A short story by SJ Bennett

The problem won’t be taking the shot. That’s simply a matter of intention, breath and timing. The problem will be the hat.

***

Tomorrow, on the twelfth of August, my cousin Eddie will try and bag a Macnab.

You might be thinking that this is something to do with Andy, the ex-SAS author who wrote Bravo Two Zero, but in fact the Macnab is named after the 1925 novel by John Buchan. One of my heroes, Buchan. Everyone knows he wrote The Thirty-nine Steps, which in my humble opinion is the greatest adventure story set in the Highlands, but he was also a Times war correspondent, a spy, and Governor General of Canada. As my late grandmother would say, ‘a real man’.

In John Macnab, three bored, rich men go to the Highlands and try to regain their zest for life by illegally bagging a salmon and a stag from neighbouring estates. Needless to say, it doesn’t go entirely to plan. Since then, the real-life challenge has evolved to include a brace of grouse. It tends to be done legally these days, but the twist is that you must bag salmon, grouse and stag between dawn and dusk on the same day. It sounds simple enough, but it’s devilishly hard to pull off.

We’re in the right place for Eddie to do it, though. My cousin owns a place in Speyside. Think Balmoral, but smaller, a bit further north. Whisky country. Mists and heather-scented hills, rocky rivers with sweet salmon pools and muddy Land Rover Defenders. As children, we spent all our summers and Christmases here. My grandparents lived here, but they were eccentrically Scottish. Eddie’s late father, the eldest son, settled in the family farm in Devon. My own father moved around, as younger sons tend to do. However, we try and head north every summer for the Glorious Twelfth. That’s when the grouse shooting season starts on the moors.

My older brother Nick wouldn’t miss it for the world. My attendance is patchy, partly because I’ve been abroad quite a bit over the years and also because I am, famously, the family’s worst shot. It’s a joke that’s been going since our grandmother took us out with our air rifles as kids and encouraged us to shoot empty Campbell soup cans off fences on the estate. Nick showed immediate talent. He later shot for Oxford and missed the Olympic team by a couple of points. By contrast, I quickly became known as ‘Deadeye’. Not for my skill, but for the lack of it. Deadeye David. DD. So funny. At least, Granny thought so.

***

Last year, I was keen to impress a girlfriend. I swore blind to the family that my aim had improved. Nick teased me mercilessly, but cousin Eddie, who’s always had my back, bet a tenner at the dinner table that I’d end up bagging the most birds at the grouse shoot in the morning.

Then he mentioned the Macnab idea. He’d vaguely wanted one for a long time, but last year, the yen seemed stronger. Nick offered to go for it with him at some point. After all, why let Eddie have the limelight if it could be shared?

We discussed timings. As I said, the season for legally shooting red grouse starts on 12 August, hence the ‘Glorious’ moniker. Red stag hunting up here ends in October, and the salmon fishing season on our river closes even earlier, so if you’re going to get your Macnab in, you’ve got less than eight weeks to do it. Each summer, the Highlands bristle with people armed to the teeth with shotguns and rifles. It’s surprising there aren’t more tragedies.

“Of course, you’ve heard of a royal Macnab,” Nick said, grinning round the table. “It’s when you add the host’s wife to the bag.”

Somehow, he gets away with it. Always has.

Even my girlfriend, Claudia, joined in the laughter. Next to me, Nick’s long-suffering wife Matilda smiled gamely. But I saw how Eddie’s young wife, Serena, flushed. There’s something delicate about Eddie’s missus. She’s always struck me as a wild orchid in a field of couch grass. She’s never been as robust on the humour front as the rest of my family.

I made sure Serena was all right afterwards, joining her as she went for a fag in the smoking hut outside, paying her some attention, while Eddie took charge of charades in the drawing room. When we joined the others around the fireplace topped by the massive antlers celebrating Granny’s great kill from 1974, Nick and Claudia were missing. They’d ‘gone to look for a bracelet she’d dropped earlier or something’. They came back two hours later, looking flushed, and Claudia had pine needles in her hair.

Nick had been “consoling” my girlfriend, he told me, “because I’d been ignoring her”. My brother knew exactly what he was doing when he made the royal Macnab remark: how Serena would react; how I would, and then Claudia. As far as he was concerned, it was just another game he’d won.

It’s Matilda I feel sorry for. They’ve been trying for kids for years, but nothing doing. She’s a good girl, intelligent, kind. She deserves better.

Eddie’s childless, too, by the way. He and his first wife split up over it after a decade. She went off and married a barrister, and now she has three kids under four. Serena’s his second wife. They got together five years ago, but so far, no offspring.

Anyway, Nick spent the rest of the evening regaling Claudia with tales of my childhood disasters. She listened, while I got drunk. So drunk, in fact, that I woke late the next day with a blinding headache and missed almost everything I aimed at on the grouse moor. ‘Deadeye David’, useless as ever.

