This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008236014

Ebook Edition © May 2020 ISBN: 9780008236021

Version: 2020-04-08

Discover the series you can’t put down …

‘If you like your conspiracies twisty, your action bone-jarring, and your heroes impossibly dashing, then look no farther – the Ben Hope series is exactly what you need’

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‘Deadly conspiracies, bone-crunching action and a tormented hero with a heart … Scott Mariani packs a real punch’

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‘James Bond meets Jason Bourne meets The Da Vinci Code’

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‘Scott Mariani is an awesome writer’

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‘Packed with dark intrigue, danger around every corner, bullets flying, sexual tension, and an endless assault of nasty villains … everything a thriller should be and more’

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‘If you’ve got a pulse, you’ll love Scott Mariani; if you haven’t, then maybe you crossed Ben Hope’

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Praise

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Epilogue

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the same author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Loch Ardaich

Scottish Highlands

‘Can you believe this crap?’ Ross Campbell muttered to himself as he stared through his rainy van windscreen at the narrow rural road ahead, winding onward for endless miles into the murk. The December cold and rain were showing absolutely no sign of letting up, and he had the prospect of a good soaking to look forward to when he reached his remote destination.

What a bummer. What a drag. Of course, this job would have to land on him on the dreichest, dreariest and most depressing day imaginable. Today of all days, marking exactly twelve months since Katrina had left him to run off with that rich bastard cosmetic dentist from Inverness.

Ross strongly felt that he should instead be slouched in his armchair at home, nursing his smouldering resentment in front of the TV with a few bottles of Broughton’s Old Jock at his elbow. Yes, he was still feeling sorry for himself. Yes, he was taking it badly and allowing his chronic anger to get the better of him. And anyone who had a problem with that better keep their opinion to themselves. Got that, pal?

But however Ross felt he should be spending this miserable winter’s afternoon, his duties as partner in the firm of McCulloch & Campbell, Chartered Building Surveyors, obliged him to be here. His task: to scout and assess the western perimeter of the development site within the Loch Ardaich pine forest, right out in the sticks thirty miles north of Fort William. Like it hadn’t already been scouted and assessed a dozen times already, but what was the point of complaining?

The closer he got to his destination, the more aggressively the rain lashed his windscreen. The road narrowed to a single-track lane in places as it followed an endless series of S-bends along the forested shores of Loch Ardaich. The heather-covered hills rose high all around, their tops shrouded in mist and cloud. Now and then he passed a lonely cottage or the deserted ruins of an old stone bothy. On a clear day you could sometimes spot an osprey circling over the waters of the loch, or even an eagle; and it wasn’t uncommon for a red deer to suddenly burst from cover and leap across the road right in the path of oncoming traffic, scaring the wits out of the inattentive motorist. Ross had lived here all his life, though, and for him the scenery and fauna of the remote western Highlands that drew thousands of visitors each year from all around the world held little wonder or fascination.

At last, the wire-mesh fence and main gates of the development site appeared ahead. The adverse weather conditions had kept most of the protesters away, but the diehards were still grimly hanging on. Ross gave a groan as he saw the small crowd huddled in their rain gear by the gates, ready to wave their sodden banners and scream abuse at any vehicles entering or leaving the fenced-off construction zone. Ross would have bet money that Geoffrey Watkins was among them. Come up all the way from England to stir up as much trouble as he could, Watkins was the most militant of the lot.

Ross personally didn’t have a lot of time for the environmental nutters in general, though he had to admit they might have a point on this occasion. It had certainly been one of the more contentious projects his firm had been involved in, and he’d often wished that his senior partner, Ewan, hadn’t agreed to take it on. The plans for Highland Manor, an eighteen-hole championship golf course and gated community estate with million-pound homes for wealthy retirees, had attracted no small amount of anger from locals. Two hundred acres of ancient pine forest had been earmarked for destruction under the scheme, sparking furious resistance and attempted legal action by one of the larger and more organised ecowarrior groups. The environmentalists had lost their legal case in court months ago, but in spite of the ruling against them were still gamely doing all they could to disrupt the development. Their methods had been creative enough to cause protracted and extremely expensive delays. The company who’d initially landed the contract had been brought to a virtual standstill by the legion of protesters who had invaded the site, chained themselves to trees, lain in the path of bulldozers, harangued the foresters and generally made it impossible to get the excavations underway. When the company had built a scale-proof fence worthy of a prison compound and brought in security personnel to eject the protesters, the ecowarriors had simply sharpened up their game by sabotaging construction vehicles, slashing tyres and setting an awful lot of valuable machinery ablaze, until in the end the company execs had been forced to cut their losses and give up.

