It was long after midnight and they’d have an early start. Ben and Wolf had their pick of seven luxurious spare bedrooms. Ben took a bottle of Shelton’s beer to his room and stood at the open window for a while, savouring the night sky over the ocean and the rush and whisper of the waves while smoking a Gauloise, sipping beer and wondering whether or not to call Grace yet. Tomorrow would be a long day and there was no telling what it might bring. He decided that when this was over, he’d call her. They would both have a lot to talk about. Sometime after one a.m., Ben crawled into bed and was asleep seconds after his head touched the pillow.

The next morning started bright and beautiful. Ben was up just after dawn, took his customary short, cold shower and pumped out a hundred press-ups before booking himself and Wolf onto a ten a.m. flight back to the mainland. They would land in Birmingham and make it out into the countryside in enough time to beat the crowd attending the funeral.

Meanwhile, Shelton had dragged himself out of bed and was on the phone to arrange for his bald-headed chauffeur to return his guests to the airport. Once that was done, he set about doing the necessary computer jiggery-pokery to enable Abbott’s unredacted book manuscript to be copied onto Ben’s phone. Ben and Wolf each downed a large mug of black coffee, and they were ready to go. Shelton was still disappointed at being left behind, but he shook their hands and thanked them for what they’d brought him. ‘God is on your side.’

‘We’ll find that out soon enough,’ Ben replied. That was when Shelton’s phone rang. ‘That’ll be Nosferatu,’ Wolf said.

Sure enough, the driver was waiting outside. Ben and Wolf grabbed their things and made their way back through the spaceship corridors and up to the green steel door. The dark blue Mazda was parked by the church ruins, idling softly. They climbed in the back and Nosferatu took off without a word.