At that moment, I wanted to kill my brother.

I didn’t have a plan to actually do it, obviously.

That came later.

***

The following day, Claudia and I were decanted from the shooting lodge to make space for more guests, and my chance to prove myself was gone. I’d promised her I’d take her on to a fancy hotel nearby. The idea had been to celebrate my success with the grouse, but of course that didn’t happen. Neither of us felt like making proper use of the four-poster bed, so instead, she read magazines in the drawing room while I consoled myself in the whisky bar.

I was in a dark corner, nursing an expensive dram of Tromintoul, when a couple of distant acquaintances walked in. Friends of Eddie’s. They didn’t see me – or didn’t recognise me, at least. They made themselves comfortable with a dram of whisky each, and conversation turned to Eddie and the Macnab. His yen for it was widely known, obviously.

“Of course, he’ll have to get it by October,” the Glenmorangie said. “Or not at all.”

The bourbon frowned. “Why?”

“Awful story. I was taking my father for a consultation in Harley Street. Sharma’s the top brain cancer surgeon; I literally wouldn’t trust another man in the country. Dad was given weeks to live, but Sharma’s already extended it by a year. Anyway, who did we bump into on the stairs going up, but Eddie Eddington, coming down.”

“Really? Shit.”

“Shit indeed. You should’ve seen the look on him. The colour of his face. Sunken cheeks. Dad looked like that the day they gave him the diagnosis.”

“Did you say anything?” the bourbon asked.

“Och, no. God, no. Pretended not to recognise him.”

“How long would you say he’s got?”

“Well, I’m no expert, but I’d be surprised if he’s here next winter.”

“Christ. Poor sod.”

“It’s the family I’m thinking of.”

***

It was the family I was thinking of, too.

I mean, poor Eddie, poor sod indeed. I love him like a brother. Love him better than a brother, because Nick has been an arse to me all my life. And now, with Eddie childless and both our parents dead, my brother was about to inherit a shooting estate in Aberdeenshire, a house in town, the farm in Devon and a massive fucking trust fund he didn’t deserve. It’s not only me he’s been an arse to: Matilda would right behind me in the queue.

Talking of queues, in a few short months I would be next in line for the inheritance, I realised. From then on, if anything happened to Nick and I was remotely connected – and God knows, I’ve been tempted – I’d be the number one suspect. But, in my whisky-tinted daydream, if Nick died in a tragic hunting accident, say, while most people (officially, me included) thought Eddie still had a long life ahead of him, well, that would just be horrifically unfortunate, wouldn’t it?

Deadeye David, making a fatal mistake up on the moors, because his brother was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tragic. Awful. Poor bastard. How could he live with himself?

***

The summer wore on, and Eddie failed to bag his Macnab. Claudia and I broke up, but I happened to see Nick with her just before Christmas, coming out of a theatre in the West End. He threw me an unapologetic look. Poor Matilda has no idea.

On Christmas Day, Eddie announced that he was going to go for the Macnab again on the following twelfth of August, i.e. as soon as the grouse season opened again. Now, I understood his urgency, but no particular reason was given: the cancer remained a secret.

Nick renewed his offer to join Eddie in the attempt … and this time, I did too. All my ducks were lining up so neatly it was almost alarming. At that point, Nick had a laughing fit and bet me a grand I wouldn’t manage it. I took him on, although God knows I don’t have a thousand pounds to spare. 

And here we are.

***

The hat, by the way, is an old black mesh baseball cap with Scuderia Ferrari logo of a rearing black horse on a bright yellow background. It’s the sort of thing our family would only wear as a joke, and never here. It’s currently nestling in my suitcase. Ready. Waiting.

***

I should mention that three years ago, I left for South Africa, to learn the wine trade. I thought I’d stay out there for a couple of years, come home and join a nice little wine merchant near Piccadilly, but I seemed to spend my time on endless African roads, travelling between wineries and learning fancy fruit descriptions for very ordinary vintages. It turned out selling wine was infinitely harder than drinking it, so I bunked off and went travelling.

I ended up working for a trekking outfit in Tanzania, and one of the guys was an Argentinian called Emilio. We bonded over campfires and private outings into the Udzungwa Mountains, where I taught him Scottish folk songs, and taught me everything he knows about guns and hunting. More than anything, he taught me about myself: how to calm my inner storm, how to still the breath, how to feel the target.

As my confidence grew, my skill grew exponentially. So, it wasn’t pure bravado last summer, when I planned to show off to the family on the Glorious Twelfth. Until Nick shagged my girlfriend and I blew my chances. Deadeye David ... Couldn’t hit a barn door at a dozen paces. I thought it was the end, but now I realise it was providence.

