That was as far as he got. The next moment, The Doctor flung himself across the narrow space between them and had Tom by the throat. He was pinning him back against the seat while he stared into Tom's face, his eyes inches away, his vile breath gusting into Tom's nostrils.

‘Now you listen to me,' he said, ‘and you listen good. If I ever hear you say anything like that again, if you so much as look at me the wrong way, I swear I will snap your neck like a twig, do you hear me? I don't want you talking to people, asking questions. From now on, you're my assistant, and you'll do exactly what you're told and nothing else. Do I make myself clear?'

Tom struggled to escape but the hands around his neck were pressing with incredible force, choking the very life out of him. His head was filling with a horrible buzzing red mist.

‘And you'd better pray, boy, that your doctor friend in England sends me some of those pills soon, because, if the weeks go by and they don't arrive, then you'll be no use to me and, if that happens . . .'

The Doctor's stinking mouth continued to shape words but Tom could no longer hear them, because he was melting, he was running through The Doctor's gloved hands like hot sealing wax and, quite suddenly, he was no longer in the swaying interior of the coach, he was sitting in a different kind of coach altogether, the one that was taking him on the school trip to Mary King's Close. It was no longer The Doctor's face that was pushed up against his, but the fat, grinning features of his arch enemy, Stuart Gillies. The boy's big hands had hold of the lapels of Tom's blazer and he was pulling him up close, blasting the stench of half-digested cheese and onion crisps into his face.

‘Say it!' he bellowed.

Tom stared back at him in bewilderment. ‘Say what?' he gasped.

‘Say ‘I'm a waste of space!
'
'

There was a pause while Tom tried to get his fuddled senses around the command. Part of his mind was still back in the coach with The Doctor and when he spoke, he did so without thinking it through. ‘You're a waste of space!' he stammered.

A concerted ‘Oooh' went up from the seats all around him and some laughter too. The response must have shocked Gillies because he let go of Tom's lapels and reeled back in surprise, the look on his face suggesting that this was the last thing he had expected. ‘You trying to be funny, Manky?' he snarled.

‘No, I . . . I thought that's what you wanted me to say.'

Laughter now, from the surrounding seats. Gillies glanced quickly around, sensing that his authority was slipping. ‘Oh, so you're a comedian now, are you? We'll see if you're still laughing after the visit.' He threw a quick glance over his shoulder to where Mr McKenzie sat at the front of the coach, his gaze fixed on the way ahead. Gillies turned back and shoved a grubby index finger in Tom's face. ‘You and me, Manky,' murmured Gillies. ‘One-to-one. I'll be waiting for you.'

And, with that, he gave Tom a contemptuous shove and went back to his cronies at the back of the bus.

Tom slumped miserably against the rain-spattered window and stared out at the grey streets of Edinburgh. He wondered if he was back for good this time. If so, he had jumped backwards in time maybe only half an hour . . . at least, he told himself, he would be forewarned about what might happen at Mary King's Close . . . and, if he should happen to see a flickery vision of Morag, moving past an open doorway, there was no way he was going to be dumb enough to follow her into that room a second time. After all, although this was a reality he hated, it was also one that he recognised. Maybe his trips to the seventeenth century were over with.

‘Why do you let him treat you like that?' asked a female voice.

‘Huh?' He looked up in surprise to see that a girl, sitting in the seat in front of him, had turned around to look at him. She was pretty, Tom thought, with steely grey eyes and dark, shoulder-length hair. There was also something strangely familiar about her, but he couldn't think from where. He was fairly sure he hadn't spotted her in school before.

‘Well?' she prompted him. ‘Nothing to say for yourself?'

‘Er . . . no. Sorry.' He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don't know,' he said.

‘You don't know?' She seemed puzzled by this answer. ‘Seems to me you should have an idea about it. Is it because you're afraid of him?'

‘No, it's not that, exactly, it's just . . . look, sorry, do I know you?'

‘Of course you do,' she said. ‘I'm Shona. I'm in your class.'

‘Er . . . OK, but I . . . I can't help feeling I've met you somewhere before. I mean, not here. Somewhere else. You . . . you haven't ever lived in Manchester, have you?'

‘No, worse luck. I bet Manchester is a cool place to live. All that great music . . . and Coronation Street! Have you ever been?'

Tom shook his head. ‘I don't think it's a real place,' he said.

She rolled her eyes. ‘You don't say! It's a TV programme, right? Some of it must be filmed on location. I thought maybe you might have gone on a tour or something.'

‘No, sorry. Not a fan.'

She shrugged. ‘That's OK; it's not a test.' She smiled. ‘Question is, what made you want to leave Manchester and come and live in Edinburgh?'

‘Don't you know?' asked Tom. ‘Everybody else seems to. My mum ran off with this guy and he lives here.' He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the back seat. ‘They're all talking about it.'

‘I don't take much notice of what they say,' said Shona, dismissively. ‘They're idiots. Anyway, about Stuart Gillies. You shouldn't let him push you around like that. He's a bully. And when you stand up to a bully, he just melts away like a snowflake in a microwave.'

