by Francis - TO THE HILT

'Don't worry about it,' I said.

Armed with generous cash from my mother I trekked back by rail to Reading and went to see the firm of Young and Uttley, the investigators recommended by Tobias. An unprepossessing male voice on the telephone having given me a time and a place, I found a soulless box of an office - outer room, inner room, desks, filing cabinets, computers and coat stand - with an inhabitant, a man of about my own age dressed in jeans, black hard boots, a grubby singlet with cut-out armholes and a heavy black hip-slung belt shining with aggressive studs. He had an unshaven chin, close-cropped dark hair, one earring dangling - right ear - and the word HATE in black letters across the backs of the fingers of both hands.

'Yeah?' he said, when I went in. 'Want something?'

'I'm looking for Young and Uttley. I telephoned-'

'Yeah,' said the voice I'd heard on the phone. 'See. Young and Uttley are partners . That's their pictures on the wall, there. Which one do you want?'

He pointed to two glossy eight-by-ten-inch black-and-white photographs drawing-pinned to a framed cork board hanging on a dingy wall. Alongside hung a framed certificate giving Young and Uttley licence to operate as private investigators, though to my understanding no such licence was necessary in Britain, nor existed. A ploy to impress ignorant clients, I supposed.

Mr Young and Mr Uttley were, first, a sober dark-suited man with a heavy moustache, a striped tie and a hat, and secondly, a wholesome fellow in a pale blue jogging suit, carrying a football and a whistle and looking like a dedicated schoolteacher going out to coach children.

I turned away, smiling, and said to the skinhead watching me, 'I'll take you as you are.'

'What do you mean?'

'Those pictures are both you.'

'Quick, aren't you?' he said tartly. 'And Tobe warned me, and all.'

'I asked him for someone good, honest and discreet.'

'You got him. What do you want done?'

I said, 'Where did you learn your trade?'

'Reform school. Various nicks. Do you want me or not?'

'I want the discreet bit most of all.'

'Priority.'

'Then I want you to follow someone and find out if he meets, or knows where to find, four other people.'

'Done,' he said easily. 'Who are they?'

I drew them for him in a mixture of pencil and ballpoint, having somewhere lost my charcoal. He looked at the drawings, one of Surtees Benchmark, and one of each of my four attackers.

I told him Surtees's name and address. I said I knew nothing about the others except their ability to punch.

'Are those four how you got that eye?'

'Yes. They robbed my house in Scotland, but they have south-east England voices.'

He nodded. 'When did they hit you?'

'Tuesday morning.'

He mentioned his fee and I paid him a retainer for a week. I gave him Jed's phone number and asked him to report.

'What do I call you?' I asked.

'Young or Uttley, take your pick.'

'Young and Utterly Outrageous, more like.'

'You're so sharp, you'll cut yourself.'

I went grinning to the train.

I spent the later part of the afternoon shopping, accompanied by my long-suffering mother, who paid for everything with her credit cards.

'I suppose,' she said at one point, 'you weren't insured against the loss of your whiter clothes and your climbing gear and your paints?'

I looked at her sideways, amused.

She sighed.

'I did insure the jeep,' I said.

'That's something, at least.'

Back at Park Crescent I changed into some of the new things and left the jodhpur boots, padded jacket, crash helmet and goggles for return to Emily sometime, and I told Ivan (having checked with Margaret Morden) that so far the brewery's creditors were earning haloes and had agreed to meet on Monday.

'Why don't you stay here?' he said, a shade petulantly. 'Your mother would like it.'

I hadn't told him about the attack on the bothy so as not to trouble him and he hadn't persisted in asking how I'd hurt my eye. I explained my departure in the one way that would satisfy him.

'Himself wants me up there… and I'd better do something about the Cup.'

Relaxing, he nodded. 'Keep it safe.'

The three of us tranquilly ate an Edna-cooked dinner, then I shook Ivan's hand, hugged my mother warmly, humped my bags and boxes along to Euston, boarded the Royal Highlander and slept my way to Scotland.

Even the air at Dalwhinnie smelled different. Smelled like home. Cold. Fresh. A promise of mountains.

Jed Parlane was striding up and down to keep warm and blowing on his fingers. He helped carry my clutter out to his car and said he was relieved to see me and how was I feeling.

'Good as new.'

'That's more than can be said for the bothy.'

'Did you lock it?' I asked, trying not to sound anxious.

'Relax. Yes, I did. In fact I got a new lock for it. Whatever was there when you left is still there. Himself asks me to drive over and check every day. No one is sniffing around, that I can see. The police want to interview you, of course.'

'Sometime.'

Jed drove me not to the bothy but, as arranged, straight to Kinloch Castle to talk to Himself.

The castle was no fairy-tale confection of Disney spires and white-sugar icing, but like all ancient Scottish castles had been heavily constructed to keep out both enemies and weather. It was of thick and plain perpendicular grey stone with a minimum of narrow windows that had once been arrow slots for archers. Built on a rise to command views of the valley at its foot, it looked dour and inhospitable and threatening even on sunny days, and could chill the soul under nimbostratus.

My father had grown up there, and as a grandson of the old earl I'd played there as a child until it held no terrors: but times had changed and the castle itself no longer belonged to the Kinloch family but was the property of Scotland, administered and run as a tourist attraction by one of the conservation organisations. Himself, who had effected the transfer, had pronounced the roof upkeep and the heating bills too much for even the Kinloch coffers, and had negotiated a retreat to a smaller snugger home in what had once been the kitchen wing with living quarters for a retinue of dozens.

Himself would on occasion dress in historic Highland finery and act as host to visiting monarchs in the castle's vast main dining-hall, and it had been after one such grand evening, about six years earlier, that an enterprising band of burglars in the livery of footmen had lifted and borne away ah irreplaceable gold-leafed eighteenth-century dinner service for fifty. Not a side plate, not a charger, had surfaced since.

It had been less than a year later, when a second theft had deprived the castle of several tapestry wall-hangings, that Himself had thought of a way of keeping safe the best known and most priceless of the many Kinloch treasures, the jewel-encrusted solid gold hilt of the ceremonial sword of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie.

It had, of course, meant taking the hilt out of its supposedly thief-proof display case and replacing the real thing with a replica. Ever since he had whisked the genuine article to safety, Himself had politely refused to tell the castle's administrators where to find it. It belonged to him , he maintained, as it had been given personally by Prince Charles Edward to his ancestor, the Earl of Kinloch at the tune, and had been handed down to him, the present earl, in the direct male line.

So had the castle, the administrators said. The hilt belonged to the nation.

Not so, Himself argued. The castle transfer documents had not included personal property and had in fact specifically excluded the hilt.

There had been hot debates in newspapers and on television as to when, if ever, a gift to one man became the property of all.