THE PRETENDER’S GOLD
Scott Mariani

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Scott Mariani 2020

Cover design by Henry Steadman © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photographs: Stone window © Evelina Kremsdorf / Arcangel Images; Figure © Mark Owen / Trevillion Images; Landscape © Shutterstock.com

Scott Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008236014

Ebook Edition © May 2020 ISBN: 9780008236021

Version: 2020-04-08

Discover the series you can’t put down …

‘If you like your conspiracies twisty, your action bone-jarring, and your heroes impossibly dashing, then look no farther – the Ben Hope series is exactly what you need’

Mark Dawson

‘Deadly conspiracies, bone-crunching action and a tormented hero with a heart … Scott Mariani packs a real punch’

Andy McDermott

‘James Bond meets Jason Bourne meets The Da Vinci Code’

J. L. Carrell

‘Non-stop action – this book delivers’

Steve Berry

‘Full of authentic detail and heart-stopping action – a real thrill ride’

Ed Macy

‘Scott Mariani is an awesome writer’

Chris Kuzneski

‘Packed with dark intrigue, danger around every corner, bullets flying, sexual tension, and an endless assault of nasty villains … everything a thriller should be and more’

Joe Moore

‘If you’ve got a pulse, you’ll love Scott Mariani; if you haven’t, then maybe you crossed Ben Hope’

Simon Toyne

‘The action comes thick and fast and is choreographed with Mariani’s trademark skill and authenticity. The modern master of mayhem’

Shots Magazine

‘Fans of Dan Brown will love this’

Closer

‘Edge-of-the-seat excitement … I am hooked on this series’

5* Reader Review

‘Gripping adventure, superbly written’

5* Reader Review

‘Cinematic style, fast pace and, above all, fabulous characters’

5* Reader Review

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Epilogue

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the same author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Loch Ardaich

Scottish Highlands

‘Can you believe this crap?’ Ross Campbell muttered to himself as he stared through his rainy van windscreen at the narrow rural road ahead, winding onward for endless miles into the murk. The December cold and rain were showing absolutely no sign of letting up, and he had the prospect of a good soaking to look forward to when he reached his remote destination.

What a bummer. What a drag. Of course, this job would have to land on him on the dreichest, dreariest and most depressing day imaginable. Today of all days, marking exactly twelve months since Katrina had left him to run off with that rich bastard cosmetic dentist from Inverness.

Ross strongly felt that he should instead be slouched in his armchair at home, nursing his smouldering resentment in front of the TV with a few bottles of Broughton’s Old Jock at his elbow. Yes, he was still feeling sorry for himself. Yes, he was taking it badly and allowing his chronic anger to get the better of him. And anyone who had a problem with that better keep their opinion to themselves. Got that, pal?

But however Ross felt he should be spending this miserable winter’s afternoon, his duties as partner in the firm of McCulloch & Campbell, Chartered Building Surveyors, obliged him to be here. His task: to scout and assess the western perimeter of the development site within the Loch Ardaich pine forest, right out in the sticks thirty miles north of Fort William. Like it hadn’t already been scouted and assessed a dozen times already, but what was the point of complaining?

The closer he got to his destination, the more aggressively the rain lashed his windscreen. The road narrowed to a single-track lane in places as it followed an endless series of S-bends along the forested shores of Loch Ardaich. The heather-covered hills rose high all around, their tops shrouded in mist and cloud. Now and then he passed a lonely cottage or the deserted ruins of an old stone bothy. On a clear day you could sometimes spot an osprey circling over the waters of the loch, or even an eagle; and it wasn’t uncommon for a red deer to suddenly burst from cover and leap across the road right in the path of oncoming traffic, scaring the wits out of the inattentive motorist. Ross had lived here all his life, though, and for him the scenery and fauna of the remote western Highlands that drew thousands of visitors each year from all around the world held little wonder or fascination.

At last, the wire-mesh fence and main gates of the development site appeared ahead. The adverse weather conditions had kept most of the protesters away, but the diehards were still grimly hanging on. Ross gave a groan as he saw the small crowd huddled in their rain gear by the gates, ready to wave their sodden banners and scream abuse at any vehicles entering or leaving the fenced-off construction zone. Ross would have bet money that Geoffrey Watkins was among them. Come up all the way from England to stir up as much trouble as he could, Watkins was the most militant of the lot.

Ross personally didn’t have a lot of time for the environmental nutters in general, though he had to admit they might have a point on this occasion. It had certainly been one of the more contentious projects his firm had been involved in, and he’d often wished that his senior partner, Ewan, hadn’t agreed to take it on. The plans for Highland Manor, an eighteen-hole championship golf course and gated community estate with million-pound homes for wealthy retirees, had attracted no small amount of anger from locals. Two hundred acres of ancient pine forest had been earmarked for destruction under the scheme, sparking furious resistance and attempted legal action by one of the larger and more organised ecowarrior groups. The environmentalists had lost their legal case in court months ago, but in spite of the ruling against them were still gamely doing all they could to disrupt the development. Their methods had been creative enough to cause protracted and extremely expensive delays. The company who’d initially landed the contract had been brought to a virtual standstill by the legion of protesters who had invaded the site, chained themselves to trees, lain in the path of bulldozers, harangued the foresters and generally made it impossible to get the excavations underway. When the company had built a scale-proof fence worthy of a prison compound and brought in security personnel to eject the protesters, the ecowarriors had simply sharpened up their game by sabotaging construction vehicles, slashing tyres and setting an awful lot of valuable machinery ablaze, until in the end the company execs had been forced to cut their losses and give up.

Three more construction firms were now in competition to decide which lucky crew would take their place. All the while, persistent rumours abounded of a lot of dirty money changing hands and palms being greased for the project to be greenlit. If you believed the gossip, certain local officials were going to do well out of the deal – if and when it actually got completed. The situation was a mess.

Ross was driving his company van, a little white Peugeot Bipper with the chartered surveyor firm’s logo proudly emblazoned on its side, a magnet for trouble. Not much wanting his vehicle to be attacked and pelted with missiles, he slipped away from the main gates and detoured around the site’s western perimeter to a small side entrance the protesters had, mercifully, chosen to leave unguarded today. He parked the van and listened to the rain pounding the roof. The ground was turning to slush out there, appalling even by the normal standards of a Scottish winter. Beyond the fence stood the thick, dark forest, ancient and forbidding. Local folklore held spooky old tales of bogles and sluaghs and other evil spirits and hobgoblins that lurked in the woods, preying on the hapless. What a load of shite, Ross thought, but he still didn’t much fancy having to venture inside.

He changed into his wellies and tugged on his raincoat before getting out of the van, then took the plunge. Moments later, he’d undone the padlock holding the side gate and let himself through the fence, closing it behind him before setting off at a trudge towards the trees.

The forest was very dense and hard to walk through, and Ross was certainly no hardened outdoorsman. He tripped and stumbled his way for nearly quarter of a mile using a GPS navigation device to orient him towards the western boundary. Without the GPS he’d soon have been hopelessly lost, probably doomed to wander for ever. Overhead the tall trees swayed in the wind and their branches clacked and clashed like the antlers of fighting stags in the rutting season. Deep, deep in the forest he swore out loud – who the hell could hear him, anyway – as he had to clamber over a slippery, moss-covered fallen trunk that blocked his path with no other way around except through a mass of brambles that would have stopped a tank. He cursed even more vehemently a few metres further on, when he was forced to negotiate a steep downward slope where part of the ground had been washed away by floods of rain, exposing tree roots and a great deal of rotted and richly odorous vegetable matter.

Damn and blast. Why’d this have to happen to me? At least, if it was any consolation, the rain had stopped.

He was halfway down the slippery incline when he lost his footing. He windmilled his arms to try to regain his balance, to no avail. Next thing he was tumbling and slithering through the gloopy mud, desperately grasping at roots in an attempt to halt his descent but unable to stop himself until he’d rolled and somersaulted all the way to the claggy, squelchy bottom.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ he yelled as he managed to sit upright, caked from head to toe in wet, cloying, dripping, freezing cold filth that dripped from his fingers and matted his hair. ‘I don’t bloody believe it!’ Followed by a stream of much more profane invective.

But then his words abruptly died in his mouth as a very strange and unexpected sight caught his eye.

He reached out and raked in the dirt to uncover the rest of the shiny, glinting object whose corner was peeking up at him from the ground next to him. Something hard and small and thin and round, which he picked up and held up to look at more closely. As he wiped dirt off it, a stray beam of sunlight penetrated through the pine canopy above. It reflected off the object in his fingers, and it was as though someone had shone a golden light in his face. He gasped in astonishment.

Then, moments later, he was finding more gold coins in the mud. Dirty, but perfect and beautiful. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten of them. The torrential rain flood that had washed away part of the bank must have disturbed them from their hiding place. How long had they lain undiscovered in this remote and little-travelled neck of the woods?

Suddenly, Ross Campbell’s unlucky tumble and getting clarted up to his oxters in muck had become the best thing that had ever happened to him. As fast as he could stuff the coins into his coat and trouser pockets, more kept appearing all around. Within minutes he’d collected dozens of them. It was so incredible he was laughing and hooting to himself like a kid. When he’d loaded all he could carry into his pockets he struggled back up the slippery bank with his booty, vowing he’d return to dig up the hundreds more he was certain lay buried there.

The journey back to the van seemed to take him about half the time. He was so dazed and ecstatic that he barely noticed the brambles and treacherous terrain, and didn’t think for a single moment about his filthy, wet clothes or the fact that under them he was soaked to the bone. Reaching the van, he piled into the driver’s seat and dug some of the coins from his pocket to re-examine more closely. They were old, really old. He was no expert, but he was certain they must be worth a ton of money. A bloody fortune, lying there in the mud for hundreds of years, just waiting for him to come and find it.

Ross could hardly contain himself. The day’s task was almost completely forgotten. He’d just tell his business partner Ewan that the weather was too awful to get the job done, and promise to return as soon as possible. He had the exact location marked on his GPS device.

In the meantime, he needed to get home as fast as he could. A hot shower and a cup of tea, before he caught his death. Then he’d spend the rest of the afternoon, and probably the evening, cleaning up, counting and re-counting his glorious loot. What might the coins be worth? Hundreds of pounds each? Thousands? The numbers escalated in his head until it made him dizzy. Fantasies were already forming. He could picture himself quitting his job, for a start, then getting out of this godforsaken shithole and making a bee-line for somewhere with warm sandy beaches, palm trees and beautiful bikini-clad girls, maybe never to return. Fuck Katrina and her dentist! He’d show them.

He’d need to get the coins independently valued, of course. The internet would only tell him so much. But it would have to be discreet. And preferably done by an expert in another part of the UK, maybe in Edinburgh or London. Someone who’d never be told the precise location of the discovery. Nor would anyone else, certainly nobody local. As it seemed that he alone knew about this, he meant to keep it that way. The last thing Ross wanted was for others to come searching. And with the Loch Ardaich development project so conveniently put on hold, he’d have plenty of opportunity to come back here as often as he liked to hunt for more treasure.

With a trembling hand Ross started up the van engine, then took off in a rush. He couldn’t wait to get home. This was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most wonderful and exciting day of his entire life.

It would also prove to be one of the last. He didn’t know it yet, but he would never live to see his fantasies come true. Nor did he have any idea of the chain of events his strange discovery was about to set in motion.

If Ross Campbell had not found the gold coins that had lain hidden all this time in the forest, people would not have been hurt or killed. None of the things that were about to happen would have taken place. And the men who were soon to be drawn into the web of danger would not have become involved.

One man in particular. A man Ross Campbell would never meet.

A man called Ben Hope.

But Ross Campbell had found them, and now the storm was coming.

Chapter 1

Eleven days later, the clouds were gone and the sky was bright and blue. But none of the assembly who had gathered at the cemetery in the village of Kinlochardaich to watch the interment of the coffin was smiling.

What an unspeakable tragedy. Ross Campbell had been a much-loved member of the community, even if he had been going through some personal ups and downs in the last year and not always the cheerful and carefree soul he’d once been. It was hard to keep secrets in this close-knit community, and everyone knew that his former long-term girlfriend, Katrina Wilson, was now living with someone else in Inverness. Then again, those who had spoken to Ross in the few days leading up to his untimely death reported that his mood had radically improved all of a sudden. For reasons that remained unclear he’d seemed strangely happy, even jubilant, as though he’d finally broken free of the emotional troubles that had plagued him since his relationship breakup. It seemed so ironic that, just as his life appeared to have turned a corner, he should fall victim to such an awful accident.

It was ‘Patch’ Keddie, the one-eyed birdwatcher who was one of the community’s more colourful fixtures, who’d discovered the body floating face-down among the rushes at the edge of Loch Ardaich while on his solitary wanderings in the countryside with backpack and spotting scope, four days earlier. Shocked and upset by the grisly discovery, Patch had hurried to a spot where he could get phone reception and called for an ambulance, but it was already far too late.

It appeared as if Ross must have been exploring the lochside when he’d slipped and fallen into the water. His surveyor’s van was later found quite a distance away, parked by the fence of the Highland Manor development site. This had sparked much puzzled debate about what Ross was doing down at the water’s edge, a good quarter of a mile or more from the location he’d been surveying. Perhaps he’d wandered over there just to enjoy the magnificent views. In any case, having never learned to swim he had little chance of escaping the freezing cold water. He wasn’t the first victim to have been claimed by the depths of the loch.

Among the mourners at the graveside was Ross’s partner in the firm, thirty-four-year-old Ewan McCulloch. Head bowed and grim-faced, Ewan was visibly shaken to the core by the loss of his business associate and friend. Though they’d only worked together for five years, like most folks in this close-knit community with relatively few incomers they’d known each other for nearly all of their lives.

Other attendees at the funeral included Ross’s stricken parents, who now lived near Inverness. Mrs Campbell had wept bitterly throughout the gruelling church service and was so crippled with grief that she could barely remain upright to watch her only child’s coffin go into the ground. Her husband bore his agony in stoical silence, but the expression in his eyes was ghastly to see.

Katrina Wilson, the ex-girlfriend, was conspicuous by her absence. Nobody was terribly surprised that the untrustworthy little cow had not bothered to show up. Also present were Mairi Anderson, the surveyor’s office administrator; William and Maureen Reid, who ran the Kinlochardaich Arms, the village’s one and only pub; Rab Hunter, the local mechanic who’d known both Ross and Ewan since primary-school days; Patch Keddie, tears streaming from his one eye; and Grace Kirk.

Grace was a couple of years younger than Ewan, had attended the same primary and secondary schools and then left for a time to pursue a police career in the big city. She’d returned to her birthplace a few months ago and was the only female officer in the area. Today she was off duty and out of uniform, hiding her reddened eyes behind dark glasses as she stood in the back of the crowd with her hands clasped and shoulders drooping.

When at last the gut-wrenching ceremony was over, there were solemn handshakes and hugs and commiserations and more tears before the assembly began to disperse. Poor Mrs Campbell had to be virtually carried away to the waiting car. Ewan had been hoping to say a few words of thanks to Grace Kirk, but when he turned away from the grave he saw she’d already gone. He shared a quiet moment with Rab Hunter, who clapped him on the arm and said, ‘Rough times, man. You okay?’ Once you got past the intimidating muscles and the piratical beard and earring, Rab was a big softy at heart. His eyes were full of tears and he kept blinking.

