The same unmarked black car was waiting for them in the street outside. They sat in anticipatory silence as they headed towards the target, no longer needing to discuss the plan.

The driver turned off the motorway at exit 9, and after a few miles he pulled over to the side of the road. The three black-clad men climbed out of the car and watched silently as the driver turned around and left them.

William had calculated that, on foot and in the dark, it would take around forty minutes to cover the five kilometres before they reached the edge of the forest. He took the lead, while Ross brought up the rear. None of them spoke as they progressed slowly down the narrow road, alert to the slightest danger. Only a startled hare paused to take a closer look at the passing strangers, while an owl didn’t stop offering his opinion.

When the dense barrier of the forest loomed up in front of them, William raised a hand, the sign for Ross to take over. He moved quickly to the front, taking NP’s modified video camera from his backpack. He switched it on and stepped cautiously into the thick undergrowth. The three of them advanced one step at a time, like soldiers on a slow march, aware that a single foot fault could trigger an alarm, light up the grounds and give Faulkner more than enough time to escape.

The long circuitous route demanded by the video camera took them nearly an hour to complete. When they reached the river, they crossed the bridge cautiously, and not long afterwards the forbidding grey stone building came into view, sharply silhouetted in the moonlight.

As they were about to emerge from the forest, Ross gestured firmly to his cohorts with a wave of the hand to get back down. Two guards were patrolling the north side of the building, the wide beams of their torches making sweeping circles that illuminated the deserted grounds.

Ross watched every step the guards took before they turned left at the west end of the house and continued on their way. Thanks to Juan’s research, he knew how long it would be before the guards returned. He pointed silently to a small clump of bushes fifty yards from the house that had been highlighted on the map supplied by the zealous gardener. They set off again, this time crawling through the undergrowth, reaching the copse only moments before the guards reappeared. They passed by them so closely that even in the dark Ross could see they were armed. One had a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Colonel Parker would have put him on report and confined him to barracks.

Ross watched carefully as the guards kept to a designated path so as not to set off an alarm that would wake their paymaster. He knew roughly how much time they had to make it to the kitchen where they could hide beneath a steep flight of stone steps, allowing the guards to pass a second time before they attempted to enter the house. They began to weave their way across the lawn towards a well-trodden path, aware they’d left themselves only seconds before the guards would reappear. They wouldn’t have needed a torch to spot the uninvited trio frozen like rabbits in their headlights.