Maxwell felt disappointed that they were in different rooms, but he managed not to make it apparent to the girl. “Thank you. I very much appreciate it,” he replied in an equally secretive tone. He turned and made his way towards the lift.

“What about the champagne, sir?” the girl called after him.

Maxwell turned and shot her a wink. “Let’s leave that until later, shall we? One surprise at a time.”

For the rest of the evening, Maxwell became their shadow. He was desperate not to let this opportunity go a-begging because he knew that his chances to get even with Porter were going to be few and far between. Having found an open service room on their corridor, he kept watch through the barely open door until they eventually left their rooms together about half an hour later. He had never had to make his way down three flights of stairs so fast in all his life, but he managed to reach the ground floor just as they were walking out of the hotel. As luck would have it, they had parked in the car park down by the river, about three rows away from where his BMW sat.

He followed them at a safe distance as they made their way out of town, and for a heart-stopping moment, he thought they were heading for the A9, the main road that linked Inverness with the rest of the world. But just before the slip road, they signalled to the left and pulled into the car park of Raigmore Hospital.

He waited for them for an hour, killing time by listening to a Runrig album on the minidisc system that he had had recently installed in the BMW. When they reappeared through the glass doors of the hospital, he stabbed at the OFF switch and slumped down into his seat. He watched them get into the Golf, reverse out of their parking slot, and move off towards the exit. He started his own car, but did not move. He wanted to see which way they turned at the bottom of the road. The indicator light flashed to the right, and he knew that they were heading back into Inverness.

Cutting the engine once more, he got out of the car and walked across to the hospital entrance. He had a pretty shrewd idea of what was going on, but he just had to make sure. He only had to ask a few words of the woman at the reception desk to have his thoughts confirmed, and he left the hospital with a smile on his face and a jaunty bounce to his step. He heaved himself into the BMW and let out a long, slow laugh. So Patrick Trenchard was in the High Dependency Unit, was he? He started up the car and reversed back at speed. Right, Maxwell, he thought to himself, let’s see how we can turn this to our advantage.

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