The old guy gave Ben a curious look, then peered closely at the phone with narrowed eyes. After a long time he slowly nodded and said, ‘Aye, I think so. Couple days ago. I remember, ’cuz he wiz drivin’ Ewan McCulloch’s camper van.’
We all know each other, Grace had said. Ben could see she’d been right about that. ‘My friend is Ewan’s uncle,’ he said to the old guy. ‘I’m trying to find him. Did he happen to mention anything about where he was going?’
The old guy shook his head. ‘Just bought a load of stuff and left.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
The storekeeper scratched his head, trying to remember. ‘Let me see, now. Like he wiz goin’ on a campin’ trip, at this time of year. Tinned provisions, bottled water, coffee. And something else, too.’ He pointed a gnarly finger over at the hardware section. ‘Must’ve known the snow wiz comin’, ’coz he bought one of them there shovels.’
Ben looked at the shovels and something with thousands of icy-cold little feet crawled down his spine. They were good quality hardware. Sturdy wooden shafts, big square steel blades enamelled in dull black. And he knew that Boonzie hadn’t been thinking of digging snow when he’d bought one.
No, Boonzie was thinking that when he caught up with the men who’d put his nephew in a coma, he wasn’t just going to punish them. He was going to kill and bury them.
‘Thanks for the information,’ Ben said to the old guy.
‘Ye’re welcome. I hope you find your friend.’
‘Yeah, so do I.’
Ben left the store with his supplies jinking inside a carrier bag and walked on to where his car was parked. Ewan McCulloch’s house was as dark and silent as a grave. Ben drove the Mercedes back through the quiet streets to the Gunn cottage. His landlady was still watching TV. He let himself back inside his new digs, dumped his canvas bag on the floor and carried the groceries into the kitchen. He searched through the cupboards for a couple of saucepans, filled one with water for the rice and emptied a can of stew into the other. Chunky cubes of beef in some kind of sauce that smelled like something Storm would like to eat, but it would do. Like he always said, he’d had worse.
He sat at the blue Formica kitchen table to eat, and washed his meal down with a pint of Kilt Lifter. Then he rinsed out the glass, grabbed the whisky bottle and wandered through into the living room. It was meat-locker chilly in there, so he piled some kindling and small wood from a wicker basket into the wood-burner along with a crumpled ball of newspaper and lit it with his Zippo. The flue was cold and the fire smoked for a few moments, then bright flames danced up and ate the smoke, and soon the cast-iron box of the stove was clicking and ticking as the metal expanded with the heat.
Ben settled into a fireside armchair, cracked open the scotch and poured out a couple of measures, then lit a Gauloise. Mrs Gunn had said nothing about not smoking, and even if she had, Ben figured he was paying for the privilege. Watching the fire grow and feeling the warmth slowly spread through the cottage, he sipped the scotch and watched his cigarette smoke trickle to the ceiling, and thought about how things stood and what he needed to do next.
The fact was that Boonzie could be anywhere, dead or alive. As skilled a finder of missing people as Ben was, not even he stood much chance of locating his friend in a thousand square miles of hills and forest with only a vehicle number plate to go on. But there was a way he could narrow his field of search to a sharp focus and that was to put himself in Boonzie’s shoes. Emulate his methodology. Follow in his footsteps. Arrive at the same point on the road.
Find the poacher.
All the arrows were aligned in the same direction. The poacher knew, or claimed to know, who had killed Ross Campbell. By association, assuming he was telling the truth, he probably also knew who put Ewan McCulloch in a coma. And by further association, if something bad had happened to Boonzie then the poacher’s information would potentially lead Ben straight to the door of those responsible.
He set down his glass and took out his phone. Kinlochardaich might be lacking a lot of modern commodities but he was getting a strong mobile signal. He pulled up Google, the oracle with the answer to All Things, and tapped in the search keywords SALMON POACHING SCOTLAND.
