‘You might find that difficult.’

‘I bet you I wouldn’t.’

Abbott’s gaze swept the room. To Doyle he said, ‘I could take out two of these guys before the other two even had a chance to draw their guns. After that I give myself good odds.’

Doyle held out peace-making hands, cigarette smouldering between two fingers. ‘Slow your roll there, chief, there’s no coercion involved. The last thing we want is an unwilling employee on our hands.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ said Abbott. ‘I am not and never will be an employee.’

Doyle looked at him. ‘I have been asked—’

‘I don’t care what you’ve been asked. I didn’t get into this game to start working for a small-time gangster in Derby.’

He knew he was pushing it. Why? He wasn’t sure. Only that he had a sense of having gained the upper hand and wanted the leverage.

Just don’t push it. Just don’t push it.

‘I was thinking of offering you a job,’ said Doyle, with a note of warning in his voice, as though it would be unwise for Abbott to reject it.

‘I’m going to decline,’ replied Abbott.

Big long drag on the cigarette. Eyes squinting through smoke regarded Abbott impassively. ‘Then we have ourselves a problem.’

‘We do?’ said Abbott.

‘Because Kilgore was very keen that you should stay.’

Abbott, still thinking, Who the fuck is Kilgore? pretended to consider. ‘I tell you what, I need a piss. Show me the way to the toilets, let me have a think.’

‘Marky will show you,’ Doyle indicated.

‘Just directions will do.’

‘Indulge me, eh?’

Abbott thought it best to go with it, nodding sure. The two of them trooped off to the loo. At the door to the gents, Abbott stopped. He turned to Marky. ‘I trust you’re not coming in,’ he said.

‘Happens I need a piss,’ said Marky, who in contrast to his boss’s estuary tones, had a northern accent. Halifax direction, if Abbott wasn’t very much mistaken. One thing you could say about being in the forces: you got to recognise an accent.

In they both went. There was only one urinal, so Marky used the cubicle while Abbott stood, having a piss but also gathering himself, thinking that he somehow needed to extricate himself from this situation, every instinct he had screaming at him to get out before his gossamer-thin cover was blown.

He finished his piss, could hear that Marky was doing the same in the cubicle. ‘Do you want me to wait, darling?’ he called.

And then the door to the toilet opened and in came a tiny little girl, maybe eight or nine years old, dragging a plastic bucket and mop.

She looked at Abbott, who looked back, assessing her with the same eyes he’d used for the Somalian boy back at his B&B in Finchley.

But coming up with a very different answer this time.