by Karen Swan
‘And how does he seem?’
‘Frail, although don’t tell him I said that. He should still be resting.’
Sholto tutted. ‘Another of his foolhardy moves, running into that fire. You’ve seen the headlines, I expect, painting him as some sort of have-a-go hero?’
‘Yes.’
‘God knows what he thought he was doing,’ Sholto muttered.
‘I heard he went in to decouple the dust collectors, to stop an explosion moving through the ducting systems and taking out the rest of the distillery. All things considered, we might be wise to consider this one of his finer moments,’ she said generously.
‘But imagine if he’d been killed. Imagine the headlines then. We’d probably have been closed down on some Health and Safety point because of it and all those people’s jobs would have been lost. There are trained professionals to deal with that kind of thing.’
‘You’re right, of course.’
He sighed. ‘I doubt he’ll have learnt any lessons from it, though. I expect he’ll continue in the same vein as before, thinking he’s untouchable and unaccountable.’
Alex, feeling inexplicably defensive of Lochlan for once, decided not to say anything further as Sholto came deeper into the room and perched on the end of the desk. Whether or not Lochlan’s actions had been correct or brave or justified was beside the point.
‘Where did you say he’s gone again?’
‘Something to do with inspecting an old storage unit, he said.’
‘So then we’re at liberty to talk freely for a few moments?’
‘I should think so.’
‘Tell me, how’s it going? I’ve been eager to know but as I mentioned at our meeting in Edinburgh, I think the less contact between you and me, probably the better.’
‘I have to agree. Lochlan has been incredibly resistant to the idea of even talking to me, much less working with me, and I think it’s partly because he feels that as you hired me, I must be in the enemy camp.’
‘Mmm. I can’t say it surprises me. He’s a stubborn beggar. Probably doesn’t help that you’re a woman either.’
Alex wondered whether that was strictly true – had her being a woman stopped him from ejecting her from his office? Or would he simply have thrown her further if she’d been a man?
‘So, you’ve not had much luck then?’
‘Not much, I’ll be honest. I did think I was beginning to make some headway with him earlier in the week, but I’m afraid with the fire intervening I’ve most likely lost that little momentum now. And even if I haven’t, I’m not sure when he’ll be well enough to sit down and work with me. He inhaled a lot of smoke.’
Sholto looked concerned – though not by the report of Lochlan’s health. ‘Can you still meet the target?’
She inhaled deeply, thinking over the events of the past few days, even the last hour: Skye’s fretting over him, Lochlan’s frustration that she remained off limits . . . Increasingly she was beginning to think that his former fiancée was his only area of vulnerability, in which case, did this business problem have a personal solution? Could the fire have opened their eyes to their true feelings for one other? Could it even have hastened things along a little? ‘I think so.’
‘You think so?’ Sholto echoed sceptically.
‘I’m quietly confident—’
‘Confident about what?’ Lochlan asked, suddenly appearing at the door and stopping at the sight of Sholto on his desk.
‘Ah, Lochie,’ Sholto said, rising and walking over to him. ‘Miss Hyde here was just telling me she’s confident you’ll be up on your feet again in no time. Is that true? We need to find a way to get back into production before Christmas.’
‘Before Christmas? Christ, that’s punchy,’ Lochlan laughed mirthlessly. ‘In case you’re not up to speed, we lost all the malt stores in the fire so that’s a two-week time lag even if we got a new delivery in the steeps today – which we won’t because the lead in the steeps buckled in the heat so we need new ones to be cast first. And then of course there’s the small issue of the barley loft being completely destroyed so there’s nowhere to actually do the malting,’ he added with no small amount of sarcasm.
Sholto shot him a stern look and there was a long pause as they waited for him to calm down.
Lochlan – so ready to anger – took a deep breath and put his hands on his hips. ‘However, I’ve just scouted one of the old hay units,’ he said in a more conciliatory tone. ‘It’s not really big enough but it’s not like we’ve got any other options: the floor’s sound and it’s well ventilated. It wouldn’t take much to get it cleaned up and fitted out; and if I can get the copper shop to knock us up some new steeps, the best-case scenario would mean we could get a first batch in by next week – that could then steep over the festive break and it’d be ready to go in the kilns straight after New Year.’
