The geese fell in love with Neil Cleary, and the fish, well they caused a hell of a stink in more ways than one. That was after Tam and Ed got out of Aitkenbar Distillery and after Jack Lorne had his hair dyed an odd shade.
Tam could hear the birds through the ventilation gap as dawn broke in the east, honking in that aggressive territorial tone geese adopt. It had taken him two hours to finally get the connections made and he was confident enough that whatever he had done couldn't be easily discovered. The maze of pipes still did what they were supposed to do, for the time being at least. The final job had been to tighten a little grub screw into the tiny hole in the coolant pipe and seal it. The freezing spray simply shut off. By that time Ed was blue with the cold.
"God, I'm f... f... chilled to the bone." He could hardly speak for the chattering of his teeth and Tam couldn't help grinning. Ed glared at him.
"You did that on purpose." It took him almost a minute to get the accusation out. The blanket was down on the concrete and cold water pooled out from the fabric. Ed was scrambling to get out of his overalls. "Look at me. I'll get pneumonia."
"It's only a bit of water. Us plumbers get wet all the time." Tam's neck was still sore from the cramp of the barrel, and Ed just happened to be the nearest and easiest to take revenge on.
"If I snuff it, it's down to you." The overalls were off and Ed was trying to unbutton his shirt with stiff numb fingers. Above him the heat sensor winked its blue metronome. He got the shirt off and stood there shivering in his boxers, skin roughed and puckered with gooseflesh. He glared again at Tam.
"This had better work."
"Sure it'll work. Here, do you want something to heat you up?"
"Give me your shirt."
"Bugger off. I'm the tradesman here. You're just the hired help."
"Thanks pal." Ed stomped off, swinging his arms out and then around himself, trying to get the circulation back. His jockeys dripped down his legs and left a trail on the floor. If it had been winter he'd have been in serious trouble. Tam heard footsteps on the metal stairs and then a door open on the far side of the big tank. A few minutes later Ed came back, wet feet slapping on the floor. He was buttoning a white lab coat that built for someone several stone wider. Tam burst into a gale of laughter.
"What do you look like?"
Ed stopped and looked down at himself, hairy white legs poking down beneath the hem, and then he started to laugh too.
"Here," Tam said. "This is the second Easter miracle." He held up a tin mug that was chipped with long rough use. Ed took it, smelt it and his face lit up.
"Where did you get this?"
"Trust me, I'm a genius. You just have to know where all the pipes go, and a shifting spanner comes in fine and dandy."
Ed took a big swallow of the overproof whisky and then coughed as it hit the spot. Colour came back into his cheeks.
"Man, that goes down a treat."
Tam started dragging the toolbag away from the wall towards the shelter under the big tank, out of the direct line of the heat sensor. He sat down with his back to a pillar and Ed joined him. He passed the mug back and Tam took a fine swallow.
"Here's the good bit," he said. "If we have to wait for the morning, we might as well sit back and enjoy this."
He dig into the bag and pulled out a long jointing compound tin, hut when he opened it, Ed saw a stack of fat roll-ups.
"Finest Leb red," Tam said, handing one across. He lit up, sucked in and held it until his vision began to waver.
"You're forgiven man, that's the business."
Sometime in the morning, after Marjory Burns had stamped Ed's card again, the pair of them hid behind the barrels until Donny gave them the all clear, and Tam staggered out into the light of day, wove his way across the grass, and stumbled face-first into the chain-link fence. The boys had to haul him and his toolbag through the hole in the wire and drag him through the brambles. He was still singing an hour later before he fell asleep in the sun. Ed was sent home sick.
The geese watchdogs had taken to the popcorn and somehow they had imprinted on Neil and now he couldn't get rid of them. It had been a good idea that for a while had worked just a treat but now it had developed unexpected complications. They had got used to coming to the fence for a feed, marching up and down, beaks pointing at the sky, honking anticipation. Then he had weaned them away from the front, scattering mounds of the stuff further and further way, until they became accustomed to gorging only a few yards from the cooperage at the back of the building, well away from the decant hall.
"They can smell me half a mile away," he told Donny . "Either that or they're telepathic."
The pair of them had lugged another couple of plastic bags of corn feed through the new-worn track in the bushes and far in the distance, the geese had already begun their cacophony.
"Listen to them," Neil said. "They love this stuff, but as soon as I get anywhere near the place they start up that racket. It'll screw us for sure."
"You think we should shoot them?" Donny asked. "I've still got my old slug gun."
