It was starting to rain and I switched on the windscreen wipers and turned up the heater, then turned it down again as I realized I couldn’t be cold because my palms on the steering wheel were sweating.

  *

  It was dark by the time I reached Kingussie following the route Sammy, David and I had taken to visit the Highland Wildlife Park. God, it seemed a lifetime ago. I turned into the B9152, driving to Kincraig parallel to the shore of Loch Inch. The Cavalier headlights carved out tunnels of light through the blackness, the road speckled with raindrops, the windscreen wipers whirring quietly. The effect was almost hypnotic and twice I braked too late and too hard when an insomniac sheep wandered in front of the car.

  The inhabitants of Kincraig were all indoors out of the rain when I passed through the town, and it had been more than an hour since I’d seen another car on the road. I felt like the last man alive, the only occupant of a dead world, a ghost planet. When I crossed the last streetlight, plunging into the dark and leaving the glow of the town behind me, I pressed the trip counter on the speedometer and watched it count off the tenth-mile segments as the road twisted and turned through the hillside.

  I saw the signpost just before it clicked up 2.4. It leant to the right, the wood was cracked and gnarled and the lettering was obscured by green moss, but I could just make out the ‘Insh’ of ‘Inshriach’ and I pulled the wheel round sharply to the right and drove into the woods.

  The track was just wide enough for one vehicle with passing places every hundred yards or so. It was rutted and potholed and the car bucked and swayed as it bounced from hole to hole.

  The soaking tree trunks glistened under the headlights, branches whipping to and fro in the wind. The windscreen wipers began to clog up with fallen leaves, and the car skidded as I followed the track to the right and guided the car uneasily alongside a line of stone terraced cottages, gardens overgrown behind white picket fences, windows blank like the eyes of a blind man, washing lines bare, rainwater cascading over blocked gutters. On the downstairs window sill of the middle house sat a brown and white cat, its eyes glowing brightly, tail twitching as it turned to watch the Cavalier go past.

  The track opened up into a large tarmac carpark in front of the distillery itself, a two-storey whitewashed building, E-shaped with the three prongs of the E pointing towards the cottages. On the left of the building was a white Ford Sierra and I parked by the side of it, three yards away from the black door the girl had described. I switched the lights off and allowed my eyes time to get used to the watery moonlight which faded and flickered as rain clouds passed overhead, then stepped out of the warmth of the car with the briefcase.

  My footsteps echoed around the courtyard as I climbed the metal steps. At the top I wiped my soaking hands on the Barbour jacket and seized the brass door handle.

  The door opened easily and silently and I crossed the threshold into the mashing room, moonlight reflecting off the copper-topped tuns.

  Down the left-hand side of the whitewashed stone wall were a series of small, circular windows, five times the width of a ship’s portholes. Through them I could see clouds passing over the dulled stars in the night sky and then the moon was blotted out and I was in complete darkness.

  At the far end of the room was an oddly-squeezed goal-post of light, and as my eyes became accustomed to the dark I could see it was a closed door with light shining through from whatever lay beyond. Then the moon reappeared from behind a cloud like a scolded child putting its head around a door and I moved across the room, the thick wire mesh floor rattling under my feet with each step, briefcase handle gripped firmly in my right hand, left hand forward to open the red-painted wooden door in front of me.

  I felt like a latecomer to a party as the door opened and I stepped into the light, blinking. All conversation, if there had been any, stopped and everyone was looking at me as if I’d arrived at a black tie reception dressed in a blazer and slacks. But this wasn’t a party and there was no smiling host to step forward and cover my embarrassment and offer to introduce me to everybody.

  The light came from a battery-powered lantern which was hanging from one of the steel girders that criss-crossed the high roof above the fermentation vessels. There were no windows in the fermentation room and the lamp suggested that all power had been cut off to the mothballed distillery.

