What? Let me explain. My name is Iain McGregor of the clan McGregor and I live in a place called McGregor. People who design rockets tend to triplicate critical components and my people did the same. After all, your name is pretty critical - get it wrong and confusion will reign.
Now you probably have a picture in your mind of a bad tempered old git with a broad Scottish accent, a kilt and a souvenir shop full of faux Scottish tat made in Taiwan. Well, I am a bad tempered old git so you got that bit right but the rest may surprise you.
Firstly, Scottish clan chiefs all speak with cut glass English accents. That is because we are all privately educated at Eton. We speak like super posh Englishmen. Sorry about that but it is not my fault. As for the kilt, it was invented a mere 200 years ago to promote the Scottish tourist industry so I would not be seen dead in one. And I certainly don't have a souvenir shop. That is because I am seriously wealthy - not up there with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos but very comfortable.
Now for my place of abode - my gaff, my crib as common people call it. It is a fortress. No, not a castle, a fortress. A mile of tunnels and dozens of chambers cut out of the granite. Or 'Hewn out of the Living Rock' as the guide book would say if there were such a thing. But there is no guide book. Nobody is allowed in except a few times a year under strict control - this saves me several million a year in tax - don't ask. So I grit my teeth and prepare for the barbarian hordes. Meaning people like you.
The fortress is cut out of an enormous rock that soars some five hundred feet above the sea and can be seen from twenty miles away. A brooding and threatening place that just reeks of violence. And over the last 900 years it has seen plenty. Bear in mind that these places were built as engines of war. Designed both to defend and intimidate. Full of crude, violent thugs who would murder and torture on a whim. You did not fuck with these people. And nor do you fuck with me.
My grandfather was known as the Wran McGregor. The word 'wran' can be roughly translated as 'cunning old bastard' - he had worked for many years with Bertrand Russell and I have a vast collection of his correspondence. Many PhDs have been written about him.
In 2002 I was Colonel of a Highland regiment and had seen action overseas. I returned minus a foot but people I had been with did not return at all so you could consider me both lucky and unlucky. I could have spent the rest of my life in the maths department at Oxford but then my father died and I took possession of the fortress.
On the wall of the Great Rume in the fortress is a long engraving in mirror image Gaelic concerning the Croone McGregor. The Croone disappeared some 300 years ago and this engraving was said to be a series of clues as to its location. The Croone is a solid gold crown encrusted with huge badly cut blue diamonds and jadeite. In terms of raw materials it is worth tens of millions but as a 700 year old relic almost beyond price.
I speak fluent Gaelic both formal and informal so I set to work on the problem which people had been trying to solve for some 300 years. It was in the form of a poem but the clues were incredibly subtle and much of the poem was redundant - like the junk DNA in your body. Maybe relevant but maybe not. After five years I felt that I could see into the mind of the person who had hidden the Croone.
I was getting there but not quite. Then on the 12th December 2012 it all fell into place. The engraving did not stand alone and it is no coincidence that I found the solution on 12 / 12 / 12. The number 12 had great significance in the solution. Now usually when you solve a puzzle it seems obvious later but this was not. It was mind bendingly complex. Trust me. And I had not yet found the Croone - merely solved the puzzle in principle.
I then cheated a little. I got some people in who spent two weeks creating an incredibly detailed 3D map of the fortress. You could zoom in from any angle and it was accurate to less than one milimetre. At one point there was a cigarette end on the floor and if you zoomed in on the computer you could read the name on the filter tip. Yes, that detailed.
Did I find it? If you are smart you will have noticed that a while back I said "it is worth" rather than "it was worth" so that might tell you something. Or maybe not.
The approach to the fortress is across a huge hole via a fifty foot drawbridge which these days is electrically controlled. The fortress is never empty so if I am away I would just phone up and they would lower it. At night I would raise it personally - it had CCTV so I could see it was up. When you had crossed the draw bridge you went through a steel portcullis and then a big solid oak door. So that route in was well protected Many of the chambers had windows over looking the sea or the drawbridge. Glazed these days of course. But those facing the sea were 300 feet above sea level and 100 feet from the top of the rock. So how did they get in?
Yes, I woke one night on the last day of March and heard an indistinct noise like somebody banging on a door. Now years before I had heard something similar and it had turned out to be just a steady drip of water which reverberated right through the fortress. But this sounded very odd so I opened up the CCTV screen and looked at all the cameras - almost twenty in total. I studied each view very carefully, formed an assessment of the situation and then went back to bed.
In the morning it all became clear. There were ropes and serious climbing gear coming down from the top of the rock. They had somehow climbed up the outer edge right to the very top then rapelled down to one of the upper windows. Broken the glass and climbed in. They had been picked up on the CCTV and there was a clear shot of them hurtling through space as they emerged from the side of the rock before falling 300 feet onto the rocks where they were found very dead a few hours later on April Fools day.
That shot now takes pride of place in the Great Rume.
When we went through all the historical CCTV records (yes, we keep them - they are not overwritten) we found them on the 'open to the public' day four months before. The cameras are of the of very highest quality and the images were crystal clear. They were quite well known rock climbers who had doubtless been paid a pile of money to find the Croone.
We tracked them through the Great Rume on the historical CCTV records and they had taken a special interest in the bright red door that had a big sign on it:
EXTREME DANGER - DO NOT ENTER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES
Well, that is clear enough, isn't it?
On the night in question they had apparently managed to get through the red door but how was not entirely clear. It was both electrically locked and also had an old fashioned lock which any skilled lock smith would get through in a few seconds. Once they were through the door they were doomed - hence the notice.
The floor sloped down and became slightly steeper and slightly smoother with each step and unless you took extreme care you suddenly started to slide and then after about fifty feet you just shot out into space. As they had discovered - it's called learning on the job.
At the coroner's inquest much attention was concentrated on the locks on the red door. They had picked the lock (they had lock picks in their pockets) but why had the electric lock opened? Well, of course, the answer is simple enough - somebody must have accidentally pressed the button.
Like I said, you don't fuck with me
Bob Cory
Modified on 11/08/2023 at 13:16:32 by ℗ Bob Cory