‘That’s that, then,’ Ben said.
‘Time to hit the road,’ Grace reminded him.
‘Yeah, I think you’re right.’
‘My place?’
‘Sounds good.’
The three of them climbed into the Mazda. Ben fired up the engine and lights, got the wipers and heater going, crunched the old car into gear and U-turned around in a snowy courtyard illuminated yellow and orange by the blaze of the castle. He drove out of the gates and they set off.
The goons at the gatehouse were long gone, and the main entrance to the estate had been left hanging wide open as if someone had departed in a hurry. Three sets of tyre tracks were imprinted into the snow, one fresher than the others. Two heading west, the more recent one heading east.
‘You think it’s Stuart?’ Grace asked, frowning.
‘He willnae get far,’ Boonzie said.
It wasn’t until they’d left the estate behind them and were back on the open road in the direction of Kinlochardaich that they heard the chorus of sirens and saw the flashing lights of dozens of police and emergency vehicles filling the horizon. Moments later, the speeding procession screamed past in the opposite direction. It looked like half the Scottish police fleet had rolled out in response to Grace’s call.
‘Only took them ninety minutes to get their arse in gear,’ she remarked acidly.
‘Now’s your chance to stop and talk to them,’ Ben said. ‘They’re going to have a lot of questions.’
Grace shook her head and smiled. ‘Some other time. I’m off duty right now.’
Epilogue
The police did have a lot of questions. An awful lot. But curiously, even after Grace made her formal statement to her colleagues in Fort William, they didn’t show any interest in speaking to Ben. It was almost as though he’d never been involved in any of it.
Boonzie voluntarily checked into Belford Hospital the morning after the incident. The same afternoon, Mirella landed on the place like a hurricane, and Ben was there for the tearful reunion. He was also a witness to Boonzie’s solemn promise to his wife that his days of danger and excitement were officially over. If Mirella didn’t hold him to it, Ben damn well would.
It was while the reluctant retiree was still being fussed over in the hospital that Dr Fraser, the head surgeon, came to deliver the news that Ewan had awoken from his coma and was talking. Even though he could remember little of what had happened to him, his cognitive functions seemed otherwise unimpaired and the doctors expected him to make a full recovery.
The following day, after spending hours with his nephew, Boonzie went home to Italy a happy man. But his parting words to Ben were disturbingly ambiguous, as Boonzie clasped his hand, gave him one of those sly winks and said, ‘All’s well that ends well, laddie. We must dae it again sometime.’
Ben remained in Kinlochardaich for several more days afterwards, and spent most of that time with Grace. There were moments when he thought he’d just stay there for ever.
Meanwhile, a number of other events began to unfold. The eco-activist Geoffrey Watkins was released from jail with all charges dropped, while Angus Baird and his cronies were heading in the opposite direction. Shortly after Grace submitted her evidence to the police top brass from Inverness, Detective Inspector Fergus Macleod and Detective Sergeant Jim Coull were placed under arrest for their part in the murder of Ross Campbell and the attempted murder of his business partner, along with multiple corruption charges, and more. A growing list of other names quickly became implicated in the affair, including those of constables Murray Brown and Douglas Rennie, who soon broke down under questioning and confessed to their sins. Oddly, the exact details of how Brown and Rennie’s patrol car had come to be set alight on the road between Crianlarich and Glen Orchy remained something of a mystery.
The greatest mystery of all, namely the question of what the hell exactly had happened at Charles Stuart’s estate that night, continued to baffle the authorities. Grace’s story was that she had managed to escape her captors shortly after making her call to the police, and knew nothing of the causes of the fire that had gutted the castle and left dead bodies everywhere. Her superiors might have privately suspected she was hiding something, but had no evidence to prove it.
While all this was going on, more and more criminal charges quickly piled up against the missing millionaire. CCTV footage taken at the Belford confirmed that the man found suspiciously loitering inside Ewan McCulloch’s hospital room by the head surgeon, Dr Fraser, was indeed Charles Stuart. More footage showed the suspect fleeing from the scene, clutching a knife. But it was the devastating confessions of Fergus Macleod and Jim Coull that delivered the greatest damage.
