Moody mystery in Scotland: Mist, miles, and Orkney on the horizon.
Episode 1
Discreet travel is difficult when accompanied by armed officers.
An escort through the Wellington airport hadn’t been requested, but the New Zealand police insisted.
Bleary eyed travellers stare. He ignores them, until he senses the woman watching. He half turns, allowing himself the faintest smile. Not for her exactly, but for the night they’d shared.
Get a grip, man. Focus on what’s ahead.
He clears security. A phone in an adjacent tray buzzes as he collects his carryon. His breath falters. And he thinks of the woman again.
He hadn’t expected the memory of her to follow him.
The departure gate is busy. People laugh or mumble softly. Someone drops a boarding pass and swears under their breath.
His phone rings.
That alone is wrong.
He steps out of the queue, mind jumping ahead to a dozen scenarios. He answers without checking the number.
“Where are you?” A familiar voice. Tight. Controlled.
“At the gate.”
A pause.
“You may be exposed. Treat it as real.”
The words land harder than he’d like.
“Define exposed,” he says, keeping his tone even.
“It’s unconfirmed, but the indicators aren’t good,” the voice replies. “We suspect they know who you are. And tracking your movements.”
A young family shuffles past, a child dragging a backpack twice her size.
“How?” he asks.
“We haven’t identified that yet.” Another pause. “Working on it.”
“When was this flagged?”
“Before you landed in Wellington. We’re still chasing validation.”
A heat settles in his chest, low and sour.
“And now?”
“Your flight stays the same,” the voice continues, quicker now. “But from here on assume you’re being monitored. Closely, constantly.”
He looks through the window at the plane waiting on the tarmac.
“What changes?” he asks.
“You,” the voice says. “Trust nothing. No one. No matter how ordinary.”
His mind slips back to the night before. The woman. And the most random approach he’d ever experienced.
Had it been staged?
Part of him says no. Experience says otherwise.
He nods, even though no one can see him.
“Understood.”
The line goes dead.
For a moment he stands still, the noise of the terminal cascading around him.
He straightens his jacket and rejoins the boarding line.
Same destination. Same seat.
But the ground has shifted. And he knows it will keep shifting until something finally breaks.
Episode 2
He lands in Edinburgh just after dawn, body out of sync with the clock on the wall.
Thirty two hours of travel has folded time in on itself. The gentleness of a New Zealand summer has been replaced with a Scottish winter that is as unforgiving as it is insistent.
The air is heavy with moisture that clings to everything it touches. Cold seeps through his clothes, his skin, to settle amongst the tiredness in his bones.
He collects the hire car, downloads the maps, and drives.
As he leaves the city he stays vigilant, checking mirrors and traffic. He knows this isn’t how they would track him. But some habits are too ingrained to drop.
Edinburgh gradually disappears. Heading into the Highlands, colour drains from the world. The clouds, rivers, lochs, all flatten into a lifeless grey. After the lush greens and blues of New Zealand, his eyes struggle to adjust.
Mist thickens without warning. Visibility drops. The road narrows. He slows, but the car still slides slightly on the bends, tyres searching for grip.
His knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.
There are no other vehicles. No people. Not even a solitary sheep or cow, just narrow lanes and poor weather.
Daylight is fading by the time he reaches the turn-off. He checks the map again, runs through the instructions in his head. Everything aligns.
He stops at the end of a track amidst peat-dark heather and wiry grass. A stone cottage hunkers low on the earth, as if it had sprouted from the land. He sits in the car longer than necessary, reluctant to leave what little warmth remains.
When he finally opens the door, the cold bites hard. The remoteness, the silence, threaten.
He checks his phone.
No reception.
Nothing moves.
A sound he doesn’t recognise drifts through the valley. Carried over water, stone, distance, it slides on the surface of the wind.
He walks towards the cottage and pushes against the heavy door. The timber resists before giving way.
His muttered curse is swiftly muted in the dampness.
There is no sign of use, recent or otherwise.
Abandonment leaves traces. This has none.
The place has been stripped back to neutrality; to a barrenness that invites inspection but offers nothing in return.
He leans against the wall and laughs. It is not a pleasant sound.
“Well played.” His voice is rough with fatigue and frustration. “I’ve flown halfway around the world chasing a signal that was just empty noise.”
Episode 3
The false trail isn’t what bothers him. That’s nothing new.
It’s how neatly everything unfolded. How easily he was led to the Highlands, how precisely they counted on him following.
What else do they know about him?
He taps the steering wheel with impatient fingers.
Since when had his disciplined approach become a weakness?
He slams on the brakes; idles at a junction that barely qualifies as one. Stone walls press in on all sides, catching the headlights in tight, deliberate lines. Uncertainty has made him indecisive.
He reverses, turns sharp right.
If that is how they want to play the game, he’s up for it.
A second decision quickly follows. He won’t call in. Not yet.
He doesn’t know when he became a puppet, or who’s pulling the strings—his own side, or theirs.
