If Monty was going to use it to check with two former SAS directors to establish Ben’s veracity, then it had to be secret information to which only the inner circle of British Special Forces would be privy.

Ben said, ‘September twentieth, 2003. A combined UKSF and Delta Force unit with the codename Task Force Red deployed twenty miles west of Tikrit as part of Operation Citation, under my command. SAS suffered one KIA that day, a thirty-year-old trooper called Jon Taylor who caught an RPG round in a surprise attack by Islamic insurgents. Taylor was from Wakefield. He played the saxophone. His wife’s name was Sally and they had a little girl called Charlotte, who’d be twenty-one now, and a Yorkshire terrier called Duke who lost a leg in a road accident when he was a puppy. Jon was upset about it at the time.’

Something nobody else could possibly know. It was Ben’s best shot.

‘You think he’ll ring back?’ Grace said when the call was over.

‘Only time will tell.’

But time wasn’t something Ben had in spades, and every minute spent waiting was painful to him. He stood watching the darkness fall outside the cottage window and chain-smoking Gauloises, unable to silence the clock that was ticking loudly in his head. He was betting the farm on Mad Monty. If this went nowhere, he had no other leads to follow.

‘Isn’t there some other way?’ Grace asked.

‘Unless I break into jail and kidnap Angus Baird and his cronies on the off-chance that one of them might be able to tell us something useful,’ Ben replied, ‘then yes, right now, this is the only way.’

Grace had nothing better to offer. She fell back into her own brooding silence, twiddling her thumbs by the fire. When she spoke again, one hour and five minutes had passed since the end of Ben’s conversation with Mad Monty. ‘He’s not calling back, is he?’ she said glumly.

Ben said nothing. One hour and ten minutes. One hour and fifteen.

Grace said, ‘He’s definitely not calling back.’

Ben still said nothing.

‘I can’t believe I’m running around with an SAS major.’

‘Retired.’

One hour and twenty-one minutes after the call had ended, the phone rang and Ben snatched it up.

Mad Monty said, ‘Make your way towards Buxton, Derbyshire. Call me when you get within ten miles and I’ll supply you with further instructions.’

‘This is much appreciated, Colonel.’

‘I look forward to making your acquaintance, Major Hope.’

Operation Citation and Duke, the three-legged pup, seemed to have done the trick. Monty hung up the phone.

‘How far away is Buxton?’ Grace asked, echoing Ben’s own thoughts. So late in the afternoon, there was little chance of grabbing a last-minute flight from Inverness to Manchester. The only alternative was a long drive south.

‘Over six hours by car,’ he replied. ‘I’ll go on my own.’