***

The order of the Macnab is up to you. If you’re an expert fly fisherman, and the weather conditions are right, you might go for the difficult stag first and leave the salmon until the end. But Eddie has our grandmother’s skill with shotgun and rifle, so the plan is to hit the river first, which might be the tricky part for him, before heading into the hills.

The grouse should be relatively easy. On the twelfth, when the keepers have made sure they’re plentiful and the birds’ lack of experience makes them startled and stupid, you can pretty much point up in the sky and hit one – as long as you’re half sober. Stags, on the other hand…. They’re infinitely more finely-tuned creatures than we are. They can smell what you had for breakfast on the subtlest of breezes from a couple of miles away. If they catch the faintest whiff of you, they’re off. If they hear you look at your watch, they’re gone. The moment you decide to go for it you’d better make the shot, because they’re not going to give you a second chance.

But if you’re ready, that moment between pressing the stock against the shoulder, sighting the rifle on the animal’s heart and gently squeezing the trigger…. It’s something like zen. It’s bred into us as humans, I truly believe that. It’s deep, eternal peace.

My family don’t know that I know this, which, tomorrow, is kind of the point.

***

I’ve learned my lesson. Tonight I don’t drink, even though Eddie is liberal with the scotch. On my way into the kitchen to top up my Diet Coke, I catch a glimpse of Serena and Matilda chatting intimately in the billiard room. From the closeness of dark and blonde and heads, it’s clear they’re sharing something private. Matilda has her hand on Serena’s arm. I wonder if Serena’s pregnant at last. The irony of timing. If Eddie had a kid, then Nick wouldn’t inherit when Eddie died, and the urgency of my plan wouldn’t apply.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Serena. More than a soft spot, actually. It’s why I went away to South Africa. When you meet ‘your person’, you know. You just know. And I knew that day, five years ago, when he introduced her to the family. Dumbstruck. Privately heartbroken. There we are.

I can’t help imagining a few months hence, after Christmas. The grieving widow, forced by the laws of inheritance to move out of her home – her homes, actually – stripped of her status, her life. I don’t know, but if I could persuade her to feel even a little for me…. Of course, the circumstances would be tragic; two cousins dead, manslaughter, cancer and all that; but stranger things have happened. She could keep it all, and have me too. Have kids at last. I mean, if she’s pregnant now, then it’s different - she’d keep it all anyway, for the baby. But if she isn’t….

Later, Matilda joins me in the snug, where two of the dogs are curled at my feet. She and Nick have hardly exchanged a word all evening. Matilda’s nursing hot water and honey for a cold, but she’s cheerful enough, in a quiet sort of way. I say isn’t Eddie looking well since he lost that extra weight, and she smiles, as if she hasn’t thought about how gaunt he suddenly seems this year. So, she doesn’t know. Which means Nick probably doesn’t know, either.

Serena comes over to sit with us, nursing a steaming mug of her own. I might be imagining it, but I think she and Matilda just shared another look. That secret smile women have. Serena looks exceptionally lovely in the firelight. A dark ringlet falls across her cheek as she leans in to stroke a sleeping spaniel. I instinctively lean in too, and our fingers brush each other. I’m glad my head is clear so I can withdraw my hand with the speed of a gentleman. She gives me a good-natured smile.

Eddie comes in to announce he’s off to bed. He has a busy day ahead.

So do I.

***

We rise at dawn and dress for the river. Two ghillies accompany us down to the slow-flowing water of the Spey, glowing dully in the early morning light. Sandy Macintosh is in charge. His family have worked for mine for three generations. Today, he’s helped out by Dougie Brown, who’s been around for well over a decade. There’s not a square inch of this land, be it rock, water or heather, that they don’t know. A third man, Alasdair MacKay, is checking out the stag situation up on higher ground.

Ghillies aside, we’re a party of four: Eddie, Nick and me, hoping for our Macnabs – and Eddie’s friend George, a writer. Apparently, George hopes to recount the day on some sort of podcast. I wonder what he’ll do if things turn out the way I intend. But no matter if it doesn’t happen for me today. Macnabs require a big dose of luck, and if Eddie doesn’t do it this time he’ll want another go this season. Then Nick and I will join him again. I can think of today as practice.

I’ve learned that practice makes perfect. Another thing my family doesn’t know about me.

***

According to Granny, fly fishing is a battle of wills, man against fish, which the wily salmon usually win. I’ve never minded. It’s peaceful and elemental here: nature therapy for those who can afford it. And it always comes with excellent meal breaks.

For two hours, we cast our lines without a hint of a bite. Eventually, a Land Rover arrives with a hot breakfast and we stand around the tailgate polishing off the porridge and honey, sausages and scotch eggs, prepared by Serena and Matilda. Then giant clouds gather overhead and the salmon come out to play in the welcome gloom. Nick gets his fish thirty minutes later, and Eddie a bigger one soon after.