"Sure, great. Shoot the fuckers. Don't you think it might give the game away when they find dead bodies all over the place?"
"If they keep that up they'll give the game away anyway. It's back to the drawing board."
Neil had been taken completely by surprise by the amount of popcorn that erupted from just a small pack of kernels on that first night. His mother and his aunts had screeched like scalded cats when the stove had turned itself into a fountain of the stuff and the kitchen ended up ankle deep after the boys had made a fast exit. The women soon calmed down when he shovelled it up into a bin liner, but they were still finding pieces of corn in all sorts of corners. It was more than a week since he had first turned up to wean them away from the gatehouse and the first day they had set up such a commotion that the security men had come to investigate and he'd had to sneak away through the undergrowth. Now the problem was even worse.
They reached the fence and two dozen big geese were strutting their stuff right up against the wire, ready for a feeding frenzy. They had long white necks and strong beaks and little beady eyes that had a mean look about them, but as soon as Neil started shovelling the popcorn through the wire they attacked it as if they were starving. The noise of their bickering could have been heard across the other side of the river, and it was just as well the birds were at the back end of the cooperage, where the high warehouse wall deflected most of the sound.
"They're getting fatter as well," Neil said. "They must have put on a stone at least."
Donny watched in amazement as the birds fought and squabbled amongst themselves, scraping up against the wire and flapping their wings with such force that the bushes rocked in the wind. White and grey feathers spiralled into the summer air.
"What a commotion," Donny said. "You better tell Jack we got a problem."
"He just said keep them away from the front."
"But he never said you had to wake up the whole town."
Donny had problems of his own to worry about. He'd been detailed to get the decoys and that meant recruiting his young brother and some of his pals to get themselves down the Kilmalid Burn with fishing nets made out of old onion bags, trying to catch as many minnows and sticklebacks as they could find.
"What do you want them for?" Kevin Watson needed to know.
"I'm going to breed them," Donny said. "What's it to you? Just get down there and catch me a couple of hundred."
"What's the catch?"
"No catch. I'll pay you"
"How? You'll be on the dole in a couple of weeks."
Donny grabbed Kevin by the collar and the boy's pal Danny Kane pulled back in case he got some too. Kevin was just as red-headed as Donny was, that fine, bright, corkscrewed electric shock sort of ginger that's never ever going to be in style until it's shaved right to the wood and maybe not even then. Kevin had been an afterthought child, if indeed any thought had been put into his conception at all by his parents. He was sixteen years younger than Donny, but you'd still know they were brothers.
"Listen, you cheeky wee bugger. I got money."
"How much?" Danny Kane had an eye to the main chance. He was Ed's nephew and every bit as smart on the uptake.
"How much what?"
"How much for a fish?"
"Ten pence."
"Get lost, cheapskate." Donny still had Kevin by the lapels. His brother's voice sounded strangled, which was not unreasonable under the circumstances.
"What do you mean get lost? That's a good deal."
"That's only a pound for ten. How much do you need?"
"About a hundred."
"A hundred my bum. It'll take us days to catch that many. A tenner for all that? No way."
Danny Kane piped up. "Tell you what, make it a pound and you got a deal."
"A pound?" Donny 's voice raised an octave. "A pound. For a stickleback? We used to catch them by the ton when I was your age."
"Aye, well, you can go and catch your own ton then," Kevin said, "seeing you're such a big hot shot expert."
"Look, I'll give you twenty pence a fish."
"Eighty," Danny said, grinning, and everybody could see where this would end up.
Donny let go when it got balanced out at fifty pence and hit Kevin a perfunctory slap on the back of his head just for the hell of it. He'd have to ask Jack for a decent hit at the petty cash fund and he hoped there would be no problem there. There was no chance he'd come back and lose face with Kevin and that sly little Danny Kane by admitting he couldn't cough up.
What he didn't realise was that Danny Kane was every bit as smart as his uncle and despite the fact that there was nothing better for twelve-year-olds to do in the high summer than spend a couple of afternoons down at the Kilmalid stream hooking out brown trout and little tidal flounders, he had, even at this age, a good estimation of time and motion and value for money. It was he who directed Kevin to build two lines of stones in a downstream pointing chevron and drive two stakes into the steam bed with the onion mesh bag stretched between them. After that the pair of them went fifty yards upstream, cut two straight ash saplings with a thick crown of leaves and used them to sweep right down the little stream, driving every little fish with the flow and into the bag. In less than half an hour they were trundling homewards pushing a wooden bogey with ten big sweet jars filched from the back of Thornton's shop, each filled with an assortment of gasping freshwater fish.
