Highland Fire: captivating romantic suspense full of twists

by Abigail Clements

  He wouldn’t face me. ‘I loved her at the time,’ he said, looking past me into the darkness over the loch. ‘She came here first four years ago, with Kevin McGuire. She was young and gentle. I was lonely. She lived with me here at Sron Ban for several months. We quarrelled a lot. She fooled around with drugs, she wouldn’t leave them alone. Kevin had gotten her into that.’ He said the last very harshly.

  ‘I went back to New York finally. Before she found she was pregnant. When she did, she went away to Inverness, then Edinburgh. She only wrote me after the baby was born. I came back at once.’

  ‘Why didn’t you marry her?’ I said bluntly.

  ‘Because,’ he said with a faint smile, ‘she wouldn’t marry me.’ He paused, watching my reaction and then said, ‘I left her in Edinburgh. I sent her money of course. I always supported them, and that was the end of it, or so I thought.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then she came back here, back to Achbuie. Back to Kevin McGuire.’ He raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness and then dropped them quickly. He went and slumped down in the chair at the desk, staring at the open Gaelic bible.

  ‘No wonder you two hate each other,’ I said. He didn’t deny it. Then I said, ‘Whyever do you stay together, working together, you and Kevin? It seems insane.’

  ‘Because we haven’t any choice,’ he said, still looking at the spread pages of the book. Suddenly I remembered, long ago, the day after I arrived, hearing that, hearing Kevin shouting at him almost the same words.

  No wonder that morning had been bitter between them. Had he blamed Kevin, blamed him for the drugs that led to Shona’s death? I remembered how he had told me about finding the dead girl in the road and a wave of sorrow for him came over me. It must have been very hard on him. That was what Grisel had said. They had known, of course, and not told me. I wondered what else people knew here and didn’t tell me. ‘There are things here we don’t talk about,’ Dominic had said once.

  What else? I was determined to find out. ‘Why haven’t you any choice?’ I demanded. ‘It’s your place, why don’t you fire him?’

  Dominic laughed, a short bitter laugh.

  I leaned over the desk, making him look at me and said clearly, ‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand you and I don’t understand what’s going on around here.’

  He looked up bleakly and said, ‘No. You don’t. But it doesn’t matter any more, Carrie. You’re going away now, and that will be the end of it for you.’

  ‘And what about Caitlin?’ I demanded desperately.

  He covered his face with his hands and said softly, ‘Leave me alone, Carrie, I’m tired.’

  ‘What about Caitlin,’ I shouted. I caught at his wrist, trying to jerk his hand away and make him face me. He turned his hands, catching mine, holding it gently against his face.

  ‘Please stay with me, Carrie,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not me who’s wanting to go,’ I pointed out.

  ‘But you must go,’ he said, still holding my hand, ‘unless you will promise me that you’ll not see Seumas Cameron. Not at all.’

  ‘That’s blackmail,’ I said dully.

  ‘I know, Carrie. But it’s the only weapon I have. I don’t want to lose Caitlin. And I don’t want to lose you.’ Suddenly that made me think of Seumas’s warning and I said quickly, ‘Dominic, come with me. We’ll all go, you and I and Caitlin.’ I don’t know what I was proposing, but I was willing to pay almost any price for Caitlin’s future.

  The room was almost dark, but I could still see his sweet, gentle smile. ‘I’d love that, Carrie. Someday.’

  ‘Now,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t. I have some work to do first.’

  ‘Leave it.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s important.’

  ‘More important than your daughter?’

  ‘More important than anything.’

  ‘Then we’ll stay,’ I said. ‘And you’ll lose everything.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  I leaned against the banister at the foot of the stairs, holding hard onto the wood, my face pressed against my hand. Sron Ban was still and silent. Caitlin was with Grisel. I had taken her there, saying that I was going to Ullapool for the afternoon, which wasn’t true.

  Dominic was in Edinburgh. He had left yesterday morning and he would be back sometime this evening. Just as he had gone out the door, he had stopped and told me that he had forgotten to give Kevin McGuire the keys, the distillery keys, and Kevin was away for the morning. If Kevin were to come needing them, I was to give them to him. He had told me where he had left them, on the dresser in his room.

