The primitive stone bothy had played an important role in Jamie McGlashan’s life. Once upon a time the remote, weather-battered shelter had served its traditional purpose as a means for roving hunters like Jamie and his father to take refuge from the elements and cook fish and rabbits over an open fire. Years later it had become Jamie’s regular hideout when he was on one of his intensive poaching sprees and sometimes wouldn’t return to his trailer home for weeks on end. And since Ross Campbell’s murder it had provided a very convenient hiding place for an eye-witness too terrified to go home.

It was nearly four days since Jamie’s encounter with Ewan McCulloch’s uncle, the wild old nutcase who’d appeared out of nowhere dressed like a yeti and threatening him with a crossbow, and to whom Jamie had confessed his secret. Jamie hadn’t seen him again, and probably never would. Which pissed him off somewhat, because it meant he’d likely never see his mobile phone again either. But the old guy’s haunting final words of advice had kept replaying inside his head ever since.

Get as far away frae this place as ye can. All hell’s aboot tae break loose.

With no cash for travelling and nowhere else to run but the bothy, Jamie had spent these last days keeping his head down in even greater paranoia than before, shivering miserably through the freezing cold nights and dozing for most of the daytime in his sleeping bag, living off his diminishing catch and only sneaking outside to forage for firewood now and then.

As much as part of him enjoyed the total reclusion, he couldn’t stop his imagination from running riot. What the hell had the old guy been planning on doing? Jamie lay there for hours visualising scenes of mayhem and bloodshed, Ewan’s crazy ninja killer uncle stalking the streets like Rambo hellbent on revenge. The look in his eye had been so terrifyingly sincere that Jamie had no problem believing he would carry out his threat to put his enemies six feet under the ground. For all Jamie knew, the nutter had already wiped out everyone connected with his nephew’s beating and had either been shot to death in a massive gun battle with the police or was now locked up in jail. Which, with the bad guys dead, would mean it was now safe for Jamie to leave his hiding place. Not knowing what was happening out there was eating him alive.