But she had never really had any control over them, she knew that now. They had always gone their own way, their combined personalities and resources making that inevitable.

Now the upshot was one dead, one arrested for a bloody and senseless murder. Even with her own past, her own way of life, she could not find it in herself to condone, or indeed even understand, an act of such callousness and absolute lunacy as the twins had committed that night. They had barbarically murdered in cold blood, in front of witnesses, two men who were well known, albeit well disliked. To do something like that in public you had to be either mentally unstable or a lunatic of the first order. The twins, it seemed, had been both these things. Now Daniel at least would have to pay the price. She couldn’t hope to help him out of this.

Even if she had wanted to.

It was this that saddened her more than anything: she didn’t want to help Daniel. She guessed, shrewdly, that it had been his big idea to kill them in The Two Puddings in Stratford, in front of everyone. It had his mark of showmanship about it. Oh, that was Daniel’s way all right. It had been a calculated move by him, to guarantee total autonomy in the East End. To guarantee they would never be challenged again. Well, Boysie, God love him, was dead, Daniel had seen to that. Now Daniel would have to take the can.

It amazed her how they had even dreamt they could get away with it. It was 1969, not the days of the Wild West. Daniel’s exceptional brain should have made him aware of that, but he had a kink in his nature, brought about by God knows what, that made him think they were invincible. And they had been, until that final act of folly.

She pushed her face into Tommy’s coat, savouring the feel of him.

Limmington watched them as he passed through the front of the station. He mistook Briony’s demeanour for sorrow at their getting caught; sorrow at losing her boys. He couldn’t have been more wrong if he had tried.

It was sorrow all right, but sorrow tinged with guilt and wonderment. Like many a parent before her, she was wondering just where the hell she had gone wrong.

Liselle looked at the headline on the front page of the Daily Mirror and felt a tightness in her chest: BLOODBATH IN EAST END. She saw a picture of the twins with an airbrushed rip so the photograph was in two ragged pieces. Her eyes scanned the page.

Last night in Stratford two local businessmen were murdered in cold blood. Mr Peter Pargolis was shot twice with a sawn-off shotgun, in the stomach and the legs, and fatally wounded.

David Mitchell was slaughtered with a long-bladed knife.