So this was the stone circle! Somehow he had climbed above it; possibly the bank of cloud caught up on the mountains had screened it from him until now. It was only three hundred yards from the cottage, yet the steepness of the incline made it seem like a mile.

It was situated in a kind of no-man's-land. The hedgerows seemed to peter out here as though the rocky earth was too poor to support the growth of hawthorn. Or perhaps it was left unscreened for the convenience of tourists. Peter could not imagine anybody wanting to climb all the way up here just to look at that. There was nothing to see except a few pines that had obviously been planted long after the druids (if any had ever used this place) had passed on. Some stones; he counted them—nine. Maybe there had been more and local farmers had dragged them away for their own use over the centuries. Just a bare, roughly circular, patch of land; the entwining branches of the trees, which had been planted too close to each other, shut out the sunlight. A gloomy place; even Peter Fogg as a writer could not find words to describe it more fully. An historical nonentity. Eerie!

A deep-throated croak and a swish of wings had him cowering, throwing up his hands to protect himself. In a momentary pang of fear he became primitive man in a world that was still young, with some hideous prehistoric winged monster about to swoop down on him. That bloody raven again! The damned thing was persistent, cheeky, in no way afraid of man. Now why the hell had it come back here to this circle of desolation when surely there was food to be scavenged in the fields? Even now, it was circling beyond his range of vision in the fog, calling angrily as though it saw him as a trespasser and was ordering him to leave.

And as he turned in a half-circle to follow the irate cronking of the invisible bird, Peter suddenly saw why the big black bird was eager to return to this stone circle. Oh, Jesus Christ Almighty!

It was Snowy. Well, it was a white cat, anyway, although it was doubtful whether it was still individually recognisable. Peter stepped back a pace, his instincts screaming at him to run and keep on running; only it seemed that all the strength had drained from his legs. He felt the bile rise in his throat and thought he was going to vomit. But he neither fled nor spewed, just stood and stared in disbelief with bulging eyes. It couldn't be; he must be imagining it, in the same way that Janie had been letting her fears run riot lately. Nobody would possibly commit that kind of atrocity on a harmless cat.

But somebody had, and as if he needed further proof the bloodied feline corpse dangling from the branch above his head swung round in the windless atmosphere, dripping thick scarlet fluid from the gash which had opened up its stomach. It seemed to look down on him with dead eyes; its open jaws, frozen with rigor mortis looked as if they were trying to move and say, 'They did this to me!'

Its belly had been slit right up into its throat in a gory T-shaped wound and the rope round its neck tied so tightly that the head had bulged out of proportion to the rest of its mangled body. Pitiful. Hideous.

Peter backed away, glancing around him. The fog had moved in and thickened still further, and for one awful second he experienced a sense of disorientation, a feeling that he had suddenly been transported to another world, a hostile land of terrible atrocities where the perpetrators lurked in the mist. He realised he was shaking uncontrollably. Don't be a bloody jool, pull yourself together.

He forced himself to think logically. The Wilsons, of course; this was their revenge for Saturday morning's encounter, a cowardly way of getting back at him through a dumb animal. Peter had never liked cats but suddenly he wanted to burst into a torrent of tears on behalf of this one. Oh God, it was awful. Undoubtedly it was the cat's death scream Janie had heard in the night, a shriek of feline agony as the knife gutted it whilst it still lived.

Well, at least there was an explanation for what had happened during the moonlit hours, revolting as it was. Otherwise Janie might have gone off at a tangent about spirits of ancient druids carrying out blood sacrifice, or something like that. He'd have to tell her; maybe he could bury the cat before Gavin came home and between them they could concoct some feasible white he. Or just leave it that Snowy was missing, and possibly buy Gavin a kitten or some other pet. That was the best way—but, damn it, those louts weren't going to get away with this.

Peter was still shaking when he arrived back at the cottage, but now it was with a burning fury. He thought about phoning the RSPCA. No, the police were best. He'd get hold of the local copper and put him in the picture. This victimisation of English residents had to be stopped; these vandals had to be taught to respect the law, to obey the rules of society.

And if the law wouldn't co-operate, then he'd sort the Wilsons out himself! Peter paused in the doorway and found himself glancing back in the direction of the stone circle. The hill fog had come right down and obscured everything. He shivered.

It was just as Janie said: you got the feeling that something was up there in the hills watching you. But that was nonsense, all in the mind. He almost convinced himself with an effort, but not quite.

He went inside, consulted the'dog-eared telephone directory and dialled the number of the village police station.

6

Gavin had been dreading morning playtime throughout the preceding lesson. Mr Hughes didn't make him feel any easier; it was almost as though he had singled him out with his bad tempered baleful glare time after time. Mark and Jon Wilson were sitting at the back of the classroom. Gavin heard them sniggering together, bringing a feeling like an acute bout of colic to the pit of his stomach. It was ail Dad's fault; he ought not to have gone and complained to the headmaster. In a way it was as if Mr Hughes and the Wilson brothers had joined forces to make life uncomfortable for the helpless outsider.

'Right, that'll do for now,' Hughes grunted. He fixed his gaze on Gavin again and picked up his pipe from the desk. 'Playtime, lads. Out you all go. I don't want anybody hanging behind in the classroom.'

A sudden rush for the door, boys and girls eager to shake off the boredom of forty minutes of mathematics, chattering amongst themselves. The Wilsons were first out, not even glancing back, an urgency about their movements.

'You, too, boy.' The headmaster regarded Gavin steadily. 'You heard what I said. Fresh air is what you need to get rid of that pallid complexion of yours.' An insult that was meant to hurt: You don't fit in here but you'll damned well do what everybody else does, like it or not.

Gavin nodded, his lower lip trembling. But he wasn't going to give the schoolmaster the satisfaction of seeing him cry.

It was damp and foggy outside in the playground. Gavin stood on the edge of the concrete compound. He saw a group of children playing football with a sagging, partially deflated old ball, trying to kick it between the stanchions of a rusty climbing frame. Some younger ones were playing tag, squealing and shouting.

He had a feeling of not being wanted, of a general unwillingness to allow him to join in, to mix with them. It had never been like this at Perrycroft; everybody played with everybody else. Sometimes you quarrelled but it was never over anything very important and was usually forgotten when the bell went for lessons.

'Well, if it isn't the English creep!'

He stiffened as he recognised one of the Wilsons' voices behind him. He didn't know which one—they both sounded the same. He wondered whether to run back into the classroom but decided against it. Mr Hughes was still in there marking homework. He'd be angry and send him straight back outside. It was no good running when there was nowhere to run to.