‘But that’s still three weeks from now,’ Sholto said with a tut.
‘Well, what else do you suggest we do?’ Lochlan replied, impatient again. ‘It wasn’t like the fire was planned. None of us saw this coming.’
‘And what has it exposed? That we have no backup, no contingency. This simply highlights the case that I’ve been making for years now, that the site is too small. We don’t have enough stores.’
‘And as I’ve been telling you, there’s no point in having more stores if we can’t fill them. We are hamstrung by our peat stocks. That peat is what makes Kentallen unique. We can’t ship it in; we can’t replicate it. I’m no happier about it than you are but the facts are the facts: our greatest strength is also our greatest limitation. When will you accept that we can be small and still be the best?’
‘And when will you accept that there’s not just profit in consolidation but security too? Something like this would never have happened if we—’
‘What?’ Lochlan snapped. ‘Sold out?’
Sholto’s cheeks flamed. ‘The site is too small, the buildings too old and the technology inadequate,’ he said in an ominously quiet voice. ‘We have to move with the times. I would have thought that you – as a young man – would see that more than me.’
‘Oh, I do. I see that diversification is the answer, not consolidation. We can grow and still be our own masters.’
‘How? With what?’ Sholto scoffed. ‘We don’t even have the money to get the bloody CCTV working!’
‘You know how. Reinvest the profits.’
Sholto held his hand up. ‘Stop right there. The proposal was unequivocally thrown out.’
‘Not unequivocally. Bruce supported it. And I think Mhairi could be convinced . . .’
Alex, watching the dynamic closely, saw Lochlan’s jaw pulse: he was barely keeping his temper in check. That anger, always there.
There was a knock at the door behind Lochlan.
‘Yes?’ he asked, whirling round, his expression changing as he saw it was Skye again. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sa— Look, I’ve taken them,’ he snapped, shaking the pill packet at her.
‘It’s not that,’ Skye said, looking startled. Hurt. ‘Dad’s asked if you can join him by the rack warehouse.’ She looked at Sholto. ‘All of you.’
‘What, now?’ Lochlan asked, clearly eager to get back to his argument.
‘He says it’s urgent.’
At Sholto’s insistence – no doubt to use her as a buffer between him and his combustible CEO – Alex was obliged to join them. They walked across the courtyard past the canteen and the copper shop, to the warehouse, where the barrels had been restacked outside the night of the fire. Fresh snow had settled on top of the tarpaulins that had been cloaked over them, and Torquil was already there, talking to Bruce.
‘Sholto,’ Bruce said, shaking his hand as the men met. ‘How are things?’
‘You mean, apart from the obvious?’
‘Och well, aye . . .’ Bruce murmured, his gaze snagging on Alex in her worker’s uniform.
‘You’ve met Miss Hyde, I assume?’ Sholto asked courteousl
y.
‘Of course. She put us all to shame on the shoot last weekend. Although I barely recognized you, I must say,’ he said with a smile.
Alex looked down at the worker’s uniform and her bare arms, suddenly feeling the cold. It had been fine when she’d been working up a sweat in the office, but standing here in the softly falling snow, she gave a shiver. She wouldn’t be able to stand out here for long. ‘Admittedly, I don’t usually go undercover. I do prefer to wear my own clothes,’ she smiled.
Lochlan gave a derisive snort and she shot him a look – although perhaps he had a point.
‘Well, thanks for coming. I’ll make it quick seeing as it’s perishing. Do you want the good news first or the bad?’ Bruce asked, rubbing his hands together briskly as the snow continued to flutter and they all lightly stamped their feet.
‘More bad news?’ Sholto asked grimly. ‘Haven’t we had our share?’
‘I’m afraid it’s all connected.’
‘Let’s lead with the bad then. Get it out of the way.’
‘Well, as we feared, the fire has affected some of the stock. I’m afraid the first few batches we’ve sampled of the seven-year-old virgin oak casks have shown fizzing upon pouring.’ He sighed. ‘Now, they were at the very back of the warehouse, closest to the fire, so this could be as bad as it gets, but worst-case scenario? The whole lot could be unusable.’
