As calmly and quickly as she could, she told the senior officer what was happening. Her current predicament and location. The murders and the kidnappings. The payoffs to Macleod and Coull and an unknown number of their subordinates. The voice on the line sounded sceptical at first, but the more Grace told him the more concerned he became. ‘This is not a prank call,’ she assured him more than once. ‘I swear to you. This is real and I need urgent assistance.’

Then the call was over. She’d done all she could and now she just had to hope something would happen. She replaced the receiver on its cradle and crept to the door, pressed her ear to it and listened. She could hear nothing outside, so she went over to the window. On a clear day she would have had a sweeping view of the hills and mountains in the distance. Nearly forty minutes had now passed since her escape from her would-be rapist, and the afternoon was fading fast into twilight. She could see snow coming down hard in swirls and flurries over the castle grounds, settling thick and deep everywhere.

And she could see the headlights of three black 4x4s burning through the murk as they passed single-file into the courtyard and pulled up below.

It wasn’t the police.

Chapter 59

Hacker was still ripping his way furiously from room to room through the castle when his phone rang again.

‘Oy, mate, where is everyone?’ rumbled the deep voice of Mikey Creece. ‘Some bleedin’ welcome committee this is. No way to greet an old pal.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Right outside the front fuckin’ door. Someone gonna let us in, or what? It’s taters out here and we’re freezin’ our bloody nads off.’

Hacker paused for another snort of crystal as he hurried across to meet them in the castle’s great entrance lobby. Stuart was nowhere to be seen. Mikey Creece and the other nine members of his crew were all clad in heavy winter coats and boots. Five of them were carrying bulging black military holdalls whose contents Hacker didn’t need to guess at.

Creece was a large, bulky man with the physique and flattened features of a backstreet prize fighter. His crony Phil Buckett was his physical opposite, scrawny and short and nervy with darting eyes. The others were a motley bunch of Devil’s rejects named Fish, Meeks, Colvin, Hardstaff, Biggs, Walker, Khan and Davies. If Creece was a big guy, then Fish was a monster, six-eight and made of solid muscle with a neck thicker than his head. Chaz Colvin had only one ear, and ‘Socket’ Meeks wore a patch over his left eye.