It was a rushed second shot from a warm barrel, and thus liable to be fractionally less accurate. The bullet struck a whole quarter-inch off its intended point of impact, which for Tuesday Fletcher was a poor performance. But the recipient would never know the difference. His world ended like his buddy’s, in a violent white flash with the contents of his skull instantly reduced to a fine particulate spray by the devastation of the high-velocity conical missile and the hydrostatic shock it left in its wake.

‘Top banana,’ Jeff said.

‘Pulled that one a bit. Now what?’

Jeff swivelled the binocs away from the two dead bodies towards Grace. She was standing there by her Land Rover, gaping and paralysed with horror.

Jeff said, ‘Now we run down there, try to explain to her what little we know about whatever the fuck is happening here, and convince her to come with us. Then I need to make a phone call.’

The time was one p.m. exactly.

Chapter 37

West Sussex

1.07 p.m.

Wolf answered Ben’s phone. ‘Yeah?’

The caller said, ‘Who’s this?’

‘Wolf,’ replied Wolf.

‘Who the fuck’s Wolf? Is Ben there? Put him on.’

Wolf passed the phone to Ben. ‘You’d better take it.’

Ben only wanted his bottle, but he reluctantly took the phone and recognised Jeff Dekker’s voice saying, ‘Hello? Hello?’

Ben’s thoughts were jumbled and confused from too much whisky. His first reaction was a chill of alarm that Jeff was calling him from Le Val’s almost certainly tapped line; then the bad thought came to him that it didn’t matter any longer if Saunders was listening in, because Saunders already knew the score. But then he realised that the incoming call was from another mobile, one whose number he didn’t recognise. Why was Jeff calling him on his burner, anyway? As far as anyone was concerned, it was still locked up in his safe at home.

Nothing seemed to make sense, except his certainty that he’d caused Grace’s death.

‘Ben? Is that you?’

‘Jeff? What are you calling for? Where are you?’

‘I might ask the same question,’ Jeff said. ‘Nobody’s got a clue where you went after you disappeared the other night.’

‘I’m … it doesn’t matter where I am.’ At that moment, Ben didn’t even know.

‘You okay? Sound like you’ve been at the sauce, mate.’

‘I screwed up, Jeff,’ Ben said. The sound of his old friend’s voice made him want to spill out his emotions like a confession to a priest. ‘They’re going to kill her and there’s not a thing I can do to stop it.’

Jeff could have responded in a hundred different ways, but a chuckle wasn’t what Ben would have expected. Jeff said, ‘You’re talking about Grace?’

Ben couldn’t believe that his friend could find this amusing. ‘What the hell’s so funny?’