Three more construction firms were now in competition to decide which lucky crew would take their place. All the while, persistent rumours abounded of a lot of dirty money changing hands and palms being greased for the project to be greenlit. If you believed the gossip, certain local officials were going to do well out of the deal – if and when it actually got completed. The situation was a mess.

Ross was driving his company van, a little white Peugeot Bipper with the chartered surveyor firm’s logo proudly emblazoned on its side, a magnet for trouble. Not much wanting his vehicle to be attacked and pelted with missiles, he slipped away from the main gates and detoured around the site’s western perimeter to a small side entrance the protesters had, mercifully, chosen to leave unguarded today. He parked the van and listened to the rain pounding the roof. The ground was turning to slush out there, appalling even by the normal standards of a Scottish winter. Beyond the fence stood the thick, dark forest, ancient and forbidding. Local folklore held spooky old tales of bogles and sluaghs and other evil spirits and hobgoblins that lurked in the woods, preying on the hapless. What a load of shite, Ross thought, but he still didn’t much fancy having to venture inside.

He changed into his wellies and tugged on his raincoat before getting out of the van, then took the plunge. Moments later, he’d undone the padlock holding the side gate and let himself through the fence, closing it behind him before setting off at a trudge towards the trees.

The forest was very dense and hard to walk through, and Ross was certainly no hardened outdoorsman. He tripped and stumbled his way for nearly quarter of a mile using a GPS navigation device to orient him towards the western boundary. Without the GPS he’d soon have been hopelessly lost, probably doomed to wander for ever. Overhead the tall trees swayed in the wind and their branches clacked and clashed like the antlers of fighting stags in the rutting season. Deep, deep in the forest he swore out loud – who the hell could hear him, anyway – as he had to clamber over a slippery, moss-covered fallen trunk that blocked his path with no other way around except through a mass of brambles that would have stopped a tank. He cursed even more vehemently a few metres further on, when he was forced to negotiate a steep downward slope where part of the ground had been washed away by floods of rain, exposing tree roots and a great deal of rotted and richly odorous vegetable matter.

Damn and blast. Why’d this have to happen to me? At least, if it was any consolation, the rain had stopped.

He was halfway down the slippery incline when he lost his footing. He windmilled his arms to try to regain his balance, to no avail. Next thing he was tumbling and slithering through the gloopy mud, desperately grasping at roots in an attempt to halt his descent but unable to stop himself until he’d rolled and somersaulted all the way to the claggy, squelchy bottom.

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ he yelled as he managed to sit upright, caked from head to toe in wet, cloying, dripping, freezing cold filth that dripped from his fingers and matted his hair. ‘I don’t bloody believe it!’ Followed by a stream of much more profane invective.

But then his words abruptly died in his mouth as a very strange and unexpected sight caught his eye.

He reached out and raked in the dirt to uncover the rest of the shiny, glinting object whose corner was peeking up at him from the ground next to him. Something hard and small and thin and round, which he picked up and held up to look at more closely. As he wiped dirt off it, a stray beam of sunlight penetrated through the pine canopy above. It reflected off the object in his fingers, and it was as though someone had shone a golden light in his face. He gasped in astonishment.

Then, moments later, he was finding more gold coins in the mud. Dirty, but perfect and beautiful. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten of them. The torrential rain flood that had washed away part of the bank must have disturbed them from their hiding place. How long had they lain undiscovered in this remote and little-travelled neck of the woods?

Suddenly, Ross Campbell’s unlucky tumble and getting clarted up to his oxters in muck had become the best thing that had ever happened to him. As fast as he could stuff the coins into his coat and trouser pockets, more kept appearing all around. Within minutes he’d collected dozens of them. It was so incredible he was laughing and hooting to himself like a kid. When he’d loaded all he could carry into his pockets he struggled back up the slippery bank with his booty, vowing he’d return to dig up the hundreds more he was certain lay buried there.

The journey back to the van seemed to take him about half the time. He was so dazed and ecstatic that he barely noticed the brambles and treacherous terrain, and didn’t think for a single moment about his filthy, wet clothes or the fact that under them he was soaked to the bone. Reaching the van, he piled into the driver’s seat and dug some of the coins from his pocket to re-examine more closely. They were old, really old. He was no expert, but he was certain they must be worth a ton of money. A bloody fortune, lying there in the mud for hundreds of years, just waiting for him to come and find it.

