The Cotton brothers had a reputation for the best-grade gear. Most of it came from Manchester, some even as far away as London. County-lines trading had taken a sharp upturn since gangs realised that urban police were given more money for busting drugs rings than those in the provinces. They stayed one step ahead of the police by trading in the least likely places: middle-class suburbs, schools, warehouses, gyms and National Trust car parks. Once the coppers got wind of a phone network, the gangs would move on, replacing the lines with new phones from different provinces. It was how the Cotton brothers had survived for so long: they were big boys in a little town, not the other way around.

Life avoiding drug squads was like guerrilla warfare in the concrete jungle. Of course some big names had gone down for serious time. Only last year a county-lines gang in Preston had been banged up for a total of eighty-two years. But for every one caught, there were thirty waiting to fill the gap. It was truly an underworld where survival depended on the network of the gang family and not the usual realms of society with their fucked-up rules and outdated methods. Ganglands had their own rhythms, their own language, their own organisations and economies, their own laws and even their own music. They should be used as models in college to teach kids how to be entrepreneurs, Jason often said, fancying himself as some kind of philosopher.

Tyrone listened as Adam talked to his hangers-on; noticed that Adam kept bringing up Sharon Bradley. He was agitated, and Tyrone wondered what Keira’s mum had done to deserve such attention. He remembered Sharon through the eyes of her daughter as a sponger, a lazy old hag who nagged her constantly.

Apparently she was becoming a problem. He listened as they discussed what she’d been up to and the appearance of some kind of blockade as a protest against the police. It stoked his interest and made him change his opinion of Keira’s mother. At least someone was doing something about her death. She was basically going round the estate with a loudhailer promising everlasting life to anyone coming forward for the sake of the community. Tyrone quite liked the sound of it. Unlike Adam, who wanted to get rid of her the only way he knew how. Though apparently Jason was having none of it.