  They were important keys, among them those that opened the bonded warehouse. He had trusted them to me completely. Now I was going to betray his trust.

  It was not something I wished to do, or liked to do.

  Considering what happened afterwards, I have many many times raked my conscience about it since. But I did it for Caitlin. And in some strange way that worked out all wrong in the end, I did it for Dominic.

  I let go of the banister and walked slowly up the stairs. I had decided. The door to his room was slightly ajar, and I opened it further and slipped inside. It was not strange for me to be there; I came in every day to make the bed and to dust. But my reasons were very different this time, and I felt dishonest and deeply guilty at my intrusion.

  The keys were on the dresser, as he had said. I stood looking at them for a moment, then turned away.

  My eyes went slowly over the familiar furnishings of the room. The dresser with Seumas’s pencil sketch of me, still propped against the mirror. The shelves and shelves of books. The narrow bed I had more than once wanted to share. The wooden crucifix over the bed; the faded Irish tricolor half-covering the gable wall. That had been his father’s, long ago.

  I sat down on the bed and thought about what I was doing, and thought about Dominic. Catholic who never went to mass, Irish patriot who had never seen Ireland ‒ what were the real purposes of his strangely incomplete life?

  My eyes came back at last to the dresser with my picture on it. He did love me. And I loved him. And we’d never even kissed. Not once.

  I stood up quickly and crossed to the dresser, picking up the keys and walking out without once looking back.

  I got into the minivan and drove down the Sron Ban road, hoping I wouldn’t meet anyone, particularly not Seumas. I didn’t. I saw no one on the way to the distillery other than two men in tweeds, walking with binoculars, one with a map rolled under one of his arms. Tourists probably, summer visitors walking on the hill, looking for wildlife. It was unusual, though, for we rarely saw strangers up this far.

  Just after I passed them, I turned off on the grass-grown track to the distillery. It was Sunday afternoon. I knew that the place never shut down; that was impossible. But there was only a handful of people working there on a Sunday. They would all be some distance away, in the main building and the malting sheds. The warehouse was far from there, isolated behind its larch trees. And the door was on its hidden side.

  It was there that Dominic and Kevin had been working that day I went there, so unfortunately, in the rain. There was something in the warehouse they hadn’t wanted me to see; they were desperate that I not see it. Whatever it was, I was almost sure that if I did see it, I would understand the dangerous business that was going on at Sron Ban. I might even understand Dominic.

  I was going to find out. The warehouse looked deserted, blank and lonely stone walls beneath the bright green larch. I pulled up the car some distance away, off the road, behind a clump of thick-grown gorse. I didn’t expect anyone to pass at this end of the place, by the little-used track to Sron Ban, but I was being very careful.

  I had to stand a long time in front of the door, glancing nervously over my shoulder, searching among the keys for the one that fitted this lock. I found it finally, the door opened easily, and I stepped into the vast cobwebby silence of the whisky store.

  I had to le
ave the door slightly ajar for light. It made me nervous, but I needed to see. The walls around me were lined with the dark bulking shapes of whisky casks piled high. In places they had lain for years the dust was heavy-layered on them. I walked carefully around from one wall to another, not touching, just looking, and not knowing what I was looking for.

  One entire wall was stacked with crates, crates of bottled whisky, which having reached its age, waited now to be shipped to market. Among those crates I found what I was looking for.

  There was a long green tarpaulin stretched over some of them. I wondered, why some, not all? I lifted a corner of it and rolled it back. First, more whisky crates; then I saw, underneath, some that were different

  I lifted one of the top crates down; it was heavy and I had to brace it against my knees, sliding it carefully to the floor. The wooden boxes underneath were closed, and too long and flat to hold whisky bottles anyhow. They were rough, makeshift-looking.

  The lid of the one nearest me was slatted wood and loose. I lifted it off, laying it aside, and slid back the hessian cloth that lay over the contents inside. There were half a dozen military rifles in the box, new rifles, gleaming blue-black metal in the dim grey light.

