At the first banging on the door, Jimmy had gone out to the hall and looked through the spyhole in the front door. As soon as he had seen who was there he had telephoned the police.

Just as he put the phone down, Boysie kicked the door in. Now Jimmy stood in the front room, with its ragged nets and brokendown settee, his head clear for once, fear making the cannabis recede inside his mind, and he waited for the good hiding that he knew was coming.

‘Hello, Jimmy son, I hear you’ve been a very busy boy?’

Daniel’s voice was low, conversational. He pulled out from under his coat a large pickaxe handle, carefully wrapped with green insulating tape, the type electricians use to bind live wires.

Jimmy’s eyes were riveted to the pickaxe handle as if glued there.

‘I never hardly touched her, I swear.’

Boysie laughed. ‘What about little Faithey then, and her battered eye, you ponce?’

He clubbed Jimmy with a large meaty fist.

Jimmy spun with the force of the blow and landed on the settee. He held his cheekbone with a trembling hand. ‘I cracked her, I admit, but I never touched that child. That was her ma, that was Delia. That’s what the bloody fight was over!’

‘You lying bastard!’ Marcus’s voice was shrill and then he began kicking Jimmy, using every ounce of force he could muster. A few minutes later, Boysie joined in with Daniel. The first crack of the pickaxe hit Jimmy Sellars on the back of his head.

Jimmy thankfully lost consciousness. He would never regain it. The last voice he heard was Janis Joplin singing his favourite song: ‘Take another little piece of my heart.’ He died three hours later on the operating table of King George’s Hospital.

The police had arrived five minutes after the three angry men had left the block of flats. Miraculously, no one had seen or heard anything. But the police hadn’t expected anything else.

Limmington looked at the broken body being taken into the ambulance and gritted his teeth. He would get those Cavanaghs. He would get them, and he would put them away for good.

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-three

‘I hope you’re pleased with yourself, young lady? I hope you realise just what you bloody well caused?’

Delia’s face was white and stricken. Her mouth was moving, but she couldn’t seem to make any sound. Jimmy dead? Jimmy, her Jimmy, dead?

‘Your father could be up on a murder charge because of you! Your father and your cousins. And do you know what really gets to me, Delia Dowling? The fact that that boy never asked for what he got. You wanted him taught a lesson. You. Now this is the upshot!’

Delia sat up in bed. ‘You mean he’s dead, Mum, Jimmy’s really dead?’