The little man grinned, with greasy gray lips. “I’m sure you are. I was just asking. You can’t give a man a hard time for asking. Anyway. He’s a monster,” he said, gesturing across the room with a mostly chewed lamb chop. The bald man was eating some kind of white pudding with a spoon. “So’s his mother.”
“They don’t look like monsters to me,” said Shadow.
“I’m teasing you, I’m afraid. Local sense of humor. They should warn you about mine when you enter the village. Warning, loony old doctor at work. Talking about monsters. Forgive an old man. You mustn’t listen to a word I say.” A flash of tobacco-stained teeth. He wiped his hands and mouth on his napkin. “Maura, we’ll be needing the bill over here. The young man’s dinner is on me.”
“Yes, Doctor Gaskell.”
“Remember,” said the doctor to Shadow. “Eight-fifteen tomorrow morning, be in the lobby. No later. They’re busy people. If you aren’t there, they’ll just move on, and you’ll have missed out on fifteen hundred pounds, for a weekend’s work. A bonus, if they’re happy.”
Shadow decided to have his after-dinner coffee in the bar. There was a log fire there, after all. He hoped it would take the chill from his bones.
Gordon from reception was working behind the bar. “Jennie’s night off?” asked Shadow.
“What? No, she was just helping out. She’ll do it if we’re busy, sometimes.”
“Mind if I put another log on the fire?”
“Help yourself.”
If this is how the Scots treat their summers, thought Shadow, remembering something Oscar Wilde had once said, they don’t deserve to have any.
The bald young man came in. He nodded a nervous greeting to Shadow. Shadow nodded back. The man had no hair that Shadow could see: no eyebrows, no eyelashes. It made him look babyish, and unformed. Shadow wondered if it was a disease, or if it was perhaps a side effect of chemotherapy. He smelled of damp.
“I heard what he said,” stammered the bald man. “He said I was a monster. He said my ma was a monster too. I’ve got good ears on me. I don’t miss much.”
He did have good ears on him. They were a translucent pink, and they stuck out from the side of his head like the fins of some huge fish.
“You’ve got great ears,” said Shadow.
“You taking the mickey?” The bald man’s tone was aggrieved. He looked like he was ready to fight. He was only a little shorter than Shadow, and Shadow was a big man.
“If that means what I think it does, not at all.”
The bald man nodded. “That’s good,” he said. He swallowed, and hesitated. Shadow wondered if he should say something conciliatory, but the bald man continued, “It’s not my fault. Making all that noise. I mean, people come up here to get away from the noise. And the people. Too many damned people up here anyway. Why don’t you just go back to where you came from and stop making all that bluidy noise?”
The man’s mother appeared in the doorway. She smiled nervously at Shadow, then walked hurriedly over to her son. She pulled at his sleeve. “Now then,” she said. “Don’t you get yourself all worked up over nothing. Everything’s all right.” She looked up at Shadow, birdlike, placatory. “I’m sorry. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.” She had a length of toilet paper sticking to the bottom of her shoe, and she hadn’t noticed yet.
“Everything’s all right,” said Shadow. “It’s good to meet people.”
She nodded. “That’s all right then,” she said. Her son looked relieved. He’s scared of her, thought Shadow.
“Come on pet,” said the woman to her son. She pulled at his sleeve, and he followed her to the door.
Then he stopped, obstinately, and turned. “You tell them,” said the bald young man, “not to make so much noise.”
“I’ll tell them,” said Shadow.
“It’s just that I can hear everything.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Shadow.
“He really is a good boy,” said the bald young man’s mother, and she led her son by the sleeve, into the corridor and away, trailing a tag of toilet paper.
Shadow walked out into the hall. “Excuse me,” he said.
They turned, the man and his mother.
“You’ve got something on your shoe,” said Shadow.
She looked down. Then she stepped on the strip of paper with her other shoe, and lifted her foot, freeing it. She nodded at Shadow, approvingly, and walked away.