‘And four, in this case, you’re behind locked doors, steel-reinforced. Inside a brick shithouse of a railway arch that was built to hold the weight of those old iron trains. Nuke-proof.’

Mickey pondered his opinion. Finding it hard to argue with the logic to a point. That point being…

‘OK. But how do we get inside? I mean yeah, they’ll be half asleep by now, but they’ve still got CCTV watching the street. The second they see us they’ll wake up and tool up. Won’t they?’

The former soldier grinned at him. ‘Simple. All I need is a bottle of urine.’

Mickey raised an eyebrow in gentle disbelief. All right, special forces and that. But all the same…

‘You’re going to open a locked door with a bottle of piss?’

‘Yup.’ Shaw raised a hand to forestall his incredulity. ‘Has to be fresh, mind you. The cold stuff isn’t half as effective.’

‘I see.’ Mickey still feeling incredulous. ‘How does it work then?’

The ex-soldier looked at him for a moment. A question in his eyes.

‘Before I tell you, I need to know that you still want to do this.’

‘Of course I do. Unless I can knock Joe over before six he’ll go to work on people I care about more than I care about myself.’

‘Yeah, you said that. But there’s a big difference between “need to” and “capable of”. You’re sure you want in on this?’

Mickey pondered that for not very long at all. ‘In the last few weeks I’ve shot a drug dealer dead.’ Raising a single finger. ‘Ambushed a cash collection crew and shot five of them.’ Two fingers. ‘Beaten the living shit out of a houseful of people traffickers, and—’

‘Yeah, we saw that in the papers. Nice work.’

‘Thanks.’ Three fingers. ‘And then I took out his number-one enforcer. I’m not proud of the way I did it, but he had it coming.’ Raising the fourth finger.

‘I take your point. I really do.’ Shaw nodded, pursing his lips in approval. ‘But those were all set pieces, weren’t they? All four of those actions were planned. But this, Mr Bale, is different. This is going to be chaotic. With an unknown number of opposition players, equipped with who knows what. We’re not even sure about the floor plan either. And that’s where we live.’

He gestured at the two men and a woman sitting at the table.