Lochlan winced, physically turning away and planting his hands on his hips, and Alex remembered what Torquil had told her about their upcoming stock squeeze six years from now: someone a generation back had miscalculated and numbers were tight enough as it was, without a fire depleting the rest of their reserves. These virgin oak casks – though doing well for some other brands – had been a new and untried category for Kentallen, but Torquil had told her it had been their only chance at riding out this supply crisis.
‘But look, we knew they might be the worst affected,’ Bruce said, trying to mollify. ‘Everything else was thankfully sufficiently far from the blaze at that point as to not suffer too great a change in temperature, and the snow has helped to dissipate the smoke stench in the dunnage; I’m hopeful that if we can start getting the casks back into the dunnage in the next few days and regulate temperatures again, no lasting damage will have been done to the rest.’
‘But the seven is our cash cow – lower price point, easier palate,’ Lochie said abruptly. ‘She’s bringing in the new business, she’s where we need the numbers as we come up to the shortfall.’
‘Aye, and it’s a blow. But the good news I’ve got for you may actually compensate for it. In fact, in a funny way, the fire may just have done us a favour.’
‘You think?’ Lochlan muttered sarcastically, one arm in the air indicating the charred wreckage behind them.
‘In all the reshuffling that night, we unearthed a few barrels of a malt which was in the furthest corner from the fire. It was buried right away behind the ’67s, deliberately hidden behind a wooden board. Unless you knew it was there, you couldn’t see it.’
‘And what is it?’ Lochlan asked.
‘That’s just it – we don’t know. It wasn’t on the inventory system and never has been, as far as we can tell. No one’s ever seen it and there’s no record of it. I certainly had no idea about it and I’ve been here almost fifty years.’
There was a brief pause.
‘What are you saying, Bruce?’ Sholto frowned. ‘That we have a malt no one knew about?’
Bruce grinned, rubbing his hands together vigorously and not just because of the cold this time. ‘Aye, exactly that. I’m saying we’ve hit on the holy grail – a hidden malt. An eighty-five-year-old hidden malt.’
‘Eighty-five . . . ?’ Torquil spluttered as an audible gasp went round.
Alex looked around the group: they were all open-mouthed whilst Skye was grinning from ear to ear. Clearly, this was a big deal.
‘But . . . the angels’ share,’ Torquil spluttered. ‘Surely there’s nothing left.’
‘That’s what we thought too. But all I can say is your grandfather must have had an excellent cooper back then. Not to mention, the particular area where it was sitting on the earth in the dunnage was damp – we think there must be a water source close by. Either way, it’s meant it created a little humidity pocket which slowed down the rate of evaporation. We need to look into it more closely, but our estimates at the moment are that we’d have enough for sixty, maybe sixty-five bottles.’
‘Of an eighty-five-year-old malt,’ Sholto breathed, saying the words over and over and looking as though he’d been hypnotized. ‘What’s the oldest that’s gone to market?’
‘The Mortlach seventy-year-old Speyside,’ Lochlan said without hesitation. ‘Fifty-four bottles at ten grand each and a hundred and sixty-two smaller bottles at two and a half.’
‘Worth considering,’ Torquil nodded, locking eye contact with his cousin and nodding intently, both clearly on the same wavelength for once. ‘More at a lower price point opens up the market.’
‘We should have new bottles designed for it,’ Lochlan replied. ‘It’s going to generate massive interest when it comes out – it needs to be special. In fact, I had an idea a while back for the upcoming private reserve sixty to have its labels punched from copper but it would be even better suited on this.’
‘Ho!’ Sholto held up his hands. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, gentlemen. This must be strictly confidential until the say-so. There can’t be any talk of limited-edition bottles and special labels. It’s bad enough having the press still crawling about the place; if the wrong ears were to get wind of this, we’d have people robbing us in the night.’ He turned to face their master blender. ‘And besides, the most pertinent question of all has not yet been asked. Have you drawn any off yet, Bruce? How does it actually taste?’
