Page 23 of Fierce Highland Longing

“It’s only me.”

Callum came in dripping, boots off at the mat, holding a bundle of newspaper out in front of him.

“Two mackerel. My brother-in-law’s got more luck than sense.” He put them on the counter. “Tell Isla they’ll not keep past Thursday.”

I had the cloth over the table before he was through the door. It was the only quick thing I did all night.

“Sit down. You’re soaked.”

“Two minutes.” He sat anyway. His hands went round the glass I gave him, and the iron ring on his right hand knocked the side of it.

Callum’s eyes, sharp as a herring gull’s, swept the room before landing on Tavish. “You’re upright, then.”

“I am.”

“Good man.” He drank. “Isla’s hip any better for the weather?”

“She says a hip’s a hip.”

“That’s her.” He laughed, and it filled the room, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Eleven days without a blow. I’ve the tides written down since 1993, and I’ve nothing like it in the book.”

We talked about the mackerel and about a boat that came in wrong at Fraserburgh, and about Isla’s roof, and Callum cuts his own hair, and you can tell from the back of it.

Tavish had gone quiet in the window chair. His hand was in his pocket, and I could see him working something around in his fingers.

“You’ll not have been down the far end again.” He put it to the fire rather than to me. “Since that night.”

“No. I’ve been up on the headland mostly.”

“Aye. Better light up there.”

“That’s what I told him.” I forced my shoulders to relax.

“You’d want to keep off it altogether.” He set the glass down and turned it a quarter, the way he’d turn a bolt. “There’s a lad in Peterhead had two thousand pound of gear off a boathouse in September. Folk go through them. You get all sorts in an empty building, and half of it’s nothing, and then you get a thing wrapped up in oilcloth folded over three times, and you’d wonder who’d bother.” He stood and reached for his jacket. “Right. Isla’ll have my head about the fish.”

He got his boots on at the mat.

“Mind that step. It’s greasy. Night, both.”

The door shut, and the cold came in behind him, and the fire leaned sideways and came up again.

I sat there with my glass in my hand.

Nobody had seen that cloth. It went from a box behind a wall into my coat, and from my coat into a drawer, and out of the drawer onto this table twenty minutes ago, under a cover.

Corners in. Top over. Over again.

Only the man who wrapped it could know that.

My eyes met Tavish’s across the table.

He knew. He’d known all along.

And he still hadn’t taken it.

Chapter Ten

The Iron Man — Tavish