Ross could hardly contain himself. The day’s task was almost completely forgotten. He’d just tell his business partner Ewan that the weather was too awful to get the job done, and promise to return as soon as possible. He had the exact location marked on his GPS device.

In the meantime, he needed to get home as fast as he could. A hot shower and a cup of tea, before he caught his death. Then he’d spend the rest of the afternoon, and probably the evening, cleaning up, counting and re-counting his glorious loot. What might the coins be worth? Hundreds of pounds each? Thousands? The numbers escalated in his head until it made him dizzy. Fantasies were already forming. He could picture himself quitting his job, for a start, then getting out of this godforsaken shithole and making a bee-line for somewhere with warm sandy beaches, palm trees and beautiful bikini-clad girls, maybe never to return. Fuck Katrina and her dentist! He’d show them.

He’d need to get the coins independently valued, of course. The internet would only tell him so much. But it would have to be discreet. And preferably done by an expert in another part of the UK, maybe in Edinburgh or London. Someone who’d never be told the precise location of the discovery. Nor would anyone else, certainly nobody local. As it seemed that he alone knew about this, he meant to keep it that way. The last thing Ross wanted was for others to come searching. And with the Loch Ardaich development project so conveniently put on hold, he’d have plenty of opportunity to come back here as often as he liked to hunt for more treasure.

With a trembling hand Ross started up the van engine, then took off in a rush. He couldn’t wait to get home. This was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most wonderful and exciting day of his entire life.

It would also prove to be one of the last. He didn’t know it yet, but he would never live to see his fantasies come true. Nor did he have any idea of the chain of events his strange discovery was about to set in motion.

If Ross Campbell had not found the gold coins that had lain hidden all this time in the forest, people would not have been hurt or killed. None of the things that were about to happen would have taken place. And the men who were soon to be drawn into the web of danger would not have become involved.

One man in particular. A man Ross Campbell would never meet.

A man called Ben Hope.

But Ross Campbell had found them, and now the storm was coming.

Chapter 1

Eleven days later, the clouds were gone and the sky was bright and blue. But none of the assembly who had gathered at the cemetery in the village of Kinlochardaich to watch the interment of the coffin was smiling.

What an unspeakable tragedy. Ross Campbell had been a much-loved member of the community, even if he had been going through some personal ups and downs in the last year and not always the cheerful and carefree soul he’d once been. It was hard to keep secrets in this close-knit community, and everyone knew that his former long-term girlfriend, Katrina Wilson, was now living with someone else in Inverness. Then again, those who had spoken to Ross in the few days leading up to his untimely death reported that his mood had radically improved all of a sudden. For reasons that remained unclear he’d seemed strangely happy, even jubilant, as though he’d finally broken free of the emotional troubles that had plagued him since his relationship breakup. It seemed so ironic that, just as his life appeared to have turned a corner, he should fall victim to such an awful accident.

It was ‘Patch’ Keddie, the one-eyed birdwatcher who was one of the community’s more colourful fixtures, who’d discovered the body floating face-down among the rushes at the edge of Loch Ardaich while on his solitary wanderings in the countryside with backpack and spotting scope, four days earlier. Shocked and upset by the grisly discovery, Patch had hurried to a spot where he could get phone reception and called for an ambulance, but it was already far too late.

It appeared as if Ross must have been exploring the lochside when he’d slipped and fallen into the water. His surveyor’s van was later found quite a distance away, parked by the fence of the Highland Manor development site. This had sparked much puzzled debate about what Ross was doing down at the water’s edge, a good quarter of a mile or more from the location he’d been surveying. Perhaps he’d wandered over there just to enjoy the magnificent views. In any case, having never learned to swim he had little chance of escaping the freezing cold water. He wasn’t the first victim to have been claimed by the depths of the loch.

Among the mourners at the graveside was Ross’s partner in the firm, thirty-four-year-old Ewan McCulloch. Head bowed and grim-faced, Ewan was visibly shaken to the core by the loss of his business associate and friend. Though they’d only worked together for five years, like most folks in this close-knit community with relatively few incomers they’d known each other for nearly all of their lives.

Other attendees at the funeral included Ross’s stricken parents, who now lived near Inverness. Mrs Campbell had wept bitterly throughout the gruelling church service and was so crippled with grief that she could barely remain upright to watch her only child’s coffin go into the ground. Her husband bore his agony in stoical silence, but the expression in his eyes was ghastly to see.

