In hiding, the brothers would need help. They wouldn’t be able to remain immune to the heat radiating towards them for long, unless they had a secure network of loyal aides. By now, everyone in the county, if they hadn’t had their heads up their arses, knew their names, and his dad’s two hundred K was up for grabs.

He shuffled along with them and the girls tagged behind. They wore their hoods up and Jordan fastened a bandanna around his mouth when he’d finished eating, throwing his pasty wrapper to the floor. Delinquency, he decided, felt rather satisfying.

An unwelcome image of his sister’s face appeared in his head and it made him angry. Why now, he had no idea, and he closed his eyes, willing her to go away. He had to stay steely if he was to have any chance of ending this.

He became aware of a car slowing behind them, and the two alpha males of the group stopped. They held their hands up in a reassuring gesture and nodded, before approaching the vehicle. The others slowed, but kept walking. Jordan looked behind him. The two men were talking to the driver, who looked to be in his thirties, and fairly respectable.

Jordan covered his face and looked away. He knew the driver. The men were spreading their hands and shaking their heads. It was clear that it was an uncomfortable conversation, but there was some type of understanding between them. They knew each other. He watched as the man handed something over and it was put swiftly into a coat pocket. The whole time, the boys never revealed their faces. The driver shot a glance in Jordan’s direction and his heart almost stopped. He quickly told himself that no one would ever recognise him in this ridiculous get-up: he looked like all of them.

When the two rejoined the group, they said nothing of their encounter. Jordan mulled it over. He’d seen plenty of examples of the police talking to people on the estate over the last twenty-four hours. They had varied from cartoonish – in the sense that the coppers looked way out of their depth and were ridiculed into moving on – to raw hatred. This encounter had been neither. It wasn’t a fact-finding exercise, and it wasn’t a casual interview by a copper doing the rounds. Neither had it been menacing. It had been more of a friendly chat and an exchange of goods.

Chapter 47

Will drove away, with Liam next to him. For three hundred quid, they now had the address of a warehouse in Penrith where the Cotton brothers were hiding, no doubt unaware of the amount of evidence being gathered against them. They’d be thinking to ride out the storm until Tyrone Fenton was arrested and charged for the murders and they could all go back to normal.

There was no normal any more.