Hacker shook his head. ‘If heat comes down on me and my people, we can just disappear. That’s what we do. What we’ve always done. But not you. You’re a respectable businessman. You’ll be fully exposed and on your own.’

‘There’s no going back now,’ Stuart replied hotly. ‘I told you I was prepared to do whatever it takes. And so will you be, if you want to go on working for me.’

‘Your choice,’ Hacker said.

At that moment, Hacker’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw the caller ID. ‘It’s Banks.’

‘I’m assuming this means we’re finally rid of our star witness,’ Stuart said. ‘Some good news at last.’

Hacker’s two Dishonourables associates Bobby Banks and Kev O’Donnell had been sent out earlier to finally eliminate the poacher. Their orders had been clear and simple. Kill McGlashan, dispose of the body, destroy the evidence, burn his trailer. As Hacker hit reply, like his boss he was assuming that he was about to be told that the mission was complete and they were returning to base.

But as Banks began to babble in his ear, Hacker realised that something was badly wrong. He gave his employer an anxious look and put the call on speaker so Stuart could listen in. ‘Slow down, Banks. Where are you?’

Banks’s voice sounded agitated over the phone speaker, and muffled by the noise inside his car as he drove fast. ‘On my way back. Alone.’

‘Where the hell’s O’Donnell?’

‘He’s dead. I think.’

‘You think?’

‘There was shooting. I looked back and saw Kev go down. If he ain’t dead he’s in a bad fuckin’ way. He was just lying there in the snow, all bloody.’

‘Looked back, as in, you were running away when this happened?’

‘The job was take out McGlashan,’ Banks said. ‘Just a poxy fisherman. We didn’t know we were going to meet any resistance, did we?’

‘I thought you went tooled up.’

‘Yeah, but only the one shooter, and Kev had it. What was I supposed to do? The fucker’s got a sawn-off.’

‘Calm down,’ Hacker said sternly. He was getting a headache from trying to figure out what the hell Banks was telling him. ‘What fucker’s got a sawn-off? McGlashan? Did he shoot Kev?’

‘No, not McGlashan. He’s fucked, okay? We did the job. I’m talking about the other fucker.’

Hacker’s mind flashed back to the man he’d tried to kill the night before, down by the loch. He’d thought he was shooting at the poacher. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe a serious new player had arrived on the scene. That might explain how the man had managed to evade him and disappear like a ghost. But who was he?

‘This man, what does he look like?’