Pending a full forensic inquiry, Stuart was initially thought to have perished in the bizarre incident that destroyed his home – but that theory was dropped when, just hours later, his Rolls Royce was snapped by a speed camera doing ninety on the A830 near Arisaig. Soon afterwards, a major manhunt was launched nationwide. By then, the authorities had learned enough to put Stuart away for the rest of his life.
Eight days had gone by when Ben finally had to tear himself away from Grace and return to Le Val. The parting was difficult.
‘Let’s be honest,’ he told her. ‘What’s the future for a guy like me and a smart lady cop from the Highlands?’
‘We could have had fun finding out,’ she said.
Ben had been home less than a week and getting back into the rhythm of daily life, often thinking about her, when he received an unexpected phone call. Grace had some news: Charles Stuart had been apprehended by a police patrol vessel while trying to escape across the sea to Ireland. According to the arresting officers’ report, in an attempt to evade capture the fleeing suspect had disguised himself by wearing a long blond wig and women’s clothing.
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PROLOGUE
The pursuit had led northwards from the English south coast into the heart of the Surrey countryside, deep among thick broadleaf woods under a full moon. It was late March, the spring equinox, and the night was mild and balmy and filled with the sweetly pungent scent of the flowering bluebells that carpeted the woodland floor.
The man called Wolf had stalked his target for hours and for the moment he could go no further, waiting and hoping for the opportunity to finish the job he’d started. A job he did not particularly relish and wouldn’t have been doing unless he was getting well paid for it. A job he must nonetheless complete, lest he disappoint the ruthless men who employed him.
So far, the assignment felt like it was jinxed. It wasn’t Wolf’s fault. He’d followed the plan exactly until things had started going wrong. Which had happened very quickly, earlier that evening.
The hit was scheduled for 7.30 p.m. at the target’s home outside the pretty West Sussex village of Pyecombe, a few miles from Brighton. Abbott was expected to have been alone, but when Wolf had arrived at the nineteenth-century parsonage at the appointed hour and was concealed in the large garden preparing to make his move, he’d been interrupted by the sudden and unanticipated appearance of a gold Range Rover that pulled in through the front gates, rolled up towards the house and crunched to a halt on the gravel driveway next to Abbott’s Lexus.
Wolf had watched from his hiding place as the Rover’s doors opened and out spilled the target’s ex-wife in a red dress, their two young children and a twenty-something brunette that he assumed was the kids’ nanny. Wolf’s mission file contained details on the former Mrs Abbott (number three, the trophy, the most painful marital misstep of the fifty-eight-year-old politician’s career) and the two kids: little Emily, four, and her brother Paul, seven. Since the acrimonious split they now lived twenty miles the other side of Brighton, in a large house provided by the generous divorce settlement and alimony payments
that Debbie enjoyed spending on expensive trips abroad. Her lifestyle habits, such as the recent fling with the ski instructor in Zermatt, were well known to Wolf’s employers; but none of the clever-dick analysts who provided the background intel had managed to foresee that she’d show up here today to mess up their plans. Typical.
Anthony Abbott emerged from his front door to meet his visitors, his silvery hair uncombed, casually attired in beige slacks and a cricket jumper. To shrill cries of ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ the kids rushed up and hugged their father. Wolf had a zoom telephoto lens attached to his phone, through which he could see that Abbott was as nonplussed as he was by old Debbie turning up like this. Judging by their facial expressions and stiff body language, relations between the couple were still frosty. Abbott appeared impatient for her to leave and kept glancing at his watch, as though he’d been disturbed in the middle of something important he was anxious to return to. If only he knew, Wolf thought, what her unexpected arrival had saved him from. Even if it was just a temporary stay of execution.
