With 144 kilometres per hour reading on the clock and the road zipping towards them like a black ribbon Wolf said, ‘Okay, now that I’m officially dead, what’s our next move?’

‘You worked for these people. What’s your take?’

Wolf considered. ‘We don’t know their real identities, where they live or where to find them. So that’s a dead end. The one lead we do have is Karswell Hall itself. Whoever owns the place, you can bet they’re part of it. So we hit the place, grab ’em, take ’em away somewhere where nobody can hear us getting rough on the bastards, make ’em talk, find out what we want to know, go from there.’

Ben had already considered that option, and rejected it as too risky. ‘As you found out yourself, the hard way, the place is highly surveilled. A hidden security camera gets one glimpse of us coming, it gets straight back to Saunders and the first thing he does is make a call to Scotland.’ He shook his head. ‘Can’t happen. Besides, for all we know, the place isn’t even used as a residence. Could be a serious false move for us to make. But it’s not the only lead we have.’

‘I’m all ears.’

‘The man you were sent to kill. You told me he lives near Brighton?’

Wolf replied, ‘Seven miles north, to be exact. Just outside a nice little West Sussex village called Pyecombe.’

Ben pulled up his mental map and calculated distances and times. The Franco–Spanish border to Calais was about eleven hundred kilometres, just over seven hundred miles. Once they were across the Channel, Dover to Brighton added another couple of hours to the journey. He estimated that without too many delays, if they drove like wild men, they should reach their destination sometime not long after midday.

Sometimes the world was just too damn big for Ben’s liking.

He said, ‘If the target was one of their own people, inducted into their cult or whatever the hell this is, then he’ll have useful information. He obviously knows enough to make him a threat to them in some way. Why else would they want him dead?’

‘Makes sense,’ Wolf said. ‘But there’s just one problem. He’s a marked man. Odds are he’s dead already.’

Ben knew that Wolf was right. ‘That’s a chance we’ll just have to take. Who is he anyway?’

Wolf smiled. ‘Well, seeing as I’m no longer bound by the constraints of professional discretion, I don’t mind telling you. His name is Abbott. Anthony Abbott.’

Ben took little interest in current affairs and paid scant attention to the news. But some names stuck more in his mind than others, and a distant bell rang from deep within his memory. ‘Sir Anthony Abbott, the Member of Parliament?’