‘Of course not. These things don’t happen in real life. It’s like something out of a bloody Dennis Wheatley novel. Abbott’s either lost his mind or he’s so desperate for money he’ll say anything, regardless of whatever libel suits he’s liable to bring down on himself if a word of this nonsense were to be published. All I know is, we can’t possibly represent him. What does he take us for?’

Seaward gazed into his empty glass, thought about refilling it but then decided that he’d had enough to drink. ‘I’m sick and tired of talking about the whole rotten business. Let’s go to bed.’

Soon after they retired upstairs, Roland Seaward was snoring loudly in a place far away from demons, witches and occult rituals. But Georgie Seaward could not sleep, and she knew that she had to see the manuscript for herself.

Deep in the night, she quietly got out of bed. Careful not to wake her husband she sneaked out of the bedroom and tiptoed down the stairs to the study where he kept his briefcase. She switched on a side lamp and quietly closed the door.

Sure enough, rummaging around inside the case she came across a small manila envelope, hand-addressed to the agency with a Brighton postmark. She recognised it as the same one she’d opened herself, weeks earlier. The envelope contained a black memory stick and a polite, formal covering letter signed by Sir Anthony Abbott. ‘Dear Sirs …’

Georgie removed the memory stick and saw that it had a sticky label attached to it. An eight-digit passcode was scribbled in her husband’s writing on the label. She carefully inserted the drive into a port on Roland’s desk computer. As the screen flashed into life she sat down, entered the passcode to open the document and began to read. The book’s title sent a shiver down her spine:

THE PANDEMONIUM CLUB

An hour later, she had devoured every word and was breathless with horror. With a shaking hand she reached for the phone and dialled a number.

The voice that came on the line was her brother’s. He sounded half-asleep, but anxious that his older sister was calling him in the middle of the night.

‘Georgie? What’s up? Is something wrong?’

Georgie Seaward replied, ‘Jasper. Listen. You’re not going to believe this.’

Chapter 25

‘We’re going to get caught,’ Tuesday had said anxiously into his co-pilot’s headset mic as the old Cessna buzzed across the choppy blue-green waters of the English Channel towards the UK south coast that morning. With no customs clearance and maintaining total radio silence, what they were doing was as illegal as the activities of the drug smugglers and gun runners who plied their trade in and out of Europe by sea and air. But it seemed that Tuesday was the only one worrying about it.