‘Not as an abstract entity,’ I’d told him. ‘More as something you have to seek out and face up to. Rationalism; science. You know.’
Donald had looked like he really didn’t know at all. ‘Have more whisky, son,’ he’d said, reaching for the bottle.
Now it was a few days later and I’d been summoned to the highly prestigious Olness Golf Club — home of a course worthy of being mentioned in the same veneratingly hushed breath as Carnoustie, Troon, Muirfield and even the hallowed Old Course — to Meet People.
‘Stewart! Here you are,’ Mike Mac said, coming up, pumping my hand and leading me back towards the dining room. ‘Didn’t realise you were here. Come on, come and meet people. Hope you brought a good appetite. You not got a drink yet? Dearie me. We’ll soon fix that.’
We were in a private dining room off the main one.
Fuck me, I was being introduced to the Chief Constable for the whole region, a brace of town councillors and local businessmen, and our MEP. I’d heard of these people, I’d seen them on TV. The Chief Constable looked entirely comfortable out of uniform.
I had no idea what I was doing there. They talked about holidays just past or planned, fishing quotas, trying to encourage planning applications from supermarkets other than Tesco, investments, fly-fishing beats, the next Ryder cup, Donald Trump, the placing of speed cameras and the latest travails of Aberdeen (the football club, not the city).
They all seemed like friends but not friends; there was a sort of polite wariness mixed in with the bonhomie, a reserve that accompanied all the urbane good-chappery. However, they were articulate, intelligent people, with that gloss of power it’s hard not to feel a little excited by. They were quite sure of themselves and they weren’t bad company, especially as we worked our way through the selection of specially chosen wines. Olness Golf Club had a sommelier! Who knew? (I was probably being terribly naive.)
Sitting in a sort of upmarket version of a snug bar afterwards, I got to talk to the Chief Constable, then our MEP, Alan Lounds. He was very smooth. The Chief Constable had been pretty smooth, but Alan the Member of the European Parliament was smoother still. Apart from anything else he had the sort of deep, resonant, perfectly modulated voice you could imagine women swooning over, the sort of voice you just wanted to listen to, having it poured over you, wallowing in it. A voice so seductive it scarcely mattered what he was actually saying with it.
Technically Alan was an Independent; mostly he voted with the centre left or centre right, depending. Independent politicians are something of a tradition up here; I think we resent the idea of the people we vote for having any loyalty to a party that might compromise their responsibility to us.
He and I got to talking, over some more single malts, forming our own little subcommittee slightly apart from the rest of the guys.
‘Quite a family you’re marrying into,’ Alan said (I’d been told to call him Alan. ‘Call me Alan,’ — that’s what he’d said).
‘Really just marrying the girl, to be honest, Alan.’
‘Hmm.’ Alan smiled and tipped his head just so. I got the impression I’d just said something perfectly charming but completely wrong. Alan was small-to-medium, but he carried himself tall. He was tanned, with dark, tightly curled hair, neatly trimmed. He had rugged good looks and eyes somewhere between seen-it-all and twinkly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s a family that’s important to the town, to the region, even.’
‘I guess,’ I said.
‘You haven’t any reservations, have you?’ he asked me.
‘Reservations?’
‘Well, we all know the reputation Donald and the family have,’ Alan said in his best we’re-all-men-of-the-world tones. ‘The … complicated relationship they have with the more … obvious forces of law and order.’
‘Not officially, obviously,’ Alan said, smiling. He sighed. ‘Though, playing devil’s advocate, you might claim they help to keep the peace, so qualify in a sort of honorary capacity.’ He gestured with one hand. ‘Not the sort of analysis
‘I suppose,’ I said. I might have looked slightly shocked, or just wary.
Alan sat forward, drawing me in towards him as we cradled our whisky glasses. ‘Does it … worry you, knowing the full range of the Murston clan’s business interests?’ he asked, still with a smile. He glanced over towards Mike Mac, who was deep in conversation with the Chief Constable. ‘Not to mention Mike, over there?’
‘Only a little,’ I said.
