Chapter One - Highland Clearance.

The Nephew was lain silent up atop the paper sacks of pony nuts near the roof of the agric supply warehouse, dreaming about ghost bags, when his mobile diddled "Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves".

The rat he'd been waiting on scattered along the main rafter, as the Nephew'd seen rats running the tops of fish-trap walls across loch shallows at low tide, craftily avoiding a two-mile detour. This lengthy rat came against the Nephew's shaving mirror and free-falled, plopped into the aluminium drum of water laced 20 foot under, on the hay-fecked, ochre-washed concrete. The rat's snout and paws barely scratched, circling in the watery bin.

The Nephew nubbed off the anthem.

"Check your sheds and outhouses," the Foreman's voice whispered. "That's your Uncle cracked up again. Your mother just tinkled tells me he's lighted out for Ballachulish, cross-country as per usual and at a fair old rate of knots; but no before he's murdered your four bloody budgerigars. Again!"

"Never!" the Nephew breathed. "Not Ian, John, Reni and Mani?"

"Aye, all four birds slaughtered, just like the last four: Mr Green, Mr Yellow, Mr Blue and Mr Blue, least it was quick this time; just scalded each to death with a cigarette lighter, then took both your mother 's sets of false teeth for his own mouth, marched down the Mantra and stole their World Cup kitty. For a man with a glass eye, your Uncle 's pretty long-sighted when it comes to pub kitties. Last count there was near 17 grand in it. They've agreed not to call in the feds. Keep it a family thing and see if you can find him first. I'll give you the days off. You'll no get many lifts if this petrol blockade steps up. Get going and Old Two Bags. Don 't dare lose my mobile there."

"Right you are," the Nephew says.

Ears still droning from the baseball batting he gave the sides of that water bin, till guts hung out the rat's mouth, the Nephew came down the caravan park. Inside their caravan, burned bird feathers smelled like singed human hair. The Old Dear had ventured out just far enough to float his wee dead birdies into the bulrushes and down the Black Lynn, which flows beneath our town, to where it emerges at the tunnel mouth by the sea, no doubt with a haughty stare from the swans clustered there. The Nephew thought, If I horsed it to the Farmer 's Den, descend the cellar's steps, could probably just catch their cheery-coloured, scalded feathers drift past smuggler's slipway in the green tunnel, away downstream and salute them bye, bye forever. A tear came to his eye and he shivered with violence.

His Uncle, The Man Who Walks, had never took too kindly to birds since he found her lemon canary still happily singing over the corpse of his dead Mum on the lino, her skin scorched by three days of concentric urine circles round her. His Uncle shut that canary up in the attic, close to the lightning during a thunderstorm, and it never sang again.

The Man Who Walks is available now and published by Jonathon Price at £10.99.

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