Ben and Charlie had known nothing of the plan to eliminate him, so it had been easy to put the blame for Sugarboy’s accidental death on her.

But you did strike the fatal blow, a small voice reminded her.

Did I? Did I really?

Sugarboy told me not to run, but I couldn’t stop myself. It was my fault. I thought he was behind me, not Sugarboy. I thought I could smell the bastard, but I was wrong.

She stopped there, the unbearable image of Sugarboy lying on the ground, startled eyes staring up at her. She’d dropped to her knees, hugging him to her, begging him to live. For a moment, there was life in those eyes, and his mouth moved in answer.

Desperate, she’d leaned in closer, trying to hear the mouthed words.

Then he was there with the others, the words What the fuck have you done, Seven? ringing in her ears.

The wave of memory was retreating. She braced herself, not permitting the backwash to take her into the darkness with it.

She knew what Sugarboy wanted her to do. She’d heard his final words.

Finish it.

She had deliberately chosen an uncomfortable section of the rock to lean against, to prevent herself from falling into anything but a fitful doze. The distant and only entrance required watching.

Time-wise, he should be here shortly, if he was coming at all.

Although there had been other things for him to think about, bar herself. The fallout from Watson’s death being one of them. The mashing of his face would only deter the authorities for as long as it took to run a DNA profile. Watson was a convicted drug dealer who would be on the police database.

The fact that there had been a forensic expert on the island when the body had been found had been unforeseen. Had the woman she’d met in the plantation not been so readily available, then it would have delayed things still further. They might all have got away and back to Afghanistan and be free again.

But he would never have permitted that to happen. He didn’t want the arrangement to end. He wanted to make sure he was in charge of it again by the time they returned to the source.

Turf wars didn’t just erupt on the streets of Glasgow.

The only way to end it was for him to go. That’s what Sugarboy had said. Remember that night in prison? Remember what I said? His voice echoed in her brain.

‘You’d kill any bastard that would rape me.’ She mouthed the words as though Sugarboy was still in the darkness with her.