It is a dark, dreich day to be standing in the 'founder's room', so I am by the window, catching what there is of the light looking out towards the bay, just visible through the sleet if you know that it is there.
The faintest line, a slight shift
in colour in the expanse of grey mist, marks the horizon, the sky with just a hint of violet, the last of the sun, separating it from the colder grey of the sea. Winding down to the bay is the burn, the pure island water that chose the site for the distillery, but there is not enough light left to make it flash silver as it can do. It is three o'clock, an hour left of daylight this far north, but with the rain closing in it might as well be dusk already. Making the most of the light by the window has its price; the cold outside slices straight through the single pane of glass in the Victorian window as if it were not there. I won't join the huddle by the fire until Charlie Frazer comes in, though.
I haven't been in this room for twelve years, not since the distillery was sold. I used to stand here, next to my grandfather. He liked to look out of the window, across the island, but I preferred to stand so that I could look into the room, at the full rows of bookshelves lining the walls. "Bookish", my grandfather would say with a snort if he caught me scanning the titles instead of listening to him, but ruffling my hair to show his affection. My great-grandfather collected most of the books. I often wondered if he read them all, or if the ranks of fat, leather-bound tomes were really there to add another layer of insulation to the walls against the island winter.
The books stayed here when Charlie Frazer took over, after the bank foreclosed on the mortgage, and I've often wondered about that, too. I still think that they were my grandfather's personal possessions, so the books should have come to my father, not have been left here for Charlie Frazer to rub his hands over when he bought the company. But I was just turning eighteen at the time, and I didn't say anything. The books hardly seemed important then, although, seeing them again now, I think they would have been something left of the family fortune, such as it was. But not then, 1994, the year we lost the distillery and Fiona disappeared.
I was in love with Fiona in the way an eighteen year old is in love with the girl next door. She was pretty and quietly intelligent, and everything her father, Charlie Frazer, was not. We were both due to start at Glasgow university the following autumn. I had hopes that when we got there, away from the island and our families, we would have got together. It probably would never have happened, and we would have gone our separate ways, caught up in the sweet-shop of university life. But she did disappear, and, with that, she stuck to me as firmly as only a ghost can, haunting my student days.
I never knew what Charlie Frazer thought when she disappeared. There were all sorts of rumours flying round the island. Some involved him, some me. I kept my head down, got my grades, and left on the boat for Glasgow. Charlie spent all his time in the distillery, "turning the old lady around", he said. It wasn't whisky distilling that took up his days, though, but "putting Gladdenaich on the map" as a visitor attraction. It turns a profit today: a little from whisky, more from the coach parties paying £4.50 to tour the distillery, then buying packaged sets of miniatures and heather-scented specials, and still more from having turned the row of worker's cottages into holiday lets.
The door bangs open, and Charlie strides in, stopping in the middle of the room, making everyone turn round and come to him.
"Ah, George, glad to see you here. Representative of the old family name. Last one left of the old days. Come to see Gladdenaich still standing and ticking along nicely these days?" Typical Charlie rubbing it in, with that big smile of his that never quite reaches his eyes.
"All ready to tap the barrel, gentlemen?"
The barrel is sitting, planted smugly, just like Charlie, in the middle of the room. Across the bung is the yellowing paper, signed by my grandfather and Donald, the old cooper, sealed down with sealing wax, impressed with the Gladdenaich seal. The actual transfer of the distillery company was done on the telephone – two sets of lawyers putting the date on documents that had already been signed privately. This wasn't Charlie's style. Charlie demanded a proper, humiliating signing over of everything my grandfather had, not just dry legal documents produced by the lawyers and the bank. He came up with the idea of the 'founder's barrel', as Charlie had called it, the last barrel produced under my grandfather's ownership, with the tape over the bung personally signed. I wasn't there, but I can still imagine him grinning as my grandfather and Donald autographed it for him. The barrel has matured for its full twelve years now. Charlie arranged this ceremony with the local newspaper and another couple of worthies to tap the barrel; an opportunity to put himself on the front page of the island news, and make a few choice remarks about saving the distillery for the "future of the island".
With my grandfather safe in his grave there is only me left for Charlie to goad. I need not have come, of course, but I was curious to be back in this room once more, after twelve years away. It is difficult to reflect with Charlie hammering the tap in the bung hole, too firmly, probably damaging the cask. He draws off the first dram, and hands it to the reporter, the second for himself, swirling it around his cut crystal tumbler. The reporter sips, then spits his mouthful out into the fire, where it blazes with a brief pure blue flame.
"Contaminated", he rasps, obviously trying not to retch. Charlie stamps to the door, yelling for the cooper, and then stands glaring at me until some poor young man comes with a steel bar to prize the lid off the barrel. The young man sweats slightly, more from terror of Charlie than exertion I think, and levers the lid off. The sweet, strong smell of whisky fills the room. The young man steps back and then tips the barrel forward onto its side, whisky flowing out over the floor.
"What the…" Charlie begins, and then stops, as the naked body of Fiona washes out of the barrel on the tide of whisky.
Her wet hair is wrapped around her face and breasts. Her skin is lightly tinted, a mix of peat-brown and sea-green soaked in from the whisky. She has become the colour of the island. In death she is a selkie, a creature as much of the island water as of earth.
"Get out. Get out", Charlie shouts, grabbing me by the arm, pulling me to the door and pushing me through it.
I walk down to the end of the corridor, and rest my forehead against the cold outside wall. Behind me I can hear shouting about the police. I shut my eyes for peace. With my eyes closed, what I see, far too clearly, is Fiona, lying naked, as if peacefully asleep. She looks just as I imagined when I was alone in my teenage bedroom, picturing us together. That these scenes come into my mind makes me feel sick. Finding Fiona again, I think I did love her truly, but how can I know, now, seeing her like this? I have always imagined her in some city or on some island far away, where one day I might just see her in the street on holiday, and say "hello", quite casually. I want to stop the images of Fiona, and open my eyes, looking down the long empty corridor of the distillery.
When the police arrive I will have to say something. My grandfather and Donald are both dead. They would have known they would be safe in their graves by the time the barrel was tapped. So no-one can get them to say how Fiona was killed and put in the barrel. After twelve years I don't think that anyone else who knows anything will tell.
So what can I say? We lost the distillery because my grandfather would just make good whisky: no visitors, no gimmicks, no marketing. Charlie Frazer said that he would put Gladdenaich on the map. Now my grandfather has really done that with a vengeance. Once this has been in The Scotsman there will be one distillery on everyone's tour list. I guess if Charlie Frazer can't handle that he'll have to close to visitors.
I can't believe that my grandfather would take Fiona's life just to leave his final mark on the distillery, but I know no-one but he and Donald could have sealed her in the barrel. They must have been quite, quite mad, but coldly scientific, preserving her in cask strength whisky, 75% alcohol, like a perfect young specimen on the shelf in the natural history museum. Even allowing for evaporation, the angels' share, as distillers say, there would be enough to keep Fiona in waiting for twelve years. You see, I know about whisky; my grandfather has taught me everything.