As he holds it up for a picture before putting it back in the river, the look of bone-deep delight on my cousin’s face almost breaks my heart. I know he doesn’t have many of these little triumphs left. Suddenly, he glances over and catches my eye, and his face falters. I hope I didn’t betray my melancholy. I grin and give him a thumbs-up. He grins back. The Macnab is on.

But I still haven’t had a bite.

“D’you mind if we get on?” Nick asks, turning for the bank. “We’ll be here all day. Have you ever caught a salmon, DD?”

“Many times.”

Twice. One of them pure fluke when I was ten.

“Clearly not today,” he announces curtly. “Let’s go.”

It was never about the Macnab for me, and nobody seriously thought I’d get one. I graciously agree. 

***

I know what you’re thinking: when both Nick and Eddie are gone, and I happen to inherit the estate, and Emilio in Tanzania finds out how, he’s going to have something to say on the matter.

He might. It’s quite possible the news won’t reach him that far away, but still, I’m not taking chances. As soon as this bit’s over, I’m going to get in touch. The thing Emilio wants most in this world is to set up his own little nature reserve in Costa Rica. He’s been saving up for decades and he reckons he needs another half a million dollars, but to be safe, it might be double that. Even Eddie’s estate couldn’t magic up a million dollars from nowhere, so I’d have to sell a few things. I’m thinking the classic car collection started by my great-grandfather, which Nick has drooled over all his life. Possibly a farm cottage or two. That’s OK. Emilio won’t want more, and if he does, we can come to some sort of arrangement.

But he’d never be able to prove anything anyway. What I’m trying to do is so difficult that when it’s done, it will look exactly like an accident, because in a way it will be. Also, what was my motive? As far as everyone knows, my cousin has a long life ahead of him. So what would I stand to gain?

***

We drive to a bothy and change into tweed jackets and breeches, known as ‘breeks’. We may look like something out of P.G. Wodehouse or Oscar Wilde, but they’re warm and waterproof. Tweed is woven to be camouflage against the greens and browns and purples of the Scottish countryside, and it lasts a lifetime. I’ve had my jacket since I was twenty-one.

Alasdair, the third ghillie, arrives with gundogs from the kennel and shotguns from the cabinets. It’s time to bag some grouse. Eddie has offered to lend me a valuable Purdey from his collection. Nick scoffs that it’s wasted on me – and I’m here to prove him right. My job at this point is to repeat my risible performance from last year. A shame, as it’s a beautiful gun.

On the bigger estates further south, an army of beaters might be used to drive the birds towards the guns, but here we ‘walk up over pointers’, as they say, using the dogs to flush out the birds ahead of us. Soon, the air is alive with flapping wings and squawking. They take off like startled bagpipes; it’s almost comical.

Nick and Eddie go first, getting a grouse apiece. When it’s my turn, I make sure to miss with my first three shots and manage to wing one of the birds with the fourth. Alasdair has to finish it off on the ground by wringing its neck. It doesn’t take long before the other two have their brace, but Deadeye David continues to miss, and graciously bows out again.

Lunchtime. Eddie and Nick’s Macnab adventure continues. My own challenge is about to begin.

***

Shotguns, even Purdeys, are not good for killing people accidentally. I mean, they’re great for killing people accidentally, happens all the time. But you have to be at such close quarters that you’re either incredibly stupid, incredibly badly trained, or just incredibly bad. You can claim to be incredibly unlucky – but good luck with that, if the victim happens to be a family member you didn’t like, who ultimately stands between you and a fortune.

Rifles are a different matter. With a rifle, you can kill at long distance and claim, hand on heart, that you thought they were an animal moving in the undergrowth. On the Continent, where hunting with rifles is more common and hunters tend to have the forces of justice on their side, people get killed on a regular basis. In the UK, our strict safety measures make it tougher. A particular problem for me is that the moors are not thick with woodland this high up, so it’s hard to say you didn’t see the target. But that’s good: I want it to be difficult.

We drive as far as the track goes, towards the glen where Alasdair’s found an old stag that needs culling. He’s waiting with a pony and a pony boy, to help us transport the carcase back, should Eddie be lucky. If he is, Nick will have a go at another one, followed by me, if there’s still time. If anyone can be bothered by then.

Nick walks a few yards from the vehicles to find a quiet spot to apply his anti-midge spray, and I sidle up beside him and glance around. Nobody’s looking; they’re concentrating on their own exposed flesh. I slip the baseball cap out of my pocket and put it on. And I wait. One, two, three, four….

Nick looks up from spraying and sees me wearing it.

“You look like a dick, DD.”

“Thank you.”

