“So I’ve read.”

Lancaster laughed. “You don’t know the half of it, love.”

“But he wasn’t regularly employed, not on their payroll?”

“That’s about it. An occasional encouragement to pay up, or deterrent against talking. You know the sort of thing.”

“He told you this?”

Lancaster laughed. “Come off it, love. It wasn’t something you discussed over a game of darts at the local.”

“But you knew?”

“It was my job to know. Keeping tabs. I liked to think I knew what was going on, even outside my manor, and that those who counted knew that I knew.”

“What do you remember about him?”

“Nice enough bloke, if you didn’t cross him. Bit of a temper, especially after a jar or two. Like I said, he was strictly low-level muscle, a boxer.”

“He used to boast that he knew Reggie and Ronnie when he was in his cups, after he’d moved up to Peterborough.”

“Typical Billy, that. Didn’t have two brain cells to rub together. I’ll tell you one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“You said the kid was stabbed?”

“That’s what the pathologist tells me.”

“Billy never went tooled up. He was strictly a fist man. Maybe a cosh or knuckledusters, depending who he was up against, but never a knife or a gun.”

“I didn’t really regard Bill Marshall as a serious suspect,” Michelle said, “but thanks for letting me know. I’m just wondering if or how all this could have had any connection with Graham’s death.”

“I can’t honestly say I see one, love.”

“If Billy did something to upset his masters, then surely—”

“If Billy Marshall had done anything to upset Reggie or Ronnie, love, he’d have been the one pushing up daisies, not the kid.”

“They wouldn’t have harmed the boy, to make a point?”

“Not their way, no. Direct, not subtle. They had their faults, and there wasn’t much they wouldn’t do if it came right down to it. But if you crossed them, it wasn’t your wife or your kid got hurt, it was you.”

“I understand Ronnie was—”

“Yes, he was. And he liked them young. But not that young.”

“Then—”

“They didn’t hurt kids. It was a man’s world. There was a code. Unwritten. But it was there. And another thing you’ve got to understand, love, is that Reggie and Ronnie were like Robin Hood, Dick Turpin and Billy the Kid all rolled into one, as far as most East Enders were concerned. Even later, you only have to look at their funerals to see that. Fucking royalty. Pardon my French. Folk heroes.”

“And you were the Sheriff of Nottingham?”

Lancaster laughed. “Hardly. I was only a DC, a mere foot soldier. But you get the picture.”

“I think so. And after the day’s battles you’d all adjourn to the local and have a jolly old drink together and talk about football.”

Lancaster laughed. “Something like that. You know, maybe you’re right. Maybe it was a bit of a game. When you nicked someone fair and square, there were no hard feelings. When they put one over on you, you just filed it away till next time. If the courts let them off, then you bought them a pint next time they came in the pub.”