  That was enough. I knew then, but I was going to be positive, and without any doubt I lifted down another whisky crate and raised the lid of another long wooden box. Another half-dozen rifles, exactly like the others.

  I had a sick feeling of utter hopelessness that made me stop caring very much about anything; made me stop thinking and stop listening. Numbly, mechanically, I set about exploring further. I found smaller labelled paper boxes containing ammunition, different kinds, different labels. They meant little to me, I didn’t know anything about guns. Other than what they were used for.

  There was more than guns. Explosives, detonators, all the tools of trade of the urban guerrilla. There was enough in this building alone to supply a small private war. God knows how much more there was where it came from. And how much more had gone before it, over the sea, to where Dominic let strangers fight his father’s war for him.

  Then suddenly there was a faint squeak of hinges behind me and the door banged shut. In the thick rush of darkness I heard a voice, faintly amused, saying, ‘And now that you have found it at last, are you liking what you’ve found?’ I knew the voice, knew the faint Belfast inflection that over the months I had learned to distinguish from the native Highland accents around me: Kevin McGuire.

  I spun around in the darkness, facing the invisible threat.

  ‘Where are you?’ I whispered, shaking.

  ‘Here,’ he returned and in a rush he was beside me, catching one of my arms and twisting it behind my back, so that I couldn’t move.

  ‘Let me go,’ I shouted as he twisted my arm up higher and hissed, ‘Quiet.’

  I bit back a cry of pain. Being noisy was just going to get me hurt. I heard the rustle of cloth and then there was a bright glow of light. Kevin released me and stepped back. He was holding a cigarette lighter up in one hand. In the other he had now a small handgun, and it was pointed at me.

  ‘I would not be advising you to scream,’ he said quietly.

  The yellowy light of the flame caught the rusty colour of his hair and the thin ragged moustache. His features were made heavy and distorted by the flame shadows, the eyes deep and dark. Still I could see the odd, satisfied smile when he asked pleasantly, ‘And are you liking your man’s playthings?’ He laughed under his breath, gesturing with his head toward the boxes of rifles.

  ‘You’re in this, too, then, aren’t you?’ I said.

  He laughed shortly again. ‘Everybody’s in it, you stupid fool. I would have thought you’d have realized that by now. Considering the way you’ve been prying into everyone else’s business since the day you arrived.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘Only today.’

  He laughed again, a long easy laugh, sounding as if he had all the time in the world. ‘Today’s enough, lass.’

  Then he added, ‘Well, maybe you’ve just been rather unlucky, but you damned well turned up whenever anything was happening. I’m sorry, lass, but your luck, bad or otherwise, has just run out. And so has my patience.’

  ‘You’re going to shoot me, aren’t you?’ I said, shock dulling the depth of the awareness.

  ‘Aye, lass, I am that.’

  I shrank back from him, backing into the jumble of crates.

  ‘Och, ye needn’t worry just yet. I’m not going to do it here. Not with half of Sron Ban Distillery listening. There are quieter places.’

  ‘Dominic will kill you,’ I said desperately, defiantly. He laughed, long and loud, so that the light shook with his shaking hand.

  ‘Oh, aren’t we romantic?’ he said finally, still enjoying his joke. ‘It is a good match, then, you and he. Two romantic meddling Yanks. It is rather a shame that I’m going to have to break it up.’ Then he got very coldly serious and whispered, ‘Dominic won’t kill me, lass. He won’t lift a finger against me. He didn’t for Shona and he certainly won’t for you.’

  ‘For Shona?’ I repeated numbly.

  ‘Aye, for Shona. She was rather like you that way. She could not leave well enough alone. She found out too much, and then she thought she’d use it against me, just to get what she wanted. She was off to the police that night when you met her, did you know?’

  I said nothing and he leaned back easily against a whisky cask, still calmly holding the gun on me, the flame flickering between us.

  ‘But,’ he continued coolly, ‘it is a long walk to Braemore. A long way to be walking. Faster in the Land Rover, of course, much faster. I am surprised you did not see me pass the phone box that night. Very surprised. Still then, Shona didn’t see me until just before I hit her. It was a dark night. And of course, I didn’t play fair. I did keep my headlamps off.’