If it hadn't been for Danny Kane's ingenuity, then things might not have turned out the way they did, and Donny Watson might not have ended up with an awful sore face and worse, but like the poem says, for the want of a nail, the shoe was lost, and so on right up to the end where that one nail ends up closing the coffin lid. But that's for later.
On the day Neil took Donny down with him to feed the geese, the boys made it back home with the fish gulping for oxygen, and tipped them into the big plastic rain-butt behind the greenhouse that served as an ad-hoc watering can during the height of the summer. Fortunately for the fish, the tub was full of mosquito larvae, letting them gorge for a while until there were none left. Unfortunately for the little sticklebacks and minnows, there was a hairline fracture in the base of the butt, that let out a fine trickle of water which, as it was out of direct sight, nobody noticed. Even more unfortunate was the fact that the container sat at the corner of the house, and for half the day it got the direct rays of the sun in the hottest summer anybody could remember for a long time. Almost immediately the water began to heat up as its level lowered. Donny treated the captives to a huge handful of goldfish food from Ryan's pet shop and left them to get on with it, confident that they'd have enough to keep them going for the next couple of days.
It came as a great surprise to him when he next inspected the tank to find it half empty, filled with a thick, foetid liquid, and giving off such a stench that he almost lost his lunch of pies and beans. And by that time things had moved on. It was too late to send the boys out on another fishing expedition and Donny had to think of another plan and that's what got him a really sore face and testicles and put the whole operation in serious jeopardy.
Jack's brother Michael was a natural when it came to computers. Jack and their mother had scraped together six years before and bought him an old Toshiba at Christmas. Mike had learned to programme by hacking in to his games to gain more lives and become the envy of the gamers in street. It had seemed natural for him to progress through school and now be applying for a place in a degree course on programming. He was eight years younger than his brother and that gap was a huge chasm when it came to electronics. Jack could work the phone and the stereo and managed to laboriously type his course reports on the old Dell, but Mike seemed to be able to work the things telepathically.
"You want me to scan it or copy it?"
"What's the difference?" They were up in the loft that the pair of them had converted into men's territory, with Jack's desk jammed in at a gable corner and Mike's study area festooned with wires and hardware. Mike gave him a suffering look.
"If I scan it, I use the scanner. It has word recognition of a sort and will convert it into type. Or I can copy the whole thing and jiggle it around to get the font right."
"Don't you get technical on me," Jack said. Mike was more slender, but dark like himself. "Jiggle it around. Is that in the manual?"
Mike laughed. "It's quicker to scan. I got a program here that will do a great imitation."
"Then that's the one I want. I need it to look like the real thing."
He handed over the papers that Jed had sneaked out of the dairy.
"I need this and this," he said, spreading the sheets. He took out another paper unfolded it. "And can you do me something like this?"
"Carson Convoy? Who are they?"
"Can you do it?"
"Does the pope wear a pointy hat?" Mike glanced up from the sheet of paper. "This is a lease document. What's it for?"
"Trust me, Mikey boy, you don't want to know. Anybody asks, you know nothing, right?"
"What are you up to, Jack? Anything to do with those guys that duffed us up?"
Jack ruffled his bother's hair and Mike dodged out of the way. He'd always hated that. "Yes and no. I'm trying to get a few things sorted out. And get a few people sorted out while I'm at it."
"But this is a hire agreement for trucks. You fake them and you're in deep shit."
"Look kiddo, we copy these and print them out, making them look like the real McCoy, and then you forget about it, or I make you eat the damn things. Got the picture?"
"Don't get shirty, shorty."
Mike pulled back and looked Jack in the eye. "Listen Jake, you sure you're okay? I mean, if you're up to something that could get you the nick, I mean.... "
"Nothing like that, egg-head. You're the brains of the family. I'm the brawn. You get this fixed for me and I'll see you're fixed okay. Trust me, I'm your brother."
"That never made any difference before now," Mike said, but he was smiling now.
"Trust me or I'll kick the shit out of you."
"That's more like it."
"And we need a web site of our own," Jack said.
"Who's we?"
"Need to know," Jack said. He thought he should just engrave that phrase on his forehead. "And you definitely don't."
"You have to start telling me something sometime. I can fix up a website, but I have to know what you want in it."
"A whole lot of lies," Jack admitted.
