Ben worked out the timeline. Four days ago meant that Boonzie had visited the shop on his first day in Scotland, just a couple of hours after he’d last spoken to Mirella.

The shop owner said, ‘And, my mistake, your dad did make one extra purchase that doesn’t appear to have been on your list.’

‘What?’

‘One of those.’ The shop owner waved at a hanging display above the counter. Ben looked up and saw that it contained an assortment of crossbows. Most of them were plasticky and toylike, but a couple of them looked like highly effective weaponry that could drive a razor-tipped bolt through the side of a rhino and penetrate a couple of brick walls on its way out.

Those were the ones the shop owner was squinting at through his glasses as he went on, ‘Excalibur, made in Canada. The most powerful of their kind on the market. No licence required. Your dad asked for the screw-on hunting arrow tips. I reminded him that it wasn’t legal to hunt live quarry with in the UK, but he bought it anyway. Said that wasn’t a problem.’

Ben pointed. ‘Could you take one down for me, please?’

The shop owner lit up. ‘You want to buy it too?’

‘I want to see it first.’

The shop owner took one down and passed it to Ben. You could feel the latent power flowing through the weapon like electric current. It felt light and balanced. Ben put it to his shoulder and trained the onboard telescope sight through the window onto the street. The scope was hi-tech stuff, with an inbuilt laser rangefinder and an electronic red-dot optical reticule that glowed brightly against the target for shooting in low-light conditions. Mil-dot elevation increments to show where to hold the aim for longer ranges, to compensate for the forces of gravity. Once skewered, nothing could survive. The bow was an eminently lethal piece of kit, even more so when placed in the hands of a warrior like Boonzie McCulloch.

Ben could see the methodical steps his friend had taken as he prepared for the task ahead. The camper van. The supplies. Now the ghillie camouflage suit, the combat knife, the NV goggles and the high-powered bow completed the picture. Boonzie wasn’t going after red deer. He knew the dangers; he was taking no chances. And since four days ago, he’d been actively in pursuit of his quarry.

But was Boonzie the predator in this hunt, or was he the prey?

Chapter 23

Four days earlier

The day before Boonzie is taken

Boonzie had almost forgotten how much he’d loved this game, once upon a time. The thrill of the hunt took him back decades to his military days, tempered only by the bitter ache in his heart every time he thought about Ewan lying in the hospital and the men who put him there.