She didn’t hang around for long. Eleven minutes later, the Range Rover departed and Wolf watched it disappear up the quiet country lane. He was pleased to see her go, but now he had another problem: it appeared that the purpose of her visit was to dump the kids and nanny on her ex. Wolf wondered whether her intention was to liberate herself for another romantic trip to Zermatt or elsewhere, or whether she wanted to have the house to herself for a tryst at home with another of her numerous beaux. Whatever the case, the unexpected turn of events screwed things up for him. His mission remit was to make this look like a burglary gone bad, taking advantage of the fact that Abbott’s financial fortunes had downturned to the extent that he could no longer afford the private protection team that a man of his importance should ideally have had watching over him. Nicely convenient. Wolf was a skilled assassin who had no problem with carrying out a quick, clean murder dressed up as an amateur job.
But he did have a problem, and a big one, with killing kids. Which he’d have little choice but to do if he pressed ahead now, to avoid leaving witnesses. The nanny, too. Messy. Very messy. While others in his profession might not have such scruples, Wolf just wasn’t enough of a bastard for that. And so, Wolf decided to hold back and wait. Improvisation wasn’t a problem for a man of his training and experience. He settled back and kept watching the house.
At 9.33 p.m., the hit now more than two hours overdue, Abbott re-emerged from his front door and started walking briskly towards his car. He’d changed his casual attire for a suit and tie and was carrying a leather overnight bag. It seemed like he was going somewhere, leaving the nanny alone to take care of Emily and Paul. Wolf had been told nothing of any planned excursions – then again, if not for Debbie’s interference, the mission would have been over and he’d have been long gone by now.
Wolf watched as Abbott climbed into his Lexus and set off up the driveway. By the time the car had reached the road, Wolf had already slipped away and hurried back to the Audi saloon he’d hidden around the corner. Like all the vehicles he drove in the course of his work, it had untraceable number plates and officially did not exist. He quickly caught up with the Lexus and followed at a discreet distance as Abbott hustled off down the country lane. Wherever he was going, the man seemed to be in a hurry to get there.
This new twist offered Wolf a fresh opportunity to finish the job, if he could track his target to a more suitable location. Having laid eyes on Abbott’s kids he felt a very slight pang that, thanks to him, they would never see daddy again. But that was the nature of Wolf’s profession. Life could be a bitch sometimes. He stayed on the Lexus, never letting it out of his sight but with always at least one vehicle between it and his Audi. Politicians, as a rule, weren’t very highly trained in recognising when they were being tailed, but you couldn’t be too careful.
The Lexus led northwards for fifty miles, taking the A23 and the M25 into Surrey. He seemed to be heading for Guildford, but then turned off the main road and headed into deep countryside. Wolf hung right back and kept following. Then, at three minutes to eleven, Abbott turned into the gates of a manor estate surrounded by woodland. Wolf drove on past the entrance, slowing down just enough to see the Lexus’s taillights disappearing down the oak-lined private road and the plaque on the stone gatepost that said KARSWELL HALL. The stately home itself was out of sight of the quiet country road.
Quarter of a mile further along, Wolf found a spot to hide the car and cut back on foot through the darkness, taking with him the things he needed. Karswell Hall was encircled by a high stone wall that he scaled with ease, and he dropped down inside the wooded grounds and made his cautious way towards the house. From a vantage point among the trees he was able to observe as more cars arrived, one every couple of minutes, and paused at a checkpoint on the private road where security guards checked papers before waving the visitors on through towards the stately home. It looked like some kind of late-evening event or gathering was underway.
It was 11.22 p.m. and he should have reported to base hours ago. Wolf was all too aware that his employers back in London would be wondering what the hell was happening. He faced the choice of whether to abort his mission and admit failure, or stay on his target until a suitable opportunity arose to eliminate him and make it look like an accident.
Wolf had never admitted failure in his life. He was still figuring out his best move when a black Mercedes limousine purred up to the checkpoint and was halted by the security men. The chauffeur rolled down his window and showed them an admission pass. While they examined it, the driver stepped out of the car for a moment to check a front tyre, and the cabin of the limo was momentarily illuminated by the interior light.