Illegal freshwater fishing was a subject Ben knew nothing whatsoever about, and as he trawled randomly from one web article to another he was surprised at what big business it was. From what he could glean, the reason why the Fisheries enforcers had such a hard time catching offenders was twofold. To begin with, it was almost impossible to police the waters of Scotland’s thousands of lochs and rivers, whose combined area was larger than some seas. Loch Ness alone held more than seven million cubic metres, more than the total volume of water in all the lakes of England and Wales.
The second reason illegal salmon fishing was so hard to stop was that it was so lucrative, because the untraceability of the stolen goods meant that a lot of it ended up on the tables of top restaurants in Edinburgh or London, who were happy to pay cash and ask no questions in return for quality merchandise.
Put those problems together, and it added up to a highly tempting activity. So tempting, that the authorities had even had difficulties preventing their own enforcement personnel from catching fish on the sly. Even more strongly drawn to the freshwater bounty were criminal gangs, whose members had been known to attack or threaten the Fisheries enforcers at knifepoint when caught in the act.
Ben didn’t think that the mystery poacher was one of those. More likely, he was just some local guy putting food on the table or perhaps making a few quid on the side. For legitimate anglers the official salmon season had ended in October and wasn’t due to start again until January or February, after the spawning season had replenished the stocks with a teeming new generation of young fish. But a dedicated poacher who didn’t feel the need to abide by the rules and was hardy enough to brave the rough conditions could feel free to harvest the lochs and rivers unimpeded all through autumn and winter.
Which meant there was a reasonable chance of finding the guy out there on the loch in December. The problem Ben faced there was the same one the enforcers faced: that of geography. He closed down his search and jumped over to Google Maps, which told him that Loch Ardaich was twelve miles from west to east. That was a lot of water, and an even larger area of shore, for one man to patrol in search of a small, moving target. Ben would have felt inadequately equipped even with a four-man SAS team and air support.
But again, there were ways to even the odds. According to what few obscure news reports Ben could find online, Ross Campbell’s body had been found near the eastern end of the loch, not far from the new Highland Manor golf resort development where his surveying duties had taken him that day. And that enabled Ben to drastically reduce the area of loch he’d need to cover. Ben had hunted many men, during his time in the army and since. He was exceptionally good at it, because he had the ability to put himself in his quarry’s mindset, think like they thought. So he closed his eyes now, let his mind drift and thought the way the poacher would think.
If what the man claimed was true, then he was scared as hell. He’d witnessed a murder. He was carrying the heavy burden of a dark and dangerous secret. It was possible that he’d stay away from the loch altogether, stay at home peeking through the curtains. Or that he’d find another loch or river, or switch to shooting deer for a while. But if he did choose to keep poaching on Loch Ardaich, he’d stay as far away as possible from the scene of the crime. Therefore, if there was any chance of catching him at his work, it would be at the opposite end of the loch, the western side. And while the facts pointed to the alleged murder having taken place during the daytime, the poacher would now be much more likely to venture out only under cover of darkness. An extremely cautious man. Paranoid, even. Knowing that the Fisheries enforcers were out at night looking for him. Knowing also that certain others would be strongly motivated to wipe out any witness who could incriminate them. He’d be as wary as a wild animal, and like a wild a
nimal he might easily resort to violence to defend himself if cornered.
That didn’t concern Ben. He had gone after warier and more dangerous men, and found them, and survived.
The cottage was comfortable and warm, but Ben had no intention of sleeping there that night. As the hour grew later, he made his preparations.
Time to go hunting.
Chapter 21
The far western tip of Loch Ardaich was Ben’s target destination that night, but he didn’t drive all the way there. He headed east from the village and circled the twelve-mile length of the loch anticlockwise along the lonely winding roads until he was running parallel about half a mile from its northern shore. An hour’s trek from the western end he stopped and left the car hidden deep offroad, concealed in the shadow of the pine trees.
