‘He’s one of them, but they wanted him dead?’

‘If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have called me in.’

‘Okay. What then?’

‘The chance of getting to finish the job that night was looking more and more remote, but I hung around just in case. Thought maybe if the guy wandered outside on his own for a smoke, or went back to his car to get something, I might be able to move in. I’d have killed him without making a sound. Made him disappear like he’d never been there.’

‘Spare me the details. Just tell me what happened.’

Wolf went on, ‘I’d have waited and watched all night, if I’d had to. As it turned out, I only had to wait half an hour or so. Just before twelve, the guests all disappeared. I wondered what was up. Then right on the stroke of midnight, the lights in the house all went out and next thing I knew, the guests were all filing outside, wearing these robes and masks, like you saw. I thought I was seeing things. They made their way in a weird kind of procession down the back lawn towards the lakeside and gathered there, all facing towards the island in the middle of the lake. Then it started. You know the rest.’

‘You saw nothing else?’

Wolf shook his head. ‘After they killed the girl I sprinted back to my car. Unluckily for me, I got tagged by a security camera hidden in the woods. Caught red-fucking-handed like an idiot. Which is what now makes me a target. I guess I know too much. They might even have guessed that I managed to snap their little theatre show on film.’

Ben remembered the way Wolf’s London apartment had been ransacked as though someone had been searching for something important. Now he understood what they might have been looking for. He asked, ‘The old man with the cane. Was he one of the spectators by the lake?’

‘He was there, all right. Limping along with the rest of the bastards.’

‘What about the other one – Curnow, or Saunders, or whoever he is?’

‘I can’t know for sure, Ben. That’s kind of the point of the robes and masks, isn’t it? For all I know, Curnow was the sicko in the red robe and the horns who cut that poor girl’s throat. All I can say for certain is he was at the house. They’re in it together, the whole bunch.’

Ben’s thoughts flashed back to Grace, and for a horrifying instant he imagined her being kidnapped and whisked off to Karswell Hall to be tethered to a statue and slaughtered like a sacrificial lamb.

He said, ‘We have to stop them, Jaden.’