‘Then, I was,’ Ben said. ‘Now, I don’t know any more. Sometimes it still calls to me, very faintly. Other times, I wonder what the hell I was thinking back in those days. Here’s what I know. If forces of good and evil have a hold over this world of ours, whatever else is out there, it’s got to be because of what’s in a person’s heart. Does it even matter whether or not God and Satan are real? If these maniacs choose to worship some entity with horns and carve pentacles on their victims’ flesh, that’s enough to give it wheels. But here’s the good news.’

‘What’s the good news?’

‘We don’t have to worry about fighting the Devil. We only have to take down his followers. Then he ceases to exist.’

‘That’s a comforting thought. Talking about a shitload of killing, though.’

‘It’s what we do best,’ Ben said. He hated that that was true.

‘We’re not the only ones with that kind of talent,’ Wolf said. ‘If Abbott’s still alive for the moment, then you can bet there are eyes all over him. First opportunity they get, they’ll make their move. Could be happening right now, even as we speak.’

‘Better get moving then, hadn’t we?’

It was coming up for four a.m. here in the south of France. The first streaks of dawn were blood-red in the east. Sunrise was still some way off, and they had twelve more hours of fast driving ahead of them before they’d reach the West Sussex village of Pyecombe. Wolf took the wheel for the next leg. He was a fast driver. Almost as fast as Ben was, and the Alpina was built for effortless, all-day-long blistering manic speed like a Rapier missile system was built for wreaking hellfire and destruction. Ben burned one Gauloise after another down to the nub and tried to relax. But the only way to relax would have been to shut Grace out of his head, and that was impossible.

‘Got to make you wonder what old Abbott did to them,’ Wolf mused as the sunrise peeked gold over the horizon. ‘I mean, what’s the stupid sod been up to?’

And as it happened, Ben and Wolf weren’t the only people wondering the very same thing.

Chapter 24

Five hours earlier