A hefty man with a pork-belly paunch, Benny was not the sort Adam would normally consider a friend, for Benny looked as he was, forthright, in the tradition of rural Scotland: a farmer’s boy of sixty. He had thick wiry grey hair framing a large strong-boned face, with bottom-heavy lips, eyes small brown dots beneath thick angled eyebrows. He dressed casually in a plain white shirt and brown trousers buttoned below the belly, and ever since he’d taken to wearing a pair of fawn cowboy boots he had the look of the wannabe but well-past-it rocker. He was a Muir, an entertainer and an entertaining man at that, and Adam found his friendship restorative.
Benny sucked on his pipe, indifferent to the gurgling of the tar-slurried stem. When he’d had enough he plopped the pipe, still alight, in his
