The night was suddenly deathly quiet. Clarissa Dudley lowered the gun. She took a tissue from her dressing gown pocket and spent a moment wiping her prints off the parts she’d touched. Then she tossed it to Ben. He wanted to express to her again how sorry he was, but there were no words. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen anyone go through what she was going through and bear such intensity of unspeakable emotional pain with so much strength and dignity. He had decided that he admired Clarissa Dudley. He admired her very much indeed.

‘I’ll be going back to bed now,’ she said. ‘What with all these strong sleeping pills and tranquillisers that my doctor prescribed me, I might be out of it for the whole of tomorrow. For days, even. It could be thirty-six or forty-eight hours before I wake up and realise something terrible has happened to my poor husband, and call the police. I imagine that kind of timeframe would suit you fine, wouldn’t it?’

Ben sensed what she was thinking. ‘You heard what he said about tomorrow night’s event.’

She nodded. ‘And it seems to me that Tristan’s little friends might panic and pull the plug, if they knew he was dead. News travels fast.’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘And I’m sure you want them all to be there.’

‘Very much so,’ Ben said.

‘And so, I can buy you some time.’

‘Thirty-six hours should be more than enough for us to do what we have to do.’

‘After which the shit’s going to hit the fan anyway,’ Wolf said. ‘We’ll be long gone by then.’

She nodded again. ‘That just leaves the matter of the security team. For this to work, I suppose we can’t let them go until this is over. But if they’re innocent as you say, I wouldn’t want any harm to come to them. Will they survive for thirty-six hours in their present condition?’

Ben replied, ‘If there were somewhere secure they could be contained for that long with some basic provisions to keep them going, they’d be fine until the police rescued them.’

‘There’s the old coal cellar,’ she said. ‘We use it as an extra food store. There are tins of things and stacks of bottled water and soft drinks. It has a chute where people used to pour the coal in. The trapdoor is solid and it has a strong bolt. I don’t think anyone could get out of there.’

‘Untie ’em and dump ’em down the chute,’ Wolf said. ‘They might wonder why the hell we’re doing it, but they won’t have a clue. Could work.’

‘We’ll take care of it,’ Ben told her. ‘One more thing. We need the Bentley.’

She gestured back towards the house. ‘Take it. You’ll find it in the garage with the keys in it.’