  I could see four people in the room, spread among a dozen wooden circular tubs which came up to just above stomach height, ranged in three lines of four, two lines close to the walls and the third running down the middle. With the red door behind me I was standing in a corridor between the central line of four vats and the right-hand batch.

  At the end of the room and to the left were David and Sammy, David sitting with his back to one of the vats with his legs pulled up against his chest, Sammy standing by his side, ruffling his hair. David beamed as he saw me and tried to get up, but Sammy crouched down beside him and whispered into his ear. He settled back down but watched me carefully with wide eyes. I smiled and waved with my free hand.

  ‘It’s all right, David, you’ll soon be home,’ I said loudly, still walking, now passing the first vat, the hand holding the briefcase clamped tightly shut, eyes taking in as much as I could.

  The girl was standing six feet to the right of David and Sammy, in the space between the left and centre lines of vats. She was about five feet two with close-cropped red hair and an elfin face with a crop of freckles around her pert nose. In thigh-length boots and green jerkin she could have passed for Peter Pan, but she was wearing a green waterproof anorak zipped up to the neck and blue jeans and in her right hand hanging by her side was a large black handgun.

  She took a cigarette from her lips with her left hand, dropped it to the ground and moved to stamp it out, but it fell through the wire mesh in a shower of sparks to the room below. ‘Well now, just in time,’ she said, glancing at her wristwatch. ‘And with the money, too.’ Hers was the voice on the phone.

  She smiled and turned to her partner, tall, thin with a mane of black curly hair and a long, hooked nose. He was standing at the end of the corridor I was walking along, but slightly to the right so that the lower part of his body was obscured by the last wooden vat in the right-hand line.

  He was wearing a similar anorak, but his was open to the waist showing a white crew-necked pullover underneath and he had on grey herringbone trousers instead of jeans. They both wore blue and grey training shoes and could have passed for students hitching around Europe, if they’d had a couple of rucksacks and if they hadn’t both been carrying guns.

  His was black and seemed bigger than hers and from sixty feet away it looked like a revolver, but the lamp was tied with a piece of wire to the girder which crossed the room directly over their heads so it shone straight down on them, and it was hard to judge exactly what they had in their hands other than to see quite clearly that his was pointing at my stomach.

  The door clicked shut behind me and I whirled round in a panic because I’d left it open. Ronnie Laing was there, leaning against the wall, arm across the door, a lazy smile on his suntanned face, every strand of his blond hair in place, blue eyes watching my every move with cold amusement.

  He wasn’t carrying a gun, with two professional killers on tap he didn’t need one. He rubbed his long tapered hands together, smoothing them like a concert pianist about to play to a packed Albert Hall. The smile grew wider.

  ‘So glad you could make it,’ he said softly, the spider to the fly. ‘I was almost hoping you wouldn’t come and I’d be able to play with Sammy.’ The eyes behind the green-framed glasses blazed with evil intent and I knew full well that unless I came out on top he would get to play with her and that she’d die screaming while he stood over her, smiling his lazy smile.

  I was surrounded, but two had guns and one didn’t so it was no contest. Laing would have to wait.

  I turned my back on him and began walking again. I swung the case slowly backwards and forwards in time with my feet and started talking, not concerned with the words or the sense, just trying to keep their minds off the case and what it contained and my mind off what was going to happen and what could happen if it all went wrong. Mouth in overdrive, brain on auto-pilot, I was back in my father’s study in front of his desk, reciting poetry.

  ‘The money’s all here,’ I said, and I was surprised at how steady my voice was. My throat was dry and my tongue felt twice its normal size and I couldn’t swallow. ‘Just keep calm,’ I said. ‘There’s no need for anybody to get hurt.’

  The girl smiled at that and she moved to the right, away from David and Sammy, and stood behind the penultimate vat in the middle line about six paces away from her partner who moved to his right and stood in the corridor facing me.

  She raised her gun in both hands and pointed it at my chest and my skin crawled as I saw that she was still smiling, eyes flashing like a flirtatious teenager.