‘Yeah, I’m okay,’ Ewan lied.

Rab shook his head and blinked once more. ‘I still cannae get my head aroond it, you know? He was here with us, and now he’s gone.’

‘I can barely believe it either,’ Ewan replied, truthfully this time. He, too, was having a hard time adjusting to the reality of Ross’s death. They parted, and he walked slowly back across the cemetery grounds and past the old grey stone church to where he’d parked his van. It was a little white Peugeot with the company name on the door, identical to the one Ross had been driving. Ewan didn’t have a car of his own. His only personal vehicle was a rundown old camper, currently off the road and somewhat neglected. Maybe one day he’d get around to it.

As Ewan headed homewards he was asking himself the same question he’d been asking for days: What on earth was Ross doing down there at the lochside? He couldn’t have been lost; he knew the area as well as anyone. Ewan didn’t believe he was admiring the scenery, either. Ross couldn’t have given a damn about such things. Had he been drinking? A couple of times in the months since Katrina had left, Ewan had thought he could smell alcohol on Ross’s breath during work hours. Maybe he should have reached out to his friend, offered support, but he’d said nothing at the time. Now he feared that Ross’s emotional state might have been more serious than anyone had supposed.

At the back of Ewan’s mind was the unmentionable thought that wouldn’t go away.

Suicide. Was it possible?

Surely not. Ross wasn’t the type to top himself. But then, every man has his breaking point. What if Ross had simply reached his? What if the apparent uplift in his spirits during his last few days – and yes, Ewan had noticed it too – was really just a desperate man’s last-ditch attempt to disguise the bleak despair that was consuming his heart and soul?

If that was true, then Ewan had truly failed his friend.

‘Oh God, Ross. I’m so sorry.’

When Ewan got home to the small house in which he lived alone, he went straight to the kitchen and poured himself a stiff whisky from a bottle a client had given him the Christmas before last. He wasn’t much of a boozer, but this could be a good time to take up the habit. He sat down heavily in a wooden chair at the table, gulped his drink and then poured himself another. Mixed up with his grief was the bewildering issue of how the business was going to continue with just him as a solo operator. There was already too much work for two partners, especially if the massive undertaking that was the golf course project went ahead. Ross’s sudden absence left a gaping hole that threatened to swallow Ewan up, too.

He had been unable to do any work since receiving the news of the death four days ago. He had no plans to go into the office tomorrow either. Nor the next day, most likely. Let’s just sit here and drink, he thought. By the time he’d finished the second whisky the edge was coming off his pain and he decided that a third would help even more. He knew he’d probably regret it, but what the hell.

Ewan woke up in the darkness. The phone was ringing. What time was it? He must have been asleep for hours, and had no recollection of having moved from the kitchen table to the living room couch. His head was aching and his mouth tasted like the contents of a wrestler’s laundry basket. He should never have drunk so much. Bleary-eyed and disorientated, he managed to get up, turn on a light and stumble across the room to answer the phone. Who could be calling?

He picked up. ‘Hello?’ he croaked.

There was silence on the line. Ewan repeated, ‘Hello?’

Chapter 2

‘Is that Ewan McCulloch?’

The caller spoke in a local accent. His voice was throaty and deep, marked by a pronounced lisp that somehow sounded familiar to Ewan, though very distantly so. He tried to think where he might have heard the voice before, but couldn’t place it. His head was spinning from the whisky. Glancing at his watch he saw it was nearly midnight. He managed to get it together enough to reply, ‘This is he. Might I ask who’s calling?’

‘Never mind who I am,’ said the lisping voice. ‘It’s what I know that should concern you. It’s what I saw. I cannae keep it tae myself any longer. It’s not right.’

Ewan blinked, paused a beat in confusion. ‘I’m sorry? I don’t understand. What are you talking about? Do I know you? Look, it’s very late and I’m kind of tired.’

‘Shut up and listen tae me. I’m talkin’ aboot yer man Ross Campbell. That was nae accident, get it?’

‘No, I don’t get it,’ Ewan replied, thoroughly bewildered. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘And in case you thought he did it tae himself, think again.’

‘Who is this?’ Ewan demanded. ‘Are you sure I don’t know you? Have we met?’ The more the caller talked, the more Ewan was certain he’d heard the voice before, as if in some other life he could barely remember.

‘They killed him.’

‘They what? Say that again.’

‘You heard me,’ the caller went on tersely. ‘The basturts caught him in the woods, dragged him doon tae the loch and tossed him in the water tae make it look like he drowned hisself.’ He let out a sigh. ‘There. Now you know the truth.’

Stunned, Ewan carried the phone back to the sofa and slumped into it. Was he dreaming? No, the caller sounded perfectly real. And very sober, serious and sure of what he was saying. ‘But … you’re talking about …’

‘Aye, I am. That’s what this was. No other word for it. Cold-blooded murder.’

‘I … what … how …?’

‘How do I know?’ the caller finished for him with a sour chuckle. ‘Because I was there, that’s how. Fishin’ for salmon that it’s not my right tae fish, if you get my meaning. I was checkin’ my nets when I saw these five men appear from the woods. Thought they were a bailiff patrol at first, so I hid deep in the bushes, wonderin’ how the hell I was gonnae get away. They’ve caught me before. But they didnae see me. They had other business on their minds.’

Ewan pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, desperately trying to think straight. ‘I … this is just insane.’

‘It was near dark,’ the caller went on. ‘But I saw the whole thing clear. As they came closer it wiz obvious that the fifth man, he wasnae one o’ them. They were holdin’ him by the arms like he was a prisoner. He was fightin’ and strugglin’. Yellin’ at them tae let him go. But the poor guy couldnae get away from them and he never had a chance. They hauled him tae the edge o’ the bank. I couldnae believe my eyes. Didnae want tae watch. Next thing there was a big splash as he hit the water. Two o’ them were carryin’ boat hooks with long metal poles, them telescopic ones. He tried tae drag himself up the bank but the fuckers kept pokin’ him and shovin’ him under. Again and again. Took five, six minutes. Maybe longer. I wanted tae do somethin’ tae help. But I was scared what they’d do tae me. Then when he stopped fightin’ and I could see him floatin’ in the water, they prodded him a few more times tae be sure. I heard one o’ the basturts laugh. Then they turned an’ walked back tae the woods. And that was the last I saw o’ them.’

Ewan couldn’t speak, could barely even breathe. His mind was swirling from much more than a bellyful of booze. Ross, murdered? Was this some kind of crazy dream? Ewan dug his fingernails into his flesh and nipped himself until it hurt, but the caller went on talking.

This was no dream.

‘I could’ve gone tae try an’ pull him from the water,’ the caller said. ‘But I knew he was dead already. I was shocked. Ma heart was thumpin’ so bad, I thought I was gonnae faint. So I just waited until they were gone, and then I legged it. Ran like hell, an’ kept runnin’. I wish I hadnae, but that’s what I did. I just wanted no part o’ it. It wisnae until the next day, when they found the body, that I even knew who they’d murdered. Been frettin’ over it ever since. Cannae shut it oot o’ ma head.’

At last, Ewan was able to marshal his wits together enough to ask the obvious question. ‘These four men. Who were they?’

There was a pause on the line as the caller mulled over his reply. When he spoke again, he sounded scared. ‘I’m sorry, Mr McCulloch. It would be mair than my life’s worth tae tell you another word.’

‘You recognised them, didn’t you?’

Another heavy pause. Then, ‘Two o’ them. That’s all I’ll say.’

‘Please,’ Ewan said. ‘I need to know.’

‘Forget it. I’ve already told you too much. Goodbye.’

‘Hold on. Don’t hang up. Please! If you don’t want to tell me, then at least report what you saw to the police. Better still, we could go there together. Tell me who you are. I could meet you somewhere, right now. We could drive up to the police station in Fort William first thing in the morning.’

‘Mr McCulloch—’

‘We don’t have to tell them about the salmon poaching, if that’s what you’re worried about. Under the circumstances I don’t think they’d even be bothered about—’

‘Look, I just wanted you tae know the truth o’ what happened,’ the caller said. ‘Or as much o’ it as I dare tae tell. Dinnae make me regret that I called you. Nobody except you has any clue what I witnessed. I intend tae keep it that way. And if you have any sense, you’ll keep this tae yourself too. That’s all I have tae say. Good night, God bless and good luck.’

And Ewan was left holding a dead phone. He tried dialling 1-4-7-1-3 to find out the caller’s number and call them back, but the information had been withheld.

It was only just gone midnight, but Ewan was certain he’d get no more sleep. He couldn’t even close his eyes. He frantically paced the floor, his mind awhirl. Was this some kind of sick joke? The enormity of the mystery caller’s claim was staggering. Ludicrous. Impossible.

And yet … what if it were true?

As he went on pacing for the next hour, Ewan reflected on the trouble and anger that the golf course development scheme had stirred up. A lot of folks in these parts were furious about it, not least the self-proclaimed ecowarriors who, vowing never to give up the fight, had plagued the construction company until they downed tools and walked away. A few months back, someone had made a threatening anonymous call to the McCulloch & Campbell office, saying their firm would regret it if they remained connected with the project. Of course, Ewan had reported the call to the police in Fort William, who’d appeared to do nothing about it. For the next several weeks he had kept expecting to find his car tyres slashed or an office window broken, but nothing more had come of it and he’d quickly forgotten the episode.

However, a lot of other people, including Mairi the firm administrator, had been convinced that it was only a matter of time before someone got seriously hurt. Some of the protesters were a militant bunch. Who knew what they might be capable of?

Breaking windows and vandalising construction machinery were one thing. Murder was something else entirely. But given that both Ewan and Ross were widely known to be associated with the project, albeit only indirectly, what if …

Jesus. Maybe it was true!

The more Ewan thought about it, the deeper his panic grew. He wanted to call Mairi to tell her. But he didn’t want to alarm her until he could be more certain of his facts. Who to talk to, then? The police again? Perhaps Grace Kirk? Even if he’d had her number, she’d only think he was crazy. He had no real evidence. What if it was all a lie?

It took a long time for Ewan to think of who to call for help and advice. His uncle was retired and had been enjoying a quiet life in the Italian countryside for the last few years, with his Neapolitan wife Mirella. He’d always been there for his nephew, since Ewan’s parents had passed away. He’d spent his career in the army, though he’d seldom ever spoken about the things he’d done and his crazy adventures back in those days.

Though you weren’t supposed to talk about it, everyone in the family had known Ewan’s uncle was no ordinary soldier, but was involved for a long time in the secretive and hidden world of Special Forces. He was older now, but still strong and wise, a rock you could cling to. Someone you could truly confide in.

Yes, that’s what Ewan needed to do.

He soon found the number in his address book. Feeling a little more settled, he managed to doze off for a few hours on the sofa. At six in the morning, seven a.m. in Italy, he brewed a strong coffee, then picked up the phone.

Chapter 3

Ewan’s uncle was called Archibald, but nobody called him that. For some reason that had never been too clear to Ewan, the name his uncle had always gone by was Boonzie. Boonzie McCulloch. Ewan thought it might have been an old army nickname that stuck.

It was a great relief to hear his voice on the phone. Despite having lived for years in Italy, Boonzie’s accent was still as strong as the day he’d left Scotland. He was delighted to hear from his only nephew. But Ewan thought his uncle sounded tired, his voice a little weaker than the last time they’d spoken.

After spending a couple of minutes on the usual pleasantries, Ewan bit the bullet. ‘This isn’t just a social call, Uncle. I wish it was. Fact is, I’ve got a problem.’

‘What kind o’ problem, laddie?’

‘The kind I need someone like you to advise me what to do about.’

Boonzie listened calmly and quietly as his nephew related the whole story: Ross’s death, Ewan’s initial speculations about possible suicide, and the anonymous phone call from the man he could only refer to as ‘the poacher’, which had blown away all the previous theories about the drowning and left him, Ewan, in such a quandary. He told it exactly as it had happened, leaving nothing out. When he finished, Boonzie methodically broke down the facts and went through all the questions that had been flying around Ewan’s mind. Was this real? Could it be some kind of prank? How plausible was the witness’s claim? Could it be verified? Was there any way to identify this mystery caller and get him to come forward, or at least reveal more about what he’d allegedly seen?

Nobody with a background as tough and dangerous as Boonzie McCulloch’s could have survived as long as he had without being extremely cautious. He was nobody’s fool and his mind was as sharp as the wicked double-edged blade on a Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger. But after a long discussion, Ewan’s uncle could come to only one conclusion. ‘I trust ye, laddie. If it sounds real to you, then it sounds real to me.’

‘Part of me wishes you’d dismissed the whole thing as total bollocks,’ Ewan said. ‘I’d have been happy to believe you, and try to forget this nightmare ever happened.’

‘Ye say this person sounded familiar,’ Boonzie said thoughtfully.

Ewan replied, ‘I thought so at the time, yes. I was sure I’d heard his voice before somewhere. But the more I try to remember where, the less sure I am about it. I might have imagined it. I’m going out of my head with confusion. What the hell am I going to do?’

Boonzie’s reply was unhesitant. ‘Do nothing. Sit tight and wait for me tae get there.’

Ewan realised how foolish he’d been not to anticipate that this would be his uncle’s instant reaction. ‘No. I can’t accept that. I’m not asking you to drop everything and come here. I just thought … to be perfectly honest I don’t know what I thought.’

‘Aye, well, two heads’re better than one. Give me a day to sort things oot here and make the travel arrangements. I’ll be with you as quick as I can.’

‘I hate to drag you away from your home.’

‘The middle of winter’s no exactly the busy season for us,’ Boonzie said with a chuckle. He and Mirella had a seasonal business growing tomatoes and basil, which they canned into purée and pesto for the restaurant trade in their region of Campobasso. They’d never be millionaires, but it was a blissfully peaceful life and exactly what the couple wanted to be doing.

‘All the same. I feel like shit about it.’

‘Wheesht. It’s the least I can do. We’ll have this thing worked oot before ye know it.’

Despite his sense of guilt Ewan was already feeling much better. ‘And then? Take it to the police?’

‘Maybe. First let’s make sure we know what’s going on here. One step at a time, Ewan. One step at a time.’

‘Thanks, Uncle. You’ve no idea how much this means to me.’

‘I promised yer father on his death bed that I’d look after ye, Ewan. That’s what I mean tae do. You’re like the son I never had.’ The fearless Boonzie McCulloch wasn’t afraid of sounding corny, either.

‘Och, stop it. You’re embarrassing me.’

‘I mean it. So you stay put, keep yer head doon and dinnae move a muscle until I get there. Okay?’

‘I will.’

‘Swear?’

‘Absolutely.’

But despite his promise, as the hours passed following their conversation Ewan found it progressively harder and harder to sit twiddling his thumbs waiting. The morning seemed to drag on for ever and he didn’t know what to do with himself. Impatience was building like steam pressure inside him. Shortly after eleven a.m. his rising tension was suddenly interrupted when his landline phone rang again, louder than a train whistle, making him jump.

