The Pretender's Gold Read online

  He watched the message go, and felt suddenly very alone and empty. In a sudden fit of hopeless rage he ripped the page out of the notepad, screwed it into a ball and flung it at the wastepaper basket. It missed, and rolled into the corner. He was too despondent to care.

  He was beginning to worry that maybe his uncle wasn’t coming at all.

  Chapter 5

  Early next morning, with the surveyors’ office still closed and having heard nothing from his uncle, Ewan decided to drive over to the golf course development site and take a look around. He avoided the ubiquitous crowd of demonstrators who never seemed to tire of camping by the main entrance, and sneaked around to the same discreet spot on the perimeter fence where Ross’s van had been found. He quietly let himself in through the locked side gate and spent a while wandering among the woods. The chances of finding where Ross had made his fateful discovery were pretty slim, and he knew it; he didn’t really know why he’d come here except for something to occupy his mind.

  From the southern edge of the forest’s tree line he made his zigzagging way down the steep, heathery slopes to the lochside. The sky was pale and the air was chilly, making his breath billow in clouds. The craggy hilltops that surrounded the loch like the defences of prehistoric fortresses were wreathed in mist, now and then a shard of sunlight breaking through the cloud and casting a golden streak across the rugged landscape. All his life Ewan had marvelled at the magnificent scenery, but it was now forever tainted by the tragic event that had taken place here.

  He hung around for a while, ambling up and down the bank in the vague hope of spotting the mysterious poacher. Which was a silly bit of wishful thinking, at best. The loch was twelve miles from end to end and it occurred to him that, of course, the spot where Ross was found wasn’t necessarily the same place where the witness claimed to have seen him being killed. The body could easily have floated some distance. To make matters worse, it was unlikely that the poacher would visit the same location twice in such a short time, even under normal circumstances. The fishing rights on the loch were tightly controlled by the Fisheries Board, whose tough bailiffs were known to patrol the shores regularly.

  In short, Ewan knew all too well that he was wasting his time here. Utterly demoralised, he trudged back through the woods and reached the van just as it started to rain again. He slumped in behind the wheel and drove off.

  He hadn’t gone far when he noticed a car in his mirror, following him along the twisty, otherwise empty road. The chunky Audi four-wheel-drive seemed to have appeared out of nowhere – but then Ewan hadn’t been paying a lot of attention. Now that it had caught his eye, he watched it in the mirror and thought it was following him much too closely, like fifty miles an hour on these tricky little roads wasn’t fast enough for this guy, and he was aggressively trying to get past. Okay, okay, you pushy bastard, Ewan thought, slowing to forty and edging a little to the side to let the guy overtake.

  But instead of passing him, the big Audi slowed down too, matching his speed and remaining right on his tail, almost bumper to bumper. What was this clown playing at? Not liking this one bit, Ewan sped up again to widen the gap between them. Like before, the Audi stayed right with him, accelerating at the same rate he did. Ewan didn’t want to take his eyes off the twisty road for too long, but kept glancing in the mirror. All he could see were two vague shapes behind the Audi’s rainy windscreen. ‘Come on, then, do you want to overtake me or not?’ he yelled.

  Then, suddenly, the Audi swerved out to one side and came surging by him with a roar. Just as he was feeling glad to be shot of this tailgating hooligan, the Audi abruptly sliced across his path and its brake lights flared crimson through the rain.

  With his heart in his mouth Ewan stamped on his own brakes and twisted the steering wheel to avoid a rear-end collision. But the road was slippery, he was travelling too fast and he felt his wheels lose traction. He cried out in panic as the van went into a skid. The verge flashed towards him. His front wheels hit the grass with a thud and the nose of the van ploughed through several feet of dirt before smashing hard into the drystone wall that divided the verge from the neighbouring field.

  The force of the impact threw Ewan violently forwards in his seat and the exploding airbag punched him in the face. Dazed, he saw stars. He was only dimly aware that his engine had stalled and the front end of the van was a buckled mess embedded in the remains of the drystone wall. Through a mist of confusion, he sensed someone approaching; then his driver’s door being wrenched open and the cold air flooding into the cab. The shape of a large man leaned down towards him and reached inside the car. Ewan heard the clunking sound of his seatbelt clasp being released. Next thing he knew, two strong hands grabbed him by the collar and he felt himself being hauled roughly out of his seat.

