‘So maybe that’s why you’re off the hook,’ Colin said cheerily.

Greg didn’t believe it would or could be that easy, but thanked Colin for bringing him up to date.

‘Did Stratton mention Joanne at all when talking to you?’ he asked.

Colin’s cheerful look disappeared. ‘Why?’ he said worriedly.

‘Did he ask if she was staying at Beanach?’

After a short and obviously anxious pause, ‘He might have. Is that bad?’

Greg’s heart raised its beat. ‘What did you tell him?’

‘I said I didn’t think so. I didn’t want to get you into trouble if it wasn’t allowed.’

Greg could have hugged him. Instead he clapped him on the back. ‘Good.’

Colin looked a little perturbed at such an open demonstration of praise.

‘Right, I’ll head down there now,’ Greg told him.

‘Remember,’ Colin said, ‘if he sacks you, I’m going too.’

Ard Choille already wore a deserted look. In the morning light, its silver birch shone just as brightly, but its balcony and walkways lay empty. No more clinking of glasses. No more brightly coloured butterflies inhabiting its branches. No more raucous laughter.

An Lochan Uaine still lay green and inviting, but no sunshades or loungers sat alongside. Only the ugly evidence of the covered grave.

Greg ordered the dogs to wait by the Land Rover and, steeling himself, approached the main door and once again banged the stag’s head knocker. When there was no response, he opened the door and stepped inside, determined not to put off the moment of confrontation any longer.

‘Mr Stratton,’ he called up the open staircase. Eventually a voice he recognized as Chalmers bid him come up.

He passed a deserted dining room with no sounds of any remaining staff from the nearby kitchen. Had they gone too, he wondered?

Chalmers was in the balcony room with a pot of coffee.

‘Take a seat,’ he ordered, rather than offered. ‘Aidan’s on a phone call in the study.’

Greg had never really registered Chalmers. He was one of those men who, if you didn’t know to the contrary, you would assume was Stratton’s assistant. He’d always remained in the background, said little, although it had been obvious that Stratton deferred to him on occasion.

At this moment, Chalmers was studying him closely, perhaps revisiting his opinion of the estate’s head gamekeeper. It made Greg wonder just how much of Chalmers’s money was involved in Ard Choille and the estate in general.

‘They released you? Do you know why?’ he said.

‘Because I didn’t do anything wrong,’ Greg said.

Chalmers accepted that with a little nod. ‘Then we still have a head gamekeeper.’ He said that as if it were his decision and not Stratton’s.