Scope controlled the anger. He’d get this bastard, and he’d make him pay for killing that little girl if it was the last thing he ever did, but right now it was going to have to wait.

But then the gunman took another drag on the cigarette, and was suddenly hit by a coughing fit. He bent over double, trying to bring it under control and, as he did so, Scope took his chance and sprinted at his back, hoping he couldn’t be heard above the noise.

The gunman spat on the ground and, as he stood back up again, he must have heard Scope’s rapidly approaching footsteps, because he swung round fast, a surprised look on his face, and instinctively raised the gun.

Barely two yards away, Scope dived straight into him, knocking his gun to one side, and sending the two of them crashing to the ground. The gun went off with a loud pop and the gunman gasped as he landed on his back with Scope’s weight on top of him, and broke into a second coughing fit. Making full use of his advantage, Scope punched him twice in the face, grabbing his gun arm by the wrist at the same time and giving it a twist. The gun went off again as the gunman fought to hang onto it. Even in his current state, he was putting up surprisingly strong resistance, but then Scope sat up on top of him, and used his free hand to rain blows down on his face with every ounce of strength he could muster, driven on by the thought that the bastard had just murdered a child, and the adrenalin that seemed to course through every sinew and muscle of his body.

The gunman grunted as his nose broke and blood splattered his face, and his body seemed to go slack. His grip on the gun loosened and Scope paused just long enough to pluck it from his hand, then leapt to his feet, panting from the exertion of the violence. Below him the gunman rolled from side to side on the ground, seemingly dazed by Scope’s onslaught, his face already beginning to darken and swell.

Scope pointed the gun down at his chest. ‘Who are you?’ he hissed in the darkness. ‘And what do you want here? Tell me now or I’ll kill you.’

The gunman finished coughing, rolled to one side, and spat blood and phlegm into the dirt. ‘Fuck you,’ he grunted.

Scope stiffened, the cold anger he was feeling enveloping every other thought. ‘No,’ he said, pulling the trigger. ‘Fuck you.’ He shot him once in the belly, feeling too much pleasure at the spasm of pain that passed across the gunman’s features, then once in the chest, finally finishing him off with a third bullet just beneath his left eye.

Afterwards, he stood rigid for several seconds staring down at the man he’d just killed, waiting for the anger to subside. He knew he was going to have to check the little girl to see if she was still alive, even though he felt sure she wouldn’t be. There was no way she’d have got more than a few yards into the undergrowth, and the gunman had seemed confident that he’d finished her off with the shot, but he was going to have to look, however hard it might be.

A vision of that little boy back in Afghanistan staring up at him with the gaping hole in his throat tore across his mind, and he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Which was when he heard it. The faint crunch of leaves underfoot.

His eyes flew open and he saw two shadowy figures a few yards apart, approaching him quietly through the trees, some fifteen yards distant. There was no question they’d seen him. Not only that, it looked like they’d identified him as an enemy. They were both holding rifles and, even as he watched, the closest of the two put his rifle to his shoulder and took aim.

Scope leapt for cover as the first of the shots rang out, scrambling behind a tree. A chunk of bark flew off as a round struck the trunk, only a few inches from his outstretched leg, and he rolled over on the ground so he was temporarily out of sight and, knowing he only had a few seconds to put some distance between himself and the two gunmen, he leapt to his feet and took off into the foliage, keeping low.

No more shots rang out and, as he ran, keeping to a straight line and using the thick undergrowth as cover, knowing he was going fast enough to outrun them, a sudden thought struck him.

He’d just run past the exact spot where Casey must have been shot. He remembered it well enough, even though he hadn’t actually seen her fall.

But there was no body there now.

Forty

‘JESUS CHRIST, WHAT the hell’s going on?’ said MacLean, looking over towards Sayenko’s corpse from his position behind a beech tree about ten yards away.

Keogh was standing behind a second tree nearby. His ears buzzed from the gunshots and his shoulder ached from the recoil of the rifle as he looked beyond the corpse to where the man who’d just killed Sayenko had disappeared. He’d almost had the slippery sod as well. One more second and he’d have got him in his sights and blown a nice big hole in his heart, but then that big oaf MacLean had made a noise and that had been it. The target had bolted, moving far too fast and purposefully for an amateur.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, trying to keep his voice quiet, even though the buzzing in his ears made it hard to hear himself. ‘Maybe he’s something to do with Amanda Rowan. A bodyguard, someone like that.’

‘If he was her bodyguard, where was he when we tried to snatch her?’ grunted MacLean dismissively.

It was a good point, but Keogh was completely at a loss as to any other explanation. He wasn’t a cop: MacLean was right about that. So who the hell was he?

Keogh motioned to MacLean and together they slowly approached Sayenko’s corpse, crouching low in case the stranger was waiting to ambush them.

‘Cover me,’ whispered Keogh, slinging his rifle over his shoulder and quickly searching the corpse as MacLean stood above him, looking round carefully. There were bullet holes in Sayenko’s belly, heart and head, and it was obvious that they’d been delivered by someone who knew how to use a gun. Even at a range of just a few feet, if you’re not good with firearms, you won’t make as precise hits as Sayenko’s killer had.

Keogh took out Sayenko’s sat phone and a spare magazine he had for his pistol, then got slowly to his feet. For the first time on this op – in fact, for the first time in a long time – he felt truly nervous.

‘So, what are we going to do about this fellah?’ asked MacLean.

Keogh sighed as they stepped back into the cover of the trees. ‘I don’t see how he’s going to raise the alarm. Not after he’s just committed cold-blooded murder. Our best bet’s to keep to the original plan, pick up Amanda Rowan, give the bitch a well-deserved kicking, then get the hell out of here with her.’ He took one more look into the gloom, wondering if the stranger had rescued the little girl (and, in a small way, hoping he had), then turned away, knowing that they were fast running out of options.

Forty-one

Today 15.45

BOLT OPENED THE window of the hire car they’d picked up at Aberdeen Airport and breathed in the fresh clean air as he and Mo drove along the A95, a thick wall of pine forest on one side of them, and a long sweeping loch with bleak, tree-dotted mountains rising up into a pale blue sky on the other.

It was rugged, dramatic scenery, and a far cry from the city where Bolt spent so much of his time. This was only his second visit to Scotland – the first had been a two-week family holiday to the Western Isles when he was a boy, and it had rained pretty much the whole time – but, looking at it now in all its silent, natural beauty, with virtually no other traffic on the road, he promised himself he’d come back at some point and do some fishing – even if it was on his own, now that his old fishing buddy Sam Verran had got himself a girlfriend.