“You won’t need your spray,” I told him. “If we keep moving, the midges won’t get us even if the wind drops further and they launch, which it won’t. Come on, let’s head up to where we can get a really good view of the harbour.”
We climbed up to Gallows Hill at a good pace, admiring the view opening out beneath us as we left the crowding trees lining the lower paths behind. Yeah, it was definitely worth seeing.
“That’s some view,” Shay said, drinking it in as he turned slowly. The town and harbour below and to the east of us could not have been better displayed. “Awfully flat, all that land behind Stornoway, and you can even see the sea over there beyond it. That bit of coast can’t be more than a couple of miles away.” It really was picture-postcard pretty from up here. The water below was dotted with fishing boats, and the early sunshine gave everything a nice sparkle.
I took a couple of pictures for my da, and we headed back down to find ourselves what would hopefully be a really tasty breakfast at The Crown. Neither of us was disappointed there either.
Thirteen
After calling in at the hotel so I could change, and to pick up our stuff, we headed over to Church Street and got set up in our pokey little office again. Shay went back to working through his list, digging into the phone, email and social media accounts he’d started on before I got up. If Jordan or Phelps reached out to anyone, my cousin had tagged as a likely contact, or vice versa, we’d soon know about it, once he had all his alerts set up.
My cousin hadn’t been entirely honest when he told Mads Nielsen that he ‘only’ spoke seventeen languages fluently. He was also highly proficient in every important programming language, past and present. His self-designed, multi-layered platform operated on the one he’d compiled for his own exclusive use and was intelligent enough to adapt itself to interact with any system he’d taught it to recognise, translating his instructions virtually instantaneously to ensure compatibility. Shay’s platform would not run any code that he hadn’t written himself, and the only key to that was in his head. That kept changing, too, according to whatever weird, convoluted system he’d decided to use. Miss the required key out of a string, and it would simply quarantine the code, whilst tracking down its source for Shay to decide what to do about it. He’d tested that himself, from other computers. It worked just fine. Incoming information was ‘cleansed’ and translated before he even saw any of it. Da had told me once what he thought Shay could make out of selling that system, before pointing out what havoc it could wreak, in the wrong hands.
“As a species, we’ve never yet made a useful new tool that couldn’t also be used as a weapon,” he’d said, “and that thing was built by a truly superior intelligence.” It was a good job nobody else would ever be able to use it. All his outer defence systems behaved ‘normally,’ as far as anyone trying to penetrate them was concerned. The Ids knew he was world class, but they had no idea how far ahead of their best he really was.
I left him to it and went to fill up our water bottles and a thermos for the car. Ewan MacLeod came into the break room to make himself a drink while I was waiting for the kettle to boil, and he greeted me cheerfully.
“Good morning, Sir. Looks like we’re in for another lovely day out there. I hear you and your cousin even managed to get up to Gress beach for a bit yesterday evening?”
“Good morning, Ewan. We did. It was very nice. Where did you hear that?”
“Oh, Annie MacLeod’s sister’s ex-boyfriend was in the pub with us last night. He’d been up there paddle boarding. He thought you were a couple of guys in training for a triathlon or something, but we figured it out when he mentioned the silver Golf.” Stornoway had a population of about five thousand people. What were the odds?
“Triathlon? Hardly.” Neither my cousin nor I had the least interest in any form of competitive sports. “Ewan, do you happen to know when Angus MacLeod usually gets to the distillery in the mornings?” I asked. “I’m planning to give him a call, and the earlier, the better.” The kettle came to the boil and turned itself off. “Get your tea first. I’m just filling this up.” I waved the thermos at him.
“Thanks.” He poured for himself, considering. “It depends on what they have planned, I’d say. Some days he could be there before eight and others not until ten.” He put the kettle back so I could fill up my thermos. “His answering machine should forward any messages you leave, though.” That was good to know. Ewan opened the fridge to get some milk out. “Not having any tea or coffee in that?” he asked, puzzled.
“It’s for my portable espresso maker,” I said, smiling. That thing was going to travel with me everywhere. “Amazing, all the great little gadgets they can make these days!” He pulled a face.
“It certainly is, but I can’t stand that stuff.” He finished squishing his teabag around with the spoon and binned it before adding a drop of milk to his mug and putting it away again. “You can’t beat a good cuppa. To each their own though, ey?” He tipped me a friendly nod and headed off, mug in hand.
I topped up the kettle for the next person and went back to the office. I got Angus’s answering machine when I called, so I just left a message asking him to get back to me.
“Want to start checking some of these accounts?” Shay asked, passing me his phone. “Jordan’s sisters both chat on Messenger quite a bit.” He’d put
