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know,’ said Jamie. ‘Who doesn’t? Sit yourself down.’
    There was a jug of steaming coffee standing ready, made by one of those American coffee machines that first pioneered good coffee in the Highlands of Scotland, replacing the bitter sludge which had masqueraded as coffee before.
    The office was bright and warm. ‘Do a lot of business?’ asked Hamish.
    ‘Aye, but mostly with London. Lobsters, smoked salmon, and venison. I’ve just bought three new refrigerated trucks to take the goods down to the market at Billingsgate. Finish your coffee and I’ll give you a tour.’
    While Hamish drank his coffee, Jamie continued to talk proudly of his business, how he had four fishing boats over on the west coast and was well on the way to making himself a fortune.
    Then he took Hamish round the long, low buildings. One housed deer carcasses, giant beasts pathetic in death, row upon row of them. The next building was a shop that sold commercial frozen packaged meals as well as smoked salmon, pheasant, grouse, and partridge. The last building they came to had three enormous lobster tanks, each surrounded by a low concrete wall, the water alive with crawling black lobsters. ‘See this one,’ said Jamie, lifting a black monster out of the water. ‘Eight pounds in weight.’
    ‘And how much will that fetch in London?’ asked Hamish.
    ‘Oh, about twenty-five pounds. In fact, you could say about a pound sterling for every year of its life. That lobster’s about twenty-five years old.’
    ‘So how much is in the three tanks – I mean, how much is all this worth?’
    Jamie grinned. ‘There’s about six thousand pounds’ worth in each tank. The water’s salt, of course, and the filters you hear bubbling away there keep the water clean.’
    ‘Man, you must be kept busy,’ marvelled Hamish. ‘Ever get a day off?’
    ‘Haven’t had one in years,’ said Jamie. ‘But I’ll be going down to Inverness at the weekend for my son’s wedding. All the family’ll be there, so I’ll need someone to mind the store for the first time.’
    ‘Would you like me to drop in at the weekend and see if everything’s all right?’ volunteered Hamish.
    ‘No, nothing can go wrong. I’m not worried about burglars. Never had a break-in in Cnothan. I’m more worried about the filters packing up. I’ve got a local man, Sandy Carmichael, who’s going to act as watchman.’
    Hamish raised his eyebrows. ‘Not the town drunk, him with the horrors.’
    ‘The same. But he’s going straight and there’s no harm in him at all. Of course, Mainwaring got to hear of it and dropped by to warn me and yak on about how dangerous it was to employ a drunk. I hate that man; I’d feed him to the fish if I thought I’d get away with it. Interfering, pontificating nuisance. I liked him at first. Funny, that. He was a breath of fresh air. Charming, friendly. Then he buys a book on scientific fish-farming and tries to involve me in it. No business head whatsoever. Or I assume the man has no business head, for I was to put up the money for the venture, which he would run. I fended him off as politely as I could. He became more insistent. Then he started to get rude and make some patronizing remarks about how ill-run my business was. I wanted to buy one of those croft houses out beyond his for my uncle. I told him about it when we were friends. Next thing I know, he’s bought the place himself, and now it stands empty. I know he did it to spite me. I was not interested in the land, only in the house for my uncle. Mainwaring uses the croft land, of course, or the Crofters Commission would step in.’
    ‘Why?’ asked Hamish. ‘I mean, why does he put people’s backs up?’
    ‘I think he likes power,’ said Jamie, ‘and irritating people is a sort of twisted way of getting it. See here, I can’t believe my luck. I’ve worked hard, but I was a road worker’s boy and came up from nothing. At the back of my mind, there’s always the fear that all