  Ewan did what he could to resist but he was disorientated and still in shock from the accident, and the man was much bigger and stronger than he was. Ewan felt himself being bodily dragged along the wet grass, then dumped hard on the ground at the roadside. He heard car doors opening and shutting, and became aware of more men gathering around where he lay gasping and blinking.

  All he could do was gape helplessly up at them. Four unsmiling faces stared back. The men were each wearing bulky quilted jackets, black woollen beanie hats and black gloves. Two of them, including the man who had dragged him from the car, were total strangers.

  The other two, he realised with a jolt of paralysing terror, were not.

  One of the men he recognised grinned down at him and said, ‘Hello, Ewan.’

  Chapter 6

  It was later that morning that a taxicab driven by a local man called Duncan Laurie picked up a traveller at the tiny Spean Bridge railway station on the West Highland Line. The passenger was an older man, lean and grizzled with a salt-and-pepper beard and white hair buzzed so short it looked like a military crew cut. He gave Duncan an address in the village of Kinlochardaich, a few miles away, loaded his own single travel bag in the boot of the car and sat in the back.

  Duncan had been driving cabs for a long time and he was pretty good at sizing people up. His passenger had the look of a tough customer. Not a particularly tall or large man, but he was one of those work-hardened gruff little guys who seemed to be made out of wood and leather. Not someone to be messed with, Duncan thought. But there was nothing menacing or threatening about him. He had an air of stillness and calm. A man who meant business. Though he was obviously a Scotsman – from Glasgow or thereabouts, judging by his accent – he looked more as though he’d spent the last several years in a warmer climate, like Greece or Spain. At first glance he could even have passed for a native of the Mediterranean region, except for those flinty, hooded grey eyes, the colour of a battleship. Eyes that seemed to watch everything, drinking in his surroundings and missing no detail as they set off north-westwards along the scenic glen road towards Kinlochardaich.

  ‘You’re no from around here, I’m guessing,’ Duncan said by way of initiating conversation.

  The flinty eyes connected with his in the rear-view mirror and the passenger replied with a monosyllabic ‘Nope.’

  ‘Here to visit, then, aye? Got friends and family in Kinlochardaich?’

  The passenger gave only a slight nod in response. Not much given to small talk, seemingly. Maybe he was tired after his long journey from wherever. Or maybe he just wasn’t keen on questions. But it would take more than a bit of dourness to quell Duncan’s sociable nature.

  ‘Name’s Duncan. Duncan Laurie. I live over in Gairlochy.’

  ‘McCulloch,’ the passenger said quietly. ‘Boonzie McCulloch.’

  ‘Good to meet ye, Boonzie. If you need a taxi ride during your stay, give me a call, okay?’ Duncan plucked out a business card and handed it back over his shoulder.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Boonzie replied, taking the card. Then he said no more until they reached the quiet streets of tiny Kinlochardaich.

  The taxi pulled up at the address. Boonzie retrieved his b
ag from the boot, paid his fare and thanked Duncan for the ride. The taxi sped off. Boonzie glanced around at the empty village street, which looked as if it hadn’t changed much in the last century or so, and reminded him of the Scotland of his youth. Misty mountains were visible in the background and the air was tinged with the scent of woodsmoke from chimneys.

  He checked the address his nephew had given him over the phone. This was it: 8 Wallace Street. A modest grey stone terraced house, a far cry from the rambling old farmstead Boonzie and his wife Mirella called home, but not a bad wee place. He was happy that his nephew had made something of himself. The boy had been dealt a rough hand, what with losing his mother at such a young age and the death of his father not many years afterwards. There wasn’t a day that Boonzie didn’t think about his late brother Gordon. Though he’d never spoken a word of it to a living soul. Boonzie was like that.

  He rang the front doorbell and waited, smiling to himself in anticipation of meeting Ewan again. It had been a while.