“Why are you wearing a bloody Ferrari bloody baseball cap anyway? You hate cars,” he says.

“I don’t. I hate your cars.”

He can’t take his eyes off the cap, with that gaudy yellow logo. I was given it twenty years ago at Goodwood by a guy who worked as a mechanic for the Ferrari F1 team. Eddie Irvine used to have one just like it. It looked good on Irvine, because everything looked good on him. But I do indeed look like a dick.

“I didn’t know you kept it,” he mutters.

“I found it in a cupboard last week.” I sweep it off my head. “You can have it if you like.” I hold it out by the peak, but not close enough that Nick can take it without reaching.

He reaches.

He puts it on backwards, as he always does, and revels in the mental image of himself as the straightlaced tweedy gentleman with Italiano headgear, as I knew he would. Hoped he would, anyway.

“Are you ready?” Eddie calls over.

“As I’ll ever be,” Nick says, assuming as always that the question is meant for him alone.

He shoulders his rifle and gathers his walking stick. I start to walk away. I’m keen for this little moment to be forgotten. Nick’s the Ferrari man, not me. Everyone will assume he brought the hat himself.

But before I go, he says under his breath, “You know about Eddie, don’t you.”

It’s not a question. I’m too surprised to lie.

Nick scowls. “I saw the way you looked at him, by the river. Matilda said you commented on his weight. It’s not some bloody keto diet. He told me last night: three months. Six at most. He’s lucky to have made it this far. Poor bastard. C’mon, let’s go.”

I have to kill my brother today. Today, or not at all.

Because now I officially know about Eddie, dammit, but so far only Nick knows that I know. If he makes it back, he’ll tell Matilda he told me and my air of innocence regarding my imminent shift in the line of inheritance will mean jack shit. So, much like a stalker with a stag, no second chances.

***

Yesterday, Sandy Macintosh set up some bench rests so we could zero our rifles. This means deciding on range and adjusting the telescopic sight to allow for gravity and the nature of your ammunition. I’ve borrowed a sight from Eddie, and like an amateur, I made sure to ask Sandy how to use it properly. But I made a hash of it and my sight ended up being zeroed for double the distance Sandy intended. Dear me.

Eddie offered to lend me a rifle for the stag, as well as the Purdey for the grouse, but I’m using the one our grandfather left me. The stock is scratched and dented, but it’s solid, and I know it like I know my own heartbeat. Like I know the curve of Serena’s shoulders. Like I know the depth of Nick’s depravity. Since I got back from Africa, I’ve been attending a couple of shooting ranges on the outskirts of London with it. My scores aren’t officially great, but then, a little bit like today, they don’t know when I was aiming at the bullseye and when I wasn’t.

We walk for over an hour, towards a ridge overlooking the glen where the stag is grazing with his hinds. It’s hard going, through thick bracken and rough heather, over wet grass and slippery rock, but the views are spectacular. The wind picks up from the east. In the distance, vivid purple moors top bands of thick green forest, under rainclouds the colour of Tahitian pearls. There’s nowhere more beautiful. Eddie’s a lucky bastard – up to a point.

I might have been hopeless with an air rifle as a child, but I was a good sailor. I got to the stage where I could have tried for the British team, but that took time and resources for training camps. My late parents were focused on Nick’s potential Olympic shooting spot, so they told me to ‘just enjoy myself’. And I did. I taught sailing in Greece for three years.

Which is to say that I know wind. I feel it and understand it as well as any damn stag. I know where it’s coming from and when it’s about to change and what it will do. I know how to be ‘upwind’ of an animal, when it will catch every molecule of my scent, and how to be ‘downwind’, which is the equivalent of being invisible. So I know how Sandy and Alasdair will want to stalk the red stag, and how to work out where I need to be to stalk my prey.

It’s now three-thirty. Sunset in the Highlands is nearer nine at this time of year, but the weather is closing in, and realistically we have a couple of hours before we’ll need to join Dougie back at the cars. It suddenly hits me: if my plan is successful, my brother has two hours maximum left to live.

He has so many plans. Places he wants to go, gas-guzzling cars he wants to buy, vintage watches he wants to own, kids he wants to have with Matilda, if he can ever get her pregnant, or dogs he wants to breed if he can’t. Shit. Imagine thinking you have that ahead of you, and you only have until teatime. But in a way, don’t we all live like that? Isn’t it better that we do? At least this way it will be quick.

I hang back a bit, and I watch as he strides off with the others, the yellow logo on the back of his head like a bloody target. He’s not worried about that, of course. He only wants to make sure he’s camouflaged from the stag’s point of view. Eyes on the prize.

Eyes on the prize.

After ten minutes more of heavy going uphill, Sandy looks round and notices I’m straggling. He walks back to me.

“You OK, DD? You’re looking peaky.”

