‘Great,’ she breezed. ‘Well, we’re going back now and Tony can set them up. What would you like?’
Johnson thought about it for a moment before shaking his head wistfully.
‘Ah well, you can’t always get what you want. But I’d happily settle for a Glen Garioch. It’s a nice wee cheap half.’
‘Ach, sometimes you can get what you want,’ Rachel mock-scolded him. ‘What’s your favourite? I know it’s not the Glen Garioch.’
‘Well…’ Johnson deliberated. ‘They do have a 1975 St Magdalene that really hits the spot. It’s a whisky for high days and holidays though. I really couldn’t…’
No, of course you couldn’t, Tony thought. Sly old bugger. He’d seen the St Magdalene on the malt vault list and knew it came in at £12 a measure.
‘Okay, what’s going on?’ he asked Rachel as they walked back towards the hotel, the whisky choice having been settled.
‘Going on? What are you talking about?’
‘Why are we talking old Tom Weir in for a drink?’
‘His name’s Dick and he’s a nice old man. Stop being such a grouch and show some respect.’
‘Rach…’
‘Oh, come on,’ she cut off any further argument. ‘Do you fancy one of those St Magdalenes yourself?’
‘Well… I suppose I could be persuaded.’
‘You usually can,’ she smiled. ‘What are you looking so miserable about anyway?’
Winter didn’t have a face that naturally inclined towards a smile. A grimace was his default setting. It wasn’t so much that he was never happy; it was more that his brain had never got around to letting his face know.
They had only been settled back in the bar a matter of minutes when the sound of shoes scraping on the doormat signalled Dick Johnson’s arrival. He pulled off his hat and nodded to the barman, a tall, angular and balding man in his late fifties, who didn’t seem at all surprised to see him, before pulling up a chair beside Rachel and Tony. The malt was already on the table and Dick surveyed it for an age before he even picked it up. He then embarked on a seemingly well-practised routine of holding the glass to the light and drawing in a deep breath of the cratur, smiling at the smell of it.
It reminded Winter of his favourite Gaelic word, sgriob, the tingle of anticipation on the lips before tasting whisky. Winter had his own form of sgriob but it was for something different entirely. His mind drifted briefly back to the streets of the city he’d left behind that morning and the dark possibilities it offered for fulfilling his particular itch: stabbings, beatings, high flat jumpers, drug overdoses, murders, all waiting to be photographed. Hell mend him but he missed it.
Rachel’s words snapped him out of his obsessive wonderings and brought him racing back into the hotel bar.
‘Tony, could you go and get my jumper from the room? The green one. I’m still chilly from being outside.’
Winter sighed, wondering how she could still be cold given the heat from the fire but glad enough not to have to sit out the agonising wait to see if Johnson was ever going to get round to drinking his expensive whisky.
‘Sure.’
‘Ta. It’s in my white bag.’
Tony left Rachel with the gardener, a raise of his eyebrows receiving an ironically sweet smile from her in return. However, the jumper wasn’t in the white bag, nor was it in the black one. It still wasn’t in the white one when he looked a second time and it was a good five minutes before he found it put away in a drawer. Rachel had a mind like a vice and it was very unlike her to have forgotten where she had put something such a short time before. He was more inclined to believe she hadn’t forgotten at all. Back in the corridor that ran the length of the restaurant and passed the bar, he could see Rachel and the old boy were still deep in conversation. As he got nearer, he saw Johnson get to his feet.
‘My dad worked here at that time,’ he heard Rachel saying. ‘He told me about her. Long time ago now though. Won’t you stay a bit longer?’
‘No, sorry, it’s time I was going,’ Johnson sounded irritated. ‘Ella doesn’t mind me taking the long way home but she gets annoyed if I go round the lake twice, if you know what I mean.’
The old man put his hat back onto his head and began pulling his coat around him.
‘Thanks for the drink. I don’t mean to be rude but… but I really do need to go.’
Johnson waved a curt goodbye to the balding barman, who seemed to be listening in on their conversation, and opened the door to leave, pausing reluctantly on the mat.
‘What was your dad’s name? I might remember him.’
Rachel hesitated.
‘Narey. Alan Narey.’
Johnson looked hard at her before exchanging a curious glance with the man behind the bar. ‘No. I guess my memory’s not what it was. Thanks again.’
Winter waited until the door had closed behind Johnson, a blast of cold air sweeping across the table, before he began his own interrogation.
‘Right, answers. First, your dad used to work here?’
‘No, just around here. For a while.’
‘What did…’
‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said interrupting him. ‘We’ve got an hour before dinner, why don’t we head back to the room until then?’
‘What did you mean by…’
‘Tony, maybe you didn’t understand me. I meant back to the room.’
The penny dropped.
‘Ah. Back to the room. Why didn’t you say so?’
Tony led the way back to Osprey and its large, comfortable bed, not seeing the pensive look on Rachel’s face as she glanced back at the door through which the old man had departed.
CHAPTER 5
‘Have you seen it?’
‘Of course I’ve seen it.’
‘That’s all you have to say about it?’
‘What do you expect me to say? You think I’m going to fall to pieces, don’t you? Think I’m not going to be able to handle it.’
‘Are you?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t bloody know. Who is doing this?’
‘Who do you think it is?’
‘Christ, I don’t know. How the hell am I expected to know? It could be anyone. But why now? Who would do something like that now?’
‘Are you going to be okay?’
‘No. Probably not. I’ve not been doing too well as it is. And now this.’
‘You have to stay calm.’
‘That’s easy for you to say. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. My nerves… they’re not good. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Do nothing.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You must.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do that.’
CHAPTER 6
Sunday morning broke cold but bright, the sun streaming through the windows as soon as Rachel pulled back the curtains. She stood and stared across the calm, glassy surface of Scotland’s only lake — though even if it was a lake by name, it was as much a loch as any other — at the island that now stood clear and green in the middle distance. The mist that had formerly framed it had disappeared but the place was no less foreboding, to her at least. It seemed bigger than before, almost as if it were nearer. The island had certainly come to her in the darkness of her dreams and now it looked as if it had sneaked closer while the curtains were drawn.
‘You’ll see it better with these’ came Tony’s voice from behind her. She turned to see him standing a couple of feet away with a pair of binoculars in his hand.