Free The Whisky Affair (Raymond Armstrong Series) by Michael J Gill

rarely used a computer outside of work but decided it would be prudent to look through Gordon’s emails for the past month… He found nothing out of the ordinary. Next he looked at Gordon’s bookmarks. Many had to do with the whisky industry, along with several on how to improve your golf swing. The most recent were on Las Vegas golf courses, the Baronial Hotel and Casino and a web directory showing most of the top restaurants in downtown Vegas. Raymond’s first thought was that Gordon had been planning a trip for himself or with James, to go meet their distributor in Vegas.
    He could find absolutely nothing, particularly in files accessed in the past month that could have driven Gordon to drink – no obvious reason he could find to indicate if or why Gordon might have been the least stressed out.
    He stretched out his legs. Beneath his right foot the heavy waste basket toppled over. He picked it up to find an empty whisky bottle. “ Hmmm … Bute 12-year-old,” he said aloud. It was the distillery’s flagship whisky that had taken the world by storm. What a Beaut! There was a single empty glass on the desk, an empty bottle in the bin. So, he had started drinking alone again?
    He picked up the empty glass and was taking it to the sink by the display cabinet when he noticed there was just a speck of the whisky left in the bottom of the glass. He put the glass up to his nose, anticipating the typical aromas of Bute 12-year-old – freshly baked cake like his grandmother would make, and strawberry jam like he’d spread heavily over his bread, as a child. He could pick out the Bute single malt in any blind tasting.
    He stopped dead in his tracks, smelling the small remains in the glass. He detected a peaty smoke aroma. Couldn’t be . He went back to the desk, picked up the empty bottle of 12-year-old, and smelled it again. A feint aroma of cake, and a hint of the jam… No trace of peat.
    He went back to the cabinet and noticed a special distillery edition of the Big Bute. It had been opened, with maybe two or three servings poured from the bottle. He pulled the cork and gave it a nose, making sure to keep his nose a few inches away. Whoa , that was so peaty…
    Interesting .
    He read the label on the bottle. This whisky was a special edition, named the Noble Bute. A highly peated malt that the distillery had only produced one time, to his knowledge. Maybe they’d produced a few thousand bottles that were allocated to their best markets around the world. He opened a spreadsheet and it confirmed Noble Bute was distilled on April 9th, 2005 in honor of the wedding of Camilla to Prince Charles, the Duke of Rothesay – their duke. Interesting that this fact from Anne’s little tour had meshed itself into this situation, in the here and now, and under these tragic circumstances.
    And there he was again. Thinking about Anne. She wouldn’t know about Gordon… He’d call or email Anne later with the bad news.
    He noticed a paper that disclosed a large chain of sushi restaurants in Japan had tried to buy the entire stock. To sell it all to one buyer would have been totally out of character for Gordon so Raymond was unsure whether the deal went through.
    In fact, he and Gordon shared a secret that nobody would know – though Louisa might have guessed it by now. Gordon detested peaty malts and only nosed and tasted them at public events. He understood them and could detect which distillery had made them, however, any malt over 25 phenols per million, the measure used to define the modest amount of peat used in whisky, was a no-no for him personally.
    Raymond sat back in Gordon’s leather armchair. His forehead became tense, and he felt a sharp pain developing in his head. This was a common occurrence in the past when he was totally pissed off on an assignment. What am I missing here?
    He composed himself, and tried to stay calm as he headed out of Gordon’s office to speak to the one person who might understand why he felt