‘Actually I found a whole bunch of them,’ she said. ‘Some were repeat offenders, others one time only. I took down the names and ran a check on each one in turn. The first was Hamish Galloway. Arrested seven times for illegal salmon fishing, the last time in March 2014, which was just two months before he died of emphysema. So that’s him crossed off the list. Second was a guy called Clark Duff. Again, I ran him through the system. Turns out poaching is the least of his crimes. He’s currently halfway through serving a six-month sentence for shoplifting. Strike him off the list, too. And on, and on. Some of them have left the area, some are still around. Dozens of names. But that didn’t stop me from nailing our boy.’ She grinned. ‘Jamie McGlashan. King of the heap, with an undefeated eleven past poaching convictions to his name. Never married, never had a real job. Lives alone and on benefits. He’s our guy.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because Ewan and I both went to the same school as him. I didn’t know him all that well. Nor did Ewan, as I remember, because people tended to keep their distance from Jamie. He was a rough kind of kid, used to get into fights, act moody, and didn’t have a lot of friends. We were all vaguely aware of some problems he had at home. The rumour was that his dad used to hit him, but back then dysfunctional family issues weren’t openly talked about. One day Jamie came into school with a split lip that was all sewn up and swollen like a rugby ball. After that, he always talked with a bit of a lisp, and it left him with a nasty scar that kids used to make fun of. So, more fights, more trouble, more suspensions. It was sad. He wasn’t a happy boy. Then he started developing a weight problem, which made him even unhappier.’

Ben recalled the taunts of the men who’d been out hunting the poacher the night before. Fat, scar-faced bastard. It sounded as though Grace had nailed it. ‘And you think maybe that’s why Ewan recognised his voice on the phone, because of the lisp?’

‘The way Jamie talked could have sounded vaguely familiar to him, but still just a half-memory he couldn’t pin down. The mind works like that sometimes, doesn’t it? Especially when it was so long ago. I mean, we were just eight or nine years old.’