  Now I’d passed the second vessel and the third was only three steps away, left, right, left and then I was swinging the briefcase up in a relaxed, fluid motion across my body and onto the wooden lid of the vat in front of me.

  The man’s gun was pointing down towards the floor and I hadn’t seen him take off the safety catch but that didn’t mean anything because the chances were it was already cocked and ready to fire. They’d both moved forward and their faces were in shadow, the lamp shining behind them giving them halos around their hair like two wayward angels.

  The case came down on the lid with a dull reverberating thud and I saw Sammy jump. She stayed low beside David and put her arms protectively around his shoulder, hugging him to her. Our eyes met and instinctively I realized that she knew exactly what was going to happen next. She half smiled, a brief flash of her perfect teeth, and she nervously reached up to brush a strand of loose hair away from her face. As my hands moved towards the case she shifted her body, putting herself between David and the two killers, watching me over her shoulder, muscles tensed, a cat ready to spring.

  I could feel Laing’s eyes boring into my back and I fought the urge to turn and look at him. If I did I knew for sure that I’d be lost. The man and the girl were moving again, she walked round to the right and into the corridor next to him, he then shuffled across to give her room and the bottom half of his body was once more hidden by the last vat in the right-hand line.

  I wanted to scream at them, to tell them to stand where they were. Stay calm. Stay cool.

  ‘I suppose you’ll want to count it but I’d be grateful if you’d get a move on because I want to get David home as soon as possible,’ I said, as my hands moved to operate the locks on the case. I’d already set the combinations and the locks flew open as I pushed the gilt buttons either side, the two clicks sounding like one.

  The girl’s gun was still aimed at my chest, the man’s down at the ground. They turned to smile at each other as I raised the lid.

  ‘You’ve no idea the problems I had getting the money together at such short notice,’ I said. ‘I almost didn’t make it. And you didn’t give me nearly enough time to drive up from Edinburgh, the roads can be vile at this time of night . . .’

  I was talking too much but it didn’t matter any more because the shotgun was in my hands and I stepped away from the open case. In one movement Sammy pushed David sideways onto the wire mesh floor and threw herself on top of him, using herself as a shield, a tigress protecting her young. But David wasn’t her offspring, he was my brother, and she was still risking her life to keep him out of harm’s way. Whatever happened I promised myself I’d never let Sammy down again, no way would I ever disregard the loyalty she’d shown, a loyalty I knew I didn’t deserve. I held onto that one thought, blocking all else from my mind.

  The girl turned first, her eyes opened wide and her mouth formed a perfect circle of surprise as she fought to unscramble the messages from her retina.

  The man saw the look of confusion on her face and he stepped forward towards her and then began to turn. Her gun was pointing at my groin but she made no move to pull the trigger, and she frowned in confusion like a little girl trying to remember her nine times table and then I fired.

  The shot ripped through her anorak and jeans the way it had shredded the blanket tied against the outbuilding back at Stonehaven, and the green and blue of her clothing was stained with red as she lurched backwards and slammed into the wooden vat behind her, mouth still open, face untouched because I’d aimed low. Behind me I heard Laing curse and scrabble for the door handle. I ignored him, he wasn’t armed.

  The gun dropped from the girl’s fingers and rattled onto the metal floor and she groaned and pitched forward with her hands clutching her bloodstained stomach.

  I turned the shotgun towards her partner but I knew I wouldn’t make it because his gun was already levelled at my chest and the finger was tightening on the trigger and I still had to move through ninety degrees to stand a chance of hitting him, so I angled it upwards instead and fired at the lamp above his head.

  The two bangs were simultaneous and the lamp went out. I heard it shatter and the pieces slam against the roof as the bullet from his gun caught me in the chest, lifted me off my feet and threw me backwards down the corridor. I hit the floor shoulders first and then my head crashed back and I felt it open and bleed, but the pain was nowhere as bad as the crippling numbness in my chest. The door behind me opened and closed as Laing fled the scene, footsteps clattering and echoing.

