‘Mustn’t jump to any conclusions yet,’ Shelton cautioned them. ‘It’s a political memoir and he’s an important politician. You’d expect his name to come up.’

‘Playing Devil’s advocate now?’ Wolf sneered.

‘But it tells us one thing,’ Ben replied to Shelton. ‘Abbott’s no longer using false names.’

‘You called it right,’ Shelton admitted. ‘Looks like this is the real deal.’

‘Now for the real acid test,’ Ben said. ‘Pick one mention of Dudley’s name at random and let’s see what comes up.’

Shelton shrank the document down so that its hundreds of pages looked like a mosaic of tiles and the text was unreadably tiny. He clicked blind somewhere in the middle, then hit ‘Find Next’ and scaled the pages back up to full size.

The line of text containing the chosen search term read:

‘Also present at the ceremony that misty November night at Karswell Hall, clad in his mask and robes along with the rest of us, was Privy Council Member Tristan Dudley.’

Wolf gnashed his gold teeth in disgust. ‘And there you have it.’

Ben said, ‘Not much question about it now. He’s one of them.’

Chapter 50

It was too late to return to the mainland that night. Dinner with Shelton was a trio of wagon-wheel-sized frozen pizzas piled with peppers, olives and pepperoni, which they ate in the War Room at a large table cleared of junk, papers and screens. There was so much to eat that neither Ben nor Wolf could finish it all, hungry as they were. Shelton cleared his entire plate in just a few bites, helped himself to his guests’ leftovers and washed the gargantuan meal down with four bottles of ale. Over food they talked about the series of discoveries that had led to Tristan Dudley becoming their new primary target, and where the investigation was to proceed from here.

Chewing loudly through a mouthful of pizza crust, Shelton asked the obvious question: ‘What are you going to do to him?’

‘We’re going to pay him a visit and take him aside for a private chat,’ Ben replied. ‘Then we’re going to ask him nicely to reveal what he knows about his fellow club members.’

Wolf eyed Ben sceptically across the table. ‘Hold on, let’s just think about that for a minute. This guy is one of Britain’s most senior politicians. That means he has a team of several armed close security guys watching his back twenty-four-seven, provided at taxpayer expense. His house will be more invasion-proof than Fort Knox. No terrorist on earth could ever hope to get near enough to take a shot at him, let alone snatch him away from there. And you want to walk in, scoop him up and have a “private chat” with him about the fact that he’s a murdering Devil worshipper who sacrificed his own daughter to a cult.’

Ben said, ‘Yes.’

Wolf shrugged. ‘Oh. Okay, then. Just checking.’