As he hurried over to pick up, the thought hit him that this could be the poacher calling back to say he’d had second thoughts and would agree to meet and tell him the rest of what he knew. Or else maybe it was Boonzie, telling him he was already at the airport and would soon be winging his way to Scotland. Boonzie to the rescue!

It was neither.

‘Oh, hello, Mr Campbell.’ Ewan felt awkward talking to Ross’s father and didn’t know what to say. The agony of the man’s grief was palpable over the phone line. He sounded like death.

‘It’s about Ross’s van,’ Mr Campbell explained. ‘It’s still here and I suppose you’ll be needing it back.’

Ewan had forgotten all about the van. For some bizarre reason the police had had the recovery service tow it to Ross’s place. Now that he was effectively running the business alone for the foreseeable future, Ewan had little use for two company vehicles, but he replied, ‘Oh, aye. Yes, I suppose I will.’ Then he gritted his teeth and asked how he and Mrs Campbell were doing.

Not well, came the predictable answer. They were both sleep-walking through a nightmare. Eileen was on heavy medication and pretty much comatose. Their doctor was waiting for them back in Inverness, where they would be returning that afternoon to pick up the pieces of their life. Ewan offered some more lame condolences and said he’d come right over and collect the van. Not a task he particularly relished, but at least it’d get him out of the house for a while and give him something to do.

Ross had held a mortgage on a small ground-floor flat in a handsome double-fronted stone house a couple of doors down from the Kinlochardaich Arms, on the other side of the village. It was within easy walking distance of Ewan’s place, and he set off on foot. The wind was cold; he wondered if snow might be on the way.

Seeing the white Peugeot Bipper van parked outside Ross’s flat brought a lump to Ewan’s throat. Mr Campbell appeared at the window, and came outside a moment later to greet him with the same grim-faced demeanour as before. They shook hands and spoke only briefly. Ross’s father handed over the set of vehicle keys that had been among his son’s possessions recovered by the police. Then Ewan got into the van and drove off, feeling miserable.

With nothing better to do when he got home, he set about cleaning out the inside of the van. Ross had not been the tidiest of people. His flat had always been a tip and he kept the company vehicle like a pigsty: crumpled fish and chips packaging tossed negligently into the back, crushed empty Coke cans rolling about the floor, crisp packets stuffed into the glove compartment, dirt everywhere. Tons of dirt. It looked as though his friend had been wallowing about in a bloody farmyard. Tutting and shaking his head, Ewan chucked the rubbish into a bin bag, then went and fetched the vacuum cleaner and started dejectedly hoovering out all the bits of dried mud. Honestly, Ross. Sorry to say it, but what a slob you were.

Ewan was cleaning beneath the driver’s seat when he came across the strange object that had somehow made its way under there. He picked it up and stared at it.

‘Holy shit.’

Chapter 4

The gold coin seemed to glitter between his fingers with a life of its own. Ewan had never seen anything like it before. He turned off the hoover and sat at the wheel of the van to examine the coin more closely. Its markings were ingrained with dirt, as though it had not long ago been dug up out of the ground. But they were still clear enough for Ewan to make out. One face bore the head of a regal-looking individual with long, flowing locks of hair and a noble, patrician profile. Inscribed around the circumference were the letters LVD.XV.D.G.FR. ET NAV. REX. The reverse of the coin was inscribed with a crown and more writing: CHRS.REGN.VINC.IMPER.1746.

None of which meant anything to Ewan except the obvious 1746 date mark. And the fact that it was most definitely not a piece of brass. But now the question was burning inside him: what on earth had Ross been doing with it?

On an impulse, he got out of the van, knelt down by the open driver’s door and reached an arm under the seat to see what else might be under there. To his even greater amazement his fingers closed on a second coin. As with the first, he stared at it for a long moment. It was virtually identical except for the date mark, which was a year older.

Where could Ross have possibly found these? Surely, not even an inveterate slob would leave valuable gold coins lying around for any length of time in their car. They couldn’t have been here long. Perhaps this explained where all the mud had come from. Was this what Ross had been doing on his trips into the countryside, rooting up old coins?

Scotland as a whole was incredibly rich with history, but nowhere more so than this region. Myths and legends of buried treasure had for years drawn legions of dreamers and speculators to the Loch Ardaich pine forest and surrounding glens looking to get rich in other ways, armed with metal detectors and shovels and divining rods and God knew what else. Nobody had ever found anything of significant historic interest, barring a few rusty old arrowheads and, on one exciting occasion, a medieval Scottish claymore sword so decomposed that it looked like a rotted stick. Gradually, the treasure hunters had dwindled to a bare few – while the sceptics and naysayers became both more numerous and vociferous. ‘There’s nothing there’ had become the received wisdom.

But it looked as though Ross might well have proved the naysayers wrong. Why hadn’t he shared the news of his discovery?

Reflecting, Ewan felt a pang of betrayal. He’d always considered Ross his friend. Friends didn’t hide things from one another. Ross’s deliberate act of secrecy smacked of mistrust and deviousness. What did he think, that Ewan would try to steal his precious coins? Claim his share, because they’d been discovered on company time?

But hold on a minute, Ewan thought. This wasn’t making any sense. What were the coins doing lying about in the van in the first place? Who wouldn’t have brought them inside and made sure they were safely hidden away? Which meant, or implied, that the reason Ross had left these two particular coins in the van was that he didn’t know they were there.

Which in turn also meant, or implied, that the reason he didn’t know they were there was that he’d accidentally dropped them, in his typically clumsy and negligent style, while his attention was taken up with something else. And what else could possibly have distracted him in such a way?

One logical answer sprang to mind.

More coins.

Ewan could picture it perfectly. Ross, delirious with greedy joy at his find, scrambling home in such a rush that the gold was literally slipping through his fingers. How many more coins could he have found? Enough, obviously, that he hadn’t bothered even counting them until he got back to his flat, or else he’d surely have missed these two. Dozens of them? Scores? Who could say?

But then Ewan had another thought that made his blood turn cold.

If these two coins represented only a minor fraction of Ross’s haul, as logic suggested, then where were the rest? What if Ross had had them on his person, keeping them close, when the alleged killers struck? What if the killers had taken them?

And worst of all, what if the gold was the reason they’d killed him?

Suddenly this whole dreadful thing made some kind of sense.

Ewan pocketed the pair of coins and pulled out his phone to call his uncle. No reply, and no messaging service on which to leave a voicemail. Ewan only had the Italian landline number to reach him on. He wasn’t even sure if Boonzie possessed a mobile. Knowing him, perhaps not. There was an email address for him and Mirella, but Ewan had given up sending messages to it long ago.

Ewan couldn’t stand passively waiting any longer. He had to do something. People must be told about this. Now there was not only a potential witness to the crime, but a likely and compelling motive to boot.

Kinlochardaich had a church, a pub, a garage, a small convenience store and its own tiny primary school with about twenty-five pupils, but it had no police station – something many residents regarded as a blessing. The only cop hereabouts was Grace Kirk, and so Ewan clambered into his van and drove hurriedly over to the rented cottage in which she lived alone, just beyond the outskirts of the village. He was a little nervous about going to see her. They hadn’t been alone together since they were both sixteen years old and sort of, kind of, on-and-off going out. Not that it had been much of a relationship. A bit of hand-holding, a few awkward kisses and some sweet talk, nothing more serious. But Ewan had secretly worshipped and pined for Grace for years afterwards, and in fact was willing to admit to himself that he’d never quite got over her. The news of her return to Kinlochardaich a few months back had got him rather worked up, though he’d never had the courage to speak to her, let alone ask her out again. The local gossip mill had it that she and Lewis Gourlay, a regular of the drinking fraternity at the Arms, were an item. Ewan stubbornly refused to believe the rumour.

In the event, he needn’t have felt nervous because Grace wasn’t at home. Ewan’s remaining option was now to drive the thirty miles south-east to Fort William, the nearest town of any real size, and talk to the police there. The journey took an hour, thanks to the narrow and winding roads.

The police station was a generic slab-sided office building located out of town near Loch Eil, with misty hills looming in the background. On arrival Ewan blurted out his story as best he could to a duty officer, who became thoroughly confused, asked him to calm down and showed him into an airless, windowless interview room with a plain table and four plastic chairs. Locked in the room and made to wait, Ewan felt strangely like he was under arrest. The beady eye of a video camera watched from one corner.

Half an hour later, the door opened and in walked two middle-aged plainclothes men who introduced themselves as Detective Inspector Fergus Macleod and Detective Sergeant Jim Coull. Macleod was a large burly man with a neck like an Aberdeen Angus bull and a florid complexion, and Coull was a smaller sandy-haired guy with a brush moustache, lean and whippy in build, whose hands never stopped moving. They sat at the table and asked him to run through the account he’d told the duty officer.

Ewan patiently laid the whole thing out to them in detail. They listened gravely and Coull scratched occasional notes on a pad he kept close to his chest. When Ewan reached the part about the coins, the detectives asked if they could see them.

‘I only brought the one with me,’ he said, showing them the slightly newer one from 1746. It was a lie; the other was still in his pocket, but some mistrustful instinct made him keep it hidden. The detectives examined it with impassive faces, then Macleod asked if they could hang onto it as evidence. Ewan, who had seen this coming, reluctantly agreed. Coull put the coin in a little plastic bag and assured him it would be well looked after.

‘Don’t forget to drop the other one into the station when you get a chance,’ said Coull.

‘Of course,’ replied Ewan, thinking he’d do no such thing.

‘Now tell us again about this poacher who claims to have witnessed the alleged incident,’ Macleod said, leaning across the table with his chunky square hands laced in front of him. The term ‘alleged incident’ grated on Ewan somewhat, but he patiently and politely repeated what he’d already told them.

‘Like I said, that’s all I know about the man. I don’t know his name, or exactly who or what he saw, other than he witnessed four men pushing Ross into the loch and deliberately drowning him. He couldn’t swim, anyway.’

‘Couldnae swim, eh?’ Coull asked, glancing sideways at his colleague as though this were some suspicious detail critical to cracking the case. By now Ewan was starting to get peeved by their lacklustre response. He asked them what they intended to do about this, now they had the facts of the matter before them.

Macleod heaved his thick shoulders in a shrug. ‘To be honest, Mr McCulloch, I would hardly say we had the facts. What you’re reporting is essentially no more than hearsay. These are very serious allegations and require more than this kind of flimsy anecdotal evidence to support them.’

‘Well, if you wanted something more substantial to go on, you could try to identify the witness, for a start,’ Ewan said.

‘Alleged witness,’ Coull corrected him.

‘Okay, alleged witness,’ Ewan said with a flush of impatience.

‘And how do you propose we do that, Mr McCulloch?’

‘Given that he seems to be in the habit of poaching salmon on the loch, he might not be that hard to find. He told me he’d been caught before. So maybe he’s already on file somewhere. I mean, you must have a database of all the people who’ve been prosecuted for that sort of thing.’

‘You’d have to narrow it down to something a wee bit more specific,’ Coull said. ‘We don’t know when he was caught, or doing what exactly, or where. That’s an awfy lot of potential names to trawl through, each one of which would have to be processed individually. You’re talking an enormous expenditure of manpower.’

Ewan stared at him, thinking, Isn’t expending manpower what the police are meant to do when somebody gets murdered? ‘Okay, but it must be possible to identify him one way or another. Then maybe you could find out what he knows. Maybe in exchange for turning a blind eye to what he gets up to. Like a plea deal.’

‘That’s not what a plea deal is,’ Coull said, like a real smart-arse.

‘Whatever you call it, then.’

Macleod pursed his lips and breathed heavily. ‘I see. You’ve got this all worked out, haven’t you, Mr McCulloch? Maybe you should be doing our jobs for us.’

‘There’s a thought,’ Ewan snapped back and instantly regretted it.

The interview didn’t get any more productive from that point. Twenty minutes later, Ewan left the police station wishing he’d never gone there. On the long drive homewards he was wondering angrily why the hell he’d agreed to let them hold onto one of the gold coins as ‘evidence’, if they had little to no intention of taking the murder claim seriously.

Oh, what the hell. Boonzie would soon be here to help set things straight.

But there was no phone message waiting for him when he got home. Ewan’s heart sank in dismay.

He spent the rest of the day trying to alleviate his frustration with mundane tasks like fixing the broken wall tile in the bathroom. That evening he immersed himself in the internet, typing in search keywords like GOLD COINS LOCH ARDAICH PINE FOREST and noting down whatever he could find on a pad. There wasn’t much. Then he began checking out numismatical websites, a strange and obscure corner of the web devoted to the study of old currency.

Researching the coin’s inscriptions and 1745 date mark online he was able to determine that what he had in front of him was what was known as a Louis d’or, a gold Louis, the eighteenth-century precursor to the later French Franc. Its value, from what he could glean, was something in the region of five thousand pounds. Holy crap.

French coins buried in Scotland? Ewan investigated the history behind that, too, and made more notes. Lastly he spent a while hunting for information about illegal salmon fishing in the vicinity. Again, he discovered a few details, though nothing specifically useful to him, and scribbled them down on his pad.

He looked at his watch. Getting late, and still no word from Boonzie. Ewan didn’t want to pester his uncle by trying to call again, but maybe he could send an email. Thinking Boonzie ought to know about the coins, he used his phone to take a photo of it, then attached the image to a brief message that just said, ‘Ross found this. It gets weirder. Hope you get here soon.’

He watched the message go, and felt suddenly very alone and empty. In a sudden fit of hopeless rage he ripped the page out of the notepad, screwed it into a ball and flung it at the wastepaper basket. It missed, and rolled into the corner. He was too despondent to care.

He was beginning to worry that maybe his uncle wasn’t coming at all.

Chapter 5

Early next morning, with the surveyors’ office still closed and having heard nothing from his uncle, Ewan decided to drive over to the golf course development site and take a look around. He avoided the ubiquitous crowd of demonstrators who never seemed to tire of camping by the main entrance, and sneaked around to the same discreet spot on the perimeter fence where Ross’s van had been found. He quietly let himself in through the locked side gate and spent a while wandering among the woods. The chances of finding where Ross had made his fateful discovery were pretty slim, and he knew it; he didn’t really know why he’d come here except for something to occupy his mind.

From the southern edge of the forest’s tree line he made his zigzagging way down the steep, heathery slopes to the lochside. The sky was pale and the air was chilly, making his breath billow in clouds. The craggy hilltops that surrounded the loch like the defences of prehistoric fortresses were wreathed in mist, now and then a shard of sunlight breaking through the cloud and casting a golden streak across the rugged landscape. All his life Ewan had marvelled at the magnificent scenery, but it was now forever tainted by the tragic event that had taken place here.

He hung around for a while, ambling up and down the bank in the vague hope of spotting the mysterious poacher. Which was a silly bit of wishful thinking, at best. The loch was twelve miles from end to end and it occurred to him that, of course, the spot where Ross was found wasn’t necessarily the same place where the witness claimed to have seen him being killed. The body could easily have floated some distance. To make matters worse, it was unlikely that the poacher would visit the same location twice in such a short time, even under normal circumstances. The fishing rights on the loch were tightly controlled by the Fisheries Board, whose tough bailiffs were known to patrol the shores regularly.

