Kerry watched the two eyeing each other. Going to the table she poured out three stiff drinks. Handing one to Evander and one to Liselle, she sat on the settee, watching them warily now. It had not worked out as she had thought. It had all gone wrong. No one spoke a word for what seemed an eternity.

Kerry guzzled her drink, coughing at the unfamiliar taste of the raw cheap black market bourbon.

Evander stood silently with his drink in hand. He didn’t want a drink now, when he should want one, when he should be gulping the precious liquid down to kill the pain inside him.

‘Sit down, child. We need to talk.’

His voice was deep. Hearing it for the first time, Liselle was snapped out of her shock. Putting the drink on the mantelpiece untouched she strode past him, out of the room and out into the snow-filled night. Slamming the front door behind her she hurried away, slipping and sliding on the icy pavement.

That couldn’t be her father. It couldn’t. Not because he was black, but because he was so horrible. He was dirty-looking, he smelt of stale food and cheap scotch. She came from better than that, she knew she did.

She made her way back to The New Yorker in a cab. Auntie Briony would know what to do.

She always did.

The twins were in one of their ‘spielers’, an illegal gambling club in Stepney. The place was packed out as usual. The twins were now treated like visiting royalty wherever they went in the East End. People went out of their way to be noticed by them. If they went into a shop, the cigarettes or whatever else they bought became ‘gifts’. Stallholders made a fuss of them, shopkeepers kept on the right side of them. The twins, Boysie especially, loved this. Revelled in it.

The ‘spieler’ was approached through a large barred door, a small peephole was opened to establish who was there, and then they were duly let in, frisked, and allowed to get to the gaming tables and the bar. Prostitutes worked the clubs, generally married women out for a bit of adventure and a few quid to supplement the housekeeping. Nothing was organised in the twins’ establishments unless they organised it themselves.

The place was buzzing tonight. The twins got themselves a drink and went through to the offices. They were waiting for a young Jew named Isaiah Lipman. He was twenty-five years old and one of the best ‘longshoremen’ in the business. The twins wanted to cultivate him.