A patently false smile stretched across Rachel’s face as Winter watched her drum her fingers against the steering wheel. She was not only containing her anger but making a show of doing so — a tactic both designed and guaranteed to annoy him.
‘Well, we are this weekend,’ she finally and tersely replied, her brown eyes pointedly fixed on the road ahead. ‘You’re always moaning we never go out together, and now that we are, you can’t just be happy.’
‘Rachel, you haven’t even told me where we’re going.’
She blew a thin burst of exaggerated exasperation between pursed lips and shook her head. It had become a familiar pose of late and Winter wasn’t sure whether that said more about him or about her — or about them. All he was sure of was that it was becoming a pain in the ass. Where were they going? Maybe that was too big a question to answer.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Shut up,’ she told him. ‘There’s a bar and a big bed. What more do you want?’
It was unarguably a winning combination and he laughed despite himself. Time for the voice of compromise and geniality.
‘Fair enough, you win. Right, driver, let the mystery tour continue. How long until we get to wherever it is?’
Rachel smiled.
‘Not long. Another forty-five minutes or so.’
It had been a little over ten minutes since they’d left Rachel’s flat on Highburgh Road in Glasgow’s west end and they were now heading out of town on Great Western Road. Narey’s black Renault Megane held three bags in the boot, two of hers and one for Tony, plus his camera bag. Pack casual things for during the day but something smart for dinner was all the information she’d offered him. With a bemused shake of his head, he’d thrown jeans, trousers and shirts into the bag and given in.
Winter actually wasn’t sure when they had become a couple, even if not in a conventional sense. Their relationship was a secret from just about everyone around them, much to his irritation. She was a detective sergeant in Strathclyde Police and he was a police photographer, a civilian. Fraternising with the lower species of the crime scene community wasn’t exactly encouraged and, as far as Rachel was concerned, it was easier all round if no one else knew. He’d appreciated that — at first.
Something had changed somewhere along the way, from the secret first-night kiss to his semi-residential status in her Highburgh Road pad. It was one of those slow-moving rivers of a relationship and he couldn’t pinpoint the place in the bend where his Facebook status changed from ‘Single’ to ‘It’s Complicated’. Hers remained resolutely ‘Fuck off; it’s none of your business.’
He glanced over at her, seeing her shoulder-length brown hair shine in the glow of the midwinter sun as she drove, and reflected, not for the first time, that whatever their status was, he had done all right for himself. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, although she certainly was. She had ‘been there for him’ too. Maybe he didn’t really know what that meant, given that it was the sort of emotional claptrap that constantly eluded him, but he knew she had. When his demons came to visit, Rachel was always the one who chased them away.
She sensed him looking and turned to stare questioningly at him.
‘What is it?’ she demanded.
‘Nothing. Just thinking. So, an hour or so from Glasgow, heading west. Can we get to Teuchterland in that time?’
‘Of course,’ she answered playfully, ‘given that anywhere north of Glasgow is for teuchters.’
‘But not your proper Highlands, which would take much longer. Hm. Maybe Inverary or Crianlarich. You could just about do either of those in that time.’
She laughed.
‘Keep guessing. And while you’re at it, turn the heating up a bit, will you? It’s freezing in here.’
She was wrapped up in a white woollen coat, buttoned almost to the neck, while he sat comfortably in an open-necked shirt. He’d long stopped trying to argue about their differing resistances to cold temperatures and determined he would sneak the dial back down when she wasn’t looking.
A moment later, Rachel glanced in the rear-view mirror before signalling right at Anniesland Cross and taking the Bearsden road, almost immediately having to bat away further guesses from Tony about their destination. Arrochar? No. Stirling? No? Callander? No.
They slipped through Bearsden and onto the Drymen road, Tony continuing to be amazed at how you could be deep in the countryside just a few minutes after getting out of the city centre. In no time at all, it was all rolling hills, sheep, cattle and a twisting road to somewhere. Finally, Rachel pulled off the A81 and into the car park of the Lake of Menteith Hotel and he still hadn’t worked out where they were going even though they’d arrived.
‘This is it?’ he asked her.
‘Uh huh.’
‘But we’re nowhere. The middle of nowhere, in fact.’
‘Shut up and get out. We are in what is known as “the country”. You’ll get to like it.’
Tony got out of the car in exaggerated wonder, sniffing the air and looking around, seeing only big sky, trees and the church that loomed above them. They’d come no distance at all yet they were a world away from the hustle and bustle of the city. He wasn’t entirely sure that he liked it.
‘Hear that?’ he asked her.
‘What?’ Rachel looked around, puzzled. ‘I don’t hear anything.’
‘Exactly. It’s as quiet as the bloody grave.’
‘Great, isn’t it?’ she grinned. ‘Come on; stop moaning. I hear the sound of a pint being poured with your name on it.’
‘Ah, you always say the right thing. Okay, let’s go.’
The whitewashed walls of the hotel lay before them and Winter picked up his bag and one of Rachel’s, leaving his camera bag in the car’s boot. He’d return for it almost immediately; he never liked it out of his sight for too long. To his right, in the gap between the church and the hotel, he could see a dark, foreboding glimpse of the lake. It looked bloody freezing.
‘Tell me we aren’t going swimming?’
She grinned again.
‘You wouldn’t be tempted by a bit of skinny dipping?’
Winter shook his head.
‘Nope. Not even with you. It’s bound to be almost freezing over out there.’
‘Funny you should say that,’ she murmured. They skated along the icy paving stones, laughing, to the front door, where a solid white porch supported on black pillars reached out to meet them. Winter dropped one of the bags and opened the door for Rachel, ushering her in with an exaggerated sweep of his arm.
They tumbled into the hotel, immediately hit by a wave of heat that contrasted with the bitter cold outside. An open fire crackled to their left, with tables near the raised hearth that struck Winter as being the perfect place to sit and sample the range of malts he had already spied in the well-stocked bar to their right.
‘I could get used to this sudden impulse for weekends away,’ he told her.
All Rachel offered in return was a shake of her head as she led them to reception to sign in.
‘Hi, we’ve got a lake-view room booked in the name of Narey for two nights,’ she told the bespectacled blonde woman behind the desk.
‘Ah yes, that’s right. We spoke on the phone. How was your journey?’
‘Fine,’ Rachel told the woman. ‘We’ve only come from Glasgow so it took no time at all.’
‘Good, good,’ the receptionist replied brightly. ‘Now, let me get your key. You’re in Osprey.’
‘All the rooms are named after the area and the wildlife,’ Rachel whispered to Tony, seeing the look of confusion on his face.
‘How come you know so much about this place?’
‘I’m a detective,’ she answered. ‘It’s my job to know things.’