Rather than rely on GPS he had a map of the area imprinted on his mind. The seventy miles took him just over an hour, by which time his winding path had led him deep into ever-remoter country and his car was alone on the road for long periods. The thickening sleet slapped the windscreen and the outside temperature fell to just above zero, but inside was a bubble of warmth. His first glimpse of his destination was the eastern edge of Loch Ardaich, its restless grey waters surrounded by forest and rocky hills whose tops were shrouded in mist. He followed a lonely signpost directing him towards the village of Kinlochardaich, and not long afterwards he was making his way through the quiet, narrow streets.

The houses were mostly grey stone, settled into themselves with the passing of a century or more. He passed an old church with a graveyard, and a village filling station with a workshop and a couple of pumps, a village shop and post office; and soon after that he found the street whose name Mirella had given him.

Ewan’s address would have been one of Boonzie’s first ports of call when he arrived here, aside from visiting his nephew in the hospital, so it would also be Ben’s. He parked in an empty space directly in front of Ewan’s home, which was in a terraced row right on the street. He got out of the Mercedes, stretched his legs and back after the drive, lit up a Gauloise and then locked the car and walked up to the house. The sleet had died off, but the wind was chilly and Ben thought he could smell snow in the air.

As expected, the house was closed up. Ben peered through the front room window but couldn’t see anything through the net curtains. He came away from the front door and walked a little way up the street to where a gap between the houses led, he guessed, around the back.

His guess was right. Ewan’s back yard was a small area of wasteland, weedy and neglected. Ben stood for a moment, drinking in details. He noticed the patch of ground where a vehicle had stood until recently. A van-sized vehicle, judging by the spaces between the bare-earth wheel impressions in the dirt. A single dark oil stain had bled into the ground, the lack of individual splotches telling him that the vehicle had not been moved for a long time prior to being driven away.

He also noticed the discarded set of diesel glow plugs that someone had pulled out of its engine and tossed into the weeds. They weren’t rusty enough to have been there longer than a couple of days. Nearby lay a crumpled strip of emery cloth, reddened from where someone had been polishing up corroded metal.