‘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.’
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.’
‘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
Roland Seaward poured himself another generous measure of Hennessy from the cut-crystal decanter on the sideboard, returned to his armchair and slumped heavily into it with a deep sigh. He was alone in the large and tastefully cluttered living room of the comfortable London home he shared with Georgie, his wife of nineteen years, spending the evening much as they always did. The soft, soothing piano tones of a Satie Gymnopédie were playing in the background. The rain pattered gently on the windows outside. Roland would normally have been winding down nicely by this time of the evening and getting ready for bed, but he was feeling uptight and restless.
Sinking back into the plush leather wing chair and nursing his cognac he murmured to himself, for the hundredth time that day, ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. What the hell is that stupid sod up to?’
Georgie glanced up distractedly from the book she was reading. Force of Circumstance by Simone de Beauvoir. Georgie was a voracious reader who devoured two books a week and could have written lengthy critical essays on each and every one of them. Literature was a big part of her life, as it was her husband’s. She asked, ‘Hmmm? What’s that, darling? What’s who up to?’
Roland shook his head and waved it away, not wanting to bother her with his troubles. ‘Oh, never mind. I’m sorry. I was just thinking out loud.’
Georgie shrugged and returned to her reading. Roland savoured another sip of cognac and went back to brooding about the argument he’d had that morning with his business partner, Andrew Laverack. He hadn’t been able to think of much else all day.
It wasn’t like Andrew and Roland to argue. The two men were generally evenly matched in temperament, were of a similarly sanguine disposition and shared the same sort of background in the pub
lishing industry. At times, they even regarded one another as friends. Disputes had been a rare thing during the nineteen years since they’d set up the Seaward & Laverack Literary Agency together, its offices housed within a handsome Victorian building off Leonard Circus. They had a large client list of authors whom they represented, specialising mostly in autobiography, political memoirs, and just the very occasional mainstream celebrity bio, on a selective basis. Georgie was the agency’s highly efficient administrator. When new prospective clients came along, whether it was with a completed manuscript, a patchy work-in-progress or just an idea for a book, Andrew and Roland would both assess the project and discuss whether or not they thought they could negotiate a deal with a publisher on the author’s behalf, for their usual 15 per cent cut. Their decision-making process was easy and laid-back.
But the unfinished manuscript that had landed on their desk three weeks earlier had bucked that harmonious trend, causing the business partners to come to loggerheads for the first time Roland could remember. He had read the manuscript with unmitigated alarm, felt sickened by it and been utterly amazed when Andrew’s response to it had been the exact opposite. While Seaward wanted no part in the book or its author, Laverack was all for getting him signed up as soon as possible, in the belief that this was a sure-fire hit that could transform the agency’s fortunes. It was certainly true that they hadn’t had a big success in a while, and money was tighter than it used to be.
Their strongly differing viewpoints on the matter had grown into something of a bone of contention between the two men. Finally, that morning in Roland’s office, the building tension had flared up into a full-blown argument.
‘I wish you’d see sense on this, Roland,’ Laverack had told him. ‘It’s not every day that a well-known public figure comes forward with something this sensational. You don’t need me to remind you how slow things have been of late.’
‘No, I don’t, though I suppose you’ll keep reminding me anyway,’ Seaward snapped back. ‘And you’re perfectly right, God knows the agency could do with a boost. And it will come. I believe that.’
‘This is it, right here,’ Laverack countered. ‘Our big opportunity. How can you be so obtuse? Are you seriously intent on letting this slip through our hands? If we don’t get him signed immediately, I can think of at least twenty of our competitors who’ll snap this book up without thinking twice, and laugh all the way to the bank.’
‘I resent being called obtuse, Andrew.’
‘Meanwhile, how much longer do you think we’re going to survive, eking out a percentage from a load of dusty old memoirs nobody wants to read? There’s a market out there for something new and exciting, and it’s about time we started catering for it.’
‘If this kind of sick trash is what today’s readers hanker for, then God help them. Let them go and read it courtesy of someone else. It’s not what this agency is about.’
‘It’s about making money, Roland,’ Laverack replied hotly. ‘It always was. And guess what, these days everyone else is doing it except us.’
‘Oh, I’d love to make a ton of money, believe me. But not on these terms, Andrew. It’s not our style. More than that, it’s simply too hot for us to handle.’
‘What are you talking about? Controversy sells!’
‘Controversial is one thing. This is entirely another. It’s not even in the same league. The claims this man is making, these wildest of allegations, he’s either insane or he’s on drugs, or both. If we represent this, we’ll be the laughing stock of the trade. It’ll be like that sports presenter fellow who claimed he was the son of Christ on live TV.’
