Forty minutes went by before they reopened. The coffin came back out, making its final journey towards the cemetery on the pall-bearers’ shoulders. In its wake was Dudley, pale and tight-lipped, clutching his wife’s shoulders as she dabbed her face with a handkerchief. The bodyguards flanked their employer as the sad procession led towards Annie Dudley’s final resting place.

Ben and Wolf watched from a distance as the burial ceremony ran its course. When the coffin containing her daughter’s body was lowered into the grave, Clarissa Dudley made a terrible wailing sound that pierced the air and seemed to linger for minutes afterwards. If she had only known that the man standing beside her, lovingly clutching her hand, had as good as murdered Annie himself. The other mourners at the graveside just hung their heads. Many of them had probably known Annie personally. Whatever her faults might have been, they were visibly in shock that she was gone.

The minister said a few more words. Minutes later the burial was over, but for Clarissa Dudley the pain had only just begun. The crowd slowly dispersed and returned to their cars. The Dudleys and their security detail were the last to leave. Annie’s mother seemed to be having difficulty walking and her husband and one of the bodyguards helped her back to the Bentley. She was crumpled, spent, utterly destroyed. The agony etched on her face looked as though it had been carved there with a knife, so deep the scars would remain forever. Ben’s heart went out to her.

Two of the bodyguards got in the front of the Bentley and the others returned to their Jag. Tristan Dudley kissed his wife, gently closed her car door and walked around to the other side. As he was about to get in, he paused. Turned to gaze back in the direction of his daughter’s fresh grave. And gave a little smile before he slipped inside the car and pulled his door shut.

Ben looked at Wolf. Wolf’s jaw was tightly clenched and he said nothing. Both thinking the same thing.

Then the Bentley rolled away with the Jaguar following.

‘Let’s do this,’ Wolf said. He started the engine.

The Bentley and its escort led away from the church and moved at a stately pace through the quiet, leafy country lanes. Nobody would have noticed the grey estate car tailing them way back in the distance. It wasn’t a long journey. On the far side of Hanbury Dudley’s driver turned off the road and halted outside a pair of gilded gates set into the high, ivied stone perimeter wall of a sizeable property. The gates glided remotely open to let the two cars through, and then glided shut again behind them.