Bee speaks in her best little-girl voice of fey horror. She is as coy and concerned as a psychopath in a fox mask can feign to be. She scuffs one boot behind her other foot and it raises her skirt another inch, exposing slim thighs. Her shirt is open a touch too low.

The Triads grin at her.

– You have spirit.

– I wouldn’t even shed an eyelash.

– You have quite a mouth for a woman.

– That’s why my husband proposed the very first day he met me, at Dora Noyce’s.

The two men glance at each other.

– We have no issue with you, Mrs Fox. Or Dora Noyce.

– There’s always a fucking issue. Since Triads got here in ’52, there have been issues, no?

– Yes, a few… Nothing to worry about in the long run, no?

– My dad was in the first organised gangs in Edinburgh, you know, his dad before him. He’d tell me about those battles in graphic detail – over hot milk and digestive biscuits – just before bed every night. He never really rated Roald Dahl or Enid Blyton or that, my dad. Then he’d tell me about those exact same battles, all over again, while he braided my hair in the morning. And then he’d kiss me bye at the school gates. One day he got killed for what he did to protect another member of his gang. My mother was never the same after. That’s how I ended up doing the job I did.

– Okay, so it goes back.

– But you don’t go back, gentlemen. You are a lone faction.

– We are connected! Look, how about we don’t hire any more of Dora’s cousins, would that help relations?

– Give us back the first one.

– We can’t do that.

– Why not?

– Our boss – has got attached to her. It’s become personal.

– She’s dead, isn’t she? Bee says.

– No!

– You have no idea why we are really here, do you, gents? Rab asks.

– You want Dora’s cousin.

– It would have been advisable for you to never go near any of Dora’s family – not for business purposes, or fir personal purposes. That was a mistake.

– You are beginning to test my patience, Mrs Fox. You don’t know anything about us.

Ali holds up his shotgun.

Davey grips his sword.

Rab rests his hand lightly on the top of his cane.

Bee is agitated but trying to control it.

She begins to talk in a low, seductive voice – easy – like a long morning in bed with nothing but rain outside the window and clean sheets.

– I know one or two things, Bee purrs.

– What?

– You used to be a Red Pole.

Bee holds up one finger for a first point noted.

– Conjecture!

– I know you think you are a right hard cunt.

She holds up two fingers.

– That’s not how I would phrase it.