Boonzie cleared the barbed-wire fence and scrambled up the slope, gorse overgrowth scratching at his legs and his feet sinking into deep snow. As he made it to the top of the rise he flattened himself low to the ground and crept forward until he could see Macleod’s car from a different angle. And something else he hadn’t been able to see from the track: another car, parked a few yards away from the Jaguar around the side of the ruined chapel. The second car was a big silver tank of a Rolls Royce. Boonzie realised that Macleod had driven out to this remote spot for a rendezvous with someone he obviously didn’t want to meet in public.

This could be interesting.

Boonzie scrambled the rest of the way down the slope and approached the back of the roofless old chapel. He could hear the sound of voices: two men in conversation, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Peering through a crumbled window he saw Macleod standing below the remains of an archway, talking with another man Boonzie had never seen before. The other man was older and trimmer than Macleod, and much better dressed in a tweedy suit under a long cashmere overcoat. His hair was silver like his Rolls Royce, expensively styled and swept back from his high brow. Boonzie wondered who he was.

Only one way to find out.

He stepped around the corner of the chapel and pointed the crossbow at the two men.

They stopped talking and stared at him. Macleod’s florid features went the colour of beetroot and he said loudly, ‘What do you think you’re doing, McCulloch?’ He looked angry, but strangely unsurprised by Boonzie’s sudden appearance.

Boonzie kept the bow levelled in their direction. He stepped closer.

‘You’re making a very big mistake, McCulloch.’

Boonzie took another step and shook his head. ‘That would be you,’ he replied, ‘when you and yer pal Coull killed Ross Campbell an’ put my nephew in a coma.’

‘You’re out of your bloody mind.’

‘Shut yer hole,’ Boonzie snapped savagely at him. He jerked the bow towards the older man. ‘Who’re you?’

The older man smiled. ‘Come, Mr McCulloch, let’s be reasonable about this. Why don’t you lower the weapon and we can talk?’ His voice was smooth and mellow, the accent perceptibly Scottish but attenuated.

‘On yer knees,’ Boonzie grated.

But Macleod and the older man didn’t move. ‘You’re going to regret this, you know,’ the older man said.

That’s when Boonzie saw what at first glance looked like a large red insect hovering in front of his chest. Except it wasn’t an insect. It was the bright red dot of a hidden marksman’s laser sight drawing a bead on him from a distance.

And at that moment he knew that he had walked into a trap.