“I’m fine,” I tell him. “Just a bit ... I’m a bit nauseous, don’t know why. It’ll pass.”

“You’re sure, laddie? We’ve got a long afternoon ahead of us.”

He’s concerned because I look shaky, feeble, a weedy sassenach. I’ve practised this look: not a guy you want beside you on a stag hunt. I may well look paler than usual anyway, after thinking about Nick. The sweat on my forehead isn’t staged.

“You go down to the vehicles. Dougie can run you back.” Sandy sounds concerned about me, but actually he’s thinking that I could spoil this for everyone.

I nod and shrug helplessly. “OK.”

“You’ve had a good day. You got that bird.”

I smile thinly. The bastard. Anyone who knows anything about grouse shooting knows that what I did, winging that poor bird, was pathetic. I’m insulted Sandy thinks I’m so bad that I don’t get it. Patronising git. Will he still be here if I inherit? I’ll have to think about it.

I look back down the hill, the way we’ve come.

“Maybe I’ll get a sika or something,” I say, indicating the rifle over my shoulder.

Sika are a smaller breed of deer, not native to the Highlands. Eddie needs them culled too, but they’re elusive at this time of day. Sandy barks a short laugh.

“Good luck with that,” he tells me. “Be careful, OK? We don’t want any accidents. And no sound until Eddie’s got off his shot, yes? We don’t want to spook the beast.”

“Sure.” I nod obediently. “And tell him good luck from me. Sorry not to be there for the kill.”

“Aye.”

He heads back uphill, to join the others.

I walk downhill a little more and circle round, hard, to my right.

***

For half an hour, I track them from a distance with my binoculars as they make their way along the ridge. Briefly, another red stag stands tall and proud on the brow of a distant hill. It’s as if he’s posing for a Victorian painter. The wind shifts, almost imperceptibly. Given this new direction, Sandy will take the party further west, so they remain downwind of the animal. I move accordingly, until I’m out of sight of cars and guns – indeed, out of sight of everything.

I survey the landscape, looking for my opportunity. Once Eddie’s taken his shot, the group will get up and carry on along the ridge with the pony, either to access the glen at a point where it’s less steep, to retrieve the carcase, or to scout for another opportunity. What I need is a rocky outcrop that hides them from me for a crucial few minutes, so I can legitimately say I didn’t know where they were. Fortunately, this part of the mountain is made of rocky outcrops. I pick the spot and position myself so far from it that I am at the edge of my rifle’s range – where I ‘accidentally’ zeroed the sight. The rain helps: poor visibility gives me more excuses.

I wait, lying prone, rifle at the ready on a little stand, until a loud report cracks through the air. Eddie has taken his shot and they’ll be on the move. If I’m going to do what I need to do, I must do it soon.

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly. The words come at a key moment in Macbeth, but I always thought Shakespeare was having a laugh when he wrote them. Even so, it’s true. Get it over with.

I pray that when they appear, Nick is separate from the others. In my plan, I hadn’t taken into account how close we all walked together at the start. The slightest mistake, combined with the distance and the wind factor, could mean a bullet straying by several inches from its intended target. Enough to hit the wrong man. Call it perverse if you like, but killing Nick deliberately is OK somehow, while accidentally killing anyone else would be pure murder, in my eyes.

And as I lie in the wet bracken, waiting for that first figure to emerge from behind the rock, I realise I can’t do it. Now that I’m really here, I see the risk is too great. What a fool I was – this was always going to happen.

Idiot!

I can feel the ghost of my grandmother laughing at my stupidity. Nick has won, as he always did. I never stood a chance.

The rain falls harder. I’m about to pack up my rifle and go. But then a figure appears around the rock. Just one. I can’t help but check through my telescopic sight. A miracle: he’s alone. Another miracle: he’s wearing a dark baseball cap – but then, so is Alasdair today, a camouflage one from an army surplus store. Third miracle: the figure pauses, turns to look away to his left… and, in the crosshairs of my rifle sight, I see the bright yellow patch on the back of his hat.

It’s a sign. This was meant to be. ’Twere well it were done quickly.

I’ve already made all my calculations. No practice shot, no second chance. With little more conscious thought, I still the breath and squeeze the trigger.

***

The other red stag is briefly silhouetted on the horizon. At the crack of my gun, its majestic antlers twist as it turns and bounds away.

I leap up, because I need to be seen standing, a stupidly long distance from the target, as if I’d been taking pot shots from the shoulder.

“I saw a sika! I thought I’d go for it! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I hear my future words in my head as I look for the upright figure of the man, but he’s gone. Other figures emerge and they gather in a huddle. One looks in my direction. I wave, but I don’t raise my binoculars to check what’s happened. I’ve either done it or I haven’t. A sika, I saw a sika! I realise my eyes are blurry. I’m silently weeping without realising. Strange what the body can do.

