The Whisky Murders

Book 773: Murder Room

by Richard Grindal

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

A skilfully planned murder in Portugal; a clever con-game in Texas; a body washed up on the Galloway coast. What have these far-flung events in common? In a word: whisky. And not any kind of whisky, but a fine malt. Bruce Sanderson is on a ten-day holiday in the Highlands when he encounters Iain MacNair, who begins to teach him the mysteries of blending noble malts. He soon embarks on a relationship with MacNair's daughter Katriona but, shortly after, Macnair is murdered. Bruce begins to investigate the murder and soon finds that both he and Katriona are in the sights of a dangerous killer who will go to any lengths to protect an ingenious fraud.

Release date: January 14, 2016

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 192

Sample

THE GLASS DOORS separating the living-room from the patio were open and a hard, bright light fell across the swimming pool and the grass beyond, without
doing more than touch the dark mass of pine trees. Nor did the loud voices and strident laughter of the two men in the room do more than interrupt the endless rustle of the crickets, for the villa
was set high up in the pine wood, well away from the houses on the lower slopes of the hill near the road that led to Cascais.

They were two Scots drinking together; two Scots who had met in a hotel bar in Estoril and started a convivial evening that had grown more convivial the longer it lasted. True the elder man,
Fraser, was a Highlander, brought up in the Free Church, while Bryce was a Catholic from Clydebank, but small ethnic and religious differences could be overlooked by exiles in a foreign land.
Several whiskies bought mainly by Bryce, an engineer from a ship anchored in the Tagus, as he explained, and therefore with money to spare, were followed by an excellent dinner in one of the fish
restaurants around the harbour, with two bottles of Vinho Verde and one of the best Portuguese brandy. Afterwards they had driven in Fraser’s Mercedes, cautiously because he was canny enough
to realize that he was a little drunk, back to the villa which he had bought when he came to live in Portugal six years previously.

Now they were drinking another bottle of brandy which Bryce had insisted on bringing back from the restaurant, and it was he who poured the measures. Perhaps because they had been talking about
Scotland for most of the evening, they had turned now to life in Portugal; of how Fraser had become one of the British colony in Estoril, of how he played three times a week on the golf course,
supported the cricket team and subscribed to the British Hospital where his wife had been so well looked after during her terminal illness. A sentimental man, like so many otherwise combative
Scots, Fraser, who had been less than generous with his affection to his wife while she lived, grew maudlin as he spoke of her death and wept.

‘I brought her out to this paradise,’ he complained tearfully, ‘to live among the exiled royalty of Europe. At great expense, mind you. And what does she do? She dies on me in
less than two years. She leaves me alone.’

It took longer to get the man fou than Bryce had expected. Then at last, when the brandy bottle was almost empty, Fraser announced that he would fetch another from his kitchen, rose to his feet,
took two paces forward unsteadily and fell face down on the carpet. Bryce shook him roughly without getting more than a moan in response, but as a precaution he waited a full five minutes until the
drunken stupor was as effective as unconsciousness.

Lifting the limp body and carrying it into the bathroom required no feat of strength, for the old man was slight in build. He had chosen the bathroom because it had a window on the side of the
villa nearest to the garage and the added bonus of a gas-fired water heater. Leaving the house, he went to the garage where, he had learnt from a reconnaissance carried out the previous day, there
was a length of garden hose pipe. The late Mrs Fraser had spent much of her time trying in vain to make a British garden in the red, stony soil. Bryce had brought with him, and concealed under the
passenger seat of the Mercedes, a simple contrivance, specially made to connect the car’s twin exhausts to one end of the hose. Once this had been fitted, it was a simple matter to drop the
other end of the hose through the bathroom window, switch on the car’s engine and let it run. Then he sat down on the porch of the villa to wait.

When it was over and he had satisfied himself that Fraser was dead, he systematically and carefully removed all traces of his visit, rinsing his brandy glass and putting it away, sliding the
doors to the patio shut, drawing the curtains and switching off the lights in the living-room. In the bathroom he first took off Fraser’s jacket, tie and shoes and carried them into the
bedroom to give the impression that the dead man had gone into the bathroom to draw himself a bath and then he turned on the water heater. Finally, after wiping everything he had touched during the
evening, he left the house, coiled up the hose, replaced it in the garage and walked down to the main road through the pine trees, avoiding the dusty track which led past the other villas.

