‘Maybe they killed him,’ Leon suggested.

‘Maybe he took our share and legged it out the back way,’ Daniel suggested.

Oli finally emerged, looking unsure of himself and reeking of cigarette smoke. He zipped his jacket and started towards the door.

‘So?’ Daniel asked. ‘What did we get?’

They were out of the alleyway and walking towards the bus stop when Oli finally answered.

‘Sixty pounds each,’ Oli said, peeling a roll of notes out of his pocket.

‘You what!’ Daniel shouted. ‘That was a twelve-hundred-quid Lenovo laptop. Plus the Xbox.’

‘I tried to get it up to two hundred,’ Oli said. ‘Trey said the market was really tight. Like, nobody is buying stuff.’

‘You should have walked out,’ Leon said.

Oli shook his head. ‘It’s the risk you take, OK. Trey’s a serious guy. If you walk out, you’re gonna offend him. And he’s not someone you want as your enemy.’

Daniel gave Oli a little shove back into the bus canopy. ‘You’d better not be ripping us off.’

‘How much did you get for the phone?’ Leon demanded. ‘Open your pockets.’

Oli bordered on tears as Daniel and Leon stood close. They unzipped his jacket, went down the pockets inside and out, then made him turn out the pockets in his muddy tracksuit bottoms. All they found were a couple of pound coins and a Fresh Start ID card.

‘Where’s your share, dumbass?’

‘I didn’t get one,’ Oli blurted. ‘It was a hundred and twenty for all three of us. I messed up, OK? I gave you my share because Trey acted like a dick and I felt bad for letting you down.’

A tear welled in Oli’s eye and the twins felt sorry for him. He was kinda pathetic.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘We should go back over the road and beat the shit out of everyone,’ Leon said.

Oli raised his hands anxiously. ‘They’re serious people, you can’t mess with them. But there’s something else.’

‘What?’ Leon asked.

‘Trey says there’s a job that needs doing. I vouched for you two and he said there’s a bunch of stuff we can steal. Probably only take a couple of hours, but it needs to be done tonight.’

‘What kind of job?’ Leon asked.

‘And how do you know he’ll actually pay us?’ Daniel added.

14. FLOOD

‘Trey Al-Zeid,’ James said. ‘He runs a taxi office, possibly involved in a protection racket. My people didn’t get to actually see him.’

James was in his flat. The woman on the other end of the phone was Aisha Patel, an intelligence service liaison officer with West Midlands Police.

‘The name means nothing to me,’ the policewoman said. ‘I’m assuming you’ve already checked his background?’