The drive north is slow, the lanes narrowing the further he goes. It’s midnight when he reaches Thurso, and too late for hotels. He pulls on another layer of clothing and spends the night in the car, searching databases in bursts as the signal allows.
He follows misaligned timestamps, a fragment that should have been scrubbed, a location that keeps surfacing where it doesn’t belong.
Every so often, he runs the engine for warmth.
One name keeps reappearing, like a half-smudge on a glass door where there shouldn’t be one. Tied to ferry manifests, short-term lets, temporary registrations, it only makes sense if the islands are being used as a corridor, not a destination.
At first light, he drives the short distance to Scrabster.
Orkney is a guess, but a deliberate one. He books the ferry, choosing the slower option without admitting why. Flights leave traces. Ferries just move.
He leaves the car where it won’t be noticed and boards under a name that isn’t new, but isn’t his own.
The crossing is rough. The hull groans as waves slam, the sea roars and heaves in breathless surges. He stands alone on the deck. The wind blasts through his coat and keeps drowsiness at bay. He’s lost count of the hours since he last slept in a bed.
The island offers no welcome. Just stone, wind, and borrowed light. The grass is muted green and weather flattened. A place stripped back to endurance.
The few people he passes in the streets of Kirkwall ignore him. He checks into a modest guest house, leaves his bag and heads back outside.
There is a sense of arriving too early, before the scene can absorb him. With no crowd to dissolve into, no rhythm to borrow, his presence hovers like a drone over a quiet street.
He makes one small inquiry under an ordinary pretext. Just a name, offered lightly. The response comes back smoother than it should.
He doesn’t pass it on. Doesn’t write it down. Lets it sit, unshared.
Daylight finally gives up its pretence. The land is wide and exposed, beaten down by gales and darkness. There’s nowhere to hide and nothing to soften the cold.
He turns back toward his accommodation.
Tomorrow will be tighter. Less room to move. Fewer margins.
He’s already stepped outside the boundary.
Somewhere between the Highlands and the ferry, the game has changed. He doesn’t name it, just adjusts his pace to fit.
Episode 4
The phone rings. He doesn’t stop walking to answer.
“You’re not where you’re supposed to be.” The voice is hard, impatient.
He lets the silence stretch.
“That’s not how this works,” the voice adds. “You don’t improvise.”
“It didn’t go to plan.” He checks his watch, not for the time, but to create distance. “But you know that.”
“You may be hidden, but you’re not invisible.”
The line goes dead.
Undercover has always meant answering to two masters. One expects loyalty. The other demands silence.
Usually, the difference is obvious.
This time, it isn’t.
He buys a coffee and heads across to the harbour. Rigging clatters in the icy squall that blasts straight off the North Sea. He gulps the drink while it’s still hot and squashes the paper cup.
The quay is deserted. Straining against the wind, he looks about. Standing still is hard work; he won’t last long.
A few fishing trawlers return, seagulls flapping in their wake. A workboat loads farm supplies. Ordinary. Unremarkable.
A nudge from behind. The approach was unnoticed, despite the man’s bulk. A stained sweater glistens with ocean spray beneath the open coat. The man leans close; the smell of salt and diesel and cold crowd the narrowed space.
“You don’t belong here.” The brogue is measured, the vowels drawn out, the outcome already decided.
He turns towards the water, then back to the man’s eyes. They’re the same colour as the sea—blue and grey, never settling.
“I’m not so sure about that.” He laughs.
“You’ve been warned.”
The man steps back and is gone almost immediately.
He waits for the internal check that usually follows a warning.
It doesn’t come.
He shifts his footing against the wind, not certain what’s different.
Episode 5
Instinct. He’s always trusted it.
Something here is telling him to leave. His body knows it. The pressure in his chest, the muscles braced for something he can’t name.
Yet when the message arrives, he leaves the warm bed and dresses in haste.
Be at the slipway. Ten minutes. Don’t be late.
The slipway is further than the time he’s been given. He breaks into a jog, his heavy coat dragging with every step. The path is rough and uneven in the dark.
The sea and the land are black and unlit. In the carpark, he can just make out a van and two men lugging bags down to the water’s edge. The bags fall with a dull, unforgiving thud when dropped on the ground.
His approach is hidden beneath the sound.
One man turns suddenly.
“Who are you?”
“I’m…” he starts.
“Doesn’t matter.“ The man clicks his fingers. “You’re in the wrong place.”
The other man steps in close and the world changes. A hard punch, low and mean, aimed to unbalance. His boots slip on wet algae. His shoulder hits the concrete. Pain flashes white.
Frigid water creeps into his socks.
He doesn’t reach for his phone. He doesn’t reach for anything. Undercover means you don’t get to be rescued without becoming evidence.
A dog barks close by.
“Hamish! Leave it!” A woman’s voice.
The men freeze for half a second too long.
He twists, grabs the edge of the slipway, hauls himself up with a grunt he hates. One man lunges. The other swears.
He stumbles toward the sound of the dog, lungs burning, shoulder screaming.
A shape appears at the top of the slope, indistinguishable from the night, just a slightly different shade of black.
He guesses it’s the woman.