The hired car was still where he had left it earlier that day, concealed in another clump of trees a mile or so away. In a few minutes he was driving along the road to Lisbon where he would
cross the bridge over the Tagus and head for Spain. He drove carefully and at a moderate speed, knowing that an accident was the only possible unforeseen factor that could upset his plan. In any
event there was no reason for haste. Fraser’s body would not be discovered until the Portuguese maid arrived at the villa in the morning. After that it would be at least an hour before a
doctor or an ambulance made an appearance and another hour, more probably two, before the police went to the villa, even supposing they were called. And if anyone should be suspicious about the
cause of Fraser’s death, well, Bryce knew that the Department of Legal Medicine in Lisbon already had a backlog of more than 4,000 cases.

He might stop to allow himself the luxury of a couple of hours’ sleep before morning. In any case he would certainly have time for a leisurely meal at Madrid airport before he boarded the
plane for London. If the Glasgow shuttle was behaving itself he might be home in time for a few pints in the pub with his friends.

The bar in the Mansion on Turtle Creek was full, as it was most evenings around six-thirty. Well-heeled young businessmen who had dropped in for a drink on their way home from
the office mingled with others who had already collected their dates or their wives and were on their way to dine, either in the hotel itself or at one of the many excellent restaurants in
Dallas.

John Marshall Friend junior was there talking oil with his new associate, Dave Litman, who had just flown in from Houston where he had successfully negotiated an excellent contract for their
company. Mostly their negotiations were successful, for they were two of the smartest young operators in the off-shore oil business.

At the table next to theirs a silver-haired Scotsman was sitting with two executives of a New York public relations agency. Marshall Friend and Litman watched as the Scotsman patiently told the
elegant and very pretty waitress that he wanted a particular brand of Scotch whisky and that it should be served without ice but that he would like some water on the side. When the Scotch arrived
with a separate tumbler full of iced water, the Scotsman explained courteously to the girl that he wished to add the water to the Scotch himself to make sure he had exactly the right amount and for
that purpose he would like a small jug of water with no ice.

‘The gentleman wants a pitcher of water,’ one of the PR people interpreted for the waitress.

‘When I was in Houston,’ Litman remarked to Marshall Friend, ‘I was given a Scotch in this guy’s home that I’d never tasted before. It really was
something!’

‘Did he tell you the name of the whisky?’

‘I guess he did but I’ve forgotten it.’

‘Most likely it was a malt whisky.’

‘I didn’t know you were into Scotch, John.’

‘I learnt a lot about it—the hard way.’

‘How was that?’

Marshall Friend explained that when his father had died, he had found among the old man’s personal papers correspondence relating to an investment he had made some years previously. The
investment had been the purchase of five hogsheads of Scotch malt whisky. Marshall Friend senior, it appeared, had bought the whisky after reading a prospectus issued by Bonnie Braes Whisky
Incorporated, a company with an office in New York. The prospectus had claimed that anyone shrewd enough to put money into buying Scotch whisky could make a very substantial profit after twelve
years when the whisky was mature.

‘So my dad bought the whisky,’ Marshall Friend told Litman. ‘The deal was that they would keep the stuff for him at the distillery in Scotland and when it was mature he could
sell it. This Bonnie Braes outfit even promised in the brochure that they would buy it back at the going price.’

‘But it didn’t work out that way?’

‘I guess my dad forgot all about it. After all, the money he invested was peanuts. But when I found the papers I thought I’d get in touch with these Bonnie Braes people to see what
the whisky was worth. It kind of intrigued me.’

‘Don’t tell me!’ Litman grinned cynically. ‘Let me guess. Bonnie Braes had gone out of business.’

‘Right. They had vanished. I nosed around and found out that there had been a number of companies in the States working the same racket. Then the Securities and Exchange Commission had
started to get interested in them and they folded up their tents and slunk off into the night.’

‘And it was a rip off?’