Kate never recognised him at all. Joanne Cleary was an expert and Ed's girlfriend Donna Bryce had teamed up with her to put fifteen years on him. He had done the deal backstage at the Starlight show, when the rest of the cast were swilling beer and cheap white wine after the final curtain on the last night, air-kissing and signing programmes and pretending to be real actors. Kate had given him the big posters he needed and after the party he had gone home and sat up half the night, working a few things out.
Donna spread newspapers on the kitchen floor, slipped an old tablecloth around his neck and began to cut his hair, starting with the hank that fell down over his eyes. She worked fast, talking all the time, while Neil and Jed watched. Joanne was the direct opposite of her brother, fine featured and dark, with eyes that were almost jet black and an olive complexion that contrasted with his freckles. She took after their mother in looks and temperament and her three years at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and drama were paying off here. She sat at the kitchen table, preparing her make-up box while Donna began the bleaching process and then added the colour that converted the former black into a steely grey. She blew dried Jack's hair into a short slashback style and stripped off the tablecloth. When he turned round, even Joanne was amazed. The change in style and colour had added ten years to him. It was up to her to do the rest with the collection of brushes and skin tones and latex.
When they had gone, he put on his grandfather's old brown tweed suit and when he looked in the mirror, he almost stepped back in real amazement. A stranger stared back at him over the top of grandad's rimless glasses, a stranger who looked remarkably like the photograph of the wold man that stood on his mum's dresser.
Jack's eyes were the same blue they'd always been, and his brows still dark and thick, but it was the face of a forty-year-old who bent forward to examine him. He had one thumb hooked in the belly pocket of the waistcoat, faint crows feet around the eyes and a sharper nose. He smiled and the brackets on either side of his mouth appeared deeper and darker.
"Now would you look at that?"
The Irish accent came out of the blue, unplanned and spontaneous, but it fit with the image. He had the right colouring and the right suit. "Top of the morning to you, and bottom of the afternoon as well, begod."
He grinned at himself and knew he could pull this off. Jack walked back into the hallway and began to strip the jacket off when the door suddenly opened.
"What it the name of christ...." His uncle took one look and for a man on the other side of sixty he was on him faster than even Jack himself would have believed. The old man flung a straight punch which caught him right on the cheek with a meaty thud. Jack was standing with the jacket peeled off, his arms still jammed in the sleeves, defenceless. The punch was hard enough to rock his head to the side. Two quick belly blows doubled him up as he struggled to free himself and knocked the wind from him before he could get a word out.
"Scumbag," Sandy grunted. Jack got his arm out of a sleeve, trying to shake the old man off, still unable to catch his breath. "I'll teach you to break in on me."
He'd always been strong, Jack knew that, but he was still surprisingly fast. Jack squirmed out of the head-lock, managed to push himself to his feet, grab a breath.
"Stop it, Sandy . You're killing me."
Sandy Bruce raised a gnarled fist to catch him another one on the eye and Jack blocked it with his left, grabbed the wrist and hung on tight.
"Honest. I give in."
"Jack?" Sandy pulled back, startled. "What the hell.....?"
"Yeah, it's me. I never expected you back for ages."
"For heaven's sake, boy. What in the name's happened to you?"
Jack held on to the wrist, just in case. Sandy leant forward.
"Is that my glasses?"
"No, it's grandad's old pair."
"And what's happened to your hair, man. You look like you've seen a ghost." He pulled back further. "Just what are you up to?"
Jack eased himself upright, and pulled Sandy up to his feet. He sat down while his uncle got his own breath back.
"Put the kettle on. I suppose I'd better tell you the score before you kick the living shit out of me."
Sandy made a cup of tea and then he broke the first of the two rules of business. He told his uncle everything.
They welcomed him at Dunvegan distillery and insisted he took a dram of the finest malt that was even older than he was. It had taken two hours and twenty minutes to get from Levenford to the bridge across the sound to Skye, and then another hour to cross the whole island to get to the little distillery nested in a narrow little glen, huddled in from the big winds and storms that swept in from the other side of the Atlantic. The time factor bothered him and his backside was numb and sore. Tam was used to travelling about on the big Dragstar and maybe his skin was calloused by now, but three hours on the rough roads north wasn't merciful on the tailbone and Jack needed a hot bath to soak the stiffness out. He glanced at himself in the mirror of the hotel bedroom, and realised he felt the way he looked. Tam stayed out of sight when he called for a local cab to take him up to the distillery and none of the Dunvegan union men who had been down protesting at the closure gave him a second glance. He got a tour of the premises and the stock, and Alistair Sproat called from Aitkenbar just to make sure everything was going to plan. Jack didn't even have to concentrate on the accent. The very fact of wearing his grandfather's good tweed suit just brought out whatever Celt was in him. His cheek still hurt, but Neil's sister had smoothed over the abrasions with some thick cream and managed to get it to match the other one.
