Murray could at least help haul the trolley. That, and having possession of the project’s credit card, would be his only contribution to today’s trip. Finlay had the rest under control.
The owners, a youngish couple in matching green fleeces and wellies, had let them in, handing them plastic luggage tags and black marker pens so they could claim the larger items they wanted delivered to the project site. Then they left the pair to it, and Finlay led the way up and down the rows of plants, with the resident soppy dog following at his side.
He’d been surprised to see Finlay greet the mutt as soon as it ambushed him getting out of the driver’s side door. He’d not gone so far as to talk to the dog in a baby voice, but he’d crouched before the animal and scratched behind its ears and asked permission to take a look around.
It shouldn’t have surprised him that Finlay liked animals, hiding away with them up on that mountain of his. Still, the sight had softened Murray’s opinion of the curmudgeon.
Seeing him picking through the pots of plants in their winter dormancy surprised him even more. To Murray, most of the plants looked like nothing but unpromising stumps caked in earth, but to Finlay they seemed to be something else, a whole magical forest he could conjure in his mind just by reading the labels.
‘Ah, we’ll need a few of these!’ Finlay said, lifting a tray of tiny rosettes of wet green. This really was a terrible time of year for buying plants, if Finlay hoped to enthuse Murray about them.
‘Really?’
‘Aye! Creepin’ lady’s tresses. These’ll make a braw green carpet around the trees and they’ll encourage the bumblebees. Unless,’ he said, looking worried, ‘you’re planning on keeping the grass as a pristine mowed lawn with the stripes and all that?’
Murray shrugged. ‘That doesn’t sound anything like as much fun as a load of creepy ladies dresses, or whatever it was you said.’
A light flared behind Finlay’s eyes but seemed to extinguish itself as quickly as it appeared. ‘They’re evergreen and throw up green spikes with wee white orchid flowers in summer. We’ll take twenty to be getting on with, knowing they’ll spread themselves aboot.’
‘Right, right.’ Murray tried to follow Finlay’s business-like lead, writing ‘McIntyre x 20’ on a label and attaching it to the tray.
Finlay moved quickly onward to something else. ‘Twinflowers! These are rare in Scotland now. We’d better have some. They’ve two wee pinky-white pixie hats hanging like bells from a double stalk. Hence, twinflower. Can we have twenty of these too?’
He was like a child at the cinema Pick ’n’ Mix.
‘I’m a twin,’ Murray blurted, out of habit whenever the topic came up, but also trying to get in Finlay’s good books, if such a thing was possible.
Finlay stopped to observe him. ‘There’stwoof you?’
‘A sister, so unidentical, obviously, and she’s not much like me, really.’
‘Hmm.’ Finlay turned back to the plants. ‘Label, please.’
‘Oops, sorry.’ Murray hastily labelled the twinflowers, feeling every bit like Finlay’s secretary and as far from making friends as you can get.
The ranger stepped along the row, making sure to scratch the dog’s head to keep it by his side. ‘I’m an only child myself,’ he said in a begrudging way.
Murray ignored the urge to say something jokey and overfamiliar about how that explained a few things, and chose to ask instead, ‘Are your family from around here?’
This was clearly a question too far. ‘Cuckoo flower. Four trays?’
Murray poised the pen with a sigh. ‘How’d you spell cuckoo?’
‘Just put lady’s smock. The caterpillars love them in the spring.’
‘Not sure we want caterpillars eating…’ Murray checked the price sticker. ‘About thirty quid’s worth of flowers.’
‘Have you ever seen a cloud of orange-tip butterflies?’ Finlay challenged. ‘Or a green-veined white, for that matter?’ He asked this like he already knew the answer. The smartarse.
‘Four trays it is,’ Murray conceded, writing on the label.
‘Did you ken that a long time ago our ancient Caledonian woodland was an Eden of wildlife and plant species, before it was decimated for game hunting and logging?’
Murray had the feeling a lecture was coming, like the one this guy had given his sister when she’d got caught in the fog up Mount Cairn Dhu last summer and she’d found a fun way to keep herself and her policeman boyfriend entertained while she was stuck there.
Ally had hinted as much, swearing her brother to secrecy. It didn’t require a detective to put two and two together and deduce it was Finlay Morlich she’d described as the ‘misery-guts ranger’ that’d lectured them all the way down the mountain about how being irresponsible even at lower altitudes cost lives and he had made them both take home leaflets about staying safe in the Cairngorms.
Finlay was still talking, lifting plants and examining them, putting them down again, anything to avoid eye contact, Murray guessed. ‘We’ve a responsibility with this garden to encourage missing or threatened species, don’t you think? If we plant strategically we could see new populations of mining-bees, pine hoverfly, aspen hoverfly…’
