The man called Wolf had stalked his target for hours and for the moment he could go no further, waiting and hoping for the opportunity to finish the job he’d started. A job he did not particularly relish and wouldn’t have been doing unless he was getting well paid for it. A job he must nonetheless complete, lest he disappoint the ruthless men who employed him.

So far, the assignment felt like it was jinxed. It wasn’t Wolf’s fault. He’d followed the plan exactly until things had started going wrong. Which had happened very quickly, earlier that evening.

The hit was scheduled for 7.30 p.m. at the target’s home outside the pretty West Sussex village of Pyecombe, a few miles from Brighton. Abbott was expected to have been alone, but when Wolf had arrived at the nineteenth-century parsonage at the appointed hour and was concealed in the large garden preparing to make his move, he’d been interrupted by the sudden and unanticipated appearance of a gold Range Rover. The vehicle had pulled in through the front gates, rolled up towards the house and crunched to a halt on the gravel driveway next to Abbott’s Lexus.

Wolf had watched from his hiding place as the Rover’s doors opened and out spilled the target’s ex-wife in a red dress, their two young children and a twenty-something brunette that he assumed was the kids’ nanny. Wolf’s mission file contained details on the former Mrs Abbott (number three, the trophy, the most painful marital misstep of the fifty-eight-year-old politician’s career) and the two kids: little Emily, four, and her brother Paul, seven. Since the acrimonious split they now lived twenty miles the other side of Brighton, in a large house provided by the generous divorce settlement and alimony payments that Debbie enjoyed spending on expensive trips abroad. Her lifestyle habits, such as the recent fling with the ski instructor in Zermatt, were well known to Wolf’s employers; but none of the clever-dick analysts who provided the background intel had managed to foresee that she’d show up here today to mess up their plans. Typical.