The Crown Agent by Stephen O’Rourke

Author:Stephen O’Rourke [O’Rourke, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandstone Press
Published: 2021-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

26

Campbeltown Loch shone as I stepped from the Black Sheep the following morning. But the picture was quickly marred by half a dozen men gathered at the harbour’s edge. Twenty feet below a corpse lay face down in the water, a rope now round its waist. As they hauled the rope the body turned, and I saw it was Alex Cunninghame.

They soon had his swollen body on the ground and, calling for space, I knelt alongside. I closed his eyes, which even in death were fixed in fear, and wiped the tell-tale foam from his lips and nose. He’d drowned for sure. There were no signs of a struggle on his face or hands, but he’d suffered a blow to the back of his head. Whether this had happened before or after he’d entered the water it was impossible to tell. Word was spreading, but nobody, it seemed, had seen or heard him go in.

The Burgh police officer arrived and the body was taken off to the Minister. I joined Mackay and Birkmyre beside the pier. I must admit I was shaken.

‘Aye, a terrible shame now, so it is,’ said Mackay as I came up. He drew out his watch and began to wind it. ‘I’ve no wish to speak ill of the dead, so, but still, when a man flies close to the wind from time to time, well . . .’ but as he searched for how to put it Birkmyre murmured a line from Burns:

‘. . . She prophesied that late or soon,

Thou would be found deep drown’d in Doon . . .’

‘Exactly so, Commander,’ answered Mackay. ‘To be blunt, I was surprised Mister McCunn associated with him at all.’

Their lack of concern troubled me almost as much as the death itself, but for once I held my tongue. Cunninghame’s life certainly seemed cheap.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Mackay. ‘Shall we?’

Turning from the pier we followed him along a vennel between the Burgh Court and the Custom House into a warren of ancient passages. The last thing I expected to come across was a distillery. Yet crossing the cobbles and under an archway a wide space opened up and we landed in what, at first glance, could pass for a college quadrangle. In the far corner two dray horses waited with a cartload of barrels in front of a warehouse.

‘Here we are,’ said Mackay with a sweep of his hand. ‘Springburn Distillery. Just opened last year.’

I can never forget the smell of the place. It was an unusual mixture of malty beer, peat smoke and a hint of whitewash. Mackay briefly explained the functions of the neat buildings in different architectural styles around the square. There were two barley lofts and three malt barns all with low pitched roofs; twin kilns for roasting the malted grain, their chimneys billowing grey smoke; the stone Mash House forming the distillery’s kettle; the Tun Room with its ranks of beer filled Wash Backs; and finally the Still House, complete with fluted copper

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