‘I didn’t leave it there. I decided I’d find out if my dad really had been conned.’ One could not tell from Marshall Friend’s expression whether he would have been
disappointed or pleased to find that his father had been fallible enough to fall for a confidence trick.

Soon afterwards, he explained, he had taken the opportunity while on a business trip to Aberdeen to make a detour to Edinburgh where he had consulted a firm of solicitors. A junior partner of
the firm, a young man named Strachan, had been most helpful. As Marshall Friend had made an appointment to see him in advance, he had made a number of enquiries about the activites of Bonnie Braes
Whisky Inc. and similar firms who were promoting the same kind of investment, and had learnt a great deal.

The sale of new whisky ‘fillings’, as they were called, was, he had assured Marshall Friend, a perfectly legitimate business, but companies like Bonnie Braes had deceived potential
investors when they suggested that there was a role for private capital in the market. All the Scotch whisky blending firms who produced and marketed the different brands of Scotch bought the
fillings they required and financed their stocks themselves out of their own resources or by bank borrowings.

‘There’s no market in whisky futures,’ Marshall Friend told Litman, ‘as there is for many other commodities. So when these comedians persuaded private speculators to
order new whisky, they were just creating a pool of surplus Scotch which the industry would never need.’

‘Did you try selling your old man’s stock?’

‘This guy Strachan had already approached one or two firms of whisky brokers. Oh yes, they were ready to buy the whisky, but they offered a price marginally lower than my dad paid for
it.’

‘Some racket!’ Litman could not keep his admiration out of his tone.

‘You’d better believe it! You see what the poor saps who fell for it didn’t know was that Bonnie Braes were making them pay almost double what the distilleries were charging at
that time.’

‘Couldn’t you have sued Bonnie Braes?’

‘No way! Not under Scottish law anyway. An American attorney might have been able to file a suit here if we could have tracked down any of the partners, but it wouldn’t be worth it
for a few hundred bucks. They were clever, those guys. They pretended that the Scotch they were peddling was hard to get and wouldn’t let any one client have more than five casks. Who would
sue for that kind of money?’

‘So what did you do? Cut your losses and sell for what you could get?’

To sell had been Strachan’s professional advice, but he had also made another suggestion. Marshall Friend could have the whisky bottled under bond in Scotland as a single malt and shipped
to the States for his private use. Strachan had guessed rightly that the young American was rich enough to indulge himself and vain enough to enjoy the cachet of having a Scotch which he could
offer to his friends at home as a rare malt whisky that had been specially distilled, matured and bottled in Scotland for Marshall Friend junior, as the individually designed label would show. Of
course the whisky was not of the highest quality, not on a par with the great Highland malts, Macallan, The Glenlivet, Glenfarclas, Glenfiddich, Cardhu, Mortlach, Glenmorangie, Aultmore and
Talisker, but neither Marshall Friend nor anyone who might visit his home would be likely to know that. Marshall Friend had liked his suggestion and the deal had been arranged with a whisky firm
who specialized in the private label business.

‘How much of the stuff do you have?’ Litman asked.

‘More than a hundred cases. A famous Scottish artist designed a label for me. It shows a Highland scene with a sketch of the distillery itself—Glen Cromach. I’ll send you over
a case if you like.’

THE RAIN HAD come without warning, as it so often did in the Western Highlands, a bank of cumulus cloud appearing suddenly above the ridge of mountains
and sweeping in to envelop the glen in a sullen, grey overcast from which the rain slashed down in fine, slanting lines as merciless as flails. In the afternoon, 3,000 feet up on Sgurr nan
Ceathreamhnan, there had been the exhilaration of achievement and of the wild beauty of Wester Ross, the contours of its peaks and crags etched to an incredible sharpness in the clear air, the
lochs silent in blue loneliness. Now as the rain cascaded down on Sanderson’s packframe, with his wet breeches clinging to his thighs and bedraggled grass clutching at his boots, hill walking
was no more than a dreary, sightless drudge.

He knew that there must be a bothy not much more than a mile away in the glen, for he had marked it on his map when he had planned his route with Maggie and Simon and other friends in Glasgow.
That had been no more than a precaution, for he had a lightweight tent with him and for the last nine nights he had slept as he had intended, camped in wooded glens or by a burn and once above a
waterfall. Tonight though he would need shelter and a fire to dry his clothes and himself.

