On his return from Inverness he’d hidden the camper van deep in the shady heart of the forest near Loch Ardaich, where he’d spent two hours that afternoon diligently cutting pine branches with his new knife and laying them over the vehicle until it was virtually invisible. More work than draping camouflage netting, but far more effective.

He’d spent the rest of his day hunkered inside his concealed command centre, working out his strategy. By a process of logical elimination he’d come to the conclusion that his best chance of finding the poacher was at the end of the loch furthest from where Ross Campbell had been murdered. Unless, that was, the poacher had simply escaped the area after the incident. But Boonzie had to try, because if he failed to find this man he might never discover the truth.

He hadn’t spoken to Mirella since leaving Ewan’s house earlier that day, but he thought about her frequently and it hurt him to think about her sitting alone and fretting back home. When this was over, he promised himself, he would never leave her alone for another minute of his life.

Boonzie bided his time inside the camper until long after nightfall, consuming a simple meal of beans and coffee and keeping himself warm by the flame of his gas stove. Then, as midnight approached, he took the crossbow out of its bag and loaded six of his hunting bolts, with their shaving-sharp arrowheads fitted, into the weapon’s onboard quiver. Boonzie had little reason to think that the poacher would pose any significant threat to him, but under the circumstances he had no intention of going unarmed. Next he put on the ghillie suit, the trousers first and then the top, leaving the headgear until last so that he could wear it over the head harness of the night-vision goggles.

When he was ready, he slipped out of the camper van and began to make his stealthy, silent way through the dark forest towards the north-west shore of the loch. With the goggles over his eyes, his surroundings turned into a shimmery, watery-green world, as though he was walking on the ocean bed. It would have been easy to make too much noise crunching over the frosty ground, but Boonzie moved the way he’d trained men to move, back in the day. The skills he’d taught to his trainees were so deeply ingrained into his mind that the passing of the years had done nothing to dull them.