‘Could be late thirties, maybe early forties, but fit. Six foot or a little less. Blond hair, jeans, leather jacket. Turned up in a black Mercedes SUV. There was a woman with him.’

‘Did you get the Merc’s number?’

Banks wasn’t a total idiot. He recited the registration. Hacker made a mental note of it and said, ‘Okay, describe the woman to me as well.’

‘White, I’d say mid-thirties. Good-looking. Long dark hair.’

‘How far out are you?’

‘On these roads? Maybe twenty minutes.’

‘Copy that. Get here as quick as you can.’ Hacker ended the call and heaved a sigh. ‘Shit.’

Stuart was glaring at him. ‘Well done, Hacker. Top class. All I can say is, your man O’Donnell had bloody well better be dead. If the law get hold of him and he talks—’

‘I thought you had the local cops in your pocket.’

‘Macleod and Coull are bought and paid for, but it’s not as though I control the entire Northern Constabulary. For all I know the whole of Kinlochardaich is swarming with police, as we speak. It’s exactly the kind of disaster you assured me wouldn’t happen, with your so-called professionals on board.’

‘We can fix this,’ Hacker said. ‘I just need to know who the guy in the black Mercedes SUV is. Once he goes away, the problem goes away.’

Stuart was looking at him in disgust. ‘At least I get something for my money.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, while you were wasting time with McCulloch earlier, I got a phone call from Fergus Macleod, notifying me of an interesting detail that happened to come to his attention today. It seems that one of his lower-rank officers has been digging around in the database files at police headquarters, looking for convicted poachers in the local area, coming up with the name Jamie McGlashan and cross-checking it with DVLA records to get his current address and vehicle details. Now, apparently, in this wonderful technological new world of ours, officers wishing to access the police computer files need to log in using their own personal access code. Which leaves a record of who’s been looking at what.’

‘And so?’

‘And so I believe I know the identity of the woman who was with the man in the black Mercedes,’ Stuart said. ‘The officer who was doing all this private sleuthing happens to be one PC Grace Kirk. Who also happens to have been the off-duty constable who arrested Angus Baird and his friends the other night, after a pub brawl which, according to certain eye-witnesses who fled the scene, involved an unnamed stranger from out of town. All that’s known about him is that he beat the living daylights out of three large, powerful men without hardly touching them. Does that sound like someone who could potentially get the better of your associate Kev O’Donnell in an armed confrontation?’