He stopped to take a swig from the cheap vodka he liked to buy on his way home to help him through the nights where he wasn’t intending to go back to the club or to chair a meeting with his team. He couldn’t go back to the club tonight because he‘d been barred. He cursed himself for allowing the rage to get the better of him. It was a sign of weakness. Great leaders of men, truly great leaders, must demonstrate control. The harmless half-wit at the club meant no harm when he laughed at him. After all, he was a fucking simpleton and laughing was all he ever did. No, the poor half-wit just picked the wrong moment to laugh at the missed ‘pot’. Before he had time to calm himself, the rage battered the half-wit five times with the butt of the cue on each side of his head. He wobbled like a Weeble before eventually falling onto a pint glass, which took his eye out of the socket. If he was honest with himself, it was worth getting barred for the thrill of the beating and the smell of the blood. He’d only be barred for a day. He could always go back tomorrow. No one would miss the half-wit. No one would stop him going back. This was his patch. That was his club. He enjoyed their fear.

No, the half-wit didn’t concern him much at all. He was angry with himself, with his human weakness; the same weakness that nearly destroyed him all those years ago. The same weakness he thought had died in prison, only to creep up on him again when she turned fifteen. When he sat in the darkness on a Northumberland hillside and his eyes became increasingly distracted from his target, writing in the study, and instead watched her grow into a woman in the glow of the upstairs room.

He had allowed it to consume him for a brief moment when he watched the young boy undress her and take advantage of her. So he followed him and realised he was nothing more than a flash young footballer who was cheating on her. He was not good enough for her. When he parked his car across the country road, his intention was merely to block the boy’s path: to warn him off; to stop him doing that to her. But when he wouldn’t listen to reason, the rage made him pay attention. The rage took the pair of tin snips and a baseball bat from the boot of the car. The snips removed the boy’s lips; the bat ended his football career.

The weakness came back today when he called at the house. He knew she was alone. He knew Cormac was out. He had watched him walk up the hill with Harry. No, the weakness made him knock on the door. When she answered, he could see she wasn’t wearing anything under her top. He could see from her eyes that she liked him. Why wouldn’t she? He was a handsome man. A powerful man. A leader of men.