In short, Ewan knew all too well that he was wasting his time here. Utterly demoralised, he trudged back through the woods and reached the van just as it started to rain again. He slumped in behind the wheel and drove off.

He hadn’t gone far when he noticed a car in his mirror, following him along the twisty, otherwise empty road. The chunky Audi four-wheel-drive seemed to have appeared out of nowhere – but then Ewan hadn’t been paying a lot of attention. Now that it had caught his eye, he watched it in the mirror and thought it was following him much too closely, like fifty miles an hour on these tricky little roads wasn’t fast enough for this guy, and he was aggressively trying to get past. Okay, okay, you pushy bastard, Ewan thought, slowing to forty and edging a little to the side to let the guy overtake.

But instead of passing him, the big Audi slowed down too, matching his speed and remaining right on his tail, almost bumper to bumper. What was this clown playing at? Not liking this one bit, Ewan sped up again to widen the gap between them. Like before, the Audi stayed right with him, accelerating at the same rate he did. Ewan didn’t want to take his eyes off the twisty road for too long, but kept glancing in the mirror. All he could see were two vague shapes behind the Audi’s rainy windscreen. ‘Come on, then, do you want to overtake me or not?’ he yelled.

Then, suddenly, the Audi swerved out to one side and came surging by him with a roar. Just as he was feeling glad to be shot of this tailgating hooligan, the Audi abruptly sliced across his path and its brake lights flared crimson through the rain.

With his heart in his mouth Ewan stamped on his own brakes and twisted the steering wheel to avoid a rear-end collision. But the road was slippery, he was travelling too fast and he felt his wheels lose traction. He cried out in panic as the van went into a skid. The verge flashed towards him. His front wheels hit the grass with a thud and the nose of the van ploughed through several feet of dirt before smashing hard into the drystone wall that divided the verge from the neighbouring field.

The force of the impact threw Ewan violently forwards in his seat and the exploding airbag punched him in the face. Dazed, he saw stars. He was only dimly aware that his engine had stalled and the front end of the van was a buckled mess embedded in the remains of the drystone wall. Through a mist of confusion, he sensed someone approaching; then his driver’s door being wrenched open and the cold air flooding into the cab. The shape of a large man leaned down towards him and reached inside the car. Ewan heard the clunking sound of his seatbelt clasp being released. Next thing he knew, two strong hands grabbed him by the collar and he felt himself being hauled roughly out of his seat.

Ewan did what he could to resist but he was disorientated and still in shock from the accident, and the man was much bigger and stronger than he was. Ewan felt himself being bodily dragged along the wet grass, then dumped hard on the ground at the roadside. He heard car doors opening and shutting, and became aware of more men gathering around where he lay gasping and blinking.

All he could do was gape helplessly up at them. Four unsmiling faces stared back. The men were each wearing bulky quilted jackets, black woollen beanie hats and black gloves. Two of them, including the man who had dragged him from the car, were total strangers.

The other two, he realised with a jolt of paralysing terror, were not.

One of the men he recognised grinned down at him and said, ‘Hello, Ewan.’

Chapter 6

It was later that morning that a taxicab driven by a local man called Duncan Laurie picked up a traveller at the tiny Spean Bridge railway station on the West Highland Line. The passenger was an older man, lean and grizzled with a salt-and-pepper beard and white hair buzzed so short it looked like a military crew cut. He gave Duncan an address in the village of Kinlochardaich, a few miles away, loaded his own single travel bag in the boot of the car and sat in the back.

Duncan had been driving cabs for a long time and he was pretty good at sizing people up. His passenger had the look of a tough customer. Not a particularly tall or large man, but he was one of those work-hardened gruff little guys who seemed to be made out of wood and leather. Not someone to be messed with, Duncan thought. But there was nothing menacing or threatening about him. He had an air of stillness and calm. A man who meant business. Though he was obviously a Scotsman – from Glasgow or thereabouts, judging by his accent – he looked more as though he’d spent the last several years in a warmer climate, like Greece or Spain. At first glance he could even have passed for a native of the Mediterranean region, except for those flinty, hooded grey eyes, the colour of a battleship. Eyes that seemed to watch everything, drinking in his surroundings and missing no detail as they set off north-westwards along the scenic glen road towards Kinlochardaich.

‘You’re no from around here, I’m guessing,’ Duncan said by way of initiating conversation.

The flinty eyes connected with his in the rear-view mirror and the passenger replied with a monosyllabic ‘Nope.’

‘Here to visit, then, aye? Got friends and family in Kinlochardaich?’

The passenger gave only a slight nod in response. Not much given to small talk, seemingly. Maybe he was tired after his long journey from wherever. Or maybe he just wasn’t keen on questions. But it would take more than a bit of dourness to quell Duncan’s sociable nature.

‘Name’s Duncan. Duncan Laurie. I live over in Gairlochy.’

‘McCulloch,’ the passenger said quietly. ‘Boonzie McCulloch.’

‘Good to meet ye, Boonzie. If you need a taxi ride during your stay, give me a call, okay?’ Duncan plucked out a business card and handed it back over his shoulder.

‘I’ll do that,’ Boonzie replied, taking the card. Then he said no more until they reached the quiet streets of tiny Kinlochardaich.

The taxi pulled up at the address. Boonzie retrieved his bag from the boot, paid his fare and thanked Duncan for the ride. The taxi sped off. Boonzie glanced around at the empty village street, which looked as if it hadn’t changed much in the last century or so, and reminded him of the Scotland of his youth. Misty mountains were visible in the background and the air was tinged with the scent of woodsmoke from chimneys.

He checked the address his nephew had given him over the phone. This was it: 8 Wallace Street. A modest grey stone terraced house, a far cry from the rambling old farmstead Boonzie and his wife Mirella called home, but not a bad wee place. He was happy that his nephew had made something of himself. The boy had been dealt a rough hand, what with losing his mother at such a young age and the death of his father not many years afterwards. There wasn’t a day that Boonzie didn’t think about his late brother Gordon. Though he’d never spoken a word of it to a living soul. Boonzie was like that.

He rang the front doorbell and waited, smiling to himself in anticipation of meeting Ewan again. It had been a while.

No reply. Boonzie tried again a couple of times, then noticed that the parking space in front of the house was vacant and wondered if Ewan had gone off somewhere. Which was a little vexing. Boonzie had called from a payphone at Inverness airport earlier, and left a message to tell Ewan when he’d be arriving. If Boonzie had been carrying a mobile he’d have tried calling him on it again now, but he detested the damn things and prided himself on being the last man on the planet who didn’t own one.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a sash window squeaking open overhead. He stepped back from the door and looked up to see a thickset woman with curlers in her hair, leaning out from the neighbouring house’s upstairs.

‘Excuse me, but are you lookin’ for Ewan McCulloch?’ she called down to him, and Boonzie nodded and said he was. ‘I’m Ewan’s uncle,’ he explained.

She said, ‘The police were here before.’ She pronounced it the Scottish way, ‘polis’.

Boonzie frowned. ‘The police?’ What was this about? Hadn’t he said to Ewan not to call them until he got here?

What the woman said next shocked him. ‘Aye. Ewan’s been hurt. He’s been taken to the hospital in Fort William.’

‘Hurt? What happened?’

The neighbour shook her head. ‘Dunno, but it sounds bad. Happened this mornin’. You should get over there quick.’

Boonzie was reeling, but outwardly showed no flicker. He retrieved the business card from his pocket and asked, ‘Mind if I use your phone?’

An hour later, Boonzie jumped out of Duncan Laurie’s taxicab for the second time that day, ran up the steps of Fort William’s Belford Hospital, slammed through the entrance into the reception area and hurried to the front desk. ‘Ewan McCulloch was brought in here today. Where is he?’

‘Are you a relative?’

‘I’m his uncle, Archibald McCulloch.’ Boonzie normally disliked giving his real name, but at this moment Ewan’s wellbeing was all that mattered to him. ‘Was he in an accident? Is he badly hurt?’

‘Take a seat over there please, Mr McCulloch. Someone will come and speak to you in a minute.’

Wild horses couldn’t have made Boonzie sit down for an instant. He paced furiously for seven and a half minutes before a weary and overworked-looking doctor wearing blue surgeon’s scrubs finally appeared from a doorway down the corridor. The medical receptionist hurried over from the desk, conferred quietly for a moment with her and pointed in Boonzie’s direction.

Boonzie saw the doctor’s eyes snap onto him. He clocked the expression on her face. He knew instantly that what she had to tell him wasn’t good news.

The doctor came over. She had fair hair tied in a tight bun, and a staff name badge that identified her as Dr Fraser, head surgeon. Before she could speak, Boonzie collared her with ‘So, tell me. Is my nephew dead?’

‘He’s alive.’ But the way she said it was full of concern. Boonzie stood and listened with gritted teeth and balled fists as Dr Fraser told him what had happened to Ewan.

‘He’s suffered an epidural haematoma, fractured cheekbones, a broken jaw, broken collarbones, a compound fracture to the right arm and another to the left leg, plus a severely dislocated shoulder and massive bruising. But he’s lucky to be in as good shape as he is. I thought we were going to lose him.’

In some ways the story sounded like a terrible echo of what Boonzie already knew about the fate of Ross Campbell. The doctor related how a local resident, who happened to be driving along the lochside road that morning to visit a friend, had stumbled upon the car wreck and the inert body lying by the roadside in the pouring rain and called 999. A former nurse, she’d checked the victim’s pulse, recognised the seriousness of his injuries and known to do all the right things. If not for her intervention and the good fortune of finding him in time, Ewan might well not have survived.

Just as with Ross, everybody’s first assumption had been that the victim had suffered an accident. The doctor explained: ‘That was how it initially seemed when he was brought in. It wasn’t until I examined his injuries more closely that I realised … of course I notified the police right away. They’re looking into the matter even as we speak.’

‘Realised what?’ Boonzie asked. The muscles in his throat were clamped so tight that he could barely speak.

‘I’m sorry to say there’s more to this,’ Dr Fraser replied. ‘Your nephew appears to have been the victim of a deliberate, possibly premeditated and very violent assault. Judging by the extent and pattern of his injuries, I’d say there were at least two attackers. Maybe more, I don’t know. What I do know is that the injuries look as though they were inflicted with one or more solid impact weapons. Something with a round profile, like a baseball bat.’ She shook her head. ‘Frankly, I’ve never seen anything quite so vicious before. Things like this just don’t happen in this region. Basically they beat the poor man to a pulp and left him for dead.’

Boonzie digested that information with the fear and rage inside him starting to turn to ice-cold water in his veins. He was silent for a few seconds. Then asked tersely, ‘Will he survive?’

‘I don’t have the facilities for complex neurosurgery, so I had to trepan the skull. That’s when—’

‘I ken what trepanation is,’ Boonzie said. Many years earlier, in a bloody little jungle war that officially never happened and was now largely forgotten by all but the men who’d fought and watched their comrades die in it, he’d seen an SAS medic desperately trying to save the life of a badly concussed soldier in the field by drilling a hole in his head to relieve pressure on the brain. The soldier had lived, but he’d never been the same again.

Dr Fraser glanced at her watch. ‘He came out of surgery just over an hour ago and is in intensive care right now. So far he seems to be doing fine, under the circumstances, but we’ll have a better idea of his prognosis once he regains consciousness. Obviously it’s the brain injury I’m most concerned about. The coma might last hours, or it might last days, weeks, or longer.’

‘Or for ever.’

‘There is that possibility, which we need to be prepared for.’

‘What are his chances, fifty-fifty?’

‘I wouldn’t like to speculate, Mr McCulloch. Things could go in any number of ways and it’s far too soon to tell.’

‘I appreciate your honesty, Doctor,’ Boonzie growled.

‘In such cases the relatives are always notified. But it seems it’s not been possible to locate a next of kin.’

‘I’m his only family. Can I see him? Even for a moment?’

She hesitated. ‘You might find it upsetting to see him in his condition.’

If the good doctor only knew the slaughterhouse horrors that Boonzie had witnessed in his lifetime. ‘I can handle it,’ he replied.

‘Just for a moment, then. Come this way.’

Chapter 7

A couple of hours earlier, while Ewan McCulloch was still on the operating table, a phone conversation had taken place. It was a very private and secret call, but if anyone on the outside had been listening they’d quickly have worked out which of the callers was the subordinate, and which of them was clearly in charge.

‘What part of this do you not understand? Your instructions were to beat the truth out of him and then kill him. It’s not rocket science.’

‘We tried to get it out of him. He didn’t seem to know anything.’

‘So not only did you come back empty-handed, you also left him alive. Are you stupid?’

‘It wasn’t our fault. I told you, a car turned up before we could finish him off. We had to leg it before we were spotted.’

‘Yes, yes. I get the picture. Four tough guys, scared of some bloody old biddy on her own. What a bunch of pathetic cowards.’

‘What were we supposed to do, beat the shit out of her as well, in broad daylight? And what if someone else had turned up too?’

‘The road past Loch Ardaich isn’t exactly the M25. You could easily have handled it.’

‘Well, we were unlucky, that’s all. Credit where credit’s due, chief. We took care of the other moron for you, didn’t we? No problems there.’

‘Yes, you did. But now I’m wondering if you didn’t just get lucky with Campbell. Maybe I should have called Hacker back home from Korea to take care of the job. He doesn’t depend on luck.’

‘You had your reasons. Hacker works for you personally. You didn’t want to be too closely connected with it.’

‘Evidently, that was my mistake, trusting a bunch of useless fools on the outside with the simplest of tasks. Did I not pay you enough, perhaps?’

‘Give us a break, will you? We didn’t do a bad job of searching McCulloch’s house. In and out, twenty minutes, nobody any the wiser. If he’d had any more coins stashed away, we’d have found them. And as for him, you don’t have anything to worry about. He’s in a coma. People in comas don’t say much.’

‘They’re also known to come out of them.’

‘I don’t think that’s likely. We hit him pretty hard. He’s got something called an epidural haematoma. Bleeding on the brain. They’re operating on him even as we speak. Chances are, if he ever does wake up he’ll be a drooling vegetable, sucking on a tube for the rest of his life.’

‘You’d better hope you’re right about that. Because you’ve got just as much to lose as I have if he suddenly remembers who worked him over and starts blabbing. Next thing the trail leads back to me.’

‘That would never happen.’

‘Damn right it won’t. I want you to keep a close watch on things there at the hospital. If Ewan McCulloch so much as bats an eyelid or twitches a finger, I want to know about it. And then I’ll expect you to finish what you started. We’re not taking any chances here.’

‘Killing a man inside a hospital, that won’t be easy. Not with doctors and nurses coming and going twenty-four-seven.’

‘Don’t you watch the news? Medical staff kill patients all the time. If the National Health Service’s finest can do it, you can do it. I don’t care how it’s done. I just want him permanently out of the picture. Whatever it takes. Understand?’

‘I understand.’

‘That’s wonderful to hear. Now stop wasting my time, and don’t ever screw things up again. Not while you’re working for me. Or you’ll end up in a lot worse state than Ewan bloody McCulloch.’