“Is everything alright?” she calls.
He doesn’t answer. He keeps moving.
By the time he reaches the road, the van is already reversing, tyres spitting grit.
No one follows him.
Which is worse than being chased.
He stands there shaking. Part cold, part adrenaline, part something else.
What just happened?
If his cover was blown, why did they let him go?
Episode 6
In the morning his shoulder throbs. He can’t lift his arm properly and struggles to pull on a sweater. The deep, angry pain masks the uneasy feeling in his belly.
No messages. No contact.
Just silence; clean and deliberate.
He tries not to pace around the small room. Pacing is for people who don’t know what to do.
Outside a dull sky hangs low. Drizzle blurs the edges of everything, hiding the town until it’s almost forgotten.
He opens his phone, scrolls, closes it. He tells himself he’s waiting because that’s part of the job.
The truth is uglier.
He’s waiting because he doesn’t know which direction to turn.
Undercover is like a tightrope. You expect the sway. You expect the wind. You learn to love the sensation.
But this feels like the rope has been cut, he’s free falling and can’t see how far the drop is.
He replays the slipway in his mind—every second, every angle. The way the men didn’t rush. How they didn’t hit him again once he was down. How they let him go.
It wasn’t about the drop they were making. It was about him.
What would it take to make him panic?
What would it take to make him break cover?
His thoughts churn through the list of unanswerable questions. How was he exposed? Was it through a slip, a leak, or a hunch that landed too close to the truth? Or worse. Have his own people decided he’s expendable?
For a moment his mind flicks to a warm room and a woman’s laugh; to one night that asked nothing of him. No edge. No game.
The memory doesn’t soften him.
He resents being reminded of the choices he’s made, of what could have been.
The phone finally buzzes late afternoon.
Tomorrow. Lerwick.
No explanation. Just more movement.
He sits on the bed and stares at the screen. A quiet realisation washes over him. His confidence is fading.
He can handle danger.
What he can’t handle is not knowing whether the people pulling the strings carry badges or not.
Episode 7
He’s forgotten it’s Christmas.
Sure, all the pointers are everywhere, the tinsel and greetings. But the day itself doesn’t register until now.
Kirkwall airport is almost silent. Reluctant travellers move with little noise and even less fanfare.
Uncertainty and apprehension linger within the terminal. There’s a narrow window between the fog lifting and the winter gale rolling in. The only scheduled arrival has already been cancelled.
He sits amongst the rows of empty seats in the departure lounge. After being kept in motion so long, he’s forgotten what stillness feels like.
Yesterday, a bone-deep weariness had arrived with the latest instruction of Tomorrow. Lerwick.
Around midnight, unable to sleep, he’d finally admitted what he’s been refusing to name. This job has never felt right.
For their own reasons, both sides have kept him contained: his people, and the smuggling network he’s infiltrated.
He’s achieved nothing outside of continuous movement, amidst an endless stream of tasks that never resolve and instructions that don’t lead anywhere.
But it ends now.
In the timeless, unhurried land of Orkney, he finally sees what matters, and what doesn’t. The shift in perspective comes like cold air in overheated lungs.
Experience has taught him what both sides fear. The time to use that is now.
He balances the laptop on his knees. His fingers move rapidly on the keyboard, relishing in the sudden release.
Truth, when used in a certain way, is a blade.
He drafts a report, ccing the major agency chiefs, and feeds out small, precise truths. Harmless on their own, lethal in combination, they’re released in a way that appears incidental, almost careless.
In the wrong hands, the fragments would jam operations, expose assets, fracture alliances, and drag internal secrets into daylight. Enough leverage to make command flinch while ensuring he’s too expensive to eliminate.
He encrypts the document before uploading into the system. Logs out.
Next, he writes a text designed to strike on contact and burn forward. An operator inside the network is taking a cut and keeping it invisible. He drops the evidence. The timestamps, offsets, the tell-tale rounding errors that appear when human greed meets automation.
Bundled into a neat package it becomes something any criminal network respects: the certainty that comes from a set of numbers that can’t be argued with.
At the end, almost like an afterthought, he plants a seed. A half-detail, a sideways mention that their operation is under surveillance. He lets the implication hang like a bad smell in a confined space.
He hits send and sets his phone to flight mode.
Outside, the weather shifts. The wind changes angle. Rain hardens, then eases.
He stands, picks up his bag, and walks to the bathroom.
Under the fluorescent lights his face looks like what it is—tired, older than when he started, calm in a way that can be mistaken for coldness. He washes his hands slowly.
In the mirror he sees a young man observing him. Their eyes meet briefly, oddly weighted, then break.
The flight for Edinburgh is announced.
He’s supplied the panic, dropped the match, he doesn’t need to fan the flames. Both sides will purge. They always do. Suspicion makes sure of that.
Trust fractures first at the edges. Then at the centre.
They’ll tear themselves apart, because paranoia always needs a body; preferably a dead one.
He joins the short queue, just another man travelling at Christmas. The flight takes off. The island stays hidden beneath the heavy clouds.