That was when Wolf realised, with a shock, that he knew both of the backseat passengers.
Wolf had personally met very, very few members of the secretive agency he worked for. But he instantly recognised these two men as his superiors. One was a much older man, easily eighty-five, wizened and gaunt, wearing a black suit and sitting in the back of the car clutching a cane between his knees. A very distinctive cane, topped with a silver bird’s head with a long beak and ruby eyes. Wolf remembered it, though he’d only seen the old man once before. The other backseat occupant, twenty years younger than his travelling companion, was someone Wolf had had occasional contact with over the years.
The car moved on through the checkpoint, but the image of the two men remained burned on Wolf’s retinas. What was going on here? Why were his agency chiefs apparently attending the same mysterious gathering as the very target they had directed him to eliminate earlier that day? Wolf generally never questioned the reasoning behind his directives, but this was weird. It seemed to suggest that they were all somehow involved together – though in what, Wolf had no idea. And if that was right, then it meant that Wolf had unwittingly become involved in some kind of plot to eliminate one of their own. But one of their own what?
Wolf drew away from the checkpoint. He kept well out of sight as he worked his way around the side of the big house, threading through the trees. Karswell Hall was a hell of a grand old country pile, a real billionaire pad, its scores of windows lit up like a starship with exterior floodlamps casting a glow over the immaculate lawn that sloped down from the rear towards a gleaming dark lake at whose centre was a small wooded island, all wreathed in shadow. The gathered guests, maybe fifty or sixty of them, were visible through the windows of the manor, standing in groups, talking, sipping drinks. The men-only gathering was obviously a formal event, judging by the sombre suits and ties of everyone present. Wolf noticed that there was not a single woman among them.
Crouched down low and invisible among the trees, Wolf used his compact but powerful telephoto lens to search for Abbott among the guests, but couldn’t make him out in the crowd. Maybe he’d get a shot at his target that night, or maybe not. He kept waiting, and watching.
He had no idea what he was soon to witness.
At the stroke of midn
ight, the ceremony began.
It was like watching a surreal dream unfold. First the lights went out and Karswell Hall fell into darkness, illuminated only by the pale glow of the full moon that hung over the lake. Minutes later, a procession of figures slowly began to emerge from the rear of the house and wind its way down the lawn towards the water’s edge. But, as Wolf realised, there was something bizarrely changed about the figures. All fifty or sixty guests were now wearing strange robes, long, dark, and hooded. Their faces were obscured by black masks. Wolf felt a tingle of apprehension as he saw they were animal masks – no, bird masks, with curved, sharp beaks that reminded him of the head of the old man’s cane.
The procession assembled at the lakeside. They stood shoulder to shoulder with their backs to the trees where Wolf was hiding, all looking out across the water towards the dark, wooded island at its centre as if full of anticipation for something about to happen there. He scanned the crowd, still searching for Abbott, but it was impossible to tell whether he was among them or not. The hooded men were unrecognisable, all except for the thin, stooped figure that walked with a noticeable limp and leaned heavily on a cane.
Wolf breathed, ‘What the f—??’ He knew that he had to capture this on video. If he didn’t film what was happening he’d have a hard time convincing himself afterwards that he hadn’t been dreaming. He quickly set the phone camera and hit the record button.
Now a low chanting broke out from the crowd. Soft at first, building into a crescendo whose weird sound sent a chill down Wolf’s neck. It wasn’t English. It wasn’t any language he had ever heard before. Then, as the chanting reached its peak, a pyrotechnic burst of flames erupted into life on the island and lit up the trees – and now Wolf swallowed hard and blinked in disbelief as he saw the giant effigy that until now had been hidden in shadow. Twenty feet tall, carved out of stone, a quasi-human figure with the body of a man and the head of a bird, long-beaked like a heron or an ibis. The monstrosity appeared possessed with a life of its own as the flames made the shadows dance and cast their flickering reflection across the water.
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