‘Precisely. It isn’t safe, as you see.’
‘You told me it was because of the building, because it might fall down. Not because—’ I don’t know how to express it, whether it’s safe to do so: Not because there is something in here you don’t want me to see.
‘Yes. You’re either less stupid than I had banked on you being – or a lot more stupid. I’m trying to work out which. I think it’s probably the latter.’
Why – why – did I not just wait for the police, voice my suspicions to them? I am stupid. More than that, I didn’t even tell Doug where I was going. Because you knew he would stop you. I have been a complete idiot. This whole thing, suddenly, looks like a suicide mission. And the thought occurs to me … was it a suicide mission? I think of the oblivion I have contemplated in the past: the pills, the bridge. I have spent a long time thinking that perhaps dying wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. But now – and perhaps it’s just some deep-rooted animal instinct – I suddenly discover I want to live.
‘Look,’ I say, trying to sound calm, reasonable. ‘Let’s pretend I didn’t see any of this. I’ll just go away, and it will be like it never happened.’
He actually laughs. ‘No, I don’t think we can do that.’
I stare at him. If it weren’t so horrifying it might almost be fascinating, the change that has come over this man, who, from what I gleaned, seemed a simple, uncomplicated sort, if a bit taciturn. But then it isn’t a change, I realise. This is the real him. He’s just worn the other persona like a cloak.
He steps forward, reaching with his spare arm, and I flinch away. ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘We’ll do it like this.’ He raises the rifle. I go rigid, my skin tightening, my throat closing up in terror. I think: This is it. He’s going to kill me.
‘Start walking,’ he says. ‘What are you waiting for?’
He directs me around the other side of the stable block. Keeping the rifle vaguely trained in my direction, he reaches for the keycode. This is my opportunity, I think. This is the bit where I could try and run. But run to where? There is just gaping whiteness, all around. He couldn’t hope for a clearer target. So I can only wait while he opens the door and ushers me inside, into the darkness.
Immediately, I realise that it’s much warmer in here than I expected. In the corner of the room, I see, he has set up a generator.
‘How nice of you,’ I say, trying to sound less afraid than I feel. ‘To think of me.’
He sneers.
‘And what have you got there?’ I ask. ‘Brown paper packages tied up with string?’
I am talking, because the talking – the effort of not screaming, of forming the words – seems to be keeping me calm.
‘Exactly,’ Iain says. ‘And you definitely don’t need to worry your little head about what’s inside.’
But I need to keep him talking. I have to find a way to stay alive – and at the moment, distracting him from the business of killing me is the only card I have up my sleeve. There’s no point in promising him I won’t tell anyone about what I’ve seen. He won’t believe me. He would probably be right.
So instead, I ask, ‘Is this what you’ve been doing the whole time? The jobs about the estate – were they just a ruse? I can imagine this is probably a bit more lucrative.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ he says. And then he gives a sort of ‘why not?’ shrug – which cannot be good. If he’s deciding it’s OK to tell me things, he has also decided that I won’t have an opportunity to tell them to anyone else. No point in thinking like that. Just buy yourself time. Time is life.
‘If you must know,’ he says, ‘I like to think of this as just another one of my jobs. I build a mean dry-stone wall. I can re-grout a windowpane in ten minutes. And I make a pretty good … delivery man.’
‘I see,’ I say, slowly, as though I am fascinated by his genius. ‘You bring it in on your truck from—’
‘Let’s just say from somewhere,’ he says, faux-patient.
‘And then you keep it here and then—’ I try to think beyond the wailing panic alarm in my head. What would be the point in bringing it here, one of the remotest places in the UK, with no way of getting it anywhere else?
And then I think of the history of the place. The old laird, insisting they build him his station. ‘Then you put it on the train.’
He doffs an imaginary cap to me with his free hand. ‘Straight down to London.’ He smiles, and the expression makes him look all the more sinister. I wonder how I could ever have thought he was a normal, simple-living guy. He looks like a maniac. He looks more than capable of strangling that woman. I won’t ask him about that yet, though. I’ll keep him talking on this.
The radio, I think. If I could just get my hand to the transmit button, I might be able to get through to Doug. I could keep my finger on the button so there won’t be any giveaway feedback. He’d hear everything. Perhaps I could even say something that would let him know exactly where I am.
‘Straight down to London,’ I say. ‘How very clever. Like the whisky, in the old days. Of course – they think the laird himself was in on that, did you know?’
Iain doesn’t say anything. But he does give me a look. Duh.
‘Oh.’ The realisation hits me like a punch to the gut. ‘The boss is in on this too?’
Iain doesn’t answer – he doesn’t need to.
It’s just like the old times: the laird taking a cut from the smuggled whisky. And I’ve spent the last year blithely going about my business in the office – wondering, would the boss like to advertise the Lodge a bit more widely? Of course he didn’t want to. The business must have been a nice blind for him – but too many visitors, and people might start noticing things.
I have been a complete fool. They must have been laughing at me, all this time. The idiot in the office, not seeing what was going on under her very nose.
‘And how do you get it on the train?’ I ask. ‘Without anyone noticing?’
He gives me another look. Of course: that station guard, Alec. I think of how he behaved when I went to look around the station, the way he stood in front of the door up to his flat. Because he had something to hide.
Doug, I think. Does he know? Am I the only one here who has been kept in the dark? It might have been a kind of quid pro quo: turn a blind eye to the goings-on here, and we’ll turn a blind eye to your criminal record.
If I radio him, now, will he simply ignore me? He wouldn’t want me to die, though, would he? I think of how open, how vulnerable he was with me back at the Lodge. But that could all have been an act. Because the truth is, I realise, it was all a brief fantasy. I don’t actually know him at all.
I have to try; it’s my only chance. In incremental movements, so as not to draw attention, I inch a hand up my body, towards my pocket. Iain doesn’t seem to notice. He’s studying the gun as though it were a particularly fascinating pet.
I slide my hand into my pocket, slowly, slowly. My fingers brush the antenna of the radio, feeling for the hard body of it.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
His face is dark with anger. He strides over to me in a couple of steps. ‘N-nothing.’