He used his phone to mark the GPS coordinates, then set off on foot with his bag over his shoulder and his boots crunching in the hard-frozen snow. The forest hugged close to the west side of the loch, the pines standing thick and straight as spears with their white-capped evergreen canopy drooping low over the ground. An owl hooted from its unseen perch overhead.
By the time he reached the water’s edge a mist was rolling in, drifting like battlefield smoke over the surface and blotting out the stars. It was still and peaceful down here, the only sounds the gentle wind rustling the pines and the soft lapping of the water against the shore. Ben stalked eastwards along the south side, just a slow-moving patch of shadow that paused here and there for long moments to drink in the stillness and observe every inch of his surroundings. When after two miles he’d seen nothing, he backtracked the way he’d come. At its widest point the loch was several hundred yards across, but at its extreme western end the stretch of water narrowed to a taper, little wider than a stream all choked with branches and floating debris. He skirted around and began to make his way up along the north side. The mist was slowly intensifying, the shadows deepening around him until the inky blackness all but swallowed the trees and the water.
Ben had been following the north shore for a half-hour or so when he saw the lights. A pair of bright white torchbeams, forty or fifty yards up ahead, close to the lochside, sweeping left and right like searchlights. He sank into a crouch and watched them. Behind the lights he could make out the dark silhouetted figures of three men, picking their way through the bushes that skirted the shore. They were heading in his direction, but the range of their torches was too short to reach him yet. They could be a gang of poachers, he thought. If they were, his man could be among them – though Ben’s mental profile of the guy suggested he wouldn’t be. Or they could be Fisheries bailiffs. Or someone else. Ben was interested in finding out who.
He moved towards the lights, keeping his body low to the ground the way he’d long ago been trained to sneak up on the enemy. Getting closer, he could see that the three men weren’t carrying fishing gear. That ruled them out as salmon poachers. But they were carrying something. The lights glinted off the twin barrels of a shotgun. That was when he realised he’d stalked a little too close. One of the torchbeams swept over him, hesitated and came back. A white dazzle seared his retinas. He ducked, but too late. There was a hoarse, excited yell of ‘Over there! I think I seen him!’
Ben snaked away into the thick bushes. But the strong white light followed him. A second later the heavy percussive detonation of a shotgun blast split the night and echoed over the loch. It was followed by another. The first shot went a long way wide of Ben but the second clipped twigs off the tree directly above him and showered him with pine needles and powder snow. If they weren’t poachers, they damn well weren’t official bailiffs either. Not unless their department had adopted a new shoot-to-kill policy without informing anyone.
Ben moved a little further from the shoreline and then stopped and remained as still as a rock, listening. He heard voices. Local accents.
‘I think I got him.’
‘Which way’d he go?’
The three figures were moving faster now, making a lot of noise as they hunted for him. One of them shouted, ‘We know ye’re there, ye fat scar-faced basturt! Come on oot!’
Which was enough to persuade Ben beyond a doubt that the men had been hunting someone else. Scars he might have, but none on his face. And nobody could have described him as fat.
Then another voice said, ‘Split up, boys. He cannae be far away.’ With only a pair of torches between them, two of the men broke off one way and ventured deeper into the trees, away from Ben, their beam scouring the undergrowth in front of them. The third man kept moving towards him, snow and twigs crunching under his feet as he came closer.
The man was just three or four steps away from Ben when he halted. Ben heard the clunk of the guy’s shotgun action being broken open. The sound of spent cartridge hulls being ejected and landing softly in the bushes. A pause as he loaded two fresh shells into his chambers, then snapped the gun shut. His voice sounded very close by as he repeated, ‘I know ye’re there somewhere, ye big eedjit. Show yerself, or I’ll start fuckin’ blastin’!’
Which Ben preferred not to happen. If this moron started firing blind at the surrounding trees and bushes, he’d have a pretty good chance of shooting Ben by accident.
