Cold Grave (3 page)

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.

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.

‘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.

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.

‘Where did you get those?’ she asked him, aware of the note of envy in her voice. ‘You didn’t bring them with you, did you?’

‘No. I got them from reception.’