“He’s been in more barroom brawls than anybody else I know. And he treats people like shit. Rumor was, his first wife had a lot more black eyes than hot dinners from him. After he got the bullet from the Clarion, he set up as a freelance agency in Liverpool. He was bonking this really nice woman who worked for the local paper there. He persuaded her to bankroll him in his new venture. He even promised to marry her. On the day of the wedding, he left her standing like a pillock at the register office. That’s when he took off to Spain. After he’d gone, she discovered he’d left her with a fivegrand phone bill, not to mention a load of other debts. Then her boss found out she’d been putting him down in the credits book for payments for jobs he hadn’t actually done, so she got the boot.

“Maybe Kevin’s got something on Neil, something to keep him in line with,” I suggested.

“Dunno,” Richard mumbled through his Chinese. He swallowed. “I guess it was just that Jett wasn’t bothered enough about who did it to hold out for me.”

“Perhaps Kevin wants to make sure it’s a whitewash job,” I tried.

Richard snorted with laughter. “You mean he thinks he can keep Neil on a leash? He thinks he can tell Neil exactly what to do and Neil will do it? Shit, he’s in for a rude awakening. Neil will feather his own nest, regardless of Kevin laying down the law.”

“Yes, but at the end of the day, Neil’s not a rock journalist. You know exactly what stones to turn over, where to start looking if you wanted to dish some dirt, to get behind the headlines to the real story. But Neil doesn’t even know where to start, so to some extent, he’s going to have to go with whatever Kevin feeds him. And they’ve got him right where they want him, you know. According to Jett, Neil’s got an office and everything right there at Colcutt. He’s actually living there while he does the book.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Richard pounced. “Looking after number one. And he’s the only one who will come out of this on the up, I’d put money on it. Kevin might think he can control Neil more than he could me, but I’d give you odds that Neil will end up biting the hand that feeds him, just you wait and see.”

“Sounds like a bad deal for Jett.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time Kevin’s done that. And it won’t be the last.”