What if nobody turned up, neither the mysterious poacher nor the men who were hunting him? What if Ben was just chasing shadows and squandering what little precious time remained to him, while his friend was still out there somewhere, maybe sick, maybe hurt, maybe dead?
What if Mirella was right, and it was time to hand the search over to someone else?
Those were the bleak, crippling thoughts that were swirling uncontrollably inside Ben’s head at that moment, threatening to undermine everything he was. But for every ebb of the tide there must be a balancing swell. And so a counter-voice, a very old voice that had been there all his life, now found itself and began to speak, deep within his being. Because no matter what happens; no matter what shit you have to deal with; no matter what kind of hellfire the sky decides to rain down on you; this is where you are right now, and this is who you decided to be and take upon yourself; and you will damn well lace up your boots and pick up your weapon and put all that shit behind you and stand up and be the man you are.
No doubts. No second guesses.
Eyes wide open and no fear.
It’s who you are, soldier.
So fucking be it.
And then Ben suddenly spotted the distant figure moving along the lochside, and realised that he was no longer alone.
He watched the figure through the crossbow scope and turned the magnification up full to get a closer view. Whoever the person was, they were dressed in a heavy black quilted winter jacket that bulked out the contours of their body, with a hood pulled down low over their face to protect from the biting wind. They had emerged from the trees and were slowly making their way along the shoreline in Ben’s direction. Was it the poacher? He wasn’t carrying any fishing gear.
As Ben went on watching the figure in black, it seemed to him from the way the person moved, pausing every few steps to look around them, that they were searching for something or someone. But the angle of the hood kept hiding their face. The hopeful notion that it might be Boonzie flashed briefly, though only briefly, through Ben’s mind before he dismissed it as wishful thinking.
After a few moments the figure turned and began moving in the opposite direction, away from Ben. He was concerned that they might disappear back among the trees and be lost from view. If he wanted to find out who the person was, he would need to get closer.
He left his sniper’s position and zigzagged his way down the slope of the ridge, moving carefully and unobtrusively between rocks and bushes. From this distance, without binoculars or a telescope, it was unlikely the figure in black would spot him. Ben reached the foot of the ridge and stalked along the shoreline like some strange leafy predator, using the cover of the lochside shrubs and trees to hide his approach. The figure in black was moving more slowly and out in the open, making no attempt to conceal themselves as they ambled along the waterside and kept pausing now and then to gaze left and right. What, or who, were they looking for?
Ben was fast catching up. When he was just sixty yards behind, he sank down behind the thick base of a pine trunk and shouldered the crossbow once more to observe the figure through the scope.
Even from the rear, he instantly knew for a fact that the person wasn’t the poacher, or Boonzie McCulloch, or any other man. It was a woman. The heavy coat didn’t completely obscure the feminine contours of her body.
Then the woman turned to look about her again, and this time Ben was able to get a glimpse of her face.
It was Grace Kirk.
Grace hadn’t seen him yet, and he didn’t want her to, not looking like a bogeyman from the forest. Still behind the tree, he quickly stripped off the ghillie suit and bundled it away out of sight along with the crossbow. Then he stepped out from behind the tree and broke into a jog to catch up with her, calling her name.
She stopped and turned, pulled back the hood and stood there planted halfway up to her knees in the snow, staring at him as he approached. Her cheeks and nose were flushed red from the cold and her hands were hidden under big woolly mittens. She raised one of them to brush away a lock of black hair that had fallen across her face. Her breath billowed in clouds. Her eyes were shining with excitement and she looked as though she was about to say something, but Ben spoke first.
‘What are you doing here?’
If Ben was surprised by her presence here by the loch, her reply was even more unexpected.
‘Looking for you,’ she said. ‘I had a feeling I’d find you here.’
‘Why were you looking for me?’
‘To tell you that I found the poacher. I know who he is.’
