‘Make sure Angus gets some extra cash, Jake, for gadgets or furniture or something that will make his life a little harder.’

‘Make his life harder?’ Jake echoed.

Tony grinned. ‘There’s no way on God’s earth his bossy wife will let him make mistakes and lose her home and livelihood. The more nice things she has, the more she’ll want to keep them.’

The deal was sealed, and what was more, Tony knew there would be no hiccups. Mrs Angus, or whatever her name was, would make sure of that.

As well as sorting Angus out, Tony and Jake spoke to Bennie. He was more than happy to take over his little quarter, so that he could carry on dealing with his friends. Apart from keeping it all together, it also put everyone on the same side. Now, that was good business.

‘What time does the auction start, Tony?’ Jake was looking at his watch. Today was a day they had been waiting for, for some time. A large well-known casino, situated only a few streets away from the club, was being auctioned off. It had been losing money, though God knew how or why, and in the end the bank had taken it and was now auctioning off the building.

It was a huge place, and after looking at the accounts and weighing things up, they had all come to the conclusion that it had been badly run, and some of the staff had been embezzling, and things had gone wrong from there. Considering it was a casino, there were hardly any roulette tables. It mainly focused on slot machines. This didn’t attract the right custom, as far as Tony was concerned.

On occasion, a few of the high-ranking police detectives liked to play poker, and needed somewhere private to play it. They had asked Tony if they could use one of the booths that were used for the strippers and he’d let them. He wasn’t too happy about it, because he didn’t have a gambling licence, but this was the police, after all. He liked to play cards, himself, so he thought, why not open a casino, with poker tables, roulette wheels, and even some slot machines?

The accountant who had been sorting out the money laundering liked the idea. A casino was a fantastic place to launder money. There would be so much of it going in and out, it would be extremely hard to trace.

Today was the auction. They all knew the price would be high, because of the West End location. The accounts had been checked and double-checked, everything had been looked into, and everyone agreed this would be a good buy.

Tony had dropped the idea of buying the casino building into a conversation he’d had with the detectives, while losing to them at poker one night. Tony had been losing a lot of money, but this was just part of the plan. Each time he had a winning hand, he folded his cards and dropped them on the table, and let the chief inspectors win. They had all had a good drink together and a thoroughly enjoyable evening.