‘Least you’re not dead.’ She glanced around the gravelled yard, then marched over to the nettles and picked up a length of blue plastic pipe – the kind they used to run water under the ground. She shoved it through the handle and hauled on the ends. The door creaked and groaned as she pulled it open.

Sim poked her head in through the gap, then out again. ‘You’re welcome.’

Logan stepped inside. A thick grey cable led from the inside of the handle to a plug set at chest-height on the wall. He snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves and flicked the switch off.

The Mini’s airbags were flaccid droops of white, the steering wheel cover missing. Dark-red spots stood out on the plastic dashboard, like tiny jewels.

‘Guv? ’ Rennie waved at them from the back of the cattle court.

A Ring Knot was painted across the dirt floor in black wax, a metal stake driven into the ground at each point of the pentagram. Dark stains littered the centre of the circle. No sign of the body.

Don’t let it be Chalmers. Not after all this.

A sliding door in the side of the cattle court led deeper into the building. Sim did the same trick with the blue plastic pipe. ‘Jeepers. . .’

Logan joined her. It was a long room, about the width of a garage, with what had to be thousands of cannabis plants hanging upside-down from plastic washing line strung between the rafters. They’d discarded the bottom two-thirds of each plant – the leaves and the roots – leaving huge swollen buds clustered around a central stem, covered in frothy strands and speckled with purple. Why nick the whole thing when you could just grab the bit worth all the money?

Rennie reached out and rubbed one between his fingers. ‘This lot must be worth a fortune.’

A row of oscillating fans kept the air moving, filling it with the sweet sweaty smell of marijuana.

The next room was full of the stuff too. No wonder the McLeod brothers wanted to cripple whoever was in charge: they’d stolen a hell of a lot of cannabis.

Sim flicked the switch on another plug wired to a door handle, then pulled it open, revealing grass and swollen rhododendrons, old trees and the side of the farmhouse. They’d run out of steading.

Logan gave the signal and they split up – Rennie and Sim going one way, while he went the other, keeping low and close to the farmhouse wall. The downstairs windows at the front and side of the house were blacked out – the other side of the glass streaked with paint.

So no one could see them sneaking about.

They met up at the back door. ‘Suggestions? ’

Rennie pointed at the low drystane dyke behind the house. ‘We chuck one of those through the windows and dive in, Sweeney-style? ’

Idiot.