SIX men drove their hired van into the bleak vastness of Fenwick Moor in Ayrshire having travelled 20 miles from Glasgow.
A short time later the van made the same journey back to the city minus one of its occupants, Bristol drugs courier Paul Thorne.
Thorne had arrived in the city earlier that day with a £30,000 consignment of the drug amphetamine sulphate – worth £82,000 in today’s money.
Once the drugs were sold in Glasgow to local dealers, his job was to take the cash payment back to his masters in Bristol.
His companions that Saturday afternoon in early October 1988 included four Glasgow men and a Spaniard called Ricardo Blanco.