The house was set back from the road behind high walls. With a well-designed garden, plenty of trees to absorb noise. And distant enough neighbours to guarantee privacy. Private enough that Joe still joked about the time that his bodyguard Lewis had shot Eddie’s best mate Nigel on the terrace. Without his stunned audience ever hearing a siren. Admittedly the big man had used a suppressor on his black Smith & Wesson .45 automatic. Which lessened the validity of the boast somewhat. But the weapon’s loud cough had still been enough to make Eddie shit himself, just a little bit. That and the shock of having a bloke he’d been at school with sprayed across his Hugo Boss cashmere.

Nigel having been a trusted member of Joe’s inner circle, right up to the moment Lewis had put the gun to his head. His crime, it turned out, being seen talking to a rival gang leader’s right-hand man. Thick as thieves, over coffee, in an out-of-the-way cafe. Very clandestine, and very disappointing, Joe said. And Joe, as everyone knew, didn’t take that sort of disappointment well.

Turned out, when they unlocked his phone and read his texts, that they’d got the wrong end of the stick. As, it seemed, had Nigel, to be fair to the poor bastard. Nigel hadn’t been ratting Joe out, he’d been seeing his lover. His only mistake, Joe had opined, had been not being honest about his sexuality. Everyone knew that he didn’t have any problem with homosexuals. Sure, his nonno would have the poor bastard beaten to a pulp just for being queer. But then his granddad had had men beaten half to death for a lot less. That was just the Sicilian way.

No, Joe was cool with that whole gay thing. Just not with traitors. If Nigel had been clearer as to his preferences, as Eddie later attempted to post-rationalise, he wouldn’t have been topped quite so dramatically. Just used to blackmail the other poor bastard. Who, heartbroken, had killed himself shortly after learning of his lover’s violent demise. Or at least that was the way it had been made to look. More likely that Joe’s rival wasn’t in a forgiving mood either.

The two men, it transpired, had been planning to take their money and disappear. Had already bought a small house in Perth, of all places. The one in Australia, of course, which pretty much went without saying. Scotland, by common agreement, being full of nutters and miserable cunts. Joe had pronounced his retrospective sentence on the terrace, as his inner circle stood around the corpse and cast sidelong glances at Eddie’s blood-spattered whistle.