‘I’m the police. You’re a citizen. That’s how it works.’

‘I’ll play your game,’ Ben said. ‘The first part is just logical deduction. If Boonzie was chasing up leads and getting closer to learning what happened to Ewan, he posed a threat to the bad guys. Then they would have needed to take action before he found out too much.’

‘That’s obvious enough.’

‘The second part is less obvious, unless you know Boonzie McCulloch as well as I do. He isn’t someone you can intimidate or scare off. Heart condition or no heart condition, he’s tougher than you can imagine.’

‘I worked the beat in Glasgow. I’m familiar with what tough means.’

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘You have no idea of what he can handle. For someone to get the better of him, they’d have to be extremely skilled. That’s not an idle claim. I know what I’m talking about.’

She narrowed her eyes, thought for a moment, then said, ‘Okay, whatever you say. Go on.’

‘Therefore, assuming that all of this is connected and that whoever assaulted Ewan is the same person or group of people who would subsequently need Boonzie taken off the table to protect their interests, we’re not talking about just your regular provincial crooks. You’d need to be looking at a broader pool of suspects, someone much higher up the food chain. Organised crime gang members, or affiliated to them. Hardcore professionals from the outside.’

‘You get all of this from logical deduction?’

‘Not all.’

‘Seems pretty damned hypothetical to me,’ she said. ‘To begin with, you’ve got no motive. No reason to explain why professional criminals from the outside should have any interest whatsoever in what happens in our dull and insignificant wee community of Kinlochardaich. We’ve nothing to offer them.’

‘Actually you do,’ Ben said. ‘And this part isn’t guesswork. I think this is about money.’

Chapter 19

‘What money?’ she asked.

Ben replied, ‘It’s not what money. It’s what kind of money.’

‘All right then, what kind of money?’

Ben took out his phone, brought up the image of the gold coin that he’d showed Holly, and held it out for Grace to see. ‘The kind that looks like this.’

‘You’d better explain.’

Grace listened as Ben told her what he’d learned about Ross Campbell’s discovery. ‘These coins are hundreds of years old, which I’m guessing makes them worth much more than just their weight in gold. Not just to serious collectors, of which there are probably thousands out there, but also to anyone with the connections to fence stolen antiquities on the black market.’

‘Stolen antiquities, is that something you’re knowledgeable about?’

‘Enough to know that a lot of people in that world will pretty much do anything to make a buck. Including killing off anyone who gets in their way.’