Chapter 28
That moment changed everything. Ben was full of questions, but Grace was so cold that she could hardly speak. The temperature had to be minus six out here. He said, ‘Let’s get you somewhere warm, and talk there. Where’s your car?’
She pointed a mittened hand towards a gap in the trees. Her teeth chattered as she replied, ‘There.’
The opening in the trees led to a rough track that sloped upwards from the lochside. Her old Land Rover was parked on the frozen ground a couple of dozen yards away, icicles hanging from its roof guttering and the battered bodywork glittering with frost. It felt like a fridge inside, too. Ben got behind the wheel, found the key in the ignition and started it up. The vehicle’s heating system was feeble at best, consisting of two small air vents on the dash and a fan that couldn’t have made a candle flicker. It took a while with the engine running before anything resembling warmth began to filter through and thaw Grace sufficiently to tell her story.
Ben listened as she told him about Geoffrey Watkins’ arrest for the assault on Ewan McCulloch. ‘Last I heard, they were still working on getting him to confess to it. Except I don’t think he will, Ben, because I don’t buy that he did it. There’s more going on, and the Watkins arrest is a blind. You said this was about money. I think you were right.’
‘And I thought you couldn’t discuss confidential matters pertaining to an ongoing police investigation.’
‘Tactical flexibility is the essence of good strategy. I’m prepared to bend the rules a little here and there.’
‘No bad thing. But why the sudden change of heart?’ he asked.
She pulled off her mittens and held her hands above the heater vents, flexing and unflexing her fingers to get the blood running again. ‘Yesterday in the pub,’ she said. ‘Something you told me stuck in my mind. I kept thinking about it afterwards. It was bugging me all night long.’
‘What did I say?’
‘You said that Ewan had no idea who the poacher was.’
‘That’s what Boonzie’s wife Mirella told me. Ewan received an anonymous call. The poacher was too scared to give away his identity.’
She nodded. ‘But later I remembered that what Boonzie said to me was different. The call was anonymous, yes, but Ewan told Boonzie that he thought he knew the guy. The voice sounded familiar to him, he just couldn’t put a face or a name to it.’
Ben frowned. ‘Go on.’
‘Then there was something else you said last night, that the witness was the key to this whole thing. I wasn’t too sure at the time, because I couldn’t get my head around the idea that Ross’s death was connected to what happened to Ewan. But now the way they’re trying to pin the assault charge on Watkins makes me think someone’s trying to cover up the truth and pretend like Ross’s gold coins never existed. See?’
‘Okay.’
She went on, ‘So this morning I got thinking about all this, and none of it was making any sense to me, so I went into the arrest records. I feel like shit for not having done it days ago. I could’ve helped Ewan’s uncle. Whatever’s happened to him might not have happened.’
‘What arrest records?’
‘Every now and then the Fisheries enforcers catch someone illegally catching salmon on the lochs. In the olden days they used to just beat the crap out of them. Nowadays they have to report it to the police. Which works out much cosier for the poachers, since they do
n’t get much more than a slap on the wrist. But they still get a criminal record, of course, and it’s all on file.’
‘That’s where you found our poacher?’
‘Actually I found a whole bunch of them,’ she said. ‘Some were repeat offenders, others one time only. I took down the names and ran a check on each one in turn. The first was Hamish Galloway. Arrested seven times for illegal salmon fishing, the last time in March 2014, which was just two months before he died of emphysema. So that’s him crossed off the list. Second was a guy called Clark Duff. Again, I ran him through the system. Turns out poaching is the least of his crimes. He’s currently halfway through serving a six-month sentence for shoplifting. Strike him off the list, too. And on, and on. Some of them have left the area, some are still around. Dozens of names. But that didn’t stop me from nailing our boy.’ She grinned. ‘Jamie McGlashan. King of the heap, with an undefeated eleven past poaching convictions to his name. Never married, never had a real job. Lives alone and on benefits. He’s our guy.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because Ewan and I both went to the same school as him. I didn’t know him all that well. Nor did Ewan, as I remember, because people tended to keep their distance from Jamie. He was a rough kind of kid, used to get into fights, act moody, and didn’t have a lot of friends. We were all vaguely aware of some problems he had at home. The rumour was that his dad used to hit him, but back then dysfunctional family issues weren’t openly talked about. One day Jamie came into school with a split lip that was all sewn up and swollen like a rugby ball. After that, he always talked with a bit of a lisp, and it left him with a nasty scar that kids used to make fun of. So, more fights, more trouble, more suspensions. It was sad. He wasn’t a happy boy. Then he started developing a weight problem, which made him even unhappier.’