  ‘You killed her,’ I said. ‘You ran her down.’

  ‘And I dumped her in the back and threw her out on the main road, for someone else to find her. I didn’t know it was going to be Dominic, of course, but it had a sort of poetic balance. He always did want her back.’

  ‘You bastard,’ I whispered. ‘You vicious bastard.’

  ‘No, no, dearie. Bastards are Dominic’s province. You ask him. And I wouldn’t try to hit me, love. I am holding a gun. Or have you forgotten?’

  ‘And Dominic knows that?’ I said, incredulous.

  ‘Of course he knows.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Believe what you want, lass. But he knew. And he didn’t raise a finger against me. He has more sense, you see. He hasn’t much, all in all, but he has a good strong instinct for self-preservation. He tends to become much less romantic when there is danger around.’

  ‘You can call him a coward if you want,’ I returned, anger getting the upper hand on fear, ‘but what are you, then, running down a young girl with your car?’

  ‘I, dearie, am a realist,’ Kevin replied, smiling slightly. ‘She was trouble. I thought you were trouble, because of that night on the moor, so I tried a couple of times to get rid of you. You might remember. Oh, Dominic talked me out of that eventually, but I was never happy about it.

  ‘Frankly, Carrie, this is going to be a pleasure. You’ve been on my mind for a long time. I’ll be pleased to be rid of you. Dominic may weep a few romantic tears for you, but I don’t think he’ll do anything foolish. Life is sweet and there are other lassies. And,’ he added slowly, ‘there is always Ireland.

  ‘And for Ireland, he needs me,’ Kevin said finally. ‘Not you, not Shona, but just me. So he’ll do what I tell him, and not argue. After all, if he didn’t have me, he might have to go to the damned place himself to keep up his little game, and that would be dangerous.’

  ‘He can’t go to Ireland,’ I said, suddenly insanely defending Dominic and his crazy mad ideals. ‘He made a vow to his father …’

  ‘To never set foot on Irish soil till Ireland is free,’ recited
Kevin, snickering. ‘I’ve heard it. A very convenient vow, don’t you think? It’s nice to play war from across the ocean. Nice and exciting and romantic, and safe.’ I heard the words as an echo of my own to Dominic.

  ‘His father made him take that vow, and his father fought for Ireland,’ I said indignantly, trying to drown out the echo.

  ‘His father was a loud-mouthed coward,’ Kevin said with delicate disdain. ‘Why do you think he went to America?’

  ‘He was in exile.’

  ‘Dominic would really like to believe that,’ Kevin McGuire said softly. ‘He was a coward, a romantic coward. Like father, like son.’

  ‘You know better than that,’ I said coldly, too involved with my anger to care much about anything. ‘You know very well he’s of far more use with his money and his influence over here. He’s got enough here’ ‒ I gestured behind me ‒ ‘to keep a small army going. He’s a lot more valuable right here, for your cause, than he would be getting shot in a Belfast street.’

  ‘Your reasoning is admirable,’ Kevin replied, relaxing comfortably, toying with the gun. ‘But you are slightly mistaken. He is valuable to me, yes, but I don’t have a cause. Unless you want to call money a cause, and that would be rather cynical now, wouldn’t it? And make no mistake, his romanticism utterly delights me. That very convenient vow. It is I, you see, who must go to Ireland, and I who make the connections.

  ‘Oh, Dominic handles this end. The trucks in Marseilles. He had a lovely time rigging up the false floors in those trucks. Just like playing spies, that was. It works very well, too. And Marseilles is a good market. A good market for whisky, and a good market for guns. Just a short trip across the Med to Libya, and all the guns anyone could want. Oh, it was a very good idea, Dominic has there.

  ‘So he handles the trucks, and he has this very convenient store for the guns they bring back. And he has Lower Achbuie and his string of boys and girls to handle the loading and the boat. You saw the boat, didn’t you, the other day? And you got me in some trouble that night bloody Stephen couldn’t find the shore without lights. You do have a way about you, Carrie, for being where you shouldn’t be.