The journey continued. Ben kept Grace talking, to help him stay awake through the long hours. It wasn’t just the sound of her voice he liked. It was her warmth, her wit, and her company generally. He was starting to like her. Maybe too damn much.

They stopped at the same services they’d used on the way down, and ate pretty much the same meal as before. Then, just as they’d done the previous evening, they returned to the car and kept moving. Hours later they left the motorway north of Glasgow and the night-time traffic, already thin at that hour, dwindled away until the Mercedes became just a solitary bubble of light speeding through the empty darkness. Grace kept offering to take over at the wheel until she dozed off herself, leaving Ben alone again with his troubled thoughts and the endless road snaking hypnotically towards him out of the night. The further north they travelled, the lower the outside temperature reading on the dash dropped. Frozen rain mixed with hail and sleet needled the windscreen and formed a glacial slick over the roads and snowy verges, forcing Ben to relax his pace for fear of hitting a patch of black ice.

Nothing happened for a long while.

And then, on the lonely road pushing into the Highlands, something did happen.

Chapter 44

Just past six in the morning, carving through the frigid black heart of the wilderness somewhere between Crianlarich and Glen Orchy, the monotony of their journey came to a sudden halt with the screech of a police siren behind them and flashing blue lights filling the rear-view mirror. Grace had still been half-dozing in the warm comfort of her seat, and woke up with a start. ‘Shit! What’s happening?’

‘Looks like we might have company,’ Ben said. He’d been watching the solitary headlights creeping up on their tail for the last few minutes, and wondering about them. He slackened his pressure on the gas a little but kept moving, in case the patrol car was about to push past them and speed onwards in pursuit of dangerous criminals elsewhere.

Some chance. The patrol vehicle stayed right where it was, blues and twos going full blast. Ben thought fuck it, flicked his indicator like a good citizen and gently pulled in towards the snowy verge. The cops pulled in behind.

Grace said, ‘What’s this about? Were you speeding?’

‘On these icy roads? The sixty limit’s faster than even I’d want to go.’

‘Then what do you think they want?’