‘Sweet,’ he repeated softly, his hands rammed into the pouch pockets of his sweatshirt.
‘Awrite?’ the stranger asked, nodding his head at them by way of greeting.
‘Awrite,’ Pedro replied, taking a half-step back into the shadow of the corner and letting the stranger follow.
‘You’re the guys, aye?’
Pedro and Marky exchanged quick self-satisfied glances. Aye, they were the men. Marky could almost smell the leather of his new Lacostes, and Pedro was happy they’d soon be done for the night, cash in pocket.
Neither of them saw anything more than a flash of silver in the moonlight, a fleeting, gleaming glimpse that passed from the guy in the long leather coat to the pair of them. The man paid Pedro off first and then did the same to Marky before either could move. It was the first time that night that Pedro had felt any warmth and for a few dizzying seconds he liked the hot feeling that flared and tickled inside him. Marky was different: he’d felt the blade once before, remembered its sting and hated it instantly.
The guy had turned and begun to walk away before it dawned on Pedro and Marky that he had left without buying anything. By the time they realised he’d taken the money and the gear from their pockets, it was far too late for them to do anything about it.
Pedro clutched the hole in his stomach, the blood seeping between his fingers, and Marky giggled nervously, wondering how he was going to explain to Caprice that he probably wasn’t going to be able to see her that night.
Neither of them were badly hurt; flesh wounds that stung and ran red but that had missed all the vital bits inside. If the stranger with the flashing blade had wanted it, they’d both be fighting for their lives. Instead, they had been given a painful warning and they knew they were out of the dealing business for good. At least it would be warm in the hospital.
CHAPTER 4
Twenty minutes after unpacking and Rachel successfully swatting away Tony’s attempts to christen the bed there and then, they were sitting in the Lake of Menteith Hotel’s Port Bar. Winter was happily sipping a large Balvenie DoubleWood and throwing occasional glares in the direction of the young couple who had possession of the seats nearest to the fire. His attempt at mind control failed to budge them.
Rachel had a glass of Petit Chablis and was looking round at the goose-grey panelled walls and wooden floors, the framed photographs and sketches of yesteryear and the curling stone that was warming on the hearth. Her eyes kept wandering through the large windows to the lake and the island beyond.
They’d sat there for twenty easy minutes, saying little but savouring the rare opportunity to relax, when Rachel looked up to see an older man passing the window, wearing a heavy jumper underneath a dark bodywarmer, a bobble hat snug on his head. He was carrying gardening tools and his breath froze before him. He seemed to be heading purposefully, if slowly, along the shoreline.
‘Right,’ Rachel suddenly announced. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
‘A what?’ Winter asked unbelievingly.
‘A walk.’
‘You never walk. Anywhere. You don’t do walks.’
‘Well I do now. Come on, shift your lazy arse and get a jacket on.’
‘You’re kidding me, right?’
‘No. Move.’
Winter shook his head incredulously and threw the last of the Balvenie down his throat, feeling it sting and soothe in one go.
‘Okay, whatever. But I’m beginning to think the real you has been abducted by aliens.’
Their feet were soon crunching along the pebbled path that dissected the lawn in front of the lake, Rachel setting a fierce pace in the direction the old man had taken. As they swung anti-clockwise by the end of the hotel, the lake on their left, Rachel saw a bobble-hatted head nodding up and down by a bush some forty yards away.
‘Oh, hello,’ Rachel said casually as they reached the place where the gardener crouched. ‘Didn’t see you there. Nice day, isn’t it?’
The man stood up, failing to conceal a groan of old age as he did so.
‘Yes, beautiful,’ he replied cheerily. ‘Bit cold for some, I suppose, but I like it. Not many people venture along here in this weather though. They tend not to wander too far from the bar.’
Smart people, Winter thought irritably.
‘Oh no, it’s lovely out at this time of the year,’ he heard Rachel replying, not believing his ears. ‘We like to work up an appetite for dinner. I’m Rachel, by the way, and this is Tony.’
‘Dick Johnson,’ the old man replied, shaking off a glove and offering each of them his hand in turn. ‘Nice to meet you.’
The man was in his mid-sixties and had a whiskery white moustache that reminded Winter of Tom Weir, the television presenter who used to do programmes about Scottish towns and the countryside — shows that always seemed to be repeated at two in the morning. Dick Johnson had a red whisky nose like old Tom as well.
‘How long have you worked here?’ Rachel was asking him.
Johnson puffed out his cheeks, raising his eyes to the heavens as if counting, even though Winter was sure he knew to the day just how long.
‘Twenty-four years,’ he answered finally.
‘Twenty-four years,’ Rachel echoed with a sweet smile. ‘You must love it to have stayed here this long.’
‘Well,’ he looked almost bashful, ‘I do but don’t tell them up at the hotel or else they’ll be wanting me to do it for nothing.’
The gardener smiled at Rachel and Winter could see that the old rogue was smitten — not that Winter could blame him.
‘Oh, I won’t,’ she laughed. ‘Although…’ she deliberated as if trying to work something out, ‘if you’ve worked here that long you must have seen all sorts of things, I’ll bet.’
Something in the way she phrased it jarred with Winter. What the hell was she getting at? A look of wariness passed over the old man’s face as well and his eyebrows knotted in a measure of confusion.
‘Aye, I suppose I have,’ he said slowly. ‘Nothing too exciting though, mainly weeds and wildfowl. That’s how I always describe my job: weeds, wildfowl and water. Not that people stop to ask too often.’
‘All the Ws,’ Rachel laughed. ‘What about whisky?’
A smile spread across his weather-beaten face.
‘Well, that’s the way I like my water best. A splash of it in a good malt.’
‘Tony likes a malt, too. Don’t you?’ she asked him rhetorically. ‘What was that you had earlier?’
A rushed waste of a twelve year old, Winter thought moodily.
‘A Balvenie DoubleWood,’ he told the old man.
Johnson nodded thoughtfully, as if to leave no doubt that whisky was due proper consideration.
‘Aye, a nice enough drop. Maybe a touch sweet for my taste but good and spicy too.’
‘Sounds like you know your stuff, Dick. Well, listen, we’re nearly done with our walk and I know Tony is going to fancy another whisky in the bar. Maybe you could join us for a wee half once you’re done?’
The man smiled brightly at the thought and Winter could see that the prospect of a warm fire, a whisky and a pretty young woman was an easy choice to make after pottering about on the frozen shore all day.
‘Well,’ he hesitated, ‘Ella, my wife, will have my dinner ready. But… sometimes I take the long way home, if you know what I mean.’
Winter sighed inside. He was never shy of sharing a drink with someone but he’d just rather not be sharing Rachel with this old geezer and his war stories. Rachel, however, in a sudden burst of unfamiliar sociability, had other ideas.