  No reply. Boonzie tried again a couple of times, then noticed that the parking space in front of the house was vacant and wondered if Ewan had gone off somewhere. Which was a little vexing. Boonzie had called from a payphone at Inverness airport earlier, and left a message to tell Ewan when he’d be arriving. If Boonzie had been carrying a mobile he’d have tried calling him on it again now, but he detested the damn things and prided himself on being the last man on the planet who didn’t own one.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a sash window squeaking open overhead. He stepped back from the door and looked up to see a thickset woman with curlers in her hair, leaning out from the neighbouring house’s upstairs.

  ‘Excuse me, but are you lookin’ for Ewan McCulloch?’ she called down to him, and Boonzie nodded and said he was. ‘I’m Ewan’s uncle,’ he explained.

  She said, ‘The police were here before.’ She pronounced it the Scottish way, ‘polis’.

  Boonzie frowned. ‘The police?’ What was this about? Hadn’t he said to Ewan not to call them until he got here?

  What the woman said next shocked him. ‘Aye. Ewan’s been hurt. He’s been taken to the hospital in Fort William.’

  ‘Hurt? What happened?’

  The neighbour shook her head. ‘Dunno, but it sounds bad. Happened this mornin’. You should get over there quick.’

  Boonzie was reeling, but outwardly showed no flicker. He retrieved the business card from his pocket and asked, ‘Mind if I use your phone?’

  An hour later, Boonzie jumped out of Duncan Laurie’s taxicab for the second time that day, ran up the steps of Fort William’s Belford Hospital, slammed through the entrance into the reception area and hurried to the front desk. ‘Ewan McCulloch was brought in here today. Where is he?’

  ‘Are you a relative?’

  ‘I’m his uncle, Archibald McCulloch.’ Boonzie normally disliked giving his real name, but at this moment Ewan’s wellbeing was all that mattered to him. ‘Was he in an accident? Is he badly hurt?’

  ‘Take a seat over there please, Mr McCulloch. Someone will come and speak to you in a minute.’

  Wild horses couldn’t have made Boonzie sit down for an instant. He paced furiously for seven and a half minutes before a weary and overworked-looking doctor wearing blue surgeon’s scrubs finally appeared from a doorway down the corridor. The medical receptionist hurried over from the desk, conferred quietly for a moment with her and pointed in Boonzie’s direction.

  Boonzie saw the doctor’s eyes snap onto him. He clocked the expression on her face. He knew instantly that what she had to tell him wasn’t good news.

  The doctor came over. She had fair hair tied in a tight bun, and a staff name badge that identified her as Dr Fraser, head surgeon. Before she could speak, Boonzie collared her with ‘So, tell me. Is my nephew dead?’

  ‘He’s alive.’ But the way she said it was full of concern. Boonzie stood and listened with gritted teeth and balled fists as Dr Fraser told him what had happened to Ewan.

  ‘He’s suffered an epidural haematoma, fractured cheekbones, a broken jaw, broken collarbones, a compound fracture to the right arm and another to the left leg, plus a severely dislocated shoulder and massive bruising. But he’s lucky to be in as good shape as he is. I thought we were going to lose him.’

  In some ways the story sounded like a terrible echo of what Boonzie already knew about the fate of Ross Campbell. The doctor related how a local resident, who happened to be driving along the lochside road that morning to visit a friend, had stumbled upon the car wreck and the inert body lying by the roadside in the pouring rain and called 999. A former nurse, she’d checked the victim’s pulse, recognised the seriousness of his injuries and known to do all the right things. If not for her intervention and the good fortune of finding him in time, Ewan might well not have survived.

  Just as with Ross, everybody’s first assumption had been that the victim had suffered an accident. The doctor explained: ‘That was how it initially seemed when he was brought in. It wasn’t until I examined his injuries more closely that I realised … of course I notified the police right away. They’re looking into the matter even as we speak.’

  ‘Realised what?’ Boonzie asked. The muscles in his throat were clamped so tight that he could barely speak.

