“Jimmy Nunn was thick as pig shit,” he said. “Best wheels man in the business though. How come you’re asking about Jimmy Nunn? He ain’t been seen for donkey’s years. His missus pegged it, I know that. She was a proper slag—the only man I knew that never had her was my brother, and that’s ’cos he was bent.”

Jack had no memory of Trudie and he’d already heard bad things about her from his Aunt Fran, but to hear scum like Tony Fisher slagging her off in such a horrific way was more than he was prepared to listen to. An uncharacteristic temper began to boil up inside him which, for now, he kept a lid on because there was more he needed to know.

“Trudie would come to the club and hang around the biggest wallets till one of them took her home. If it was a quiet night and she got no takers, she’d wait around for me to finish work and we’d take a bottle of something up into Arnie’s office. He had a great big leather sofa, but she liked me to shag her on his overpriced, antique, French-polished, poncey fucking desk. It was his pride and joy—he’d say, ‘Don’t touch my desk with your filthy hands.’ And I’d think, ‘I ain’t, bruv, but Trudie Nunn’s been all over it with her filthy arse!’ Ha! He had no idea! God, I ain’t thought about Trudie Nunn in years.” And with that image in his mind, Tony grabbed his groin and left his hand there until the memory passed. “What a bleedin’ shame she’s dead. A visit from good old Trudie would go down a treat right now.”

If looks could kill, Tony would have fallen stone dead right there in front of all the prison guards. As Tony grinned his horrific psychopathic grin, Jack glanced down at his own hands in his lap—his fists clenched tight and his knuckles white. He was filled with a simmering rage that he’d never felt before.

“And Jimmy Nunn . . .” Tony went on, oblivious to what was going on in Jack’s mind. “The last time I heard Jimmy’s name mentioned was in connection to that armed raid on a security van in the Strand underpass. That was one of Harry Rawlins’s fuck-ups.” He bellowed laughing. “Harry bloomin’ Rawlins! I’d never seen my brother so overjoyed to see someone put six feet under. He spent a fucking fortune on the wreath.” Tony mimed the size of it with his hands, then went on to explain how every criminal in London had felt the same way as Arnie did. “Harry Rawlins was the only man who could make my brother nervous. He’d never been arrested for so much as a parking ticket but, Jesus Christ, he was like an octopus with tentacles in everyone’s business. There was nothing that man didn’t know about the criminal world, and that’s what made him so dangerous. If you’d ever worked for the son of a bitch, you’d never be safe again.”