  I could breathe only in short, halting gasps, like an engine starved of petrol, shuddering and juddering. My ribs felt as if they’d been hit with a sledgehammer and at least two were cracked or broken, but I was lucky that he’d gone for the chest and not tried a head shot or hit me in the legs because then the lightweight bulletproof vest that Tony had given me at Heathrow wouldn’t have saved my life, and I’d be lying bleeding to death on the floor like the girl and not inching backwards to rest against one of the empty oak vats and groping around to find the shotgun in the blackness.

  David started screaming and then his piercing yell was muffled as Sammy put her hand over his mouth and comforted him. ‘Are you all right?’ she called. ‘My God, are you all right?’ But I couldn’t answer, I was still recovering my breath and, anyway, to have replied would have given away my position – horizontal, hurt and, for the moment at least, helpless. Sammy didn’t call out again, though I could hear her whispering softly to David.

  Somewhere in front of me the man moved, slowly and carefully because he was as blind as I was in the pitch-dark room, but he was fit and healthy while I was lying winded on the floor and feeling as if an elephant had sat on my chest. And he had a gun in his hand.

  He had seen where I’d fallen so all he had to do was to inch forward in the dark until he found me and then it would be over. I managed to pull myself sideways, dragging myself to one side and out of his way but stopped when he heard me moving, and then there was a flash and a bang about fifteen feet from me and a bullet tore a chunk out of the vat to my right so he knew I wasn’t dead, but at the very least he must have thought I was in a bad way because he’d seen the first bullet slam into my chest.

  A second shot hit the floor and the bullet screeched off the metal and ricocheted into the blackness. Then there was only silence and I tried to steady my breathing because in my ears it sounded like a steam engine puffing and blowing, and I could hear my heart pounding but there was nothing I could do about that.

  I screwed up my eyes and then opened them wide but it made no difference, the darkness was absolute, no light at all in the room. Then my eyes started to play tricks and I saw greenish circles and spots of red which twisted and rolled, and white whirlpools swirling above my head as my information-starved brain produced its own signals to make up for the lack of stimulation from the optic nerves.

  He moved again and this time he was creeping sideways, to my right, but I wasn’t used to relying solely on my ears so I couldn’t tell if he was ten feet away or twenty as the perspiration dripped down the back of my arms like blood from an open wound.

  I reached into the pocket of the Barbour jacket and pulled out Tony’s second going away present. They smelled of rubber as I pulled them over my eyes and pressed the ridged button on the right-hand side. The light intensifiers flickered once and then I could see again, the goggles picking out details of the room and its contents in a greenish-grey hue.

  They came from a consignment Tony was in the process of selling to a West African state. Manufactured by Ferranti, powered by a small nickel-cadmium battery, they were the perfect issue for infantry fighting at night.

  Worn like a pair of ski goggles, they didn’t have to be fixed to a rifle like the Nato night sight, and they allowed soldiers to move easily in the darkness with their hands free to shoot and fight.

  From where I was sitting I couldn’t see Sammy or David but the man was there, about fifteen feet away to the right, facing in my direction and creeping stealthily towards me, right arm holding his gun at waist height and his left waving in front of his chest.

  He was pushing one foot forward, slowly, feeling along the metal floor so that as soon as he touched my body he’d know where to pump in the bullets. He stopped moving his left foot, transferred his weight over and then began moving his right. Two feet ahead of him was my shotgun and he was heading straight for it.

  Reaching for it was out of the question, I could barely breathe never mind crawl to the gun before his probing feet found it, and once I had started moving he’d have a good idea where I was, and it wouldn’t take more than a few random shots in my direction to hit me and this time I might not be so lucky.

  My ribs felt on fire as I took a lungful of air and spoke. ‘You’re standing two feet to the right of a vat, your right foot is forward and you’re holding your left hand out in front of your body. Unless you drop your gun I’m going to blow your balls off.’