Ben imagined Dudley being happily chauffeured off to Karswell Hall to take part in more sadistic slaughter while his poor wife mourned at home, alone and in pain. He was feeling sickened talking to this man, and he’d heard all he wanted to hear. ‘Unfortunately, Mr Dudley, you won’t be able to make it. You have a prior engagement. With your maker.’

Dudley shrank away in terror. ‘No. I’ve done all you asked. I’ve told you everything. Don’t kill me. Please!’

‘How did you think this was going to end, dickhead?’ Wolf asked. ‘Thank you very much, have a nice evening and try to behave from now on?’

‘I’m begging you. Think of my wife. We just buried our daughter this afternoon.’

‘That’s what I like about this guy. He’s so full of consideration,’ Wolf said.

‘She’ll be upset, I know,’ Ben told Dudley. ‘To have lost not only her beloved daughter but her devoted husband, too. But she won’t mourn you for long, because she’ll soon find out all about what kind of man you were.’

The idea of Clarissa finding out the truth seemed to terrify Dudley almost as much as the threat of death. ‘Wait! I thought we had a deal!’

‘I agreed not to send your confession video to our friend Vincent,’ Ben said. ‘I never said I wouldn’t show it to Clarissa.’

‘They’ll kill her for knowing too much. They’ll tear her apart.’

‘Not if there are none of them left alive,’ Ben said. ‘She needs to know that you murdered your own daughter. I think we owe her that, don’t you?’

‘Seconded,’ Wolf said with a nod.

‘I didn’t murder Annie!’ Dudley protested. ‘I … just arranged for her to die. There’s a difference!’

‘Oh, there’s a difference,’ Wolf said.

‘It was quick! She was drugged out of her mind! She barely suffered at all!’

Wolf said in disgust, ‘Come on. Plug the bastard and let’s go.’

Ben shook his head. ‘Not here. We’ll take him to the woods and do it there.’

‘No. No!’ Dudley rasped. ‘Listen, I have money. Lots of it. Half a million pounds in cash, right there in a safe inside the house. Let me go and it’s all yours.’

Ben glanced across the north lawn to the section of the perimeter where he and Wolf had entered the property. On their way in they’d draped the tow rope from the rental car over the top of the stone wall, planning to use it to haul their trussed-up captive out of the grounds and back through the woods where they’d carry out the deed. Cold-blooded murder was an ugly thing to do. Ben didn’t like it much. But to kill Tristan Dudley was to prevent the deaths of untold numbers of his future innocent victims.