Chapter 8

Boonzie left Belford Hospital with the dreadful image of Ewan, lying crumpled and shrivelled in bed covered with tubes and hooked up to machines, deeply imprinted on his mind. Dr Fraser hadn’t permitted him into the intensive care isolation unit and strictly allowed him only a few moments to peer through the thick glass window at his nephew inside.

A few moments were enough. He contained his rage as he walked outside into the windy, rain-slicked car park. Looking around for Duncan Laurie’s taxicab, he saw it was gone. The guy had obviously got tired of waiting.

The time was approaching midday. Boonzie’s body told him he was hungry but he wasn’t interested. He was thinking about his next move, and that he’d need to rustle up some form of transport of his own, when someone called his name from behind. ‘Mr McCulloch? Hold on a minute. Can I talk to you?’

He turned to see a woman emerge from the hospital entrance and hurry over to him. He guessed she was in her early or mid-thirties. She was wearing jeans and a rain jacket, and the cold wind blew her long dark hair in streams across her face as she approached. She brushed it away. Boonzie could see she was upset. He had no idea who she was, or how she knew his name.

‘I’m Boonzie McCulloch,’ he said. ‘How can I help ye, lassie?’ When you got to Boonzie’s age, everyone younger than forty-five was a lassie or a laddie.

She introduced herself as Grace Kirk and said she was a friend of Ewan’s. ‘I came to see him, but they wouldn’t let me. They told me his uncle was here visiting. Family members only.’

‘There’s nae much tae see, lassie,’ Boonzie said gravely. ‘He’s in a bad way.’

‘Is he … will he …?’

‘He’s alive. Whether he stays that way, or whether he’ll have any kind of a life after this, is anybody’s guess. Dr Fraser seems tae know what she’s doing. I trust her.’ That was a big thing to say, coming from Boonzie McCulloch.

Grace buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh, God.’ She fought with her emotions for a moment or two. When she looked up, her eyes were moist and pink. ‘I can’t believe something like this could happen to him.’

‘I need tae go and talk tae the police,’ Boonzie said. ‘Do ye know where the station is?’

‘I do. I work there.’

‘Ye’re a policewoman?’ Boonzie thought she didn’t look the type, but then again, what did he know?

She nodded. ‘I’m off duty at the moment, but my shift starts in an hour. Now they won’t let me see Ewan, I was about to head back there. You could follow me in your car.’

‘If I had one, I would.’

‘Then why don’t I give you a lift?’

Grace drove an ancient green Land Rover that was speckled with mud on the outside and as crudely minimalistic as a motor vehicle could be on the inside. ‘I’m afraid it’s not exactly luxury,’ she said as they climbed aboard.

Boonzie liked it. ‘The hours I’ve spent in these things. Takes me back, I can tell ye.’

She understood. ‘Military?’

‘Aye, long time ago. I live in Italy noo.’

‘Nice place to retire to.’

‘Retire? Me? Not on yer life.’

‘I’m sorry, I thought—’

‘Ye thought I was old.’ Maybe I am, he reflected.

‘I apologise. What do you do?’

‘Grow tomatoes,’ he replied, then changed the subject. ‘So I take it ye’re no one of the officers looking intae what happened to Ewan?’

‘I’m too close to it,’ she replied wistfully. ‘They wouldn’t have me on the case, knowing we were friends. Plus, I’m only a constable. DI Macleod and DS Coull are leading the investigation.’

‘That’d be who I need tae talk tae, then.’ He looked at her. ‘So you and Ewan must know each other pretty well?’

‘Once upon a time,’ she replied, a little evasively. ‘I’ve only just come back to this area after working away down in Glasgow for a few years.’

‘That’s where I’m from. Born and bred.’

She flashed a sad smile. ‘No kidding? I never would’ve guessed.’ Then the smile was gone again, like a ray of sunshine swallowed up behind fast-moving clouds. ‘This place is heaven to me. I can’t believe something like this could happen here. Especially not to someone like Ewan.’

‘Aye, well, it did.’

When they got to the police station, Grace led Boonzie inside and before long he was being shown into an interview room with the two officers in charge of the investigation, who introduced themselves as DI Fergus Macleod and DS Jim Coull. Boonzie thought that a Detective Inspector and a Detective Sergeant were a lot of horsepower to allocate to a simple assault and battery case, albeit a serious one. They invited him to sit, but Boonzie had done enough sitting on his journey to Scotland to last him a while, and remained standing. Grace hovered in the background, still out of uniform, while the detectives ran through their standard patter with Boonzie, designed to placate and reassure and instil trust, using phrases like ‘bring to justice’ and ‘leave no stone unturned’.

Boonzie cut to the chase with, ‘So do ye have any suspects yet?’

‘Not at this time, Mr McCulloch. It’s still very early days.’

‘Seems tae me ye’re looking at two related crimes,’ Boonzie said. ‘Ewan had reason tae believe that what happened tae his business partner Ross Campbell was nae accident. Now someone’s oot tae get him, too.’

‘We know about your nephew’s suspicions regarding Mr Campbell’s death,’ Coull said. ‘He was here two days ago, telling us the whole story. I should say it was quite a tale. Something about a salmon poacher working the loch at the time of the alleged incident. Also about some gold coins that were in Mr Campbell’s possession.’ Coull added the last part with a raised eyebrow and an expectant tone.

Ewan’s visit to Fort William police station was news to Boonzie. The gold coins were even more so. He said nothing for a moment as he wondered why Ewan hadn’t mentioned them. It could all have happened since they’d last spoken, while Boonzie was attending to certain matters before setting off.

‘I gather you and he have been in contact,’ Macleod said. ‘Just out of interest, he didn’t happen to mention anything about the coins to you, did he? Such as, where exactly Mr Campbell might have found them?’

It sounded to Boonzie as though the cops were fishing for particular information here, though he had no idea what or why. ‘No, it’s the first I’ve heard o’ it. What’ve gold coins got to do with this?’

‘I’m afraid that’s a police matter,’ Macleod said, clamping on the lid with something that looked a little too much like a satisfied smile. ‘Concerning a separate investigation.’

Thirty-three years in the military, twenty-six of them as an NCO climbing up the ranks of the British Army’s most elite regiment, had honed Boonzie’s skill at reading people. Neither Macleod nor Coull was making a good impression on him. He sensed they were holding back. He didn’t like being kept in the dark.

‘A separate investigation? So ye’re saying ye dinnae see these two cases as connected?’

‘Again, it’s too early to say, Mr McCulloch,’ Coull replied in a smarmy, condescending tone that made the bristles on the back of Boonzie’s neck prickle even more. Coull added, ‘And as we’re not generally in the habit of divulging the details of our ongoing police investigations to the public, might I suggest that you go home and let us take care of it? Rest assured, we’ll find the men who did this.’

Boonzie grunted. ‘Aye, we’ve heard that shite before.’

Macleod said sharply, ‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning that I havnae come all the way here from Italy tae be given the brush-off, while my nephew’s lyin’ in a hospital bed wi’ a face like raw minced steak an’ a stoved-in heid he might never recover from. Ye’ve had two long days tae investigate what Ewan told ye aboot the poacher, and it seems tae me as though ye’ve done bugger all but sit on yer big fat arse’ – pointing first at Macleod, then swivelling his accusatory finger like a turret-mounted fifty-cal Browning to aim at Coull – ‘and yer wee scrawny arse.’

With the cops momentarily too stunned and outraged to utter a reply, Boonzie glowered at them both with steely disapproval and added, ‘There’s more tae this than meets the eye, and if the police cannae be bothered tae find out what, then I damn well will.’

Standing in the background, Grace Kirk hadn’t spoken a word. Boonzie thought he saw a flicker of amusement curl her lip, but then she quickly suppressed it.

There were no such smiles from the two detectives. Macleod was the first to bounce back. ‘You’re not showing a lot of respect for officers of the law, Mr McCulloch.’

‘Ye get what ye’re due, son. Nae mair, nae less.’

‘I hope you’re not getting ideas about pursuing any sort of private citizen’s inquiry,’ Coull said, with cheeks flushed the colour of cheap wine. ‘The police take a very dim view of that kind of thing.’

‘Then ye’d best stay oot ma road,’ Boonzie grated. ‘There’s nae room for amateurs in this kind of business.’

‘You’re warned, McCulloch!’ Macleod stood up aggressively from his chair. He was four inches taller and considerably wider than Boonzie, and was all hard-eyed and tensed up like a silverback gorilla ready to attack. It was a display of intimidation most men would have shrunk away from, but Boonzie did not shrink away. He stared at Macleod, calm and cold, and kept staring until the cop seemed to deflate and sat down again without another word.

At which point, the discussion was over. ‘I’m sorry, lassie,’ Boonzie said to Grace, and walked out of the room.

Chapter 9

Grace caught up with him again in a quiet corridor as he made his way back towards the station reception. Boonzie said, ‘I suppose ye’re gonnae give me a hard time for what happened in there.’

She shook her head, more in disbelief than in disagreement, and despite all the sadness of the moment he saw the same twinkle of mirth on her face as she’d tried to mask in the interview room. ‘Honestly, Mr McCulloch. What a way to speak to my superiors. Big fat arse and wee scrawny arse?’

‘Didnae take it too well, did they?’

‘You tell it like you see it, that’s for sure.’

‘Is there any other way?’

‘What was all that stuff about a salmon poacher? I didn’t understand.’

Boonzie was often slow to trust people, but he got a good feeling about Grace Kirk. He briefly ran through what Ewan had told him about the strange phone call he’d received the evening of Ross’s funeral.

‘Do you think it’s true?’ she asked, deeply perplexed.

‘Ewan’s nae liar.’

‘But was the poacher telling the truth? What if it was just a stupid hoax? Some idiot calling to stir things up?’

‘I dinnae think so. Ewan thought he knew him.’

Grace stared at Boonzie. ‘Knew him? From where? Who is this person?’

‘Ewan couldnae place the name,’ Boonzie said. ‘All we know is, the poacher is someone with a secret. Who needed tae get it off his chest and warn Ewan tae watch his back.’

She shook her head in disbelief. ‘The whole thing is insane. This is Kinlochardaich. Murders don’t happen here.’

‘Until the day they do,’ Boonzie replied.

‘And what’s with the gold coins? I didn’t understand that part either.’

‘Nor me, hen. Ewan never mentioned anything.’

‘I don’t like this one bit. Please. I’m asking you. Won’t you just go home and let the police handle this situation?’

Boonzie’s face hardened like granite. He replied, ‘I came here tae help Ewan. It’s too late for that. But I’m no leavin’ until I find the people who did this.’

Grace could see that no force on earth could change his mind. She paused, glanced over her shoulder as though to check nobody was watching, then quickly took a slip of paper from her pocket and pressed it into his hand. It was a grocery receipt, on the back of which she’d scribbled a phone number.

‘That’s my personal mobile. Will you call me if you need anything?’

Boonzie said, ‘Like what?’

She flushed slightly, shrugged. ‘Ewan and I … we were close once, a long time ago. We weren’t much more than kids back then. Anyway, he often used to talk about you. Said you were like a father to him. After what’s happened I just thought – just between you and me, you know? – that if there’s anything I can do to help …’

Boonzie was touched by her words. It didn’t surprise him to hear that she and his nephew had known each other better than she’d let on at first. He didn’t miss a lot, and had noticed the way she talked about Ewan. He also got the impression that she wasn’t overly impressed at the way her provincial cop colleagues were handling the case. But he kept all that to himself and replied simply, ‘That’s very kind of you, lassie. I appreciate it.’

‘Just please, don’t go poking around too much.’

‘Because of what those clowns Macleod and Coull might think?’

‘No, because you seem like a nice man, and there are obviously some nasty characters about, and I wouldn’t like to think of you getting hurt. There’s been far too much of that already.’

He smiled. ‘I’ve come across a few nasty characters in my time, and I’m still here. Dinnae you worry aboot me, lassie.’

A door swung open and a pair of uniformed officers stepped through it, talking. One of them smiled at Grace. The other just looked, then glanced at Boonzie. Grace said, ‘I’d best get ready for my shift. Where are you headed now?’

‘Back tae Kinlochardaich.’

‘Will you be okay? Not many buses go out that way.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘You take care, all right?’

Boonzie thanked her again, and watched her hurry off. He was a straight-ahead kind of man who either liked people or he didn’t, and he’d decided that Grace Kirk was one of the good ones.

She’d been right about the buses, too. It was nearly two hours before Boonzie finally got back to the village. On his way out of the police station he’d stopped at the reception desk and, as next of kin, been given an envelope containing some personal effects Ewan had had on him when they’d brought him in. There wasn’t much: wallet, loose change, keys. No phone. Boonzie guessed that the detectives were hanging onto that, for what it was worth.

As he unlocked Ewan’s front door to let himself inside, it felt wrong to be here alone. Boonzie wanted his presence to make as little impact as possible on his nephew’s home. If he had to stay here a few days, he’d kip on the sofa rather than use a bedroom, and wouldn’t use the kitchen. Boonzie had been trained to sleep rough, live off the land and leave no trace of his passing, and spent many years instilling those same skills into others. Old habits died hard.

But the moment he stepped inside the house, such thoughts were forgotten as he saw the obvious signs that someone else had been here. Someone not as worried about disrupting the place.

Ewan’s house had been completely turned over.

Chapter 10

Boonzie had seen burglaries before and knew immediately this was something different. Whoever had broken in had been searching for something. Drawers had been rifled, sofa cushions slashed and the stuffing pulled out. Even the carpets had been pulled up as though someone wanted to check the floorboards. It was a mess. This had been the work of more than a single intruder. More likely two or three, working in tandem to ransack the place and get out fast.

Boonzie soon found the intruders’ entry point, a broken utility room window in the rear, overlooking a weedy yard filled with bins, junk and a parked camper van. Access was through a lane that cut between the backs of the houses. The intruders had reached through the smashed glass to open the window and climb in. He secured the window shut and then returned to the main rooms, where most of the damage was, to look for any clues.

Ewan had used the small dining area off the living room as a basic home office, with a little workstation desk against one wall. Boonzie noticed the empty space on the desk, a rectangle of dust where something had been removed. There was a printer and scanner, a nest of tangled wires, a pair of disconnected computer speakers and a monitor screen, but the computer itself was missing. The intruders had taken it. But who were they, and what had they been looking for?

Boonzie considered reporting this new development to the police, then changed his mind. Why complicate matters, especially with those two useless idiots in charge of the case? He already knew what he had to do, and they’d only get in his way.

Saddened by the state of the place, he set about tidying up as best he could. As he worked he found a balled-up piece of notepaper lying in the corner behind a wastepaper basket. Uncrumpling it to see what it was, he found that it was covered in handwriting he recognised as Ewan’s.

Boonzie had left his reading glasses at home in Italy, and had to peer closely at the paper to read what Ewan had written on it. The upper third of the page was a scrawl of notes Boonzie didn’t really understand. Something about ‘Louis d’or’, and some dates and other names that meant little to him. Below that were some jottings about local history, dating back to the eighteenth century, featuring a few famous names that Boonzie did recognise, though it was unclear why Ewan had been taking such an interest in the subject. The notes at the bottom of the page switched away from history and were about illegal salmon fishing in the area. Underneath Ewan had scribbled in capitals the words ‘WHO IS THE POACHER??’ and underlined them so hard he’d scratched right through the paper.

