Worst of all, he, Charles Stuart, was not the tiniest step closer to recovering his natural inheritance. His birthright. His family treasure. All he’d managed to obtain until now were the measly couple of coins that Ross Campbell had been carrying the day of his death, plus the one that Macleod had taken from Ewan McCulloch. The location of all the rest was still a mystery.

Hardly a minute went by that he didn’t want to gnash his teeth in fury at what was being withheld from him. He could hardly sleep at night any longer, because every time he closed his eyes he could see the masses of his ancestor’s buried treasure lurking beneath the dirt and leaves of the ancient forest. In his fevered dreams he found himself wandering lost among an endless wilderness of mossy pine trees, repeatedly falling to his knees and digging like a wild man, only to find nothing but fistfuls of filth and rot.

He knew he was slowly going crazy. And crazy men sometimes did crazy things. On the Rolls Royce’s passenger seat was a briefcase containing the largest knife Stuart had been able to find in the castle’s kitchen. He was prepared to use it.

His destination that evening was the Belford Hospital. On arrival he marched up to the main desk clutching his briefcase and told the receptionist that he was here to visit the patient Ewan McCulloch.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the receptionist politely replied, ‘but visiting times are by arrangement only. I’d have to check with Dr Fraser first.’

Stuart muttered a reply and slipped away from the desk. When the receptionist turned her back to answer a ringing phone, he darted through a doorway and headed down a long, brightly lit corridor. He wandered about the hospital, peering through doorways and following signs. The Belford wasn’t very big, and so it didn’t take him long to find the room he was looking for. Through a window he could see the inert form of Ewan McCulloch in his bed, all wires and tubes hooking him up to bleeping machines. Stuart lingered outside the door. Nurses and orderlies crisscrossed past him in the corridor, all too preoccupied to pay him any notice. The instant the coast was clear, Stuart slipped inside the room and softly closed the door behind him. He turned off the light so that he couldn’t be seen through the window.

Stuart approached the bed and studied the patient in the dim glow of the blinking machines. Ewan McCulloch was very still and appeared almost dead. A monitor bleeped to the slow, steady rhythm of his heartbeat.

Stuart unlatched his briefcase. Slipped a hand inside and took out the carving knife. Leaning over the bed he lowered his face close to the patient’s ear and murmured, ‘I know you can hear me, you little shit.’