Callum MacGillivray stood on the mat, looking excep-tionally clean and brushed in MacGillivray tartan, his expression pinched and anxious.
Alison felt the blood rise in her face. “What do ye think you’re doing here?” she said furiously. “Go to hell, Callum. I don’t want to see you.”
“Alison—”
“Could ye not have left me to make a fool of myself in my own time?” She started to slam the door, but Callum thrust out a strong arm. “Alison, I’ve got to talk to ye—”
“You’ve done enough damage. I’ve nothing to say.”
“Alison, I’ve something to tell ye. It’s bad news.”
The fear swept over her then, clenching her gut. Her knees seemed to dissolve and she found herself clutching the doorframe, unable to speak.
“Chrissy, I think maybe ye should go to your room,”
Callum said gently, but Chrissy shook her head and stepped closer to her mother.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s not Max, is it, Callum? Or Grandma?”
Some small detached part of Alison’s mind almost laughed at her daughter’s priorities. Would she, she wondered, have the dubious honor of coming before the horse?
“No,” she said, in a calm voice that seemed to come from somewhere outside herself. She forced herself to focus on Callum. “It’s Donald. He’s dead, isn’t he? And you bloody killed him.”
Chapter Twelve
The sharp constraint of fingertips Or the shuddering touch of lips, And all old memories of delight Crowd upon my soul tonight.
—robert louis stevenson,
“I Saw Red Evening Through the Rain”
Carnmore, April
Will stood in the door of the warehouse, gazing at the ranks of casks. He had discovered in the past few months that this was the one thing that gave him a sense of satisfaction, of completion. Some of these casks now were his, his legacy, as the ones before had been his father’s.
He breathed in the scent of oak, of hard-packed earth, and even on this cold April day the ever-present vapor of maturing whisky. This was his life, his world, embodied in barrels and hogsheads, stamped with the Carnmore seal. He had put away his books, and along with them his dreams of university in Edinburgh, of studying medicine.
The promise he had made his father bound him more
tightly than any physical constraint, and he had determined that he would commit himself well.
Will poured over his father’s ledgers and account books, he questioned the men, absorbing details of the distilling process he had never thought to notice. They were patient with him, these men who had been his friends since childhood, and he noticed that as time passed they listened more and more readily when he offered an opinion. He could only hope that he would live up to their expectations.
Closing and locking the warehouse doors, he started out across the yard towards the office. He had paperwork to do, there were orders to be filled, but just for a moment he stopped at the edge of the yard and looked out across the Braes.
They were strip-burning the heather up on the moors—
late this year because of the persistent rains in March.
The smoke rose in curls, and he caught the smell of it, sharp and acrid on the dry air.
Since he had put aside his books, he had begun to feel the land like a living thing, a presence that never left him.
The life and rhythm of it pulsed in his blood, in his skin, the tips of his fingers, the soles of his feet. When the first buds appeared on the trees, he’d felt the hard nodules on the ends of his fingers, masked by velvety skin. He felt the water moving through the earth, the green shoots pushing upwards, the delight of the lambs frisking in the fields.
He told no one, afraid they would think him mad.
It was the same in the distillery. He felt the whisky at every step, from the malting of the barley to the final dis-tillate—and he knew when it was right. He began to wonder if his father had found grace with God after all, and so been allowed to bestow a last gift upon his son. What
other explanation was there for what had happened to him?
This uncanny awareness did not extend to people, however. Watching his mother as she went about her daily tasks, he was unable to penetrate her reserve. It was not that she seemed desperately unhappy, but that his father’s death had changed her in some basic way that Will couldn’t fathom.
And then Rab Brodie had come calling from Benvulin.
It was almost fifteen miles from the Speyside distillery to Carnmore, and Will wondered if the condolences Mr.
Brodie had come to offer merited such a ride. Brodie had walked round the distillery with an assessing eye that made Will uncomfortable, but it was the man’s easy condescension that made Will’s skin prickle.
He knew from the men’s gossip that Benvulin had not fared well in the Pattison’s disaster, and if Brodie was struggling to keep his own distillery afloat, what possible interest could he have in Carnmore?
After another futile visit to the police station, where even the friendly sergeant’s patience seemed to be wearing thin, Gemma retreated to the car. She considered going round the town, trying to find a witness who had seen Hazel early that morning, but she had to admit that the likelihood of finding anything on her own was slim.
She knew she should take Kincaid’s advice and go back to the B&B, but it galled her to do it. She couldn’t banish the thought of Hazel, alone in an interview room, or worse, being badgered by Chief Inspector Ross, after what she had already been through that day.
Gemma made an effort to put herself in Ross’s position. Wouldn’t she have done the same, with the information Ross had?
No, she couldn’t summon the detachment, she was too close, and yet the effort brought with it a small worm of doubt. What had Hazel done last night? Had she argued with Donald? And why had she left so precipitously this morning? Where had she been at the moment Donald was shot? Two days ago it would never have occurred to Gemma that Hazel might hide secrets. How well, she wondered, did she really know her friend?
Unwilling to follow that train of thought any further, Gemma started the car and drove out of Aviemore, head-ing north towards Innesfree. As she crossed the bridge over the Spey, she realized that her wipers were squeak-ing. The rain had stopped. Looking up, she saw that a clear ribbon of sky had appeared beneath a dark and for-bidding bank of cloud. In the distance, the hills glowed impossibly green, and it suddenly seemed to Gemma that the morning’s violence had been a dream.
How could such a thing have happened in this place, where beauty took the breath away? She shivered, as if someone had walked over her grave, and turned up the car’s heater.
As she neared the B&B, she saw that the crowd had dispersed except for a few stragglers and an isolated television van. Slowing for the turn, she remembered that Heather had meant to go to Benvulin. Why not go there and talk to her, ask about the solicitor as Kincaid had suggested?