‘Come back?’ Garvald shrugged, opened a silver box on the desk and helped himself to a cigarette. ‘A man needs his friends after what I’ve been through, Fred. Where else would I go?’

The man with the wall-eye spoke from the doorway. ‘He couldn’t have got in through the club or the kitchen, Mr Manton, they’d have buzzed through. That means the side door. Shall I check him for a key?’

‘You do and I’ll break your arm,’ Garvald said genially.

Wall-eye took a sudden step forward, his face dark, and Manton held up a hand. ‘Leave it, Donner. He’d put you in hospital for a month and I need you around. Go back downstairs.’

Donner stood there for a moment, his single eye glaring ferociously at Garvald, then he turned on his heel and the door slammed behind him.

Manton went to a wall cabinet, opened it and took out a bottle of whisky and two glasses. He filled them both and toasted Garvald silently.

‘How did you get in, Ben?’

‘Now I ask you,’ Garvald said. ‘When did I ever need a key to open a door?’

Manton chuckled. ‘That’s true enough, God knows. You were the best door and window man in the business in the old days.’

He moved back to the desk and lit a cigarette, taking his time over it. ‘Why did you come back, Ben? There’s nothing for you here.’

‘Then why were you so anxious to keep me out? Sicking those two tearaways on to me in the fog outside Wandsworth yesterday was a mistake. Nothing on earth could have kept me away after that.’

‘Things have changed,’ Manton said. ‘It isn’t like the old days any more. The kind of money people throw around now, you can make more out of a good legitimate club than we ever did from the rackets. With the form you have behind you, Ben, you’d be bad for business. It’s as simple as that.’

‘They tell me you work for wages now, I never thought I’d see the day.’

‘If you know that, then you know who I work for,’ Manton said calmly. ‘Harry Faulkner – and he treats me just fine. I get a good basic plus a slice of the cake twice a year. More than we ever dreamed of making at the old One-Spot.’

‘When you were in partnership with me.’

Manton put down his glass and said deliberately: ‘Let’s get one thing straight, Ben. After the coppers picked you up for that Steel Amalgamated job, they shut the One-Spot up tight. It took me two years of working for Faulkner to pay off the debts. I don’t owe you a thing.’

Garvald grinned. ‘I didn’t say you did.’