In some ways the story sounded like a terrible echo of what Boonzie already knew about the fate of Ross Campbell. The doctor related how a local resident, who happened to be driving along the lochside road that morning to visit a friend, had stumbled upon the car wreck and the inert body lying by the roadside in the pouring rain and called 999. A former nurse, she’d checked the victim’s pulse, recognised the seriousness of his injuries and known to do all the right things. If not for her intervention and the good fortune of finding him in time, Ewan might well not have survived.

Just as with Ross, everybody’s first assumption had been that the victim had suffered an accident. The doctor explained: ‘That was how it initially seemed when he was brought in. It wasn’t until I examined his injuries more closely that I realised … of course I notified the police right away. They’re looking into the matter even as we speak.’

‘Realised what?’ Boonzie asked. The muscles in his throat were clamped so tight that he could barely speak.

‘I’m sorry to say there’s more to this,’ Dr Fraser replied. ‘Your nephew appears to have been the victim of a deliberate, possibly premeditated and very violent assault. Judging by the extent and pattern of his injuries, I’d say there were at least two attackers. Maybe more, I don’t know. What I do know is that the injuries look as though they were inflicted with one or more solid impact weapons. Something with a round profile, like a baseball bat.’ She shook her head. ‘Frankly, I’ve never seen anything quite so vicious before. Things like this just don’t happen in this region. Basically they beat the poor man to a pulp and left him for dead.’

Boonzie digested that information with the fear and rage inside him starting to turn to ice-cold water in his veins. He was silent for a few seconds. Then asked tersely, ‘Will he survive?’

‘I don’t have the facilities for complex neurosurgery, so I had to trepan the skull. That’s when—’

‘I ken what trepanation is,’ Boonzie said. Many years earlier, in a bloody little jungle war that officially never happened and was now largely forgotten by all but the men who’d fought and watched their comrades die in it, he’d seen an SAS medic desperately trying to save the life of a badly concussed soldier in the field by drilling a hole in his head to relieve pressure on the brain. The soldier had lived, but he’d never been the same again.