The skies above Glasgow had cleared, the streets below barely recognizable from McNab’s wet midnight tramp about town. To keep his mind off the fact that he was up in the air, McNab concentrated on the view he had of the city. The heliport was close to the Death Star and from the fly-past he could even identify the exit near the discharge lounge . . . or at least he tortured himself with that thought.

After the city faded from view, McNab focused on the meandering ribbon of the Clyde for as long as possible, but as they made their way north and west into what he would term ‘the wilderness’ he stopped looking and, since conversation wasn’t really possible, retreated into his thoughts on the email Ollie had sent first thing.

It was a report on Peter Galbraith’s information gleaned from his service records.

Galbraith had served in Iraq, then Afghanistan for the last four years as a combat medical technician in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was currently on leave, due to return for a further posting to Afghanistan shortly. Ollie’s email continued:

The information I was allowed to access was basic stuff. His service record for the previous five years. When he was out there, when he was back here.

There’s an oddity, though. Something happened to him, I think. Injured maybe? Anyway, for a period of a month he was declared unfit for work, but didn’t come home. The language used in the record refers to a hostile incident but doesn’t give any details.

McNab had written back:

Find out. Get the boss to insist. We have to know everything about his time here and in Afghanistan. What he gets up to when he’s back on leave in Glasgow. Has he got a girlfriend, boyfriend? Who he served with. All personal details.

‘Look,’ Janice ordered, pointing at a line of rock pinnacles, rising like grey teeth from the surrounding hillside. ‘The Old Man of Storr . . .’ Her excited voice was drowned by the chopper blades, the view swiftly changing as they made a turn towards a spread of brightly painted buildings clustered round a small harbour.

‘Portree ahead,’ the pilot informed them. ‘That’s where we’re putting down.’

As they started to do exactly that, McNab chose to shut his eyes and await his possible death. But if his card had been taken out of the box and examined, it had then been put back in, for shortly afterwards the chopper touched down and the noise from the blades dissipated.

McNab opened his eyes again, hoping Janice hadn’t noticed they’d been closed, only to be proved wrong.

‘You missed everything,’ she said dismissively.

‘I was watching my entire life flash before me,’ McNab declared. ‘Anyway, I’ve been here before, remember? And the only way to travel to Skye is by motorbike.’