‘It's not just him though, is it?' argued Tom. ‘He's got all his mates to back him up.'

She laughed at that. ‘What planet are you from?' she asked him. ‘Everybody knows that kids who hang around with a bully only do it so they don't get bullied themselves. Once they see you stand up to him, they'll lose interest.'

‘Think so?'

‘Know so.' She smiled and, once again, he was struck by the look in those steely grey eyes. It was maddening. He was sure he knew her from somewhere. He decided to start fishing for more information.

‘Are you from round here?' he asked her.

‘I live on the Close,' she said.

He stared at her. ‘Mary King's Close?'

‘No, you bampot! Nobody lives there any more. I'm talking about Argyle Close. There's quite a few of us from there . . .' She stared at him. ‘What's wrong?' she asked him.

‘Bampot,' he echoed. ‘You . . . called me bampot.'

‘It's just something people say,' she assured him. ‘Don't take it personal.'

But an idea was forming in his mind – something incredible – something he could never have anticipated; the more he looked at Shona, the more he began to place those grey eyes in an entirely different environment. ‘What . . . what's your surname?' he asked her, hardly daring to breathe.

‘It's Grierson,' she said. ‘Why?'

He nodded. Somehow he'd known it would be. He looked at the pretty girl and tried to work out how she might change through years of hard work and hard living. He tried to imagine her with ample curves and brawny shoulders and a clay pipe jutting out of her mouth.

‘Do they ever call you Missie?' he asked.

She was delighted by the question. ‘How did you know that?' she cried. ‘That's what my Ma and Da used to call me when I was a bairn. They used to say I was a proper little madam, whatever that means.'

‘What do they call you now?' he asked her.

‘This may come as a surprise to you,' she said. ‘But they call me Shona.'

Gillies' voice sounded from the back seat. ‘Hey, don't look now, Manky's got himself a girlfriend.'

‘That's more than you've ever had,' said Shona, contemptuously, and laughter erupted from the back of the bus.

Tom glanced over his shoulder and saw that Gillies was getting up out of his seat, a vengeful expression on his face.

‘Sit down, Gillies!' roared Mr McKenzie from the front of the coach and the boy reluctantly obeyed the command, but he mouthed the words ‘just you wait' at Tom, before drawing his index finger across his throat. Tom turned back to look at Shona.

‘Ignore that,' she told him. ‘That's just show for his cronies. Shall I tell you something about Stuart Gillies?' She leaned closer. ‘He still sleeps with the blanket he had when he was a wee baby . . . and, when nobody's looking, he still sucks his thumb.'

‘No way!' said Tom. ‘Who told you that?'

‘My Ma's friends with his Ma. She's dead worried about it. Taken him to see a child psychologist and all that.' She threw a contemptuous look down the length of the bus. ‘So, you see, he's the last person in the world you should be scared of. He has his own problems.'

The coach slowed and Tom saw that it was coming to a halt at St Giles Cathedral, the drop off point. Everybody jumped to their feet and started jostling for position but Mr McKenzie was there before them.

‘Sit down everyone!' he yelled. ‘We're going to do this in an orderly fashion. That means we'll exit the coach from the front to the back.' A groan went up from the back seat but Mr McKenzie ignored it. ‘Now, let's begin, shall we? Anybody who pushes in will get right back on the coach and will stay there until the tour is finished. I hope I make myself clear.'

The threat worked. The exit was indeed orderly, and Tom soon found himself moving along the aisle, directly behind Shona, marvelling as he did so at the trimness of her figure and wondering how she could ever have ballooned up into the hulking shape of Missie Grierson. Except that didn't make sense anyway, because Missie Grierson belonged in the past, not the future. But then, there was no mistaking those eyes and that voice. They reached the door of the coach and Shona went down the steps to the cobbled road. Tom followed and the class began the walk down the Royal Mile towards Mary King's Close.

And then everything seemed to ripple and shudder and a roaring sound filled Tom's ears. His movement along the street accelerated as though he were in a film that had suddenly been switched to fast forward. Everything around him turned into a blur, making him feel sick and dizzy. He was only dimly aware of stepping in off the busy street and moving frantically around the gift shop, before following Agnes Chambers down the stairs into the darkness. Then he was lurching up and down hills as he ran like an idiot behind the other kids, moving in and out of rooms, standing in front of mad waxworks before racing on again. Then quite suddenly, everything jerked abruptly to a halt.

He was standing with the other kids in the dark, silent tomb of the Close, looking at Agnes Chambers as she said, ‘That concludes our tour for today. If you'd like to follow me, we'll head back to the surface.'

Tom stood there feeling vaguely stunned. He felt like complaining. He hadn't seen
any
of the tour! He looked around for Shona, but he couldn't see her amongst the others and he began to wonder if she even existed. Agnes indicated a doorway and led the way through it and up a flight of stairs. The class followed her in polite single file. Mr McKenzie went up towards the middle of the group, urging those behind him to watch their step and to hold on to the wooden handrail. As usual, Tom hung back until the end, wanting to keep a distance between himself and the other kids. He wondered if he was back in Edinburgh for good this time. After the frantic dash he had just endured, everything seemed normal.