My name is Alexias Stavrou, known to my friends as Jango Stavrou, and I am employed as assistant manager at the Flamingo Club in Gascoigne Square. I was near the staff entrance just after midnight when Mr Brady comes in and says he wants Ben Garvald. I told him I didn’t even know who Garvald was, not knowing then that he was upstairs with Mr Manton. Frank Donner arrived and there was more argument. Mr Brady forced his way upstairs, but Garvald had gone so he started to search the rooms. Donner told Mr Manton to give him a couple of fivers to get rid of him. Mr Brady got very angry. There was an argument. Donner kicked him in the crutch and Mr Brady fell down the stairs to the private entrance. Garvald then came out of the linen cupboard where he’d been hiding. He left by the side door and Mr Manton told me to go after him. I followed Garvald to the Regent Hotel in Gloyne Street. When I went back, I found Mr Manton hiding in Stank’s Yard near the club. He told me that Brady was dead and that Donner had gone to lift a van. They were going to dump Mr Brady in a street somewhere and make it look like a hit-and-run accident. I told Mr Manton I didn’t want to be mixed up in it, but he threatened me. He knows I was a member of EOKA for five years during the troubles in Cyprus and that I am in this country on a false passport. We left Mr Brady in a street near the river after making it look like an accident. Donner wanted to run over him with the van just to make it look good, but another car came and we had to leave. Donner dumped the van off Grainger’s Wharf. Afterwards, on Mr Manton’s orders, we picked up Garvald at the Regent Hotel and took him to The Grange at Ryescroft, because he was a witness to what had happened, but he got away. Mr Manton told me to take his Jaguar and go to the Flamingo and bring him what was in the safe. He said his boss, Mr Faulkner, had been on the phone and needed ready cash because of a run on the house at one of his gambling clubs. On my way to the club I was arrested by Mr Miller who told me the true facts and how Mr Brady wasn’t dead after all. That’s all I got to say and it’s the truth, I swear this on my mother’s grave.

SIGNED: Alexias Stavrou

Manton sat staring at the statement for a long moment after he had finished it. Nick reached over and took it from his hands.

‘Anything to say?’

‘If you can make it stick, if you can’t …’