‘Don’t you utter your filthy God’s name in my presence,’ he snarled at his wife. ‘Yes, damn it, it’s true. Every bit of it. And I don’t give a shit what you have to say about that.’

She reeled on her feet, as though she felt faint, then turned and abruptly threw up in the grass. For a few moments she was bent over double, clutching her sides and racked with spasms. When she had nothing left inside, tears of agony were spilling down her cheeks. ‘This isn’t possible. How you could have killed our little baby?’

‘Baby, baby, baby,’ Dudley scoffed, flushed red with feral anger. ‘My dear, darling daughter was nothing but a curse on me. She hated me. Pushed me to the edge. Did everything she could to destroy my career. I should have got rid of her years ago. I had the connections. I used them. Because I can. And now she’s dead, I’m happy! Hear me? I’m happy! So are a lot of very important people who can make good things happen for me! Get it?’

His wife listened quietly. The haziness had now completely vanished from her eyes and she looked strangely composed. Beyond tears. No more emotion left to give.

Then she replied, ‘Our daughter might have had her problems. She wasn’t perfect. But she was my little girl. I loved her more than life itself. And you took her away from me, to help your career? I’ve always known that you were a shallow and ambitious man who only really cared about himself. But never, not in a million years, would I have believed you were really this much of an evil monster. I … I just can’t understand how you could do this to us.’

He screamed at her, ‘No, of course you don’t fucking understand, do you, you stupid, hopeless bitch. You haven’t got a clue about anything! You’re just like all the rest of the pathetic low-down scummy trash of the world! I should have delivered you to the Grand Master along with your fucking slut of a daughter!’

Clarissa absorbed his words without reaction and was silent for a long moment. Then she looked down at Ben’s weapon lying on the ground. She stepped towards it and picked it up. Her husband was panting and snorting like a tethered bull and staring at her as though he wanted to strap her to an altar and slice her heart out. She ignored him and said to Ben, ‘I’ve seen this gun before. It belongs to our security team. Are they involved in this, too?’

‘If we thought they were, Mrs Dudley,’ Ben replied, ‘they’d be dead now.’

‘Please tell me who you are.’

‘We’re just two people trying to do the right thing.’

‘What will happen after this?’