Over the years living in cardboard city, his mother had been given drugs by fellow prostitutes. Then she’d needed to sell her body time and time again just to feed her habit. Drugs had turned his mother into a cold, selfish junkie who had left him alone in a squat for days on end to fend for himself. He hated drugs; he had seen first-hand how they ruined lives and he didn’t want to be a part of it. Even criminals had morals!

‘If that’s what you want fellas,’ he said, ‘but I’ll be putting my own manager over this side, just to take care of things. If you don’t like it, well, remember it was you who asked me.’

Nodding in unison, they all agreed to Tony’s terms. Better the devil you know – plus, this way, they were still on a wage. Without this, they had nothing.

Tony knew Marlon had an ex-wife. There would be no legal issues, because he had left her secure. The house and plenty of money were in her name. Marlon had spoken of her fondly. There was no ill feeling, she had just got fed up with her house being permanently turned upside down by the police, and had asked for a divorce.

Tony also knew Marlon had a girlfriend, which he’d kept quiet about. All this had come spilling out one evening when they’d had a drink together.

‘Tony, man, will you do me a favour?’ Marlon had handed him a piece of paper with an address on it. ‘That my girlfriend. If anything was ever to happen to me, like taking too much of this stuff, give her 10,000 from me.’ Marlon had handed over a brown envelope containing the money and Tony had taken it and promised. Now was the time to keep that promise.

Tony didn’t know how young she was until he got there. She was just seventeen, and he didn’t know how long Marlon had been seeing her for. It made him feel uneasy.

She was living in a shared house with some friends. When Tony told her he had something from Marlon for her, she simply held out her hand. He didn’t like the idea of turning over that kind of money to her, but he had promised and, after all, it was Marlon’s money. Tony handed over the brown envelope containing the notes, and she shut the door in his face. He was pleased about that, because he had done his duty and didn’t want to get into conversation.

When Tony told Jake, and John, his driver, about Marlon’s girlfriend, they seemed to already know how much he liked very, very young women, bordering on schoolgirls.

‘I thought you knew Marlon liked them young,’ said Jake. ‘Everyone else does.’ He was nodding his head to emphasise his point.

Tony was amazed. No wonder people thought he was taking his eye off the ball. All this had been going on around him and he’d known nothing about it.