‘Nothing here either,’ Jamie McGlashan’s murderer called from the car. Hacker nodded. He took a step away from Ben and looked him hard in the eye. ‘So you’re the SAS high-roller we’ve all been dying to meet.’

‘And you’re the Pathfinder who lost his way.’

Hacker flushed an ugly colour. ‘Let’s go. He’s waiting for you.’

They escorted Ben up the steps to a tall carved-oak double doorway and inside a grand hall with a flagstone floor and mounted suits of armour clutching a pike and a halberd guarding the entrance. He momentarily wondered how easy it would be to snatch one of the polearms from its knight’s gauntlets and use it to disembowel all three of his escorts right there in the hallway. Probably not too hard, but he dismissed the idea.

‘This way,’ Hacker said. They led him from the hall down a wide corridor whose walls bristled with stuffed deer heads, with spiky antlers and staring glass eyes that seemed to watch you as you went by. Gleaming oak doors stood to the left and right. Like the ones in Ben’s nightmare, they might offer an escape from his predicament or they might lead to a painful death for him and his friends. He calmed the butterflies that were fluttering in his stomach, and walked on. At the bottom of the corridor was another tall double doorway. McGlashan’s killer and his associate stood closely at Ben’s sides as Hacker stepped to the door, knocked and pulled it open. Turning to Ben, he jerked his head and said, ‘In there.’

They ushered Ben through the doorway without touching him. Wise move, because one shove and someone would have earned themselves a snapped finger. He stepped into a palatially sized room with dark carved-wood panelling and rich fleur-de-lys drapes. The parquet flooring was like a mirror, the centre of its expanse covered with a lush hand-woven carpet of Celtic knot design. More gleaming suits of armour stood around the walls clutching two-handed broadswords. A rack held a decorative display of old flintlock muskets and Scottish daggers. At one end of the room was a vast sculpted stone fireplace in which a pile of logs was blazing fiercely. Above the mantelpiece hung an enormous gilt-framed oil painting of a historical figure.

At the other end of the room, standing gazing out of a ceiling-height leaded window overlooking the snowy castle grounds, was Charles Stuart.

Chapter 51

The great man slowly turned around as Ben stepped into the room. He was wearing a handsome tweed suit with an open-necked silk shirt and loafers. His silvery hair was slicked back and caught the light from the window. He was smiling the kind of self-congratulatory smile that he probably wore when he’d just come away triumphant from a boardroom battle or trampled one of his corporate rivals in a bidding war.