Connor felt content in general with the way things were going. He liked working alongside his old mucker Benedict, who was a character who’d originally trained as an accountant. Benedict was always neatly suited and booted and never called Ben. He was also a neat freak, which tickled Connor, but his organizational skills and his flair for skirting the laws of the land really helped the business they were in.

Benedict also kept the books of some other businesses who practised on the borderline between bent and kosher – brothels pretending to be tanning salons or massage parlours or saunas; bars and pubs who got their stock off the backs of lorries fresh from the continent. He provided fake paperwork and references for people who needed to prove to banks that they had a reliable income before granting them a mortgage.

The deals were coming in nicely and the latest scam Benedict had cooked up was one where he arranged mortgages for people who didn’t even exist; so far, he’d arranged twenty million pounds’ worth of fake loans, so Connor and him had netted a commission of two hundred thousand. And the millennium bug that had scared everybody shitless before the New Year had never happened. So everything was sweet.

Kylie was proving a problem though. Mum always clashed with Connor’s girlfriends, but she had really taken against Kylie. Mum had given her icy looks and acid remarks on Christmas Day at home, criticizing every word she said and acting as if Kylie ought not to be there. And then New Year’s Eve came around and Shauna had thrown a special millennium party. Come midnight, there Connor was with his tongue halfway down Kylie’s throat, with Mum looking daggers at the pair of them. Which meant that Kylie, rattled, had stepped up on the sofa in her six-inch heels – Mum’s sofa! – and said they were getting engaged. Which was the first he’d heard about it.

‘All the best,’ said Joey, supping his pint.

Connor took a drink then set his glass on the table. ‘So, you seen Tobias Wilkes then?’

Tobias Wilkes fronted a company for Connor and Benedict and had for quite a while been straight in his dealings with them. But then the wheels had come off in his marriage and the wife was suing him for divorce and threatening to skin him for every penny. He was hitting trouble, and because of that Connor had been watching his financial dealings very carefully. He had spotted what he feared; Tobias was skimming off the top and hoping he wouldn’t notice.

‘He’s coming down here at eight,’ said Joey.

Connor looked at his watch. It was quarter past. ‘Then he’s late.’

‘Held up in traffic maybe.’