The Tartan Ringers by Jonathan Gash Page B

stealthy manner in the least inconspicuous of vehicles, with BISSOLOTTI THE FAIRGROUND FOR THE WORLD gaudy on its side. I started admiring myself. After all, it takes skill to nick a thing this big.
    Ten miles outside Perth my brain had another mega-rhythm. Mentally shelving a niggling reminder that my previous brainwave had nearly got me killed in a night riot, I knew I’d now got a winner. Find a reasonably sized transport caff, park my giant wagon, and get a lift into Perth where trains and buses lived, and zoom to find the enigmatic Shona McGunn. No road map in my nicked wagon, of course. Typical.
    By dawn I was noshing among the hunched leather shoulders of the night hauliers in a caff near Perth, rather sad at thoughts of leaving my monster.
    A walk of three miles along the road when the lorry convoy had departed, and I became a poor motorist whose car had broken down. A kindly motorist gave me a lift to the Perth turn-off, and I got a bus into that lovely city just as the shops opened.
    Pausing only to sell a Hudson’s Bay Co folding rusty penknife pistol that I’d kept back from Francie – flat horn sides, percussion, two blades – for a giveaway price which still rankles (these 1860–70 collectibles go for twice the average weekly wage nowadays), I phoned the police, anonymously reporting that a Sidoli wagon was ditched in the night caff. Then I got on the train and dozed. I’d got a cold pasty and some rotten crumbly cake I couldn’t control. They fetch tea down the corridor just as you’re on your last legs, so I eventually made it, though weakening fast.
    Painful thoughts of Three-Wheel came to me while I nodded on the journey. And Joan’s grey eyes and long-term philosophy – maybe she was the one bird whose perception had made it? And Jo. And Tinker would be bewildered, with a score of deals waving uncompleted in the breeze. And poor dead Tipper Noone under the coroner’s hammer. And yon driver, poor bloke. Naturally, a twinge of fear came with the haze. I’d started the journey north towards Caithness with a whole fairground full of tough allies, and ended it with two fairs bulging with enemies: Sidoli’s for leaving them in the lurch, and Bissolotti’s for, er, borrowing their vehicle.
    Not much of a social record, you might say. But I felt that all in all I was entitled to pride. So far I’d reached Sutherland. I was in one piece, and being alive is always a plus. I had money in my pocket, and was heading for a mine of antiques, those precious wonderments whose very existence is proof of something more than the brute man. And good old Shona knew where they were.
    The last part of the journey was by bus. Our little local trains have been abolished in the interest of greater efficiency, so now nobody can get anywhere except by public yak. Dubneath’s version of the yak was a bus carrying smiley basket-toting women and distant-eyed men. Before we bowled into minuscule Dubneath I’d revealed all, grilled by the clever interrogation of a pally little rotund lady. I confided that I was a visiting writer. Not going anywhere in particular, just travelling. And I might look up some possible ancestors . . . Oh, my own name, yes. That’s what I wrote my poetry under. What name would that be? ‘Oh, sorry, love,’ I said absently. ‘McGunn’s the name. Ian McGunn.’ Cunning, no?
    It was the last bus that day. I was put down in Dubneath. The sea was there in the late evening. It earned a word of praise from me, which pleased my companion, though the little town was poorly lit and somnolent. Bonny place in full day, I supposed. My plump pal was going on to Lybster further up the coast, but she said there was an inn in Dubneath. ‘Where,’ she added darkly, ‘folk drink.’ We both agreed, tut-tut, sin gets everywhere these days. She’d told me that McGunn was not an uncommon name hereabouts. I said fancy that, and waved the bus off into the night.
    The tavern, replete with drinkers, instantly