Giving herself a small shake, she looked across the aisle at her friend Hazel Cavendish. “It’s lovely”—
Gemma gestured out the window—“wherever it is.”
Hazel laughed. “Northumberland, I think. We’ve a long way to go.”
Farther down the car, a mother tried to calm an increasingly fractious child, and Gemma felt a guilty surge of relief that it was not she having to cope. As much as she loved her four-year-old son, Toby, it was not often she had a break from child care that didn’t include work. Nor, she realized, had she and Hazel spent much time together away from their children. Until the previous Christmas, Gemma had lived for almost two years in the garage flat belonging to Hazel and her husband, Tim Cavendish. As Hazel and Tim’s daughter, Holly, was the same age as Gemma’s son, Hazel had cared for both children while Gemma was at work.
“I’m glad you asked me,” Gemma said impulsively, smiling at Hazel across the narrow tabletop that separated them.
“If anyone deserves a break, it’s you,” Hazel replied with her customary warmth.
The previous autumn, Gemma had been promoted to detective inspector with the Metropolitan Police, assigned to Notting Hill Police Station. The promotion, although a goal long set, had not come without cost. Not only had it brought long hours and increased responsibility, but it had also meant leaving Scotland Yard, ending her working partnership with Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, her lover—and, since Christmas, her housemate.
“Tell me again about the place we’re going,” Gemma prompted. A week ago, Hazel had rung and, quite unexpectedly, asked Gemma to accompany her on a cookery weekend in the Scottish Highlands.
“I know it’s short notice,” Hazel had said, “but it’s only for four days. We’ll go up on the Friday and come back on Monday. Could you get away from work, do you think? You haven’t had a holiday in ages.”
Gemma understood the unspoken subtext. A therapist as well as a friend, Hazel was concerned that Gemma had not fully recovered from her miscarriage in January.
It had been a hard winter. The fact that the pregnancy was unplanned and had been difficult for Gemma to accept had made the loss of the child even more devastat-ing; nor had she recovered physically as quickly as she might have hoped. But with spring had come a lifting of her spirits and a renewal of energy, and if she still woke in the night with an aching sadness, she didn’t speak of it.
“It’s a small place called Innesfree,” Hazel told her. “A pun on the owners’ name, which is Innes.”
“Nice sentiment, wrong country.”
Hazel smiled. “It’s near the River Spey, at the foot of the Cairngorm Mountains. According to the brochure, John Innes is making quite a name for himself as a chef.
We were lucky to get a place in one of his cooking courses.”
“You know I’m not up to your standards,” Gemma protested, thinking of some of her recent kitchen disasters in the house she and Duncan had taken in Notting Hill. She had yet to master the oil-fired cooker, in spite of Hazel’s helpful advice.
“The course is supposed to be very personalized,”
Hazel assured her. “And I’m sure there will be other things to do. Walks by the river, drinks by the fire . . .”
“How very romantic.”
Much to Gemma’s surprise, Hazel colored and looked away. “I suppose it is,” she murmured, leaning back into her seat and closing her eyes.
Gazing at her companion, Gemma noticed the smudges beneath the fan of dark lashes, the new hollows beneath the well-defined cheekbones. For a moment
Gemma wondered if Hazel could be ill, but she dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come. Hazel—therapist, perfect wife, mother, and gourmet vegetarian cook—was the most healthy, balanced person Gemma had ever known. Surely it was merely a slight fatigue, and the weekend’s rest would be just the restorative she needed.
Donald Brodie lifted one section of the wort vat’s heavy wooden cover and breathed in the heady aroma of hot water and barley. He had been fascinated by this part of the distilling process even as a child, when his father had had to lift him up so that he could peer down into the frothy depths of the vat. It still amazed him that the liquid produced by combining ground, dried barley with hot water could produce a final product as elegant as a malt whisky—but perhaps that was why he had never lost his fierce love of the business.
Even today, when he had so much else at stake, he had gone round the premises after work finished, as was his habit. He closed the vat and crossed the steel mesh flooring to the stairs, his footsteps echoing in the building’s cavernous space. Once outside, he locked the door and stepped out into the yard, stopping a moment to survey his domain.
It had been mild for mid-May in the Highlands, and the late afternoon air still held the sun’s warmth. Before him, the lawn sloped down to the house his great-great-grandfather had built, a monument to Victorian Romanticism in dressed stone. He turned, looking back at the building he had left. To the left stood the warehouse, once the home of the vast floor maltings, with the distinctive twin-pagoda roofs that had ventilated the kiln; to the right, the still-house and the now-defunct mill. Although the mill had not been used to grind barley to grist since the
early s, his father had restored the wheel to operation, and water tumbled merrily from its blades. The building now served as the distillery’s Visitors Centre.
The mill was powered by the burn that ran down from the foothills of the Cairngorms to meet the nearby River Spey, but the water that went into the whisky came from the spring that bubbled up from the gently rolling grounds. In the making of whisky, the quality of the water was all-important, a Highland distillery’s greatest asset.
The Brodie who had named the place Benvulin had shown a wayward imagination— ben being a corruption of the Gaelic word beinn, or hill, but vulin, the phonetic spelling of the Gaelic mhoulin, or mill, was a bit more accurate.
Tomorrow he would entice Hazel into coming here—a not-so-subtle reminder of her heritage and of what he had to offer—but then, he had grown tired of subtlety. The phone calls, the notes, the casual lunches in discreet London restaurants, spent skating around what they were feeling; all those things had served their purpose, but now it was time for Hazel to face the truth. His friends, John and Louise Innes, had done their part in getting Hazel here by arranging the cookery weekend; now he must do his—and soon, he thought, his pulse quickening as he looked at his watch.
The mobile phone on his belt vibrated. Slipping it from its holder, he glanced at the caller ID. Alison.
Damn and blast! He hesitated, then let the call ring through to voice mail. If there was one complication he didn’t need this weekend, it was dealing with Alison.
He’d told her he had a business meeting—true enough, with Heather, the distillery’s manager, who’d insisted on bringing Pascal Benoit, the Frenchman whose conglom-
erate was salivating over Benvulin. Not that he could put off Alison indefinitely, mind, but a few more days couldn’t hurt, and then he would find some way of dealing with her for good.
With that thought, he went to wash and change for the evening, whistling all the while.
Sitting down at his wife’s desk, Tim Cavendish began to work his way through the drawers. He was a methodical man, and his time was limited, because Holly, who at age four protested naps with great indignation, would not sleep long. He told himself this was a job, a project, to be approached like any other; he could, in fact, pretend he was looking for something, a lost note, or a receipt. Perhaps that would quiet the ingrained revulsion he felt at invading another therapist’s privacy. But Hazel, he told himself, had forfeited all rights to such consideration.