Boonzie smoothed the page flat, folded it neatly and put it in his pocket. Then turned to look around him at the wrecked room. Until now he’d managed to keep a handle on his emotions. The image of Ewan in the intensive care unit flashed into his mind, and he thought how his nephew might never awaken from the coma these people had put him into. Rage boiled up inside him.

‘Bastards,’ he muttered.

Boonzie put his hand on his chest as he suddenly felt an odd sensation behind his ribs, followed by a jolt of pain that made him let out a low groan. He swayed slightly on his feet and reached out to support himself on the back of a chair. He waited a few seconds for the pain to subside, then walked slowly into the kitchen to find a glass and fill it with tapwater. He used it to gulp down the last couple of pills from one of the little bottles he now carried everywhere with him. He hated taking them. There was a fresh bottle in his pocket. He tossed away the empty.

When he felt better, he went to pick up Ewan’s landline phone and called Mirella. ‘It’s me. Just checking in. You okay?’

She was happy and relieved to hear from him. They spent very little time apart, as a rule, and she told him how much she was missing him.

‘Listen, hen, there’s bad news. It’s aboot Ewan.’ Boonzie quickly filled her in on all that had happened, and shared his belief that the same people who killed Ross Campbell had tried to kill him, too. He told her about his meeting with the cops, and how he’d decided to pursue this himself.

Mirella was shocked and worried, but her greatest anxiety was for her husband caught up in the middle of this situation. ‘Promise me you’ll take care.’

‘You know I will. Always.’

‘How do you feel? Are you taking your medicine?’

‘Och, I’m fine,’ he said, brushing off her concerns. ‘Strong as an ox.’

Mirella knew how stubborn he was, and that he didn’t like being fussed over. More matter-of-factly she said, ‘Something came for you. An email, from your nephew. He sent it last night. I only saw it today.’

‘From Ewan? What aboot?’

‘Hold on, I’ll read it to you.’ A pause, while Mirella carried the phone over to the computer and pulled up the email. ‘Okay, here it is. It just says, “Ross found this. It gets weirder. Hope you get here soon.”’

‘Ross found what?’

‘There was an attachment with the email. I opened it. It’s a photo of an old coin. It looks like gold. Why would he send you that? Has this got something to do with what’s happened to him and his friend?’

Boonzie didn’t want to burden Mirella with more concerns, so he reassured her that it would all be sorted out soon.

‘I hate you not being here,’ she said with a sniff.

‘I’ll be back home before ye know it, pet.’

‘Call me every day. Don’t let me sit here worrying.’

‘Twice a day,’ he promised. Then he repeated once more how much he loved her. Which he truly did, no less than the day he’d first laid eyes on her and fallen hard. He reassured her that things would be fine and not to fret. It was hard to say goodbye.

When the call was over, Boonzie sat thinking for a long time. These damned gold coins just wouldn’t go away. They were clearly vital to understand what was going on here, but he wouldn’t know where to start with something like that. By contrast, Ewan’s notes about salmon poaching had given him an idea. If he could find the poacher, he could begin to unravel this whole thing. And there was no better time to start than right away.

The first thing Boonzie needed to do was sort himself out some wheels. He went back to the utility room with the broken window and looked again at the camper van parked in Ewan’s back yard. It was old and dirty and neglected-looking, but ideal for his purposes. He didn’t want to stay in the house. If he’d thought the men who had ransacked it might return, he’d have felt differently and wanted to lie in wait for them, but he knew they wouldn’t be coming back here. The camper van would give him a mobile base from which to pursue his objective, wherever it led him.

Boonzie was a man of many talents, even if a lot of them were underused these days. Among the skills he’d learned in the regiment was fixing old vehicles, the kind that soldiers making their way deep behind enemy lines might have to commandeer. He found the camper keys on a hook in the hallway and went out to inspect it.

A quick look around the vehicle confirmed his first impressions. The camper was equipped with two berths, sleeping bag and blankets, a stove, heater, and even a tiny washroom with a chemical cassette toilet. A little travel-stained and threadbare, but not too grotty and sheer bloody luxury compared to some of the places he’d been forced to make camp in his life. The engine wouldn’t start at first, but an hour later he had the corroded battery connections fixed up as good as new and the diesel glow plugs switched for a new set he found in the house, and the old girl coughed into life at the first twist of the key. He left the engine running to put charge into the battery, and returned to the house.

It was mid-afternoon and the light was already beginning to fade. After living in Italy so long he’d almost forgotten how early the winter evenings fell, this far north. Back in the house he worked through the plan that was coming together in his mind. Certain additional items were required in order to put it into action. He dug a copy of the Yellow Pages out of the wreckage of Ewan’s living room and soon found what he was looking for. The place he had to go next was more than an hour’s drive away, but he would make it.

Boonzie locked up the house, climbed aboard the camper and drove out of the yard and into the street. By nightfall, he’d have the things he needed.

Then he’d be ready to go hunting.

Chapter 11

While Boonzie was making his preparations, another phone conversation was going on between the same two individuals as before.

The underling reported, ‘There’s been another development, chief.’

His superior replied, quite irritably, ‘What kind of development?’

‘Someone else is on the scene. An old guy. A relative of McCulloch’s.’

‘I thought McCulloch didn’t have any family.’

‘Turns out he does. An uncle. His name’s McCulloch, too. Lives in Italy. Arrived here this morning.’

The superior heaved an impatient sigh. ‘Okay. Now tell me why I need to be concerned about some old guy who lives in Italy.’

‘Because he’s isn’t just any old old guy. He’s probably twice as fit as most men half his age. A right hard case.’

‘And why is this a problem?’

The underling said, ‘Firstly, he isn’t buying the accidental drowning theory about Campbell. He seems to think the cases are connected.’

‘I wonder where he got that idea. The poacher?’

‘His nephew told him the whole story.’

‘To be expected, I suppose. Go on.’

‘Uncle McCulloch’s got a bit of an attitude problem. Not a happy chappie. And he’s intent on pursuing his own investigation.’

‘I see. One of those.’

‘But here’s the worrying part, chief. The guy is ex-military. Retired British Army non-com. We tried to get into his MoD file and hit a brick wall. Classified shit. You know what that means.’

‘Why the hell should I know what that means?’

‘It means trouble,’ the underling replied. ‘Now, it so happens that I’ve got a brother-in-law who works for the Ministry. I was able to call in a favour and—’

‘I’m a busy man. Why don’t you just cut to the chase and tell me what you found out?’

‘Well, I’ve got McCulloch’s whole bio here in front of me. And like I thought, it turns out this bastard was no ordinary soldier. I really think you should listen to this.’

‘Let’s hear it, then.’

‘Born in Glasgow in 1953. Joined up at seventeen and was accepted into the Parachute Regiment two years later, in 1972. Did five years with them before he passed selection for 22 Special Air Service in February, 1977.’

‘You’re telling me that this moron Ewan McCulloch had an uncle in the SAS. Great. Just great.’

‘He served with them for twenty-six years. Counter-hijack and counter-terrorism specialist. A hell of a record, chief. I mean, you name it, he’s been there and done it. Operation Nimrod, 1980. The Iranian Embassy siege. Then the following year in Gambia, he was one of the special ops team who went in and rescued the President’s wife and kids from leftist rebels. Falklands War, 1982, he was with D Squadron for the famous assault on Pebble Island, when they destroyed half the Argentine air force in just thirty minutes.’

‘Oh, wonderful.’

‘In ’87 he was taking out IRA insurgents in Northern Ireland. Same year, his SAS unit got deployed to end the Peterhead Prison riot, here in Scotland. Blew their way in and stopped it before the rioters even knew what was happening. Four years after that, it was Operation Desert Storm, search-and-destroying SCUD missiles the Iraqis were trying to lob into Israel. Then in Bosnia in 1997 he was with the unit that shot dead a Serb war criminal called Simo Drljaca.’

‘This just keeps getting better.’

‘The following year they did a snatch mission in Serbia against another war criminal, Stevan Todorovic. Tracked the guy to a remote hideout in the mountains, kidnapped him in the dead of night and whisked him back into Bosnia to be arrested. After that, in 2001, yer man was sent to Afghanistan for Operation Trent, fighting against the Taliban—’

‘All right, all right, I get the picture.’

‘There’s probably more, all kinds of black-ops crap that nobody without a top-grade security clearance even knows about. He finally retired in 2003, rank of Colour Sergeant. Moved to Italy with his wife, been living there ever since.’

‘And now he’s honouring us with his company here in Scotland. Lucky us.’

‘It’s a worry. Someone with this bastard’s skills could be dangerous, if he starts sniffing around.’

‘I’d call that an understatement. All thanks to you, I might add.’

‘Chief, this guy would’ve turned up even if we’d killed McCulloch. In fact that would’ve probably made things worse.’

‘I’d say it’s bad enough as it is, don’t you? Where is he now?’

‘At his nephew’s house. Baird followed him there earlier and he’s watching the place. I spoke to him just before I called you. The old guy is still there. What should we do? You want him taken care of?’

‘If I said yes, what makes you think you’re up to the job, after last time?’

‘This will be different. No more screwups.’

‘He needs to disappear. Gone. Vanished. Not a trace. The sooner the better, before he starts talking to too many people and drawing attention.’

‘Baird can handle it. Knife job, quick and dirty, no witnesses, while the old guy’s still at the house. He won’t even see him coming.’

‘No. Baird’s just a violent retard. From what you say, the old guy will chew him up and spit out the bones. I think you’d better pull Baird off McCulloch’s tail before he gets spotted or somehow manages to mess things up for us. I have other plans.’

‘Like what?’

‘It takes a pro to deal with a pro. I’m sending in Hacker.’

Chapter 12

The Normandy coast

Two days later

Ben Hope had always been a runner. In his mindset, if you weren’t constantly moving forwards, you were going backwards. That had never been an option for a person of his restless disposition, who needed to keep pushing hard from one challenging goal to the next. Somewhere deep in his mind he believed that, like a Great White shark, if he stopped moving, he’d sink to the bottom and die. He’d made himself physically fit from his mid-teens onwards, running and cycling and rock-climbing as though he was being chased by demons. That was before he’d joined the British Army and stern, shouty men in PT Instructor insignia took him to the next level and beyond. During his career he’d been able to achieve a degree of fitness, motivation and commitment that was off the charts. Now, all these years later, he still ran every day.

He liked to vary his routine. Sometimes he could be found pounding the woodland tracks and undulating wildflower meadows around the rural thirty-acre compound he co-owned here in France, a place called Le Val. Other times, he would drive out to this long, lonely stretch of beach just a few miles away on the coast. The beach was where he’d come today, to stretch his legs and put himself to the test during some downtime.

Winter was the season in which Ben liked running the most. A cold wind was blowing in off the sea, carrying pockets of squally rain that soaked him to the bone. This was his element, and the physical discomfort just made him push harder. The adverse weather on this chilly December day meant that the beach was totally deserted except for him and his German Shepherd, Storm, who loved nothing more than to tag along after his master on these punishing workouts with his tail wagging and his long pink tongue lolling out. Ben loved the emptiness. It allowed him to run at his peak and be alone with his thoughts.

A couple of times a week, as he was doing today, he liked to raise the endurance bar an extra notch by carrying a bergen weighed down with forty pounds of sand. Back in the day, he and his Special Forces comrades used to hump much greater loads than that for endless miles both in training and in combat. This was taking it easy by comparison. But it was enough to keep him in better shape than most of the much younger guys who came to be put through their paces at Le Val.

Ben co-ran the tactical training facility with his business partner and close friend Jeff Dekker. Jeff’s career had followed a parallel course to Ben’s, serving for years in the Navy’s Special Boat Service. Along with ex-soldier Tuesday Fletcher and the rest of their team they were kept busy by all the military, police and private close protection personnel who travelled to their quiet corner of rural Normandy from all over the world to hone their skills and learn from the best.

Ben finished his run and returned to where he’d parked his new car among the dunes on the approach to the beach. It was the latest in a line of BMW Alpina high-performance sedans, dark metallic blue. As much as he favoured the marque, he seemed to keep trashing them. The last one had been shot to pieces in a gun battle outside Alençon, a few months earlier. He blipped the locks open as he trudged up the loose sand. His body felt loose and pumped. Ten hard miles, and he was barely out of breath. Not too shabby. The dog was more tired than he was.

Ben dumped his bergen in the back of the Alpina, drank half a litre of bottled spring water, then changed out of his sandy running shoes. As he was getting ready to head back to Le Val he saw that he had a new voicemail message waiting for him on his phone.

It was from Jeff. He didn’t sound very happy, but that was no surprise since he’d fractured a bone in his wrist during a training exercise two weeks earlier, and was currently confined to desk duties with a cast and sling. Yet Ben could tell instantly from his tone that something else was wrong. Jeff sounded uncharacteristically worried. All he said was, ‘Call me back soon as.’

Ben did, right away. ‘Got your message. What’s up?’

‘Boonzie’s wife called the office number just now.’

‘Mirella?’

‘Yeah. Tuesday got the call and passed it on to me. There’s some kind of problem. She seemed pretty upset.’

‘Did she say what kind of problem?’

‘No, she wanted to speak to you about it. I think you’d better talk to her, mate. It sounds serious.’

It made sense to Ben that Mirella would rather talk to him, since Jeff didn’t know Ben’s old comrade Boonzie and his Italian wife as well as Ben did. But it didn’t make sense to Ben that it was Mirella, rather than Boonzie himself, who’d called. Something was obviously wrong.

Rather than let it wait until he got home, Ben punched Boonzie and Mirella’s landline number into his mobile. He sat in the car, watching the waves rolling in as the call connected and he heard the Italian dial tone. Storm had jumped into the back and was panting hot breath in Ben’s other ear and trying to lick his face. He gently pushed the dog away as Mirella’s voice came on the line, saying, ‘Pronto?’

Jeff had been right. She didn’t sound good at all.

Boonzie had learned Italian shortly after moving to Campobasso, and rather stubbornly insisted on speaking it with her all the time, so Mirella had never got to perfect her English. Which was fine, since Ben spoke Italian very well. ‘Mirella, it’s Ben.’

She sounded even more distraught, on the point of tears, as she thanked him for calling back so soon.

He asked, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s Archibald.’ Mirella never called her husband by his nickname. Given that Boonzie would typically threaten dire violence against anyone else who dared to refer to him any other way, very few people did.

Ben steeled himself for the news that his dear old friend had fallen critically ill, or had received some terrible medical diagnosis, been given a week to live or was already dead. Not that Boonzie was particularly ancient. Even if he had been, the grizzled old warrior was one of those people you expect to live for ever, carved out of granite and as enduring and immutable as a mountain range.

But Mirella’s reply shocked him even more. ‘He’s missing.’