As I dial the sight range back, I wonder if Eddie got his Macnab. I suppose, either way, I’ve ruined the day for him, which I’m sad about. I’ve always assumed he’d have other chances, but will he? What if by a miracle I did get my target, all that distance away, in the rain, in that split second of stillness? Will Eddie feel morally capable of trying for the Macnab again this season?

Eddie, I’m sorry. I really am.

Now to head back to the vehicles and see how much trouble I’m in.  

***

Dougie is standing by the Range Rover, on a walkie-talkie, but he happens to glance up and see me. From this distance, I can’t read his face. I saw a sika. Wasn’t thinking. Did I startle the stag? Stupid of me.

As I get closer, his rigid body language alarms me. It’s hard to see if a Scotsman is ashen faced – they’re always ultra-pale – but there’s something about his shoulders….

“Helloo!” I call out. My voice is loud and high, my tone too jovial. I can’t help it. “I saw a stag, a sika rather, in the distance. I’m sorry, it must have ricocheted round the valley. The sound, I mean. I hope I didn’t….”

I’m babbling. My spiel is over-rehearsed. The set of those shoulders. I really, genuinely want Dougie to tell me he has no idea what I’m talking about. He stops me in my tracks.

“He’s dead,” he says, his own voice higher than usual. He says it’s the Scots way, “deed”. He says it wide-eyed, as if he doesn’t believe it. “Did you dae it? Was it you?”

Shock almost floors me, despite everything. Still, I somehow find the wit to say, “What, the stag? Did Eddie get it?”

“No, he didnae.” Dougie stares at me with something dark in his eyes. I realise it’s horror. “Was it you?” he repeats. “Who else is out here with a rifle?”

“Was it me?” I bluster. “I mean, there was a sika. In the distance. I just went for it. I was miles from the group by then. I can’t imagine….”

“The helicopter’s coming from Aviemore. They’ve said not to move him. But he’s dead. Shot in the head.”

Deed. Shot in the heed.

“No!” I crumble. It doesn’t take any acting. I’m a killer. And I don’t want this. “Noo.”

Dougie’s phone goes again with a call from Sandy and he updates his boss on the progress of the helicopter. “I’ve got DD with me. He was awa’ the other side o’ the hill, shooting at sika.”

Dougie’s attitude changes as he listens to Sandy on the phone. I realise that he had been increasingly coiling himself up with tension at the horror of what I’ve done, and Sandy is presumably telling him not to take a swing at me, because I see him force himself to relax his coiled fist.

The call ends. I repeat my bluster. Dougie ignores me and stares up into the hills.

“I— I’ll go and see them,” I say.

“Don’t.” The command is abrupt.

We wait for the party to descend, but nothing happens until the mountain rescue helicopter flies in from the south-west and lands over the brow of the hill. Time bends and flexes. And here they are, coming down at last, Sandy and Alasdair out in front, followed by George, the writer, looking like death, then the boy with the pony and finally Eddie bringing up the rear, his face ghostly under his old tweed cap.

But as they grow closer, I recognise my brother’s features under that cap. Nick’s alive! I didn’t hit him after all! Confusion churns with relief. Why, then, Dougie’s fury? Something’s off, though.

Nick’s not wearing the hat.

He’s wearing Eddie’s hat.

Where’s Eddie?

The helicopter takes off.

***

A voice babbles in the silence and I know it’s mine but I’m not aware of saying the words. “I saw a sika! I thought I’d go for it. I was so far away. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

My knees give way and I’m on the ground, weeping. Sandy crouches beside me, kind and considerate. Hand on shoulder. Voice low and steady.

“It’s not your fault, DD, just a godawfu’ freak. Six inches to the left or right and he’d’ve been OK.”

“I … I couldn’t’ see anything … not feeling well … the rain … I was so far away…”

“I know, DD, I know.”

“Is there any chance …?”

By way of an answer, Sandy increases the pressure of his hand of comfort on my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

I glance up and see that Nick’s hands are stained with blood. He must have gone to try and help.

But the hat. What about the Ferrari cap? Why isn’t he wearing it?

What have I done?

***

Everyone is kind.

The two policemen who interview me are gentle. One old, one young. They feel my shock, so true, so real. My grief. My guilt. They let me babble. “The rifle … the sika … the rain … I thought they were far away….”

“They were, they were, laddie. Three hundred yards, at least, behind a rock. It was a chance in a million Eddie came out when you fired.”

This from the younger man: “You couldn’t’ve done it if you’d tried.”

A stern look from his superior. Bad taste.

I stare at them in incomprehension.

Except, I fucking could.

Or maybe I couldn’t. Let’s just examine the facts for a moment: I missed. I missed the target by a mile. What did I even think I was shooting at?

