The Sinful Stones Read Online Free PDF Page A

as any of the other explanations) why Mr Martin the rent collector—the one with the year-round snivel—ought to be watched in case he tried to become friendly with small Jamie. Father’s even, earnest sentences hung disembodied in the dusk of the hallway, answered by Mother’s interjections, shocked and admiring and commonplace. Small Jamie had fallen asleep against the newel-post and never knew how he was carried up to bed; Mother must have done it, for Father’s lungs wouldn’t have stood the effort. But he’d woken next morning knowing that Mr Martin with the bull’s-eyes was somehow ogrish, though theirs was the only house in the street he didn’t call at; small Jamie had worried for a week how to warn Sara Fasting (a whole year older, a whole year more worldly wise) without betraying his own secret knowledge—worried too long and decided too late.
    Shrivelled with that childhood guilt Pibble walked on. The path, still smooth and rolled, sloped down and twisted to ease the sharp descent to the harbour. There was spume in the wind now that he was so close to where the big rollers picked irritably at the small granite protrusion of Clumsey Island, the ocean fingering this pimple of land. He’d only seen the island from above, peering through the windows of the helicopter at the tilting seascape as the machine swung and settled. Even to his unseamanlike eye, even through that grimy and half-opaque triplex, the harbour had seemed awkwardly placed, aimed due west into the gap below the Outer Hebrides where the main ocean came lolloping through.
    The road yanked back on itself, running directly under the cliffs; despite the scouring wind, Pibble could smell the unalterable smells of any harbour, however large or small, tar and diesel-­oil and dead fish. He was walking along level and spray-slimy paving when two green lights blinked on in the dark before him, moved, and were eyes—eyes at the wrong level, too high for a cat and too low (please God) for a ghoul. He stood still and held the lantern forward.
    The eyes were moving, becoming larger, nearer, a pony? But there was no clack of hooves—Crippen, it was a dog.
    Stand still and don’t be afraid, Father used to say. They can smell fear. So Pibble stood and sweated with terror as the creature stalked, hackles slightly raised, into his globule of lantern-light. He could see a faint brindling on its coat: it was a Great Dane. It stalked forward until its nose poked into his habit just below the nipples. There it stopped and snuffled.
    The hackles dropped. Whatever it had smelt was not fear, evidently. It lowered its big skull and licked Pibble’s free hand. He scratched it behind the ears, then walked a few yards along the quay until he came to a bollard, on which he sat. The dog plonked its head into his lap, nuzzling his arm for more attention. Pibble settled the lantern on the stones behind the bollard and tried to see into the dark. The total blackness behind him was cliffs, and the squatter blackness to his right was a large shed. Straight in front the gleam of starlight flicked off the crinkled water; where the movement ceased must be where the quay jutted out to give the harbour some protection from the booming ocean. But the quay seemed to bulge and give off a steadier glimmer in two places. Separating dark from dark to the west he discerned a probable horizon; following its line with his eye he saw that it was interrupted just where the lights gleamed by a small building, a building with masts, a boat.
    He got up and walked along the quay, the dog pacing beside him, until his lantern showed him a white stern on which gleamed the gold word Truth . Bracketing this word two hulking outboard motors hung, swung up horizontally above the glimmering lop of the tamed ocean. A short gangway led to the deck and Pibble already had one foot on it when a wet and bony grip closed round his wrist and hauled him back.
    It