Three for three, fired off just as fast as Tuesday Fletcher could work the bolt on the .338 Remington and plant the scope crosshairs on his targets from just over two hundred metres away, the other side of the lake where he and Reaper were hunkered down among the bushes. In a sniper’s world timing is everything – and being the artist that he was, Tuesday’s timing had been perfect.

And now the Pandemonium Club was about to earn its name, in a literal sense. Yelling and screaming, they broke their orderly line along the edge of the lakeside and scattered in panic. Several of them tripped over their robes, stumbled and went sprawling to the grass. A few of the more sprightly ones made a dash towards the safety of the house.

But they weren’t going to get very far. While all eyes had been hungrily focused on the spectacle on the island, nobody had noticed the three of their Brothers who had quietly stepped back from the crowd, taken off their beaked masks, shrugged off their robes and pointed the semiautomatic weapons that had been concealed underneath.

Ben Hope, Jaden Wolf and Jeff Dekker had joined the party.

A lot of organising had taken place in the last twenty-four hours. As Ben and Wolf had sped away from the village of Hanbury in separate cars, Ben had got straight on the phone. While Grace’s fate had been at the mercy of Saunders’ killers, he’d been powerless to call for the help of his closest friends and allies. Now all that had changed. And his friends were only too happy to answer his call.

Jeff and Tuesday had landed in the UK just hours later, while Jeff’s buddy Reaper Rigby had sped down from Wrexham to lend a helping hand. In addition to his sniper rifle, Reaper had brought with him another useful piece of kit that he kept stashed away for a rainy day: a military-grade RF scanner/jammer of the kind that Special Forces covert entry and counter-surveillance teams sometimes used to detect, locate and neutralise GPS locators, bugs and hidden cameras. The operation to get inside Karswell Hall was soon underway. They split into two teams: Tuesday and Reaper would infiltrate the grounds and take up position in the woods, while Ben, Wolf and Jeff would use Dudley’s Bentley to roll up with the rest of the delegates that night.