‘And got a lot of publicity out of it, as I recall.’
‘Except this is a thousand times more extreme,’ Seaward protested. ‘Not to mention, it leaves anyone remotely involved with it open to all manner of libel litigation. And we’ve only seen a sample of the manuscript. Who knows what kind of dynamite the finished article might contain?’
‘So what? That’s his business. Anyhow, he’s got enough sense not to bring the book out under his real name. We’re the only ones who’d know his true identity.’
‘All the more reason why we could get our fingers badly burned in this thing. These are powerful people he’s threatening to expose.’
Laverack huffed. ‘The chance of a lifetime and you want to walk away.’
‘I’m sorry, Andrew. I’m just not comfortable with this.’
‘At least take some more time to decide.’
‘We’ve been talking about it for a fortnight. What more is there to say?’
‘Go home tonight and sleep on it. You can do that, can’t you?’
Seaward had finally relented and agreed that he would. ‘But I won’t change my mind.’
And now, sitting here tasting the burn of the Hennessy on his tongue, he still felt the same way. Because how could he not? It was crazy. Seaward wondered out loud, ‘What is he thinking?’
Georgie had heard enough of his one-sided conversation. She laid down her book and fixed him with that ‘firm but kind’ look that she did so well. ‘Roland, you’ve been acting preoccupied all evening. Hardly said a word at dinner. Come to think of it, you haven’t been yourself lately.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘I’ve held my tongue about it until now, but enough is enough. You have to tell me what’s eating you. Out with it.’
‘I had an argument with Andrew,’ he admitted. ‘Over a prospective client.’
‘That’s not like you two. So what is Andrew thinking?’
He blinked. ‘What? … I … no, I don’t mean what’s Andrew thinking. Well, that too. But mainly I meant, what’s the client thinking.’
Georgie asked patiently, ‘So who is the client?’
‘Anthony Abbott. You remember he sent us a submission three weeks ago?’
Georgie nodded. ‘Yes, of course. His political memoir.’ Her job was to take in the submissions, but she seldom read any of them. She had no idea what Abbott’s manuscript actually contained.
Her husband rolled his eyes. ‘If you can call it that. Took me a week to get around to reading it. Now I wish I never had.’
‘Why, is it that terrible?’
‘Oh, it’s very eloquently written. That’s not the problem. He makes some, ah, revelations. Rather explicit ones.’
She raised a knowing eyebrow. ‘I see.’
Georgie was most likely thinking prostitutes, kinky S&M secrets, dominatrices and the like. ‘Not that sort of revelations,’ Seaward told her. ‘Something else, even more scandalous. Deeply disturbing. And dreadfully dangerous.’
She looked bewildered. ‘Why on earth haven’t you mentioned this to me before?’
Seaward wasn’t a believer, but his wife had been raised strictly Church of England and still held fast to her principles. He replied, ‘Because I was concerned that it might upset you, dear.’ He swallowed the last of his cognac and wanted more, knowing that she wouldn’t let him off the hook until he’d told her everything.
‘Upset me?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Very well. In short, Abbott’s book isn’t really a memoir. It’s a whistleblower confession purporting to reveal the existence of some kind of Luciferian cult within the most powerfully connected circles of British society.’
Georgie went pale with shock, as though someone had slapped her. She stared at him. Her book slipped off her lap and fell to the floor, and she made no attempt to pick it up.
Seaward went on, ‘He alleges, quite candidly and in the most appalling detail you can possibly imagine, that certain high-up and very well-known members of our political and business establishment are involved in practices that I can only describe as occult ritual, witchcraft and demon worship. There. I’ve said it. Not that I feel much better for getting it off my chest. I hope you understand why I felt it better to hold back from telling you earlier. I know you have sensibilities about t
hose kinds of things.’
Georgie went on staring at him for a drawn-out moment, unsure whether to believe him. She cleared her throat. ‘And you’ve actually read it? It’s real?’
‘As though I’d be making this up. Yes, I have read it. At any rate, I’ve read the hundred-page sample that’s saved on a computer memory stick, sitting right there in my briefcase. The remaining three hundred juicy pages are yet to be revealed. And I don’t care, because I want no part of it. Tomorrow morning I’m telling Andrew that, as senior partner, I’ve decided that we need to turn Abbott down. And once I’ve done that, I’m going to destroy the memory stick and put it out of my head forever.’
She was still staring at him. ‘Do you believe it, Roland? Can it be true?’
‘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 …’
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