‘And that’s not all my man can do. Did you know, for example, that he can make a video appear on a computer screen? Doesn’t matter if the owner wants to see it or not. So I can shoot some film – of you having your fingers amputated with bolt croppers, say – and then make it open on this Anthea’s screen. Just for example. Not that either of us really wants me to have to do that, of course. You don’t want to have your balls carved off with a rusty carving knife. And I don’t really want to reveal that I can do whatever I want in the paper’s computer system. But I will, unless you tell me what I want to know.’

Mark swallowed. Not doubting Joe’s willingness to do exactly what he was threatening. His mind racing. On the one hand, he could just name Tamara. The work of an instant. And, perhaps, avoid the fate Joe had outlined. But what if he did?

‘Say I give you the name you want?’

‘Which would be advisable.’

Joe, twisting the metaphorical knife by showing Mark the actual knife. Which was, as trailed, rusty. Although he hadn’t mentioned what looked suspiciously like dried blood on the serrated blade.

‘If I do…’

‘What happens to you?’ Joe leaned forward. Patting Mark’s cheek in a manner that, under other circumstances, might have been fond. ‘My old nonno… my granddad, that is… used to take me down the market of a morning, on a non-school day. He liked to walk around, looking at the produce. Buying whatever my nonna had told him to get for dinner. Although I reckon what he really went for was the respect.’

He took a drag at the cigar. Stretching out a deliberate silence that Mark instinctively knew he was supposed to fill. Help Joe’s story along.

‘Respect?’

‘Yeah, that. He was a big man in the Fifties and Sixties, my nonno. A face, as they put it then. He ran half of North London in his heyday. Had a proper gang, not the watered-down imitation I have to put up with. No blacks either. All local boys, the Windrush kids not being properly on the scene yet.’ He laughed at Mark’s face. ‘What, you think a thick bastard like me wouldn’t know anything about post-war immigration policy?’

Mark shook his head. Denying exactly the thought that had flashed across his mind.

‘Hard men for hard times, they were. And under his leadership they ripped up the rulebook. Overturned the old order. And made him a king, pretty much. By the time I was old enough to know what was what, he was retired. He passed the crown to my dad and allowed him to get on with business. Plus he was probably worn out by then. It ain’t easy, being a king.