Katrina Wilson, the ex-girlfriend, was conspicuous by her absence. Nobody was terribly surprised that the untrustworthy little cow had not bothered to show up. Also present were Mairi Anderson, the surveyor’s office administrator; William and Maureen Reid, who ran the Kinlochardaich Arms, the village’s one and only pub; Rab Hunter, the local mechanic who’d known both Ross and Ewan since primary-school days; Patch Keddie, tears streaming from his one eye; and Grace Kirk.

Grace was a couple of years younger than Ewan, had attended the same primary and secondary schools and then left for a time to pursue a police career in the big city. She’d returned to her birthplace a few months ago and was the only female officer in the area. Today she was off duty and out of uniform, hiding her reddened eyes behind dark glasses as she stood in the back of the crowd with her hands clasped and shoulders drooping.

When at last the gut-wrenching ceremony was over, there were solemn handshakes and hugs and commiserations and more tears before the assembly began to disperse. Poor Mrs Campbell had to be virtually carried away to the waiting car. Ewan had been hoping to say a few words of thanks to Grace Kirk, but when he turned away from the grave he saw she’d already gone. He shared a quiet moment with Rab Hunter, who clapped him on the arm and said, ‘Rough times, man. You okay?’ Once you got past the intimidating muscles and the piratical beard and earring, Rab was a big softy at heart. His eyes were full of tears and he kept blinking.

‘Yeah, I’m okay,’ Ewan lied.

Rab shook his head and blinked once more. ‘I still cannae get my head aroond it, you know? He was here with us, and now he’s gone.’

‘I can barely believe it either,’ Ewan replied, truthfully this time. He, too, was having a hard time adjusting to the reality of Ross’s death. They parted, and he walked slowly back across the cemetery grounds and past the old grey stone church to where he’d parked his van. It was a little white Peugeot with the company name on the door, identical to the one Ross had been driving. Ewan didn’t have a car of his own. His only personal vehicle was a rundown old camper, currently off the road and somewhat neglected. Maybe one day he’d get around to it.

As Ewan headed homewards he was asking himself the same question he’d been asking for days: What on earth was Ross doing down there at the lochside? He couldn’t have been lost; he knew the area as well as anyone. Ewan didn’t believe he was admiring the scenery, either. Ross couldn’t have given a damn about such things. Had he been drinking? A couple of times in the months since Katrina had left, Ewan had thought he could smell alcohol on Ross’s breath during work hours. Maybe he should have reached out to his friend, offered support, but he’d said nothing at the time. Now he feared that Ross’s emotional state might have been more serious than anyone had supposed.

At the back of Ewan’s mind was the unmentionable thought that wouldn’t go away.

Suicide. Was it possible?

Surely not. Ross wasn’t the type to top himself. But then, every man has his breaking point. What if Ross had simply reached his? What if the apparent uplift in his spirits during his last few days – and yes, Ewan had noticed it too – was really just a desperate man’s last-ditch attempt to disguise the bleak despair that was consuming his heart and soul?

If that was true, then Ewan had truly failed his friend.

‘Oh God, Ross. I’m so sorry.’

When Ewan got home to the small house in which he lived alone, he went straight to the kitchen and poured himself a stiff whisky from a bottle a client had given him the Christmas before last. He wasn’t much of a boozer, but this could be a good time to take up the habit. He sat down heavily in a wooden chair at the table, gulped his drink and then poured himself another. Mixed up with his grief was the bewildering issue of how the business was going to continue with just him as a solo operator. There was already too much work for two partners, especially if the massive undertaking that was the golf course project went ahead. Ross’s sudden absence left a gaping hole that threatened to swallow Ewan up, too.

He had been unable to do any work since receiving the news of the death four days ago. He had no plans to go into the office tomorrow either. Nor the next day, most likely. Let’s just sit here and drink, he thought. By the time he’d finished the second whisky the edge was coming off his pain and he decided that a third would help even more. He knew he’d probably regret it, but what the hell.

Ewan woke up in the darkness. The phone was ringing. What time was it? He must have been asleep for hours, and had no recollection of having moved from the kitchen table to the living room couch. His head was aching and his mouth tasted like the contents of a wrestler’s laundry basket. He should never have drunk so much. Bleary-eyed and disorientated, he managed to get up, turn on a light and stumble across the room to answer the phone. Who could be calling?

He picked up. ‘Hello?’ he croaked.

There was silence on the line. Ewan repeated, ‘Hello?’

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