He didn’t like Joey, who had begged him for some work until he caved. Joey was a waster from a family of them; the kid was going nowhere. And the E was a problem. Joey was dancing every weekend and by Tuesday – it was Tuesday now – he was ready to bite your head off and spit down the neck end, the hangovers were so bad.

Having been raised by a man who made his living from being fit and treating his body well, Connor despised anyone soft enough to prop themselves up with dope.

Joey winked at the barmaid as she pulled their pints. ‘Proper star, aintcha?’ he said to her. ‘You done that before, I reckon.’

The girl smiled.

Joey’s brown eyes were dancing around in his head like pinballs. His dark curly hair was stuck up in all directions where he kept dragging his hands through it. He’d be up all night at this rate, Connor thought, shooting up again and doing something fucking daft as usual. And tomorrow he wouldn’t even remember what.

‘They’ll wreck you, those things,’ Connor told him.

Connor was finding everything bloody irritating today. There he was, expanding the family fortune, keeping everything on track, and there was Dad, still boxing when he should have packed it in five years ago. Mum moaned about it, all the time. Connor loved his dad, but for fuck’s sake, why didn’t he call a halt to it now? At least Josh had never tried to encourage Connor to get into the ring. It was a mug’s game, getting knocked bandy day and night, in his opinion.

He’d seen his dad come home bent double and bleeding from fight injuries, stiff as a board for a week. He’d seen the smears of blood in the sink where Josh had spit up after taking bad kidney punches. No, he was never going to be a boxer. Running the yard at a good profit and doing a few iffy deals was about his limit.

‘Ah, you’re too bloody serious,’ said Joey, thumbing out notes and handing them over to the girl. ‘Have one yourself,’ he told her.

‘Thanks,’ she said, preening under the spotlight of his attention. ‘I will.’

They took the drinks over to their usual table in the far corner by the fire. No one ever sat in the one particular chair closest to the hearth except Connor; he was getting a name around the area as a hard nut, someone you wouldn’t want to mess with. Everyone knew his father was a champion fighter with an eighty-four-inch reach, and the son was no less dangerous, built like his dad and cool to the bone.