Throughout his career, he’d kept his eye out for opportunities. Playing the long game had always been his tactic. And he had been playing a lot of different clients – all in the criminal arena. Just like that old Biblical parable: Some fell by the wayside; some fell on stony ground; some fell among thorns. But others fell on good ground and brought forth fruit.

And with one, he had struck gold. His client Terence Gready. Over the past twenty-five years, Gready had brought forth so much fruit. And some of it truly low-hanging.

Fox knew he had been lucky – lucky that Gready trusted him implicitly, lucky that, with Gready’s scheming mind, the Brighton solicitor had, all those years ago, set a trap, miscalculating the risk that it might one day backfire and help to ensnare him. Just like himself, Gready played the long game, too, always carefully covering his back. But, Fox knew, almost everyone, at some point, makes a mistake, even the cleverest people. The safety deposit box account was Gready’s first mistake and where it had all started to unravel.

As a hedge against ever getting investigated, Terence Gready had made sure it was always going to be Mickey Starr who took the fall, not him. With the deposit box, he’d made it look as if Starr had forged his signature. He’d also left the key in the shed, which could have been accessible to Starr or someone else. He’d been scrupulously careful not to be seen together with Mickey, and all contact they had was either by burner phone or where they would not be seen. By not having cameras and alarms at his house there was always the chance that someone, possibly Starr, could have planted the evidence that the police found. This concoction he always felt would be enough to distance himself if he was ever to be part of a police investigation.

Like so many successful criminals before him, Gready had become complacent. For many years, his network of drug distribution and, more recently, his system of importing drugs concealed in high-end classic sports cars, had worked brilliantly. Complacency had been his second mistake. He thought he could easily manipulate a jury. His third had been to entrust so much to Mickey Starr, who had a vulnerability. Stuie.

His fourth mistake, Nick Fox thought, very happily, had been to hire him as his trusted solicitor, and to confide in him over these many years. Fox knew where all the bodies were buried – or rather, in this case, where all the cash was stashed. And Gready had given him unique access to it.

With Gready now dead, there was no one standing in his way. He held all the bank account numbers, and the equally important codes to them, to access over £35 million that Terence Gready had carefully squirrelled away around the world.