Resentment gave way to bitterness and depression. Not even the pleasures of the order’s periodic ritual ceremonies could satisfy him any longer. He’d started drinking too much, acting erratically, marring a lot of friendships that could have stood him in good stead. The downward trajectory of his falling star gathered speed. Following a string of bad investments and worse marriages his finances had grown progressively shakier. First the London flat had had to go; then he’d been forced to fire the private security detail that he felt a man of his importance should have looking after his personal safety. As though that weren’t damaging enough to his ego, now his accountant was dropping hints that the Pyecombe house might have to be put on the market, as well.

It had been in a moment of despair over the downturn in his fortunes that the idea had come to him to blow the whistle on all their dirty secrets. He knew enough, and had gathered enough evidence over the years, to sink the lot of them, kick off the biggest scandal in British political history and cause more suicides than the Wall Street Crash.

He’d considered going straight to the press and sparking off a bidding war to snap up his sensational story for a large one-off payout. But he soon rejected the idea, firstly because doing so would automatically reveal his true identity, and secondly because there was a much better way of doing it. One that would become a source of ongoing revenue for a long time to come. A gift that kept on giving. He’d be making six- or seven-figure royalties off of it for the rest of his life, while he drank champagne in his millionaire mansion and cruised around in his sparkly white private jet.

He was going to write a book.

Once he’d dashed off the first hundred pages of his manuscript, crammed with a juicy sampler of the even more incendiary revelations to come, Abbott had entered into secret dialogue with a literary agent, Andrew Laverack of the London firm Seaward & Laverack. His pitch was simple: he was privy to information that could topple the whole establishment. But he had no intention of selling it cheaply.