£100k. What would he spend the money on? He had his eye on a black Jeep that he saw most mornings when he was walking RiRi. Or he could take the boys to Ibiza for a few months, live it large, fuck some models and shit.

Except he wasn’t going to blow it. Guys like Snowglobe would do that, spend the lot on beer and trainers. Jerome was smarter than that. This £100k was going to be seed capital for his new venture. £100k could buy a lot of drugs, enough product to get Jerome properly into the game. Fuck messing around with a bunch of kids, the smalltime weed-dealing he’d been planning. Even before Georgia told him about the reward he’d decided against using Larry and the other posh kids; they were too much of a liability, although the posh-kid market was highly lucrative. He could make a fortune selling skunk and coke to the middle-class schoolkids of TW9. He could turn £100k into £500k easy. And then . . .

‘This time next year, RiRi,’ he said, ‘we’ll be millionaires.’

The dog groaned.

Jerome pulled up on the edge of the car park and looked up at the hotel. This place was alright, but when he was a millionaire he’d have a suite at the motherfucking Savoy.

There was the VW camper, right in the corner of the car park. He said, ‘Wait here, alright,’ to Rihanna and strode over to the van, weaving between the Beamers and Mercs and Audis – a lot of fucking Audis – and finally approaching the camper cautiously. The curtains were drawn across the back windows and the front cabin was empty. He peered around. There was a guy out front of the hotel lobby but his view of Jerome was blocked by the van. No one else around. He pressed his face against the glass and tried to peek behind the curtains but couldn’t see a thing. He tried the door, just in case the crazy bitch had accidentally left it open – which happened a lot in his experience – but it was locked up tighter than a nun’s pussy.

Was the kid in the camper now? He tried to think what he’d do if he’d snatched a little kid, which was not the kind of thing he’d ever do, no way. Though if it came down to it today, snatching this brat from the crazy kidnapper woman might be necessary. He had a pleasing vision of himself as a one-man liberating army, storming the hotel in a Call of Duty stylee, grabbing the kid and busting out of there, straight to the police station where he would collect his one hundred K and be a hero, all those feds standing slack-jawed and stunned that Jerome Smith had done what none of those lame motherfuckers could manage.

But first, he had to find her.