***

Back at the house, the women are devastated. They avoid me in shock and grief. But Serena comes to me on the second night, when I’m wandering around the house like a ghost myself, unable to sleep or eat. She puts a hand on my arm and leads me outside to the smoking hut in the garden, where she has set down two glasses of whisky and a bottle. Tomintoul. My favourite.

We sit close to each other on wooden chairs, with blankets round our shoulders. She puts a hand (a comforting hand?) on my knee. Her voice is soft.

“I don’t know if I should tell you this – Eddie didn’t want it known – but he was dying.”

“What?” My face forms a lie of shock. “I didn’t—”

“He didn’t have long. The end was going to be….” She shuts her eyes. “He didn’t know how he was going to….” Her fingers tighten on my thigh, the knuckles white, and she stares at me hopelessly. “You did him a favour, DD. It was sudden, he didn’t see it coming.”

There’s a desperate sadness in her, but also acceptance. She means it. She releases my leg and takes a gulp of whisky.

“Thank you,” I say. I gulp from my glass too. Then I remember the sight of her and Matilda in the billiard room, the hand on the shoulder, the intimacy of women. I’m too unmoored and emotional not to say what I’m thinking. “You’re not…?”

“What?” She looks confused.

“Pregnant, are you?” I can’t think of a more delicate way of putting it.

“No! Why?”

“It’s just…. I saw you and Matilda….” I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Not me.” She gives me a glimmer of a smile. “Tilly. Something else I probably shouldn’t be telling you. They’re ecstatic. Early days, but they’ve been trying for so long.”

She smiles again, a little wider, and I realise that she has given me this news as another form of comfort. The thought of Matilda’s baby makes her happy, so it must make me happy too.

“Just promise me one thing,” she says.

“What?”

“Don’t blame yourself. I don’t blame you. Live your life, DD. Eddie would have wanted you to.”

***

And the thing is, I don’t blame myself, two years down the line, as we gather in the Highlands once again, under bright blue, cloud-flecked skies, to scatter some of Eddie’s ashes among the heather. It’s taken Serena this long to face doing it. The rest of him will be stored in the family vault, but he wanted to be here, too.

Eddie got what he wanted in many ways.

Nick told me what happened. Eddie had asked to swap hats with him not long after I fell back on the walk uphill. He’d made some excuse, Nick couldn’t remember what it was. But Nick didn’t mind swapping, especially as the rain intensified.

So, what made Eddie swap a good tweed cap for an ugly, nylon, branded one? I didn’t discuss this with Nick, but I now believe that Eddie must have clocked the way I looked at him by the river, after he caught his fish. He knew that I knew. Maybe he caught me looking at Nick, too, I can’t be sure. Maybe it was the damn hat, later. But somehow, he worked out what I was going to try and do to my big brother that day. Eddie must have assumed I was doing it for the inheritance. I wasn’t, of course.

Did Eddie have any clue that I could shoot? Was he sure he’d guessed right about my intentions? Probably neither of those things. It was in the lap of the gods, but it gave him one quick, possible get-out from weeks or months of pain and heartbreak. And if it burdened me with guilt for the rest of my life …? Maybe he didn’t think about that, or maybe he did.

He wore the Ferrari hat, with its yellow target at the back. He made sure he was alone, for just long enough, in the one place he judged I might think I could get away with it. And I delivered.

I didn’t miss. It was a bloody incredible shot. The best in the Highlands that summer. And no one alive will ever know.

***

Except my brother.

There was something in Nick’s expression when he told me about the hat swap. The same look of complicity he gave me outside the West End theatre with Claudia, my ex-girlfriend.

I’m sure Nick didn’t suspect anything before the shot, but he sure as hell worked it out afterwards. He hasn’t said anything aloud, but a new Ferrari baseball cap hangs on one of the antlers of Granny’s stag above the fireplace. Given the trauma of the day, nobody else remembers the original. This, as my brother would say, is a little joke between the two of us.

Meanwhile, Nick’s son Teddy is set to inherit the estate, the farm, the cars, the trust and all the rest when the time comes. Matilda’s pregnant again – another boy. She’s blooming.

Serena has used some of her small inheritance to buy a flat in London and I see her occasionally when she takes me out to dinner. I dog-sit for her sometimes, when she goes travelling with George, her new romance.

And today, here we all are, back out on the moors, with Alasdair, Dougie, Sandy and George himself. He has asked me if he can do a podcast about ‘the Macnab that wasn’t’. I’ve said no.

Nick puts his arm around my shoulder.

“Deadeye David, eh?” His smile is as broad as the moor and his shining irises reflect the bright blue sky. “I guess you won’t be shooting here any time soon.”

I shake my head. That’s the saddest thing. I’m so very good.