Helen eyed him in surprise. ‘I’d like that,’ she replied. ‘Shall I meet you in front of the house in ten minutes?’
‘Aye. I’ll see you then.’ He nodded, put the truck back in gear, and drove off towards the castle.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Helen muttered. ‘The man can not only talk in complete sentences, he can smile, too.’
And although she’d detected a trace of whisky on his breath, she chose to ignore it.
If it took a ‘wee dram’ to make Colm MacKenzie more sociable, and if a bit of whisky took away the scowl from his face, then she was all for it.
Helen was just coming back up the drive after a brief walk when Colm drew the truck to a stop in front of the main entrance.
‘Are you ready for the grand tour?’ Colm called out as he leant out the window.
‘I am. And I hope you’ve got the heater going. It’s bloody freezing out here!’
He reached over and threw the door open, and Helen climbed, shivering, inside the truck cab. She was doing up her seat belt when Colm turned to her and held out a flask. ‘Have some. It’s whisky.’
She hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t...’
‘Go on,’ he invited. ‘It’ll warm you up.’ He lifted his brow. ‘Think of it as a before-dinner drink. If you were in the drawing room with the Campbells right now, I guarantee you’d be having a glass.’
That decided her, and she took the flask from him, tilted her head back, and took a swig.
Colm put the truck in gear and with a lurch, they were off. ‘I’ll show you the distillery first,’ he called out over the noise of the engine. ‘It’s what keeps the castle going.’
‘Whisky,’ Helen observed dryly, ‘is the lifeblood of the Campbells.’
‘Aye, and good stuff Draemar whisky is, too.’ He grinned and glanced at the flask. ‘You’re drinking it now.’
‘It’s very good,’ she agreed. ‘I don’t usually care much for the stuff, but this...well, I could learn to like it. A lot.’ She glanced at him. ‘What about you, Colm? Are you a whisky connoisseur?’
‘Hardly. I’m not much of a drinker, normally. But I do know good whisky from bad.’
‘You wouldn’t be much of a Scotsman if you didn’t.’
He laughed. ‘No, I suppose not.’ Returning his attention to the truck, he navigated down the sloping, snow-packed road that led to the Campbell distillery.
Like the castle, the building was made of stone and mortar and looked both impressive and invincible. Several dozen vehicles filled a nearby car park.
‘How many people does the distillery employ?’ Helen asked.
‘Eighty, at last count. Most are from the village.’
‘I see. So the Campbell family’s whisky makes for a booming local economy,’ she observed.
‘Aye, it keeps the village going. If the distillery ever went out, so would Loch Draemar.’ He threw the truck in reverse and headed back up the hill. ‘So tell me, Helen Thomas ‒ how’s that news story of yours getting on?’
She stared at him. Did Colm suspect that she was investigating Andrew’s death, that she was investigating him?
‘You know,’ he prodded as he saw her blank look, ‘the scoop you were after, the scoop on Dominic and Gemma’s secret wedding.’
‘Oh...yes.’ She managed a brief smile. ‘There’s nothing much going on at the moment, only Gemma driving us all mad with the wedding preparations, leaving stacks of bridal magazines everywhere, and subjecting everyone to shouty phone calls to caterers and florists and dressmakers—’
There was a quick flash of brown as a deer darted out of the surrounding woods and bounded in front of the truck. With a curse Colm wrenched the steering wheel hard to the right to avoid hitting the creature, and slammed on the brakes.
Helen, thrown hard against him, began to tremble. ‘Oh God,’ she breathed, ‘oh God...’
‘Are you all right?’ Colm asked as he turned to her. His face was ashen; fear tightened his throat. ‘Are you hurt?’
She straightened and managed to shake her head. ‘No. No, I’m fine.’
‘Sorry about that. I never saw the bastard coming. Damn, that’s your bag landed on the floor. I’ll get it.’
He reached down to retrieve it. A photograph and keys lay on the floorboard as well. ‘Here,’ Colm said, and glanced at the picture of a dark-haired man just before he handed it over with the keys. ‘Who’s this? Is he the bloke you were talking to on the phone the other day?’
She snatched it away. ‘None of your business,’ she snapped.
Colm’s jaw tightened and the closed expression settled back on his face. ‘Right, then. That’s me put in my place.’
For a moment there was silence, with only the ticking of the engine and the sound of Helen’s ragged breathing to mar the quiet.
‘He was my husband,’ she said finally. She gazed down at the photograph in her hands, and her expression was empty. ‘David. We were married for three years. We met at university – he was studying law, I was studying journalism. I loved him. Even though he drove me mad with his refusal to put his dirty clothes in the laundry hamper, and even though he took perverse pleasure in tracking mud across my newly cleaned kitchen floor, I...loved him.’
Colm was silent, his hand resting on the gearshift, waiting.
‘He often worked long hours – he was a solicitor for a big firm in Canary Wharf. He’d bring home Chinese, or curry, and we’d sit on the floor in front of the coffee table and watch telly. He tried to teach me to use chopsticks. But I never could manage them properly.’
‘I still can’t,’ Colm admitted.
‘When I found out I was pregnant,’ Helen went on, turning the photo round and round in her hands, ‘we were so excited. We wanted lots of children, at least four or five. Two boys, three girls.’ She smiled fondly. ‘The ultrasound showed a boy. David was ecstatic.’
‘I can imagine,’ he murmured.
‘I was seven months along when we went to David’s office Christmas party. It was raining. He didn’t want to go, nor did I; I couldn’t drink, and I was as big as a lorry. But I convinced him to go, to at least show his face and mingle with the higher-ups.’
Colm reached out and took her hand. It was cold, he noticed as he squeezed it. ‘You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Helen,’ he said gently.
She shook her head and squeezed his hand back before she released it. ‘I want to,’ she whispered, her voice low but firm. ‘I need to. I’ve not talked about it properly to anyone since it happened, really.’
In a few, concise words – a journalist always kept to the facts, after all, the who, what, where, when, and why ‒ she told him about the ride home, David driving down the rain-slicked streets, the looming headlights of the lorry, the head-on collision, the implosion of glass as the windshield shattered.
‘David was killed instantly. I was thrown from the car; I was lucky to survive. Lucky,’ she added,