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insistent. She was escaping the media – at least for the time being – and she didn’t want a police officer living with her either. She’d given the lead detective on the case – a big, good-looking DCS called Mike Bolt – her new address, and promised to keep it secret, even from her immediate family, until The Disciple was in custody. The consultant psychiatrist working with the police on the case had also suggested it might not be a bad idea for Amanda to get well away from the scene of her trauma, so Mike Bolt had reluctantly agreed (not that he had much choice), and had arranged for the local police to keep an eye on her. She also had a panic button, with a direct line to the nearest police station, installed at the property.
    ‘You don’t think The Disciple’s going to come after me, do you?’ Amanda had asked Bolt. ‘There’s no way I could ID him, so I can’t represent any sort of threat.’
    ‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ he’d told her, in a way that suggested it was possible he might, ‘but it’s always best to stay on the safe side.’
    And stay on the safe side she had. She’d picked a location deep in the Scottish Highlands, in a village miles away from the nearest town, paying three months’ rent upfront. Only one person outside the police knew she was here, an old friend she trusted with her life – someone she knew would never betray her, either deliberately or otherwise.
    She kept a low profile in the village, staying out of the pub and exchanging nothing more than brief formalities with her neighbours, none of whom recognized her, thanks to the fact they’d kept her picture out of the newspapers. Occasionally, one of the villagers would ask what a pretty young thing like her was doing living alone in the middle of nowhere, and Amanda would reply that she was writing a book, and wanted to be in a place that would give her the necessary inspiration. Further questions were fended off politely but firmly, and it hadn’t taken long for people to get the message.
    As it happened, Amanda had told them at least part of the truth. She
was
writing a book. Or planning one, anyway. It was something she’d wanted to do since childhood, but had never got round to doing, and she’d been working on the plan until late the previous evening, which was why she’d risen so late today.
    Amanda’s semi-detached stone cottage was the only house with two floors amongst the sprinkling of ugly, chalet-style, 1960s bungalows that made up the village of Sprey, and she loved to stand at her bedroom window looking out at the thick pine forest that started just beyond the tiny Presbyterian church. It was late October, and though winter was fast approaching, a watery sun was shining in a sky patchy with white clouds, and it looked as though it was going to be a nice afternoon. For Amanda, it was a toss-up between actually starting the first draft of her novel – something she kept putting off – or going for a nice long walk in the hills and woodland round her temporary home, or down by the river that ran beneath the village.
    It wasn’t much of a decision really, and she was just about to go and make herself some brunch and a decent pot of coffee to give her sustenance for the walk ahead, when she saw something that made her stop.
    A car she didn’t recognize – a black four-wheel drive too clean to have been out here long – was slowly passing her front gate, and the driver was looking right up at her. It was hard to see what he looked like because of the distance between her house and the road, but she was certain he wasn’t one of the local cops, and she didn’t like the way he turned away from her just a second too quickly.
    As the car disappeared behind the hedge at the end of her front garden, a knot of tension formed in Amanda’s gut, and she realized she was grinding her teeth, a habit that she seemed to have picked up in the three weeks since George’s murder, and one she knew she had to