The flimsy door creaked open and Jamie stepped inside without bothering first to kick the snow from his boots. Wasting no time, he headed for the bedroom. The trailer was filled with the familiar old smell of stale cooking oil, unwashed clothes and rising damp. His bed was a mildewed single mattress on the floor and his bedside cabinet was a scabby kitchen unit he’d rescued from a skip. There among the clutter of mouldy mugs and crumpled magazines lay his damn signing-in book, just where he’d remembered it.

‘Ya basturt,’ he muttered. He looked at his watch. It was nearly two-thirty p.m., giving him plenty of time to get to Fort William. He scooped the book up and thrust it in his pocket and turned towards the door.

And was unable to react, flinch or utter anything but a gasp of horror and surprise as the two figures blocked the doorway and one of them punched a long, slim knife blade deep inside Jamie’s stomach.

Jamie staggered back a step, too stunned to compute what was happening to him. As fast as it penetrated his vitals the knife withdrew and then came at him again, stabbing at his chest. This time Jamie instinctively raised a hand to protect himself, and the razor-sharp blade slashed across his palm and severed his little finger. Then the second figure stepped forward, clutching another knife, and Jamie felt an unimaginable shock of agony as the cold steel plunged into the soft flesh of his neck. His mouth opened to scream, but what came out was an unearthly, inhuman shriek, like the sound of an animal being slaughtered.

And it was only then, in a strangely detached moment of comprehension as though he were observing it happening from the outside, that Jamie McGlashan realised that he was being brutally murdered.

Chapter 31

‘I just have to ask one thing,’ Grace said, shivering. ‘Can we go in your car? Because I think I’m about to die of cold pretty soon if I don’t get to a proper heater.’

It was a ten-minute drive from where the old Land Rover was parked to where Ben had hidden his Mercedes. He replied, ‘Whatever you want’, jammed the Landy into gear and got it turned around on the track, then headed up to the winding narrow road that snaked around the perimeter of the loch. The thing was primitive, just a thumper diesel bolted to a chassis, more a tractor than a car. He wondered how generations of SAS soldiers, including himself, had coped with such basic machinery back in the day. That thought took him back to thinking about Boonzie again, and he shut his mind down and resolved not to think so much.