  ‘I’m sorry to say there’s more to this,’ Dr Fraser replied. ‘Your nephew appears to have been the victim of a deliberate, possibly premeditated and very violent assault. Judging by the extent and pattern of his injuries, I’d say there were at least two attackers. Maybe more, I don’t know. What I do know is that the injuries look as though they were inflicted with one or more solid impact weapons. Something with a round profile, like a baseball bat.’ She shook her head. ‘Frankly, I’ve never seen anything quite so vicious before. Things like this just don’t happen in this region. Basically they beat the poor man to a pulp and left him for dead.’

  Boonzie digested that information with the fear and rage inside him starting to turn to ice-cold water in his veins. He was silent for a few seconds. Then asked tersely, ‘Will he survive?’

  ‘I don’t have the facilities for complex neurosurgery, so I had to trepan the skull. That’s when—’

  ‘I ken what trepanation is,’ Boonzie said. Many years earlier, in a bloody little jungle war that officially never happened and was now largely forgotten by all but the men who’d fought and watched their comrades die in it, he’d seen an SAS medic desperately trying to save the life of a badly concussed soldier in the field by drilling a hole in his head to relieve pressure on the brain. The soldier had lived, but he’d never been the same again.

  Dr Fraser glanced at her watch. ‘He came out of surgery just over an hour ago and is in intensive care right now. So far he seems to be doing fine, under the circumstances, but we’ll have a better idea of his prognosis once he regains consciousness. Obviously it’s the brain injury I’m most concerned about. The coma might last hours, or it might last days, weeks, or longer.’

  ‘Or for ever.’

  ‘There is that possibility, which we need to be prepared for.’

  ‘What are his chances, fifty-fifty?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to speculate, Mr McCulloch. Things could go in any number of ways and it’s far too soon to tell.’

  ‘I appreciate your honesty, Doctor,’ Boonzie growled.

  ‘In such cases the relatives are always notified. But it seems it’s not been possible to locate a next of kin.’

  ‘I’m his only family. Can I see him? Even for a moment?’

  She hesitated. ‘You might find it upsetting to see him in his condition.’

  If the good doctor only knew the slaughterhouse horrors that Boonzie had witnessed in his lifetime. ‘I can handle it,’ he replied.

  ‘Just for a moment, then. Come this way.’

  Chapter 7

  A couple of hours earlier, while Ewan McCulloch was still on the operating table, a phone conversation had taken place. It was a v
ery private and secret call, but if anyone on the outside had been listening they’d quickly have worked out which of the callers was the subordinate, and which of them was clearly in charge.

  ‘What part of this do you not understand? Your instructions were to beat the truth out of him and then kill him. It’s not rocket science.’

  ‘We tried to get it out of him. He didn’t seem to know anything.’

  ‘So not only did you come back empty-handed, you also left him alive. Are you stupid?’

  ‘It wasn’t our fault. I told you, a car turned up before we could finish him off. We had to leg it before we were spotted.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I get the picture. Four tough guys, scared of some bloody old biddy on her own. What a bunch of pathetic cowards.’

  ‘What were we supposed to do, beat the shit out of her as well, in broad daylight? And what if someone else had turned up too?’

  ‘The road past Loch Ardaich isn’t exactly the M25. You could easily have handled it.’

  ‘Well, we were unlucky, that’s all. Credit where credit’s due, chief. We took care of the other moron for you, didn’t we? No problems there.’

  ‘Yes, you did. But now I’m wondering if you didn’t just get lucky with Campbell. Maybe I should have called Hacker back home from Korea to take care of the job. He doesn’t depend on luck.’

  ‘You had your reasons. Hacker works for you personally. You didn’t want to be too closely connected with it.’

  ‘Evidently, that was my mistake, trusting a bunch of useless fools on the outside with the simplest of tasks. Did I not pay you enough, perhaps?’

  ‘Give us a break, will you? We didn’t do a bad job of searching McCulloch’s house. In and out, twenty minutes, nobody any the wiser. If he’d had any more coins stashed away, we’d have found them. And as for him, you don’t have anything to worry about. He’s in a coma. People in comas don’t say much.’

  ‘They’re also known to come out of them.’