Ben stayed grimly silent as Mirella told him the story that had played out over the last few days. She explained how Boonzie had travelled to the Highlands of Scotland to visit his nephew Ewan, who’d been having some trouble. Ben hadn’t even known Boonzie had a nephew. He went on listening as she described the backstory of Ewan’s partner in the surveying business, recently drowned in an apparent accident that Ewan thought he had reason to suspect to be foul play.

The more Mirella talked, the faster the words came streaming out. Ben had to close his eyes and focus hard to keep up with the stream. He interrupted her flow with, ‘Hold on. Why did he think that?’

‘Because he received an anonymous phone call from a person claiming to be a witness to a crime,’ Mirella replied. ‘They said they saw some men murdering Ewan’s friend.’

As she went on explaining what she knew about the mystery witness, Ben listened hard and tried to make sense of it all. ‘So Boonzie – Archibald – went there to help Ewan do what? Track down this salmon fisherman guy?’

‘And find out what happened to Ross. But now Ewan is hurt, too. Archibald thought the same people who killed Ross had tried to kill him.’

‘Are the local police involved in this?’

‘He went to speak to them, but he wasn’t impressed. He decided to go his own way. You know him, how independent-minded he can be. And he doesn’t trust the police, at the best of times.’

Ben certainly did know him, and could also resonate with his reasons for going it alone. But it sounded like Boonzie had got himself into something bad, and that worried Ben. He asked, ‘When did you last speak to him?’

‘Two days ago. He doesn’t use a mobile phone. He called me from his nephew’s house. That was when he told me what happened to Ewan, how badly he was hurt, and how the police weren’t going to be of any help. Then I told him about the email that had come for him.’

‘What email?’

‘From his nephew.’ Mirella repeated to Ben what she’d already told her husband, reading out the short text of Ewan’s message verbatim. She described the image file that Ewan had attached with it. ‘It was a photo of a gold coin. The thing that Ross was supposed to have found. That’s all I know.’

Ben frowned at the mention of the coin. In his experience, gold and murder went together like strawberries and ice cream, and this made the suspicions of foul play seem more plausible. He said, ‘Can you send me the image file?’, and told her the email address to send it to.

Mirella was marginally more savvy with newfangled gadgetry than her technophobe husband. ‘I’m doing it now.’

Moments later, the email pinged into Ben’s inbox. He put the call on speaker while he opened up the file and scrutinised the picture. It was a good photo, focused sharp and up-close. No question that it was a gold coin. An old one, showing the date 1745. Probably valuable, though at this point Ben had no clear idea.

‘What the hell is this about, Mirella?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied helplessly. ‘Archibald didn’t say much when I told him about it. But he sounded as though it was no surprise. Like he already knew something.’

‘Did he say what he was going to do next? Where he was heading after Ewan’s house?’

‘If he had a plan, he didn’t tell me what it was. He just promised me he’d be home soon, and not to worry. But I am, Ben. I’m so desperately worried. He promised to keep in touch. Said he’d call twice a day to tell me where he was and what was happening. But it’s been two whole days and I haven’t heard anything from him at all! I keep imagining all kinds of terrible things. I’m going crazy here on my own. I had to talk to you.’

Ben said nothing for a few moments, thinking about his friend. Boonzie McCulloch was one of the toughest old war dogs Ben had ever known, and he’d known a few. The kind of guy you’d thank God was on your side, and not the enemy’s. Boonzie was also famously reticent when it came to talking about his past exploits. Ben was certain that even Mirella knew only a fraction of what her husband had been through, and survived, in his time.

‘He’s pretty resilient, Mirella. The fact that you haven’t heard from him might not mean he’s in trouble. It’s possible that he’s gone to ground for a while, and can’t call you. Maybe he will, any time now. And then everything will be okay again.’

‘There’s something else,’ she said, in a voice that sounded hollow, drained of energy. ‘Something he’d never have wanted me to tell anyone. He made me swear to keep quiet about it. Like if it was never talked about, it wouldn’t be real any more and it would just go away. But it is real. And it isn’t going away so easily.’

‘I don’t understand. What are you talking about?’

And then she told him about Boonzie’s illness.

Chapter 13

Mirella said, ‘I could tell he was having a problem. He seemed tired a lot more often than usual, and sometimes he looked pale. Something was obviously bothering him, but he kept insisting that he was fine and would get irritable if I pestered him about it. Then about six months ago, he finally confessed that he’d been getting increasingly severe chest pains and was becoming worried about them.’

Ben asked, ‘How serious is it?’

‘I persuaded him to see a private specialist in Campobasso. The doctor ran some tests and soon diagnosed heart disease. Said there was a risk of cardiac arrest if the condition was left untreated. Archibald just brushed it off, didn’t want to accept the diagnosis. When we got home, he wouldn’t even talk about it. I was so angry and upset. That man is as stubborn as a mule.’

Tell me about it, Ben thought. He waited anxiously to hear more.

‘Anyway, of course, the pains got worse. Eventually he agreed that something had to be done. Two months ago, he went into hospital to be fitted with a pacemaker.’

This was news, even though Ben and Boonzie kept in touch regularly. ‘I spoke with him just six weeks or so ago. I thought he sounded a little tired, but he never mentioned a single word to me about operations and pacemakers.’

‘And he’d have hated anyone knowing. Even more than he hates having it. He’s not as strong as he used to be, and he has to take all these pills every day. Of course, he works twice as hard to prove himself. But he’s struggling, Ben, I can tell. He’s been getting fainting attacks. I read that some of these defibrillation implants can malfunction sometimes, or that all kinds of complications can happen, even a year after the operation. When he told me he needed to go to Scotland I begged him to stay, but he wouldn’t listen. What if something happened to him there? Why else wouldn’t he have called me again in two whole days?’

‘We don’t know that, Mirella,’ Ben said, lowering his voice to sound more reassuring.

‘I already called the hospital, in case he might have been taken there. It’s in a town called Fort William. The only patient there with the surname McCulloch was his nephew Ewan. But that doesn’t mean nothing has happened. The town is miles from where Ewan lives. It’s a remote place, deep in the hills. Archibald could be out there somewhere, with nobody to help if he got into trouble. He could have fainted again, or had a bad attack, and nobody might even know about it until—’ Mirella’s voice had reached a peak of anxiety and now broke apart into a sob.

Ben was quiet for a long time. Then he said, ‘Tell me the name of the place.’

She read it out for him, struggling with the strange foreign spelling. Ben noted it down and was instantly putting together his plan.

‘Here’s what we’re going to do, Mirella. I’ll get there as quickly as I can. You need to stay by the phone and call me immediately if you hear from him. Okay?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I need as much information from you as possible to help me find him,’ Ben said. ‘For example, did he rent a car at the airport?’ Knowing what kind of vehicle Boonzie was using would be a useful asset. The registration number, even better. There were ways of bluffing that kind of knowledge out of rental companies.

‘He went by train.’

Ben considered the kind of remote local stations the area would have, not a car rental outlet for miles around. ‘Then how’s he travelling?’

‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it. What about other contacts there? Does he know anyone else in the village, did he mention any names to you? A friend of Ewan’s, perhaps? Or maybe he booked a place to stay, like a hotel or guesthouse?’

‘He never mentioned anything about that to me.’

Ben said nothing. He’d have little to go on when he got there. But that wasn’t anything new to him.

Mirella said, ‘I don’t know how to thank you for this, Ben. I didn’t know who else to turn to. I couldn’t go to Scotland alone. I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

‘You don’t have to,’ Ben told her. ‘That’s what you have me for. Finding people is what I do best, and I will find him. That’s a promise.’

And that was how, within just a few hours, Ben was getting ready to set off on another unexpected mission. They had a habit of coming his way just when he was settling back into a steady routine and life seemed comparatively normal and peaceful. He never turned down people in need of his help. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to fail to be there for one of his oldest and closest friends in the world.

Back at Le Val, Ben’s work schedule for the next few days was quickly rejuggled. Classes were cancelled, while others had to be reassigned to the stalwart Tuesday Fletcher, who was already covering for the workload Jeff couldn’t handle with one arm in a sling. Needless to say, both men would have happily dropped everything and closed Le Val’s doors to come with him to Scotland, but Ben wouldn’t have it. Even Jeff had to admit he wouldn’t be of much use with a fractured wrist.

‘Anyhow,’ Ben said, ‘it’s hardly a three-man job. The old bugger is probably having the time of his life up there, and just forgot to call home.’

Privately, he wished he could be that confident. A tingling sensation was gnawing inside him. It was a sense of deep foreboding, as though some part of his mind predicted that he was walking into danger. He tried to shake off the feeling, but it hung over him like a cloud.

Cherbourg was the nearest airport to Le Val, and the first available flight to Inverness was leaving late that evening. Ben booked his ticket online, then packed a few items into his battered, much-travelled canvas army bag. It was going to get chilly up north. Thermal gear and winter socks? Check. His warmest pair of waterproof combat boots? Check. Cold weather Norgi Top? Check. Spare packs of cigarettes? Essential. After sharing a light dinner with Jeff and Tuesday in the cosy surroundings of the old farmhouse kitchen, no wine, he shrugged on his old brown leather jacket, said a warm goodbye to Storm and walked out to the Alpina with his bag.

The winter’s night was crisp and frosty, and the forecast had threatened snow. As Ben drove to the airport he kept glancing at his phone in its cradle on the dash, plumbed into the car’s speaker system in readiness for Mirella’s call to say that she’d finally received contact from Boonzie and all was well. He would have loved nothing more than to be able to turn back towards home. But the call didn’t come, and turning back was not an option. He chain-smoked Gauloises cigarettes all the way to Cherbourg to alleviate his worry. That didn’t do much good, either.

Ben’s plane was on time, for what it was worth. The flight was a frustrating twelve-hour marathon that took him a staggered route via Lyon and Amsterdam and soon made him wish that he’d just driven the thousand or so kilometres direct. He checked his phone at each stop-off. Nothing from Mirella. Then, after a delay to clear snow from the runway, he finally boarded the KLM jet for the third leg of his journey.

Every wasted hour only made him fret all the more. When they eventually got into the air, Ben closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he couldn’t force his mind to relax. Old memories flooded his thoughts. Some good, some less good. Some very nasty indeed.

A number of years had passed since his last journey to the Scottish Highlands. It had been back in 2004, at a time when he’d not long been out of the regiment. His objective on that occasion had been to spring an unannounced visit on a former Special Forces commanding officer, a man named Liam Falconer. That trip had not gone well, at least not for Falconer and several of his entourage. That was the price he’d paid for having involved himself in some secret operations he shouldn’t have, dark and shadowy even by the standards of the black-ops world Ben had just left.

Men had died. Ben had been the one who had killed them. He did not enjoy taking lives. It was something he had been trained to do out of necessity, and he did it proficiently enough to have ensured that he’d been the only person to walk out of that situation.

He hoped nothing bad awaited him in Scotland this time around, but he sensed that he was hoping in vain. The feeling of foreboding had not left him. It was growing deeper and more threatening with every mile he came nearer to his destination. The same familiar adrenalin-tinged dread he’d experienced so many times in the past as a soldier heading into the heart of war.

Boonzie McCulloch, where the hell are you?

Chapter 14

At last, too many long and grinding hours after leaving France, Ben’s plane dropped down out of a cold grey sky and he got his first glimpse of Inverness. The quiet airport lay seven miles from the city and had once been a military airfield. Now it was the Gateway to the Highlands and Islands, standing in lonely isolation against a backdrop of misty hills and the distant North Sea.

Disembarking, Ben was glad he’d brought warm clothes. The piercing wind felt as though it was roaring straight down from Iceland, and the sleet promised to turn to snow if the temperature dropped any lower.

His first action was to call Mirella and find out what he already knew, deep inside: still no contact from Boonzie. It was now the third day since she’d last heard from him. ‘I’ll find him,’ Ben assured her.

But he had to get there first.

He hunted for a car rental place and was relieved to find a small independent firm that obviously hadn’t heard about the near-blanket ban imposed on him by most of their larger competitors. For some peculiar reason the latter seemed to object to having their vehicles returned to them riddled with holes, burnt or blown up. But he resolved to take extra care this time around.

The village of Kinlochardaich, Boonzie’s last known location, lay seventy miles inland to the south-west. Ben required a car that could get him to his destination as quickly as possible and was rugged enough to handle the remoter parts of the western Highlands in winter, since there was no telling what kinds of roads or conditions he might meet out there. The answer to his needs was a big, chunky Mercedes four-wheel-drive. Fast and comfortable, a tad luxurious for his needs, but sturdy as hell.

His route was the A82, one of the most famous highways in Scotland since for miles it closely hugged the shoreline of Loch Ness, home of the fabled creature. Ben was too concerned about reaching his target to take in the views across the rippling, mysterious waters of the loch. With the wipers slapping away the sleet and the Merc’s heater belching full blast he ripped by the ruins of Urquhart Castle and the village of Drumnadrochit, empty of holidaymakers at this time of the year but peppered everywhere with signs for Nessieland and monster theme tours. From Fort Augustus the road followed the Caledonian Canal through Glen Mor and along Loch Lochy. More endless, beautiful scenery that Ben flatly ignored as he pressed the big Mercedes along. Road signs were bilingual, in English and Gaelic.

Rather than rely on GPS he had a map of the area imprinted on his mind. The seventy miles took him just over an hour, by which time his winding path had led him deep into ever-remoter country and his car was alone on the road for long periods. The thickening sleet slapped the windscreen and the outside temperature fell to just above zero, but inside was a bubble of warmth. His first glimpse of his destination was the eastern edge of Loch Ardaich, its restless grey waters surrounded by forest and rocky hills whose tops were shrouded in mist. He followed a lonely signpost directing him towards the village of Kinlochardaich, and not long afterwards he was making his way through the quiet, narrow streets.

The houses were mostly grey stone, settled into themselves with the passing of a century or more. He passed an old church with a graveyard, and a village filling station with a workshop and a couple of pumps, a village shop and post office; and soon after that he found the street whose name Mirella had given him.

Ewan’s address would have been one of Boonzie’s first ports of call when he arrived here, aside from visiting his nephew in the hospital, so it would also be Ben’s. He parked in an empty space directly in front of Ewan’s home, which was in a terraced row right on the street. He got out of the Mercedes, stretched his legs and back after the drive, lit up a Gauloise and then locked the car and walked up to the house. The sleet had died off, but the wind was chilly and Ben thought he could smell snow in the air.

As expected, the house was closed up. Ben peered through the front room window but couldn’t see anything through the net curtains. He came away from the front door and walked a little way up the street to where a gap between the houses led, he guessed, around the back.

His guess was right. Ewan’s back yard was a small area of wasteland, weedy and neglected. Ben stood for a moment, drinking in details. He noticed the patch of ground where a vehicle had stood until recently. A van-sized vehicle, judging by the spaces between the bare-earth wheel impressions in the dirt. A single dark oil stain had bled into the ground, the lack of individual splotches telling him that the vehicle had not been moved for a long time prior to being driven away.

He also noticed the discarded set of diesel glow plugs that someone had pulled out of its engine and tossed into the weeds. They weren’t rusty enough to have been there longer than a couple of days. Nearby lay a crumpled strip of emery cloth, reddened from where someone had been polishing up corroded metal.

