The tension between the brothers had always been a point of contention. Jason was the more intelligent of the two and always gained the upper hand. Adam did as he was told. Word was they had an informer, but no one knew who it was. Tyrone remembered one squealer, three years ago, who came to the attention of the Cotton brothers after bragging about something and nothing. They found out he’d spoken to the police and figured himself immune. He’d been tortured for five hours and finally dumped, bagged and weighted, into the Duddon Estuary. No one missed him. A lot of the kids who got recruited had no family, or if they did, they were so fucked up and dysfunctional that their absence wasn’t noticed or reported. Adam in particular had enjoyed ripping out the guy’s fingernails, saying that it sounded like sucking pork ribs. Tyrone had laughed along with everyone else, but inside, it fuelled his worst nightmares.

More people arrived at the flat. The place was also used as a social hub for a select few. Sometimes it was where challenges were settled. A challenge could be one guy directly in beef with another, but it could also be a feud that had rumbled on for months. Jason Cotton was the one who usually decided where they were settled. It might be in a park, a warehouse, or one of these flats, if it involved high-ranking gang members.

A knife was pulled, and Tyrone heard Jason’s voice.

‘Fucking put that away, you twat.’

Everyone knew how hard it was to survive a direct knife fight. The two antagonists shook hands and Tyrone saw relief in their faces. Tyrone himself had never been directly challenged, and he wanted to keep it that way. Most of the violence he’d witnessed was as a result of rival gangs entering their patch, or vice versa: them travelling to patches where they weren’t welcome. He’d been knifed a few times but he’d been lucky; the NHS had put a plaster on his gashes and he’d walked away.

‘What you been up to, Adam?’ Jason questioned his brother directly and something in the room shifted. Tyrone knew that Adam was in trouble for something, and they all assumed it was because of what had happened to the jogger in Potton Park. Word was Adam had made a mistake and slashed the wrong person. He’d had a young recruit with him and thought it clever to initiate him with a brazen attack in broad daylight.

Jason wasn’t impressed, though.

‘Don’t know what you mean. Mother’s.’

‘Yes you fucking do. Don’t swear on our mother’s life, man. I told you to do a random, and you do a fucking posh chick in jogging gear, you fucking retard.’

Adam’s face went pink and he looked away.