“Aye, that it is. And a very fine drop they produce there too.” He blinked thoughtfully. “I’d be happy to drive you over myself and introduce you. DCI Morrison did say I was to take you wherever you wanted to go, Sir. Should I just give Angus a call first and make sure he’ll be there to meet us?”
That was a good idea.
“Yes, thank you, Ewan. That would be great. Meet us out front after?”
He nodded and ducked out again. Shay got up and pulled his rather expensive jacket back on (‘But it’s hemp Con! It’ll outlast all of yours by decades!’) and tapped at his laptop before locking it. It was a really nice jacket, I had to admit, and it fitted me better than it did him. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind nicking it.
“My phone will beep if any of the searches get a hit while we’re out,” he told me, staring regretfully at his laptop. “I don’t want to shut her down and slow those up.” He didn’t like leaving his favourite toy alone in a strange, ‘insecure’ location. “It’s all backed up anyway, if there was a fire, or a leak or anything…”
“We’re in a police station, Shay! So you really don’t need to worry about it getting stolen. Besides, Ewan gave me the key to this office earlier,” I told him, producing it.
“That’s nice,” he said, a bit condescendingly, “but that couldn’t possibly happen. Honestly, Con, you just don’t think sometimes, do you? I pity anyone who so much as touches my laptop. They won’t be able to get into it, of course, but the cameras will turn on automatically and start sending me the recordings. And it’ll make a hell of a racket if anyone tries to move it.” He snickered, tickled by the thought of that happening here. Even more reason to lock the bloody door!
I couldn’t think of any building in Stornoway that would be packed with a snoopier bunch than the people working in here. I grabbed my own jacket and ushered him out before turning the key in the lock, twice, behind us. Blaring klaxons, air raid warnings or whatever else he had set up, were not what I would consider ‘low profile.’ Who put movement trigger alarms on their bloody laptop? For a guy with an IQ so high that any attempt to put a number on it was meaningless, my cousin could be a right idiot at times.
Eight
Most of the drive over to the distillery was on a standard, two-lane country road. Lewis was a very flat island, compared to most of the others I’d visited, but there was far more greenery than I’d expected. The north end of the island was likely to be far bleaker, from what I’d heard and read, but this part was really nice, not that I’d want to live there. Despite the open spaces and the sweeping, all-round views to a far horizon, I think I’d begin to feel trapped quite quickly, especially when spells of bad weather made leaving the island practically impossible.
The sky was a deep blue dome, with only a few puffs of white in sight up there today, but it was strange being able to see so far on land without first climbing up to a good height to do so. There was sparkling, open water in sight, in one direction or another, for most of our short journey across to the west side of Lewis. This whole area was studded with an incredible quantity of little landlocked lochs.
We saw the island dressed up in its most welcoming guise, I knew. No doubt it all seemed a little more ominous and hostile once it donned its dark, winter storm wear.
Ewan turned off onto one of the ubiquitous, single lane, minor roads that webbed the island about three miles before our destination, and I noticed the ‘passing places,’ spaced out at regular intervals as we headed down it. He reversed up once, to the one on the left that we’d just passed, to let a car by, and two other drivers pulled in on their side of the road, at different spots, to let us through. The system worked quite well, as long as everyone followed the proper etiquette.
“What happens when an emergency vehicle comes along?” I asked.
“Oh, well, everyone just gets out of the way sharpish, Sir,” Ewan MacLeod told me cheerfully. “You get pretty good at reversing quickly after a while, and you can always drive off to the side, as a last resort, and then call a pal to come and pull you out if you get stuck in a ditch.”
Far from ideal, but they all seemed to take it as a normal part of daily life. There were plenty of little roads like this all over Britain and Ireland, but most of them weren’t this well organised in terms of well-spaced areas wide enough to pull in at. Try getting stuck behind someone towing a caravan for a few miles, or a loaded lorry from a local quarry, and you’ll soon see how annoying that can be!
“That must be where Mr Price stopped to take his photos when he was here,” Shay said from the back as we swept down a gentle slope towards the buildings we’d seen in the photos. “That wide turf verge before the fence there, see?”
As we drove by, I could see he was right. The angle and distance matched those in the shots. Ewan drove around to a small car park on the far side of the complex outside a split level building with white exterior walls and black trim.
“That’s the office block.” He pointed to the lower section, “And Angus has a little shop in there as well. People sometimes book a tour of the place, so he always keeps enough stock back not to disappoint. They’re only allowed to buy a bottle a head, mind.”
A tall, rangy man in his late