Ben recalled the taunts of the men who’d been out hunting the poacher the night before. Fat, scar-faced bastard. It sounded as though Grace had nailed it. ‘And you think maybe that’s why Ewan recognised his voice on the phone, because of the lisp?’
‘The way Jamie talked could have sounded vaguely familiar to him, but still just a half-memory he couldn’t pin down. The mind works like that sometimes, doesn’t it? Especially when it was so long ago. I mean, we were just eight or nine years old.’
Ben thought about it. The unhappy, overweight, scar-faced kid who went on to become a loner, preferring the solitude of the wild open spaces. Who had felt impelled to come forward and spill what he’d witnessed to an old school acquaintance, maybe out of some kind of nostalgic spirit. Maybe also because of his own history of childhood physical abuse. The psychology fitted plausibly. But the only way to know for sure was to talk to McGlashan in person.
Grace said, ‘I cross-checked the police records with the DVLA. He drives a blue Subaru Forester, year 2000 model. Current address is a rented trailer home about half a mile outside Kinlochardaich. I reckon we can find him, easy.’ The redness had faded from her cheeks and nose. Her eyes were alive with exhilaration.
‘This is good work, Grace. Excellent work.’
She gave him the crooked smile that he liked so much. ‘Do I get a gold star, or what?’
‘Only if McGlashan does actually turn out to be the right person. Have you told anyone else about this?’
She shook her head. ‘Just you. And nobody else would be wise to the school connection between Jamie and Ewan. So I’d reckon it’s safe to say we’re the only ones who know.’
‘Only, I was wondering how this would sit with your superiors, DI Macleod and DS Coull. This is their investigation. As their subordinate, you can be fired for withholding information from them. And I don’t suppose they take a favourable view of officers conducting their own private inquiries. Why go out on a limb like this?’
She looked at him, and he could see the hardness in her eyes. ‘I love my job. I’m good at it and I don’t take the risk of trashing my career lightly. But my instincts are telling me that something about this whole business isn’t right. If someone’s lying, that’s going to piss me off a great deal. For Ewan’s sake, and for my own, I want to find out what the hell is happening here.’
‘And bring me along for the ride? Why?’
‘Because we share a common purpose. Because two heads are better than one, like they say. And because I don’t feel safe pursuing this on my own. Whoever’s behind all this, they’re obviously prepared to get rough. So before I made any moves I wanted to come and find you. I went to Mrs Gunn’s cottage, but you weren’t there. She told me she’d seen you drive off earlier. From the things you said last night I had a pretty good idea you might be checking out the loch.’
‘All twelve miles of it.’
‘I know. But I’m a persistent cow when my mind’s made up. I drove up and down for an hour before I spotted your car. That told me what end of the loch you were scouting. Which makes sense. The furthest point from where Ross Campbell died. If McGlashan came back here, this would be the spot.’
‘Smart thinking, officer.’
‘I’m a top cop. Then I went looking for you. Turns out you found me instead, just when I was about to freeze my arse off. So here we are. What do you say?’
‘You barely know me. Why would you trust me?’
‘I see a guy who knows how to handle himself, with the brains to figure things out and the integrity and courage to do whatever it takes to help a friend in need. I’ve a good eye for people, Ben. And I don’t think you’re so bad. You’d make an excellent police officer.’