The bothy when he found it was better than he had expected. Mountain bothies, he knew from old, were unpredictable, some no better than ruined, foul-smelling hovels in which one was hard put to
endure a night even with a blizzard raging outside. The one he found that evening was a cottage, a standard Highland butt’n ben, primitive enough with its earthen floor, but boasting two
rooms, one with a fireplace, a table and two benches, the other with wooden bunks and, at one end of the building, a byre now used as a wood store. Not expecting sanitation, he was not disappointed
and a burn running through the glen a few yards away would provide water.

After heaving his packframe off on to one of the bunks, he fetched wood from the byre, lit a fire, took off his sodden cagoule, emptied his boots of water and sat down by the fireplace to dry
out. This was not how he had planned to spend his last evening before heading south. With ample daylight left, he had intended walking on until he reached a point from where he would have been able
to watch the sun sinking behind the jagged ridges of the Cuillin on Skye, one of the most spectacular sunsets which Scotland had to offer. Instead he sat in the smoky room, steam rising from his
clothes, shivering and watching as the fire hissed and spluttered, for most of the wood was still wet.

Now that his ten days of hill walking had almost ended, he recalled the reason which had prompted him to start the walk. It had been intended to serve a double purpose, to provide hard and
sustained exercise that might help him regain something resembling physical fitness and also ten days of solitude during which, from what he now sensed was a watershed in his life, he could reflect
on the mistakes which had embellished it in the past and decide how he would spend what remained of it in the future.

Physically, he knew, he was in immeasurably better shape. Since he had left the train from Inverness at Acnasheen and set out, northwards first in the direction of Loch Maree, he had climbed no
less than ten munros, the name given in Scotland to mountains of more than 3,000 feet, a modest achievement in summer some might think, but even so, looking down at his waist and his thighs he
could see he had lost weight. At least ten pounds of fat, perhaps twelve, had melted away; blubber accumulated carelessly but insidiously in London, through lunches at the Connaught and the Savoy
Grill; dinners at the Boulestin and Le Gavroche; entertaining that was supposed to persuade clients to use or consider using the services of the company for which he worked and which, in general,
appeared to succeed in that objective.

Sanderson was less sure that the second purpose of his walk had been achieved. Solitude had not, as he had hoped, been conducive to sharp analytical introspection. Instead the splendour and
timelessness of the Highlands had filled him with a tranquillity that he could not remember experiencing before. He had found himself absorbed not in his personal problems, but in the fascinating
details of what he saw around him, the changing colours of the distant hills, the different cries and songs of birds which he could not always see, the number and variety of wild flowers, the sound
of burns trickling through the heather and the peat.

So the questions about his past and future, which had occupied his mind when he left Glasgow nine days ago, now seemed remote and unimportant. As he sat gazing into the flames of the fire and
trying to recapture the concern and sense of urgency he had once felt about the future, he heard someone come through the entrance of the bothy into the bunk room behind him. There was a sound of
stamping, a good deal of shaking off of water and some quiet swearing. Presently the newcomer came into the living-room, still carrying his packframe by the shoulder straps in one hand and a wet
woollen balaclava in the other. When he saw Sanderson, he seemed disconcerted and stopped in the doorway, as though trying to decide whether he should stay in the bothy or go back out into the
rain.

‘Good evening,’ Sanderson said. ‘Foul outside, is it not?’

The man did no more than return the greeting curtly. Then, evidently deciding that he would stay, he went back into the other room, put his packframe down on a bunk from where he could still see
Sanderson through the doorway and began unpacking it. He was a man of about fifty, with a typically Scottish face, a complexion that was if anything too red, and short, curly hair that had once
been sandy and was now shot with grey. As he was spreading his sleeping-bag on the bunk, he glanced suspiciously at Sanderson from time to time. In Sanderson’s experience people whom one met
in the Highlands, whether they were natives of that part or had come there to walk or climb or fish, were almost invariably friendly and relaxed. The man who had just come into the bothy had
reasons no doubt for the suspici. . .