‘Hurts, don’t it, Ronnie? Stings I should imagine. Well, thanks to you one of my girls was tortured like that by your mate Willy Bolger. Now, where is he? Tommy’s mob-handed and so are we. Me and Mariah just picked up every piece of shite in the Arab quarter of the docks. So you’d better start talking or we’ll just round up your brothers and cut them ’til they tell us what we want to know. Won’t we, Tommy?’

He stared in amazement at Briony and Mariah. They stood there, dressed up to the nines without a flicker of fear on their faces. Mariah grinned maliciously.

‘By the way, Ronnie, we’ve rounded up Micky Campbell too. He’s outside in my car now with Marcenello, the Maltese hero. An Arab friend of mine is watching them for me. You know big Kousan, don’t you, Ronnie? He’s the one who chased you off his manor with a meat cleaver not six months ago when you was trying to get into the dock industry. Well, he don’t like you and I think we can safely say, you don’t like him. So tell us where Bolger is.’

Ronnie looked at the three people in the room. He was gradually feeling a faintness stealing over him. Not just from the loss of blood but at the realisation that here were three people who could not let him live after this night’s work. It was all Bolger’s doing, with his packed wallet and his smarmy tongue. He was as good as dead, and he knew it. Being a nasty man, if he was going he wanted to take as many with him as possible.

‘He’s round Valence Road. Bethnal Green. He’s staying with a girl of his, Gilda the Pole. You’ll find him there. But he’s well protected. The Jews are seeing to that.’

Outside the fight was in full swing and the crowd screamed for blood. That meant an opponent was down. Briony, Mariah and Tommy left the tent without a second look at Ronnie who was still trying to hold his guts inside the large gaping hole across his belly. Ronnie Olds had lived by fear all his life. He was a known villain who dealt out death like other people dealt out cards. Now he was coming to the end of his life, inside a marquee in Victoria Park, a pile of money in his wallet and a bottle of whisky in his pocket. He slumped to the floor and, pulling out the whisky bottle, drank from it eagerly.

He died as he had lived, violently, and there was no one to mourn his passing.

Pushing through the crowds who were eagerly shouting encouragement to the two fighters on the stage, Briony fought down the urge to vomit. As bad as Ronnie Olds was, the sight of him bleeding like that made her ill.