Bruce shook his head. ‘I thought we should do that together. It’ll be a special moment.’
‘We hope,’ Torquil said cautiously. ‘What if it’s gone too far?’
‘Well, there’s only one way to find out. I’m going to get these barrels moved over to the sampling lab; security’s tightest there and we certainly can’t leaving them sitting out here. Shall we all reconvene there at eight tonight? I realize it’s late but it’s best to be cautious and let everyone go home first; we don’t want a crowd.’
‘Quite right,’ Sholto nodded. ‘Eight it is, everybody.’
The group dispersed, all of them walking away with decidedly more spring in their steps than when they’d arrived.
‘A hidden malt, huh?’ Alex asked, going over to Skye and walking alongside her. ‘It even sounds exciting. I imagine this is a blender’s dream come true, isn’t it?’
‘God yes, as Dad said, it’s the holy grail for any distillery. I’ve heard of hidden malts before, of course, but usually they’ve been deliberately hidden when a master blender hasn’t wanted them to be used in a blend, when he considers a malt to be too good for that.’
Alex wrinkled her nose in confusion. ‘But . . . Kentallen doesn’t produce blends.’
‘Aye. And we don’t let anyone use our malts for their blends either.’
Alex stopped walking. ‘So then why would it have been hidden?’
‘I’ve got no idea,’ Skye shrugged. ‘But Grandad must have been up to something. He taught Dad everything about Kentallen; Dad could identify every vintage in here blindfolded. It’s inconceivable that one could have been hidden all this time and he not know about it. It must have been put away for a damned good reason.’
‘But if your father didn’t know his father had hidden it, we’ll probably never know what that reason was.’
Skye nodded and gave a hapless shrug. ‘No. I guess not. But if it tastes as good as it should do, after eighty-five years –’ her eyes gleamed excitedly – ‘who really cares?’
Chapter Fourteen
She could smell the coal smoke long before she reached the house, or could even see it from the moor. She pulled off h
er boots with her feet and left them in the porch, returning to the small box on the windowsill the snowy bobble hat and home-made scarf that Mrs Peggie had loaned her ‘for the duration’. Burberry it wasn’t, but Alex found she rather liked its homespun charm. Hanging her coat on the peg in the hall, she glanced through to the dining room and kitchen; but the voices came from her right.
‘Hello?’ she smiled wanly, seeing Mrs Peggie through the open crack of the sitting-room door and popping her head through.
‘Miss Hyde, you’re back.’ Mrs Peggie was sitting in her husband’s wing chair, the fire flickering nicely, boxes scattered at her feet. A small Christmas tree had been put up in the corner; it must have been freshly cut for it still smelled of the outdoors – peat and pine fragrancing the little room and mingling with the alder coal smoke.
‘I am,’ Alex nodded. It didn’t matter how many times she asked Mrs Peggie to call her Alex, she accepted now that she never would.
‘Would you like a wee cup of tea?’
‘That would be lovely. But I’ll get it.’
‘No, no, you come in and warm up, you look perished. I need to check on the beef anyway. I take it the snow’s falling again?’ the older woman asked, taking the box off her lap and setting it down on the low coffee table to her side. She pushed herself to standing with a groan.
‘Yes, pretty hard. Here, do you need a hand?’ Alex asked, coming further into the room and holding out a hand to pull her up.
‘Och, you’re kind. It’s dashed annoying being so stiff.’
‘You put people half your age to shame.’
‘Well, my foot’s playing up so I thought I may as well take advantage of a quiet house, rest it and get on with sorting out these boxes.’
‘You look very busy. Sifting through that lot will take hours, surely.’
‘Aye,’ Mrs Peggie sighed with a weary shake of her head. ‘You take a seat and make yourself comfortable while I go and get us some tea. Feel free to have a look if you like.’
‘What is it?’
‘Mr P.’s father’s boxes. For the museum. I reckon if he can’t make a start, I will. Though it’s awful haunting to read some of it. I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t why he’s been putting it off.’ She tutted, sadness in her eyes. ‘Just terrible what those poor families went through.’