"Mr Gabriel," Sproat had shaken his hand, strong and surprisingly firm when Jack had expected it to be weak and sweaty.
Never make assumptions, they just make an ass out of u and me. Was that from one of the business course chapters, or had he heard it in a movie? Jack shucked the thought away, needing to concentrate. This was the difficult part. The rest of it was just down to timing and organisation and making sure everybody did their bit.
Margery Burns had given him the eye when he sat down in the neat reception area with the big coffee table books that showed the basics of how whisky was made at Aitkenbar. She brought him a coffee and looked him up and down, taking in the good handmade suit cut in a classic style, and the thick grey hair. Jack nodded, not risking a smile just in case any of the latex peeled away from his nose.
"You're from Ireland?"
He nodded again, wishing she would go away. She'd made sure her fingers touched his when she passed the coffee and he wondered if Jed knew he wasn't the exclusive stable jockey. Maybe he didn't care.
"And are you staying here today?"
He shook his head, lowered his voice and the Ulster accent didn't let him down.
"I'll be flying back tonight."
"That's a shame," she said, and smiled, letting him know that if he changed his mind, accommodation would not be a problem. She was either making up for lost time or really going for revenge. Whatever way, she was doing a fine job.
Sproat saw him in to the board room, narrow and panelled, with a big mahogany table from the golden days of the past before the big conglomerates began to squeeze everybody and before designer drinks took the wind out of the old whisky sails. Jack concentrated on his manner, glad that he'd spent the night going over everything, predicting any questions. If Margery Burns hadn't recognised him, nobody would. The octagonal rimless glasses gave him an air of aloofness, and that was no bad thing. We never get a second chance to make a good first impression. Another rule. He was well primed.
"A client of mine understands you have a fine supply of whiskies that you might be looking to move on," Jack said.
"There's always a possibility of business," Sproat said urbanely.
Jack had seen the books. Margery was truly helpful, if extremely insistent. It had not been an easy thing to keep out of the grasp of those red nails.
"We'd be interested in an initial tranche of a hundred barrels of eight-year-old. You have that, plus another hundred of five and a considerable bulk of under-age that's going to take a bit of moving. There's a possibility we could be talking about a fairly sizeable order."
"I have to say you're very well informed, Mr Gabriel." Sproat was smiling as he crossed to the ornate tantalus that caged three exquisite decanters.
"Call me Michael," Jack said. "Everybody else does. Sure, it's best to do the homework first, so you can enjoy yourself afterwards."
"I've done some homework myself. Your brokerage is fairly new."
"Brand spanking new. It's a branch-out, some young heads and some old money. It's just a change of market. We were mostly in the Balkans until the market fell away, if you understand. Now there's better business in the Baltic. They're fed up with the Vodka and like a taste of the ould stuff, even if it's costing an arm and a leg."
"Yes, I saw that on the web-site." Sproat poured two manly glasses.
"If we don't take care of the customer, somebody else will. My clients believe in that philosophy and if you're interested, you can get a better deal than from any of the big boys. There's a lot of new money over there looking for a place to come in out of the cold, if you take my meaning. Good quality Scotch is in big demand, and over there, quality remains long after the price is forgotten."
"Over here too," Sproat beamed. Jack had done his homework and he knew just how keen Sproat was to empty the warehouses now that the deal was almost complete with the developers. Everybody knew he'd be doing a stock clearance and the buyers would be waiting to the last minute to scoop low at auction. Anything that upped the price and achieved a quick sale would have the gleam of gold over it.
"Tell me Michael, do you play golf?"
"Indeed I do. You'll be looking for a challenge would you?"
"I'll fix up a game at the club," Sproat said.
"Good. You do that." Jack was well into it.
"Now, we also understand that your place on Skye, well, that's just going to be empty warehousing now."
"There's interest from the tourist board," Sproat said. Dunvegan was tiny, not a major part of the set-up. "They've applied to enterprise for money to turn it into an attraction."
"Shame to see it change business," Jack said. "Now, we would be needing somewhere to store and mature."
He could see the money signs light up in Sproat's eyes. Jack lifted his glass and allowed himself to drain it. It was the smoothest whisky he had ever tasted in his life. He wondered where he could get a bottle for Sandy.