Ben looked across at him. Wolf had been examining the big guy’s corpse for ID when he’d found something else, something more worrying. He held up the bullet-shattered remains of a small black box that looked like a miniature remote control.

‘Bad news, buddy. He was wearing a body cam. Live and transmitting, until the moment you punched his ticket. Someone just watched the whole show happening.’

Chapter 34

Kinlochardaich, Scotland

Five hours earlier

It had been a frustrating half-hour for Jeff and Tuesday, but they’d had no choice but to hold back a while before setting off in pursuit of Grace and the men who’d followed her from her home that morning. With only the black Range Rover tailing her, the plumber’s van up the street was still in position. Jeff and Tuesday couldn’t afford to blow their cover. They sat in Reaper’s Ford Transit and bided their time.

At 7.21 a.m., when they could stand the waiting no longer, Jeff exited the Transit via the rear doors, using the back of the vehicle to shield him from view of the watchers up the street. A few yards along the pavement, taking care not to be seen he ducked down an alley between two houses, which led around the rear to a row of back yards separated by flimsy wooden fences. Jeff hopped one of them and jogged across someone’s garden, working his way back around in a loop. The windows of the house were curtained. He guessed the occupants were still in bed. A dog barked from behind the back door as he crept by, but the curtains didn’t twitch and nobody came out of the house to challenge him.

Seconds later he re-emerged back out onto the street as though he’d come from the house. If the watchers noticed him, they’d assume he was a villager leaving home for work. Jeff wanted them to see him. He ambled casually back up the street to where the Transit was parked, paused a second to check his bootlace before getting in, then climbed up behind the wheel.

They set off, passing Grace’s house and then the plumber’s van. The day was going to be a waiting game, so before leaving Kinlochardaich Jeff stopped off to buy some basic provisions from the village store. Then they sped the thirty miles southwards towards Fort William, going on the assumption that Grace would have headed straight for the police station and that her followers had no reason to accost her en route.

Tuesday was concerned that they’d left too much to chance. ‘I hope we’ve played this right, Jeff.’

‘Stop worrying. If they were going to make their move on her, they’d have done it during the night.’

‘Still, I’ll be happier when we get there.’