Here I was, looking out over the cityscape with the dawn creeping up like a thief. And I was watching it alone. Who did I have to share it with? No one. Who even gave a damn about me? I hadn’t seen my mum and my sister, Jessica, in person in almost a year. Virtual face-to-face calls over the computer or my smartphone were as close as I’d come to them in too long. What was my answer to their every dinner or outing invitation? I’m too busy, I can’t get away, I have matters of state to attend to. All excuses.

Here’s the thing. Mum and Jessica made me … uncomfortable. There, I’ve admitted it. My family were a constant reminder of where I came from. Not the fact that I was born in Meadowview – I was proud of that. No, my sister and my mum were born in Meadowview and would die there, and they had no problem with that. Their lack of ambition irritated me. Embarrassed me, if I were honest. Too many times I’d offered both of them a way out of the area and their comfort-zone lives. They’d both turned me down, again and again, until I’d stopped asking.

So here I was.

My friends were few.

My true friends were fewer.

And the woman I had once killed for, and would gladly die for, hated my guts.

So come and greet me, dawn. I have an unwavering, ominous feeling that the next twenty-four hours are going to determine the course of the rest of my life.

Time to make a call from my burner phone. The first couple of times, the call went through to voicemail. It was only on the third attempt that it was accepted. ‘Jarvis, it’s me. What the hell is going on? Why didn’t you answer the first time?’

‘Tobey, Eva has forbidden any and all communication with you. It’s generally accepted around here that you killed Dan, and Eva has made it very clear that you are no longer a part of the Outfit so I had to find some place private to speak to you. You don’t have many friends left in the organization. Scratch that. You don’t have any friends.’

Oh, so it was like that, was it? Well played, Eva. The woman was leaving me with decreasing room to manoeuvre.

‘Including you?’

‘Since Eva demoted me, you and I share the same boat,’ said Jarvis sourly. ‘Shane “the Weasel” Stoats is her new lieutenant and that leaves me nowhere. No one wants to be seen with me in case getting demoted is infectious. One way or another, my days are numbered.’

‘What d’you intend to do about that?’

‘Nothing – for the moment,’ said Jarvis. ‘Anyway, why’re you phoning me? I thought we agreed you wouldn’t for a while.’

‘I need your help,’ I admitted.