Silent as a panther, Ben emerged from his hiding place, came up behind the man and took him down with one hand over his mouth, craning back his head, and the other twisting the shotgun out of his grip. The man could put up no resistance nor make a sound as Ben dragged him into the bushes at the foot of a tree and wrapped an arm around his throat, locking him in a chokehold that starved his brain of oxygen and within a few seconds put him to sleep. Ben pinned him down hard and tight until he felt his body go limp.
Unconsciousness would last no longer than a couple of minutes. By then, Ben was hoping that the other two men would have wandered further away, and he’d be able to make this one tell him the name of the man they were looking for, why and for whom.
In the meantime, Ben wanted to have a look at his victim. He picked up the fallen torch and cupped his hand over the lens, so that the light shone dull and red through his fingers. He flashed it on the guy’s head and shoulders. He was a fairly large man of about thirty-five, balding, unshaven, acne pits on his cheeks, earring in his left lobe. He wore a camouflage-pattern winter jacket cinched around his thick middle with a shotgun cartridge belt.
Ben recognised him as one of the men from the pub. A pal of Kenny Mitchell and Angus Baird, evidently. Which Ben was suddenly finding very interesting indeed. He unbuckled the shotgun cartridge belt from around the guy’s waist and slung it over his shoulder. Then he searched inside the guy’s jacket and found a wallet. He was about to open it up to look for ID when something zipped very close by his head and cracked sharply off the tree trunk right beside him. Flying bark splinters stung the side of his face.
Then a fraction of a second later, trailing in the slipstream of the supersonic bullet, came the muted cough of a silenced rifle shot far away.
Ben was already diving into the bushes, grabbing his bag and the unconscious man’s shotgun as he went. A second bullet pierced the night and smacked hard into the ground just inches away from him, blowing a crater in the dirt and sending up a spray of grit and snow. Close again. Too close. Ben kept moving, no longer concerned about making his way silently through the undergrowth because he no longer had that luxury. He cut a path between the trees that curved away from the two other searchers, but as the torchlight now swept back around in his direction he knew that they’d picked up the sound of his movement. They were about thirty yards to his right. One guy pointing the torch, the other clutching a shotgun, tracking him through the forest as though he was a running squirrel. Then the shotgun went off with a loud BOOM and buckshot pellets carved a bite out of a pine trunk in Ben’s wake.
He didn’t shoot back, because he didn’t want to slow down or let his muzzle blast give away his position to the hidden rifleman. He sprinted full-pelt through the trees, leaping over expo
sed roots and fallen trunks, thick brush and brambles ripping at his legs. At any moment he expected the flash of white light and the tumbling sensation as the shooter’s third bullet turned out to be the lucky one that cut him down in his tracks.
After thirty sustained seconds of hard running Ben glanced back and saw nothing but darkness behind him, and realised that he’d managed to put enough distance between himself and his pursuers to lose them. The only sounds were the crunch of his footsteps, the rasp of his breath and the patter of frozen rain that had started falling over the forest. He slowed his pace a little, so that he could continue more silently and with less risk of slamming face-first into a tree.
Ben took more than an hour to make his way back to where he’d hidden the car, stopping every few yards to make sure he wasn’t being tracked. As he got close to the car he approached very slowly and with extreme caution. Nothing could spook even the most capable soldier more deeply than the blood-chilling knowledge that a sniper might be calmly watching from a concealed position, eye to his scope, finger on trigger, just waiting for you to walk right into the kill zone. Ben wasn’t easily rattled, but the last steps to the car were the most painfully drawn-out and tensest few minutes he’d experienced in a very long time.
But he made it to the car without any silent kill shots finding him from the darkness. He blipped the locks and jumped inside and fired up the engine and headlamps, hating the sudden noise and light that were a beacon for his position and wanting to get away as fast as possible. He tore away over the bumpy terrain, reached the road and put his foot down hard. The icy rain was falling harder and making the road slippery. He was glad of the SUV’s fancy traction control as he carved through the treacherous bends at high speed. There were no lights in his rear-view mirror. Nobody was following.
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