But his troubles with Annie were only just beginning. Her teenage years were a nightmare of one narrowly avoided scandal after another. At thirteen she was picked up by the police after a store detective caught her with hundreds of pounds’ worth of shoplifted cosmetics. At fifteen she was one of a group of underage kids found in a car, stoned out of their minds on cannabis and ecstasy. At seventeen she became involved in a fracas where someone got zapped at a rock festival with an illegal stun gun; and just months later, having somehow managed to get into Sussex University to study some trendy non-subject, she was in trouble again – this time after bombarding one of her first-year professors with obscene poetry and nude pictures of herself.

This incident was an early indicator of Annie’s burgeoning nymphomaniac tendencies. It would not be the last. As ever, only her father’s considerable influence in high places, a lot of money discreetly changing hands and a great many assurances that it would never happen again saved him from public embarrassment over the affair. He was skating on thin ice with Annie. He’d long feared it was only a question of time before his dear daughter landed him in it so badly that not even his most powerful friends would be able to get him out.

Annie had celebrated her nineteenth birthday three months ago. Soon afterwards had come the moment that her father most dreaded.

Dudley had been at home alone one morning at the family residence near Goring-on-Thames when the anonymous letter had arrived in the post. Clarissa was off somewhere, doing whatever it was that Clarissa did. When Dudley opened the envelope and examined the letter, he was extremely glad his wife hadn’t been the one to read it – or to see the half dozen enclosed photo prints.

The letter was a blackmail demand, crudely written but all too clear in its message. It seemed that Annie’s latest exploit was to get herself photographed cavorting with a gang of what could only be described – judging by their tattoos which were on obvious display in several of the explicit images – as neo-Nazis. She was obviously a willing participant in the gymnastics, which involved up to four bulky, swastika-festooned skinheads at a time. Their faces, if nothing else, had been blacked out, but in all six of the shots hers was clearly identifiable.

The letter made clear that these were only a sample of the photo album, promising to send copies of all of them to the national media unless her father coughed up a payment of one million pounds to a bank account whose number was scrawled at the foot of the page. He had a week to deliver – or else.