‘Insulting me now?’
‘Come on, Ben. I’m serious.’
‘So am I, Grace. No offence, but what makes you think I’d want to tag along with you?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, purlease, not the “I work alone” thing. Why shouldn’t you want to? Because of what I do for a living? Are you scared of me?’
‘No, I’m not scared of you.’
‘Maybe you’re worried you’ll compromise yourself. What are you gonna do, shoot someone?’
He said nothing.
She gave him the smile again. ‘Besides, if you don’t agree to work along with me on this, I won’t tell you Jamie McGlashan’s address.’
‘A trailer home half a mile from Kinlochardaich. You’ve already told me enough to find it.’
‘Yeah, but what if I was spinning you a load of crap to put you off the mark? Then you wouldn’t have a chance in hell.’
He said nothing.
‘You know you need me. In fact you can’t do without me.’
He was quiet for a few moments longer. Then asked, ‘When do you have to go back to work?’
Grace looked at her watch. It was coming on for two p.m. ‘In about six hours from now. My turn for the evening shift. Lucky me.’
Ben said, ‘Then let’s waste no time.’
Chapter 29
Three days earlier
After Boonzie is taken
‘Is he dead?’
The group of men by the ruined chapel were looking down at the unconscious body on the ground. Hacker knelt down and took Boonzie McCulloch’s pulse, then looked up.
‘He’s not dead.’
‘What’s wrong with him? People don’t just keel over for no reason.’
Hacker said, ‘It’s his heart.’
Hacker’s employer looked at him. ‘You know that, do you? Are you a doctor now?’
Hacker didn’t reply, just showed him the pill bottle they’d found in Boonzie’s pocket. Hacker’s employer glanced at the medicine, then slipped it into the pocket of his cashmere coat. He said, ‘What else have you found on him? Show me that phone.’
Hacker passed him the phone they’d taken from McCulloch. His employer examined it. He spent a few moments tapping and swiping at the screen, then frowned and said, ‘Well, well.’
Hacker said, ‘Well well what?’
‘It isn’t his. This phone seems to belong to someone called Jamie McGlashan. Here’s his Facebook page.’ He t
apped and scrolled a bit more, then his eyebrows rose. ‘Hmm. Very interesting.’ He tossed the phone back to Hacker, who looked at what his boss had found. The screen displayed a selfie image of a fat man he’d never seen before. He was standing by what was obviously a Scottish loch, hills and mountains in the background, clad in waterproofs and wearing a big goofy grin because of what he’d just caught and was proudly holding aloft.
Hacker handed back the phone and said, ‘It’s a picture of some pork-chop moron with a harelip and a large, dead fish in his hand.’
‘Yes, Hacker, that’s what it is. But it might also be something more than that.’
Hacker couldn’t give a damn. It was too bloody cold to be standing out here debating. He was here to do a job. One that was currently only half done, as far as he was concerned.
‘So what now?’ asked Bobby Banks, one of the crew who’d arrived from London just hours before. Like Hacker, they were all keen to finish what they’d come here to do, collect their very generous paycheque and be flown home.
‘Shoot him,’ Hacker said.
‘No problem.’ Without hesitation, Banks walked over to Boonzie, bent down and pressed a pistol to his head.
DI Fergus Macleod hovered nervously in the background. Even though he’d been personally present at the drowning of Ross Campbell and taken part in the beating of Ewan McCulloch, he still had no stomach for this kind of thing. None of the others paid him any attention and were not remotely concerned that they were in the presence of a senior police officer. Macleod was in far too deep to be any kind of a threat to them.
As Banks was about to pull the trigger, Hacker’s employer held up a hand and said sharply, ‘No. Wait.’
Banks stopped, lowered the weapon and looked uncertainly at Hacker, who was staring at his boss as though he were an idiot. ‘You said you wanted this man eliminated,’ Hacker said. ‘Properly and permanently.’
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