Ben wondered whether it might have been Boonzie who took the van. He was good at fixing old vehicles, and having travelled up by train he’d have needed some form of transport to get around in. It made sense.

As he pondered Boonzie’s movements, he spied the broken window at the back of Ewan’s house, and walked over to examine it. Someone had obviously let themselves in through the window. Ben reached his arm carefully through the jagged teeth of glass and tried the window catch from inside, but it had since been locked. He wondered about that, too.

The back door was securely bolted from the inside, which might explain why whoever had broken in opted for the window. Three minutes later, Ben had followed their example, but without breaking anything or leaving any trace. What the SAS had taught him about covert entry had been only the beginning of his education. If life had gone differently, he could have been a pretty successful cat burglar.

Inside, Ben found what he’d been afraid he might find. Every room of the house had been thoroughly trashed by a person, or persons, who had evidently been searching for something. Ben noticed that somebody else had since briefly attempted to clear up the living room. His curiosity about who that someone might have been was answered when he found an empty pill bottle lying on the floor. It hadn’t been left here by the intruders, that was for sure. The label was printed in Italian, and showed that the pills had been prescribed to SIG. A. McCULLOCH. The ‘SIG.’ short for ‘Signore’ and the ‘A.’ for Archibald.

Boonzie had been here, all right.

Ben guessed that he might have been given the house key by the police, being next of kin to Ewan. Then since he hadn’t booked anywhere else to stay, Boonzie might have come here intending to use his nephew’s home as a base. Ben wondered if the shock of finding the place in such a mess had caused Boonzie to need to pop the last pills in the medicine bottle. That was a potentially worrying detail. But whatever the case, Boonzie had evidently changed his mind about staying here, and wasted no time in moving on. To where, was another question.

Ben searched the wreckage of the living room until he found what he was now looking for. Ewan McCulloch’s household documents, including house insurance, bills, receipts and credit card statements, had already been given the once-over by the intruders and were scattered about under the upturned drawers of his desk. Ben was more interested in vehicle papers. He supposed that anything like company car or van paperwork would be kept at Ewan’s business premises, but that anything related to a personal vehicle would have been sent to his home address. Again, his guess was right. Among the scattered documents was a registration document, expired insurance renewal letter, road tax reminders and old MOT certificate for a Ford camper van. The log book identified it as being fifteen years old, which probably explained why it had been sitting off the road for a while and had needed some work to get it going.

Now Ben felt more certain that Boonzie had borrowed the camper. However rough and ready, it would make the perfect mobile base. And now that Ben knew the vehicle’s details, he’d already taken an important step towards finding his missing friend.

He lingered a few minutes longer in the house, wondering why anyone would have wanted to ransack it, and how much of this was related to the mysterious gold coin Mirella had told him about. But he wasn’t going to learn anything more by hanging around here. He left the house the same way he’d come in, and walked back around the rear pathway to the street.

The air temperature had dropped half a degree while he was inside Ewan’s place, and though it wasn’t yet four p.m. the light was already fading fast. Dusk came early around these parts in the wintertime. The darkening sky was choked with clouds and the first wispy flakes of what threatened to become a heavier snowfall were loosely spiralling down. The scent of woodsmoke was in the air as villagers kindled their log-burning stoves in readiness for a cold night. Ben zipped up his jacket, took a black wool beanie hat from one pocket and put it on. In the other pocket was a fresh pack of Gauloises and his Zippo lighter. He drew out a cigarette and lit up as he walked past his parked Mercedes and kept walking through the village.

Smoking helped him think as he explored his unfamiliar new surroundings. His thoughts were not comfortable ones. He shared Mirella’s deep concerns about Boonzie’s state of health, and wished that his friend had stayed at home to take care of himself. But Ben’s worries went deeper. Though Kinlochardaich might appear quiet and peaceful, even quaint and romantic, his innate sixth sense warned him of menace and dark secrets lurking behind the facade, like the watchful eyes of predators hidden in the bushes.

Suspected murder. Vicious beatings. Illegal house entry. The apparent disappearance of a man who’d come to investigate. The list was growing. And now Ben, too, was venturing into the danger zone.

As he strolled along he smiled pleasantly and said good evening to a couple of villagers he met. Anyone seeing him would think he was just another visitor to the area: maybe a business traveller passing through, or an adventure tourist on a winter camping expedition into the hills. But for Ben, his casual amble through the village felt like a reconnaissance mission no different from a covert military advance force making a pathfinder sortie deep behind enemy lines. Scouting the lie of the land. Gathering intelligence. Estimating enemy strength and location. Identifying any and all potential threats. His senses were fully fired up and not a single detail of his surroundings escaped his notice as he wandered the streets.

This was his ground zero. His war zone. It didn’t appear that way, not yet. But if bad men were out there doing bad things, and if those bad men had been foolish enough to bring any harm to Ben’s friend, then it was only a question of time before war erupted here. Ben would rip this place apart until he found whoever was responsible. And they would pay for what they’d done.

The snow was beginning to fall thicker and more steadily as he sighted the warm glow emanating from pub windows further down the street. As he got closer he could see the sign above the door that said KINLOCHARDAICH ARMS. The establishment was set back from the road. A few cars were parked outside, their roofs and bonnets dusted powdery white under the amber light of the streetlamps.

In Ben’s experience, there was no better place in which to begin a recce operation than the local public house. He looked at his watch. Only four-fifteen, but the falling darkness and plummeting temperature made it feel much later.

Time for a drink.

He pushed through the pub door and walked inside.

Chapter 15

Entering the Kinlochardaich Arms was like taking a step back into the past. Both in absolute terms, since the pub’s interior probably hadn’t been altered in any significant way since about 1850, apart from the addition of electric lighting and a jukebox, and also for Ben personally, since the interior with its ancient beams and traditional decor took him straight back to the old drinking dens that had been his haunts back in the years he’d lived on the west coast of Ireland.

The decor, though not the ambience. His favourite Irish pubs had been warm and cheery places filled with lively craic, where the conversation and laughter flowed as joyfully as the Guinness and it wasn’t unusual for fiddles, mandolins, tin whistles and bodhráns to materialise out of nowhere for an impromptu cèilidh jam session. But as Ben walked in he quickly understood from the dour atmosphere that strangers to Kinlochardaich couldn’t expect to be greeted with much in the way of good old Highland hospitality. Even the log fire crackling in the old stone fireplace felt frigid and reserved.

Most of the drinkers in the lounge bar were gathered around a single large round table near the fire. They were a group of men in their thirties to fifties, hunched over pints and talking among themselves in low, mumbly voices as though they were plotting to overthrow the government. An assortment of heavy winter jackets and fleeces were draped messily over the backs of vacant chairs. At the far end of the lounge bar, a woman with long dark hair and a reedy ginger guy were drinking mugs of something hot and steaming at a table for two by the window. The woman had her back to Ben, and the guy was gazing out at the falling snow and saying something Ben couldn’t hear.

The only other woman in the place was the young redheaded barmaid sitting behind the beer pumps, uninterestedly reading a magazine and ignoring the wolfish-looking suitor who was leaning on the bar and doing all he could to impress her with his wit. As Ben crossed the floor the barmaid’s eyes darted up from the magazine and dwelled on him for a moment, and she flashed a coy smile. No trace of any kind of a smile, though, from the group at the big table. Some of the looks that turned his way were just checking-out-the-stranger glances, others lingered into hard and overtly hostile stares. The talking died away and the place fell silent for several seconds before resuming in the same mumbly tone.

Ben thought he could probably just about manage to cope with the level of friendliness. He wasn’t here to make friends. Paying them no notice he walked up to the bar, took off his hat and pulled up one of the plain wooden stools. The barmaid put down her magazine. Up close, she was more a girl than a woman. She was wearing too much makeup, with glitter on her eyelids. With the coy smile still on her lips and her eyes giving him the once-over she sidled across and asked what he’d like.

A no-brainer of a question, since being in Scotland, the sacred homeland of his favourite tipple, it would have been heresy for him to walk in here and order a pint of ale. Ben ran his eye along the row of single malt whiskies behind the bar. It was a decent collection. Some of the names were pretty obscure, though as something of a connoisseur he’d tried them all in his time. In his book there was no such thing as a bad single malt. He made his selection and asked for a double measure. The barmaid served it with another smile. Which the guy who’d been trying to chat her up apparently didn’t like very much, giving Ben sullen eyes as Ben thanked her and paid for his drink. Ben ignored him. She did the same, and after a few moments the guy gave up with a disgusted frown and stalked away to sit with his friends.

She rested her elbows on the bar and leaned forward, tacitly inviting Ben to look down her top which, naturally, he was far too restrained and gentlemanly to do. ‘You’re no from around here,’ she said. Such powers of observation. But that was an invitation Ben did rise to, because it gave him the opportunity to mention the purpose of his visit to Kinlochardaich.

‘No, I’m just passing through,’ he said, and she looked a little disappointed. He added, ‘Came to see a friend.’

‘Oh, aye? I know everyone in Kinlochardaich.’ She winked. ‘Lady friend, is it?’

‘Nothing that exciting,’ he replied.

Just then one of the group from the round table got up and came over to the bar, thumped his empty pint glass down on a beermat and said gruffly, ‘Same again, Holly love.’ He was a heavyset man of around Ben’s age or a couple of years younger, but four inches taller, which put him at about six-three. His hair was black and curly, his nose broken and crooked, and he had the neck and shoulders of a powerlifter. His sleeves were rolled up, showing muscled forearms inked from the wrist to the elbow with flame tattoos. Ben sat and sipped his scotch in silence while Holly refilled the big guy’s glass. The man spilled some cash on the counter, gave Ben the briefest glance which Ben noticed but didn’t acknow-ledge, then stumped back to the table with his beer. The pub floorboards creaked under his weight.

The interruption over, Holly returned to her position leaning against the bar and resumed the flirting. ‘So where’re you from?’ she asked, a lot more interested in Ben than in who his friend might be, and making no attempt to hide it. Nineteen or twenty years old, stuck out here in a lonely rural village with obviously not too many strange and interesting new men passing through her life. She was more the kind of age for Jude, Ben thought. His son was between girlfriends at the moment, still living in the States but talking about returning home to the UK. Maybe Ben should send him up north to hook up with Holly here. She’d certainly make a refreshing change from the last one, a social justice warrior and do-gooder political activist called Rae Lee.

‘I live abroad,’ Ben said.

‘Thought you were English.’ That didn’t seem to put Holly off, though.

He replied, ‘Half Irish. But I don’t live there, either.’

‘How long did you say you were staying?’ Getting bolder with the flirting now.

‘Only until I find my friend. Which I’m hoping to do soon. Maybe a day or so.’

‘Och, that’s a shame. Did you say your friend’s a local?’

‘No, he’s just passing through, same as me. His name’s Boonzie McCulloch. He’s Ewan McCulloch’s uncle. Do you know Ewan?’

She nodded. ‘Aye, I know Ewan. Heard he was in the hospital, though. Is he okay?’

‘Not really. That’s why his uncle travelled to the area. I was hoping to catch up with him here in Kinlochardaich, but no joy. I wondered if maybe he’d been in here for a drink the last couple of days? Older guy. Shorter than me, wiry build. Grey hair, beard. Speaks like he’s from Glasgow.’

Holly looked dubious. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen him. I mean, we get a lot of older customers who look like that, but you’re the first new face who’s been in here lately.’ She added, ‘I should know.’

‘All the same, I have a photo of him, if you wouldn’t mind taking a look. Might ring a bell.’

She shrugged. ‘Sure, but like I say, I’m pretty sure he hasn’t come in here.’

It seemed like a long shot, but Ben took out his phone and went to his stored images. The picture of Boonzie was a few years old, taken when Ben had visited him and Mirella at their place in Italy, but he was confident that Holly would recognise him if she’d seen him. There was only one Boonzie McCulloch in the world and he didn’t change much. Ben angled the phone so Holly could see. She leaned further forward across the bar, squashing her chest on the counter and tickling his hand with the dangling tips of her hair. The images were stored in date order with the most recent first. He’d have to scroll all the way back to near the beginning to get to the one he wanted to show her.

But Holly stopped him dead when she saw the very first picture, Ben’s most recent addition to the file. It was the image of Ewan’s gold coin that Mirella had emailed him earlier that afternoon. Holly spotted it and instantly said, ‘Hey, that looks familiar. Did you find buried treasure too?’

Ben stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘That.’ She pointed at the picture with a long, glittery nail. ‘It’s not every day you see bling like that getting flashed around. Is it real? Looks real. Just like the other.’

‘When did you see something like this before?’

She pulled away from the phone, as if she’d seen enough. ‘Och, just a few days ago. He was sitting right there, on the same stool you are.’

‘Who was sitting here?’

Holly’s brow creased into a frown and she hesitated before replying, ‘Ross Campbell.’

‘Ross Campbell, the fellow who drowned?’

She nodded sadly, still frowning. ‘You must have heard about it back home where you come from, aye?’ As though accidental drownings in remote parts of Scotland were big news internationally. ‘That was awfy. I didn’t really know Ross that well, but I was so upset when I heard.’ Holly thought about it for a moment, then added in an undertone, ‘You know, some folks’re calling it suicide. But I don’t believe it. When he was in here that night he looked way too pleased wi’ himself to be the suicidal type.’

‘Explain this to me,’ Ben said. ‘Ross Campbell was in here a few nights ago and had a gold coin with him, just like the one in the photo? Is that what you’re saying?’

Holly nodded again. ‘Aye, must’ve been a day or two before … before it happened. Maybe even the very day before. I don’t remember.’

‘And you actually saw the coin?’

‘He showed it to me.’ There was nothing in her eyes but blank sincerity. She was telling the truth.

‘What for?’

‘Well, he was a wee bit pissed, to be honest. Kept going on about he’d struck it rich, found the mother lode, all that. Said he was gonnae leave this shitehole, go off to a tropical beach and never come back again. Asked me to come wi’ him. Me. Can you believe that?’ she added with a brief, wistful smile. ‘And then he was dead.’

‘He had just the one coin?’

She shook her head. ‘That’s all he showed me, but he said he had a whole load more stashed away somewhere. I wiz teasin’ him about it, said, “Ross Campbell, where’d you go gettin’ yer hands on a big pile o’ gold?”’

‘And what did he say to that?’

‘Wouldnae tell me. Said it was his big secret, and he was the only one who knew about it. I said, “No much of a secret if ye’re bletherin’ on about it in this bloody place.”’

Ben had forgotten all about showing Holly the picture of Boonzie. This was more important. Now the gold trail led back to Ewan McCulloch’s dead business partner and the whole mystery had just grown deeper. More significantly, the single coin had turned into a whole stash of them. And if Holly’s account was right, it also meant that Ross alone knew the secret of where the gold had come from. Which implied that Ewan had known little or nothing about any of this himself. He might not even have stumbled across the coin until after Ross’s death.

Ben was about to ask her more questions, but he never got the chance. Because at that moment he felt a large, heavy presence come up behind him and a loud voice said, ‘What’s all this fuckin’ shite aboot Ross Campbell?’

Ben turned. The guy with the flame tattoos was back, and he didn’t look very happy.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.