Abbott’s career had briefly flared up in public knowledge when he’d been a member of the Shadow Cabinet, back when Labour were still in power, and come to prominence over some political flap or other whose details Ben had barely been aware of at the time and had since all but forgotten. As far as he was concerned, the whole politics thing was a chimpanzees’ tea party.

‘That’s the man. Just another over-the-hill grey-haired arsehole in a suit who nobody in the normal world gives a shit about.’

‘I’m surprised a man like him didn’t have private security protection.’

‘Couldn’t afford it any more,’ Wolf said. ‘The guy’s finances were in the shitter, or so I was told. He was on his way down.’

‘For all that, it’s not every day a British MP is found murdered. Hard to keep it discreet.’

‘It would’ve been reported as a burglary gone bad,’ Wolf said casually. ‘State the country’s in now, who wouldn’t have believed that story? If I’d nobbled him in Surrey instead of West Sussex, I’d have had to bring the body back to the house afterwards. The bosses specifically wanted it that way.’

‘What about the Lexus?’ Ben asked. ‘If you’d killed Abbott at Karswell Hall and driven the body back to his house, how could anyone account for his car being somewhere else?’

Wolf smiled. ‘You don’t think they’d have got someone to take care of that little detail? I wasn’t the only guy working for them.’

‘Neat little organisation.’

‘Better believe it. Though you can’t always count on things going smoothly. The kids and nanny turning up was a pain in the arse. I’d have had to wait for them to leave first. No way I was going to hurt them.’

No women, no kids. Wolf’s golden rule again.

Ben asked, ‘So once they were out of the way, your job was to turn the place over to fake a robbery?’

Wolf shook his head. ‘Not my department. The hitter does what he does, quick and neat, and then once the job’s done they bring in a clean-up team to take care of the rest. Whether it’s to leave false trails for the cops, or search for whatever it was that got the target into trouble to begin with. Money, hot information, data files, incriminating evidence, you name it. The bosses didn’t involve me in those kinds of discussions.’

‘And so you had no idea why they wanted Abbott dead.’

‘Not then, not now. You said it yourself, Ben. He was obviously a threat to them in some way. But that doesn’t tell us a lot.’