Somewhere past Toulouse a sign flashed by for motorway services. Ben pulled in to refuel, and after filling up bought bottles of water and some sandwiches. Ham and cheese baguettes, his old standby, with a dessert of chocolate bars for energy. As he and Wolf sat eating in the car he took out his phone and hunted through the online news networks for any mention of the unnatural death of a senior UK politician. The most recent story he found was a report from as far back as 1994, of a Parliamentary Private Secretary who’d been found dead at home following what the media called ‘an act of autoerotic asphyxiation’.

People did some very strange things. But at least that guy hadn’t been mixed up in ritual blood sacrifices, as far as Ben could tell.

He gave up his internet search and put away the phone. ‘Well, either your ex-bosses are able to keep it out of the news, or our man’s still alive.’

Wolf munched the last bit of his chocolate bar and crumpled up the wrapper. With his mouth full he said, ‘If they haven’t got the fucker yet, they soon will. And good riddance.’

‘Careful what you wish for,’ Ben reminded him. ‘We need Abbott alive.’

‘Makes me wish I’d had the chance to do the job properly when I was supposed to,’ Wolf muttered, shaking his head in disgust. ‘Knowing what I know now, it’d have been doing a service to the world. Those evil Satanic bastards.’ He said it with such intensity that it made Ben wonder if Wolf meant it in a figurative way – that what they’d done to the girl on the lake island was an evil thing to do, in the casual sense of the word – or whether his meaning went deeper. Ben remembered what Wolf had said before about dark forces.

‘Do you believe in it, Jaden?’

‘As in, do I believe the Devil exists?’ Wolf didn’t have to consider his reply for long. ‘Yeah, of course I do. Old Nick. Lucifer. Whatever name he might go by. He’s in all the religions.’

‘Some. Christianity and Islam, for sure. Judaism, Hinduism, Sufism, not so much. But you’re not religious, are you?’

‘I don’t believe in God, but that’s because I never saw any evidence of Him. If He’s there at all, you wouldn’t know it, so what’s the point in taking Him seriously? He’s just an absentee landlord. But evil is all around us, Ben. I should know. I’ve spent enough of my life in service to it.’ Wolf looked at him. ‘What about you? You blew me away when you told me about wanting to go into the Church, once upon a time. I’d truly no idea. You must have been well into all that stuff.’