Long before daybreak the following morning, Boonzie set off for Fort William. For the first few miles a fresh snowfall overnight had all but swallowed the lonely road under a virgin carpet of white and he drove carefully until he reached the A82. The council gritter trucks had been out last night to salt the roads, and the tarmac was a clear, twisty black ribbon cutting through the wintry landscape.

Reaching Fort William just after eight a.m. he passed the hospital where Ewan was, and seriously considered stopping off there to check on him. But he had other matters to attend to first. From the hospital he followed the route by which Grace Kirk had driven him to the police station. It was still dark when he got there, but traffic was already filtering through the building’s main gate as the early birds reported for work, and he hoped he wasn’t too late.

In a more urban environment Boonzie would have chosen to find a parking position on the street somewhere opposite the building, from which to mount surveillance on his target. The Fort William police headquarters sat alone in the middle of a large area of wasteland, off the town bypass close to a roundabout, and there was nowhere to set up his observation point outside the grounds. Instead he drove straight inside and parked in a side parking area for visitors, within view of the building’s entrance.

If anyone came over and asked him what he was doing there, he’d say he’d come to talk to DI Macleod or DS Coull about his nephew’s assault. Which was essentially the truth, anyway. Although what Boonzie had in mind went beyond mere talking.

The camper van was a fine surveillance vehicle. It had a side window veiled with a lace curtain, and below it a berth that folded up into a bed-settee when not in use. Boonzie detached the scope from the crossbow and settled on the sofa cushions so that he could watch from behind the lace as staff cars arrived and their occupants entered the building some sixty yards away. With the scope’s magnification screwed up to the max, he could easily make out their faces from this distance.

Within a minute of his arrival a silver Ford sedan turned in through the gates and parked in the staff parking area, followed by a small blue Kia. He watched as their drivers, a man in his thirties and a woman with bleached-blond hair respectively, got out and pushed inside the building’s front doors with his scope crosshairs centred on their faces. Neither of them was of interest to him. He went on waiting.