Hacker and his men had spent so many hours trying to make the stubborn old bastard talk that at various times he’d had to pull Carter, O’Donnell, Graham and Banks off the job of hunting for the poacher. Which Hacker had deeply resented, because it had meant having to work along with a bunch of Stuart’s amateurish local goons. If that situation hadn’t been forced on him, the man they’d spotted by the lochside the night before – Hacker had been pretty damn certain it must be Jamie McGlashan, because who else would have been hanging around there in the middle of a freezing cold night? – surely wouldn’t have got away.

All to no avail.

Of course, Hacker had known from the start that prising the truth out of Boonzie McCulloch would be problematic. Firstly, they still had no idea whether he actually knew anything of value to them, concerning Ross Campbell’s discovery and his nephew’s possible involvement in it.

Secondly, it was clear to them that the old guy would never reveal the location of the gold, not even if he’d been carrying a mental treasure map around with him. This was a man who had been trained not to divulge information to captors, at any cost. Hacker had experienced a taste of that same kind of training in his past, even if the mock interrogations he’d been subjected to were nothing in comparison to the brutality and realism of the capture simulations the SAS had to endure. Hacker understood only too well that they’d have to tear Boonzie McCulloch apart limb from limb before he’d utter a single syllable to them.

And therein lay the problem. Because while Hacker’s crew had been champing at the bit to get the cash bonus coming to them if McCulloch talked, Hacker needed to be careful to restrain them from going too far with a prisoner who obviously wasn’t a well man. How do you forcefully extract information from a captive you have to pussyfoot around at the same time, in case he ups and dies on you? You can’t starve him of food and water, can’t overly stress him physically, and certainly can’t torture him – an option Hacker knew was uppermost in his men’s minds. The Dishonourables were old hands at torture.