With a feeling of regret, he laid the underwear down on the chest of drawers, but not before burying his face into the fabric and taking a long, deep breath. The sheds would have to wait for another day. He’d need them emptied first, which reminded him to retrieve a letter from his jacket pocket which he propped on the kitchen table before leaving the house.

The dogs barked in excitement as he approached the Land Rover, expecting their confinement to be over. He ignored them, turning the vehicle around in the small area in between cottage and outbuildings before heading back down the glen. On an impulse he took the turn-off before the estate house, heading along a rough track that led into one of the conifer plantations he’d inherited from his father. The track split several times and he unerringly made each turn without hesitation. One advantage of being raised as a child on an estate like this was to develop an encyclopaedic knowledge of the lay of the land, to know each track and path as well as an urban child learns the city streets around its home.

An abandoned stone building eventually came into view, trees growing almost up to the walls. The windows consisted of small slits, looking more like a Second World War bunker than a house. Iron bars covered the windows as if it were a prison, but the windows were too small for any human to climb through. He parked the Land Rover, opening the back door to release the two big dogs who began running around in a frenzy, dropping noses to the ground in search of interesting scents to follow.

“Heel!” The word was spat out, the animals reluctantly running to shadow their master as he pushed open the solid wooden door that sealed the entrance. They filed in, the laird followed by the two large dogs, and entered a square, stone room devoid of any furniture. Several rusting metal hooks hung from high ceiling beams awaiting the next slaughter. The room was cold, little sunlight reached the building through the oppressive fir trees and the sealed windows left the air stale, smelling of dust and that faint odour he associated with death and decay.

The building had once been a cared-for home, a place to bring up a family and work the land, but whichever family had last lived here were long gone – forcibly removed with so many others in the time known as the Clearances. The laird’s family were landowners even then, greedy for the profit offered by sheep grazing and uncaring of those who worked their lands. The building was now used as a cold store, a place to hang pheasants, grouse and deer killed during the seasonal shooting sprees. He stopped in surprise, seeing a box of crisps left against the wall. Next to the box was an ornate hourglass, full of red sand. The laird picked up the hourglass, wondering who had been using his cold store as an impromptu hide-out and wondering at their choice of accessories. The hourglass was heavy and rested on a base made of mahogany or some other valuable hard wood. It pivoted between two carved and polished leg bones, from a young red deer, he estimated, judging by the size. He thought it would make a handsome addition to the mantlepiece in his trophy room and inverted the hourglass to watch the red sand trickling through its pinched centre. What could it have been designed to time? The sand would take days to complete the journey from one side to the other. There was a coin embedded in the newly upturned base, Pope Paul II in profile. Holding it under one arm he turned to the door and pulled on the handle. It wouldn’t move. “Blast! Must be the damp.”