‘Hey, how do I know what to do with a baby?’ Jeff said, awkwardly clutching the wriggling child. His pudgy little legs were running in empty air. ‘This is the closest I’ve ever come to one.’

‘I don’t know either,’ Ben admitted.

‘Then what the hell are we going to do with the poor little sucker?’

‘Same as we’ll do with her,’ Ben said, glancing at Chrissie. ‘Hand him over to the police and hope for the best. In the meantime, they can’t stay here.’

Jeff nodded. He ducked his head round the door of the banquet room. ‘Tues, mate. Need you to run and fetch the Bentley.’ He tossed Tuesday the keys.

Tuesday wasn’t especially pleased to be relegated to hostage extraction duties, but when he saw the baby he put down his rifle and clutched it in his arms as though he’d been doing it all his life. Ben remembered that Tuesday was the eldest of a whole brood of younger brothers and sisters. The baby settled, but he still didn’t look happy.

Jeff said, ‘What’s he pulling that sour face for? Doesn’t he know we just rescued him?’

Tuesday said, ‘He’s cold. Get me a blanket or something to wrap him up with.’

Minutes later, Dudley’s car screeched around the side of the house. Ben, Wolf, Jeff and Reaper closed up the banquet room. The prisoners locked inside were yelling and banging on the doors and hurling chairs at the windows in a frantic bid to escape, but they weren’t going anywhere. The five men helped Chrissie into the back of the car and Tuesday climbed into the passenger seat nursing the swaddled baby as Reaper got behind the wheel. He would drive around to where the van was hidden, transfer into it and then retreat to a prearranged location where they’d all meet up again later. The cops would eventually be scratching their heads wondering what the late Tristan Dudley’s Bentley was doing abandoned near a stately home in Surrey – but by then they’d have bigger things to worry about.

‘That’s that taken care of,’ Jeff said as the Bentley took off.

Ben was just as relieved to see them go. Not just because of the need to protect Chrissie and the baby. It was because they didn’t want their friends to have to witness what was about to happen next. This was down to the three of them.

‘Now we finish it,’ Wolf said.

Chapter 63

They hadn’t talked a lot about this moment but each of them knew it would come. And now it was here.