Malcolm Hughes started visibly. 'Come now, Mr Fogg, that really is taking it too far. I know the incident which you are referring to, of course. The Wilsons and young Arnold quarrelled over something during playtime one day last week. There was an argument and I believe a blow was struck but Miss Haverill was quick to intervene and—'

'But she didn't intervene quite quickly enough,' Peter snapped, 'Look, Mr Hughes, suppose you drop all this facade you've built up about school discipline and the like. I know as well as you do that the Wilsons and probably some of the other kids are hooligans, given the chance. I'm not here to complain about young Arnold's black eye, just to tell you that it's not to happen to my boy. If it does. . . '

'Is—is this some kind of threat, Mr Fogg?' Malcolm Hughes leaned forward, the veins in his thick neck standing out like lengths of blue cord.

'It depends.' The other stood up. 'On whether anything happens to my boy. It's your responsibility to see that it doesn't.'

Hughes was puffing steadily on his pipe. How dare this upstart of an outsider come here and talk to him like this. He thought of the Wilsons and remembered how the tyres on his car had been slashed. There were things that were best left alone, but when parents complained it made life very difficult, especially if you weren't Welsh! Malcolm Hughes was English. With a Welsh name but born in Stoke-on-Trent, he'd come to Woodside with his parents at the age of three. Most people thought he was Welsh—except the Wilsons! Somehow they'd found out and life was a kind of brinkmanship. You never knew for sure what they would do, and if they did anything you never found out until it was too late. You could never prove anything. They were a kind of private terrorist organisation that you couldn't get to grips with, fighting you under the cover of darkness. They had obviously got it in for the Foggs, which wasn't surprising. Mark and Jon would rough the young kid up at school, the elder twins would—well, there was no way of guessing to what lengths they would go. The holiday cottage that had been burned down one night last winter, that was the Wilsons' doing for sure. You had to tread carefully. Run with the hare and the hounds.

'Leave it to me.' The headmaster blew out a thick cloud of smoke, which he hoped would hide the flicker of fear in his eyes, the slight trembling of his lower lip. I'll see that no harm comes to your boy.'

'Good.' Peter smiled. 'In which case I'll not take up any more of your valuable time, Mr Hughes. Good day to you.'

Peter had not missed that brief expression of fear on the schoolmaster's face. He's shit-scared of the Wilsons, Peter thought. In fact he's scared of everything, including his own shadow. A big bluffing coward, another breed of the bullying species.

He drove slowly back to Hodre, a kind of unwillingness to go home because Janie would be waiting for him, demanding a word-for-word report of his meeting at the school. OK, he'd tell her. But it wouldn't satisfy her. It didn't really satisfy him, because Malcolm Hughes was just stalling, hoping that the Wilson boys wouldn't beat Gavin up and that everything would be all right.

Peter was surprised to see that Janie's Mini was not parked on the verge adjoining the cottage. In a way he was relieved, because it would give him a respite from her continual nagging barrage that there was something odd going on. After a while he almost believed that there was, but he must not believe it, or they would never stick it out for a year. It was just the sudden contrast between town and country life, that was all. Janie would get used to this place in due course and in the meantime he just had to show a little forbearance.

He had intended to go straight back to work on that difficult chapter conclusion. Now, suddenly, he wasn't in the mood. He needed to wind down, to relax for an hour or so and get Malcolm Hughes and the Wilsons out of his system.

A walk, maybe. He remembered the missing cat. Not that he was bothered much about it himself; it was only a stray that had appeared from somewhere and taken up residence at Hodre, and he had never liked cats. But Snowy would reduce the mice and rat population and save an awful lot of trouble where Janie was concerned. Also, it kept Gavin happy. So the sooner it was found the better, and the search offered the chance of a walk and some much-needed fresh air. He could still smell that schoolmaster's rank pipe.

The cat could be three or four miles away, satisfying its sexual needs on some willing mate; on the other hand, it could have found an infestation of rats somewhere nearby in one of the hedgerows.

Peter went into the porch and donned his Wellington boots and duffle coat. Then he stood for a moment wondering where to begin. Somehow he didn't fancy going up to the forest again. The place had an inhospitable look about it, especially today when there was an abundance of low cloud.

He had woken with a slight headache, the kind which gets progressively worse as the day goes on, probably because of the disturbance last night, coupled with his anger over that stupid conversation in the Cat. And the meeting with Hughes had made him tense. Perhaps he was suffering from eye-strain too.

He groaned to himself. If this mood didn't evaporate soon he'd never be able to get down to any more work today. There was something nagging at his subconscious, a depression of sorts; and all this totally unnecessary bullshit which was upsetting Janie and Gavin.

And something else! Oh Jesus Christ, he was getting edgy, peering ahead of himself into the low cloud, which seemed to be thickening, as though he expected some kind of apparition to appear suddenly. Take a grip on yourself, Peter Pogg, or eke you'll be getting as nervy as everybody else. All the same it was a bit creepy out here, a silent lifeless grey world. Not even a crow or a magpie about; the sheep which had strayed down from the forest were nowhere in sight. Perhaps they had returned whence they had come (probably back to Ruskin's huge flock), or else they were huddling in some corner hidden by the fog. Frightened, like himself!

Damn it, I'm not scared.

Yes, you are. You just won't admit it.

Where the hell had that bloody cat gone? What chance was there of finding it out here in thickening low cloud? None, but he was going to search for it just the same, a show of bravado that wouldn't fool even himself.

Well, he wasn't going up to the forest again. There wasn't any point, because if it was up there he'd never find it. Walk the boundaries, follow the tall straggling hawthorn hedge that marked the perimeter of Hodre, and in due course he would complete the circle and arrive back at the cottage. He'd have a good look at that stone circle on the way.

Peter shivered; it was the raw damp atmosphere, of course. He struck off to the left, found the hedgerow and began to follow it. A sudden thought crossed his mind: Janie hadn't said she was going anywhere today, but then why the hell should she? They'd had quite a tiff in the night over that screaming vixen and when Janie went into one of her sulks it might be days before she got back to normal domestic conversation. Sod her, he couldn't pander to her every little tantrum. Let her work it off in her own good time.

Gigantic shapes loomed out of the opaque greyness ahead of him, mighty pine trees that would have attained fifty or sixty feet in height if the winds hadn't bent them, fashioning them over the years into weird misshapen caricatures.

Something glided from the topmost branches of the nearest tree, flapped its massive black wings just once to maintain its elevation and gave a deep cronk, before the thick grey vapour swallowed it up. A raven; while there are ravens in the Tower of London England will never fall to a foreign foe. Peter smiled to himself and tried to remember where he'd read or heard that saying. Stupid really, because they were nothing more than oversize crows. Maybe they had some kind of magical powers. He shivered again and began fastening the toggles on his coat. Coming up here didn't seem such a good idea after all; the atmosphere was damp and far from healthy, and if anything his headache had worsened. It would have been preferable to have remained in the small front room, got a fire going until the place was unhealthily snug and tried to wrestle with the conclusion to chapter one. Chapter endings were an art in themselves; they had to make the reader want to turn to the next page. If the author got it wrong, then the book was likely to be put down and not picked up again—and that was how more than a few best-selling writers had drifted into oblivion.