He was cold – not that that mattered much in the grand scheme of things. He could hear his brother, Dicky, muttering away under his breath, and he guessed that he had come to the same conclusion as he had. They were living on borrowed time. Dicky had taken a beating; he had put up a good fight, but come off worst.

Jonny sighed heavily. He was still reeling from the turn of events. Rob, his baby brother and the bane of his life, should already be dead, but not him! The moron was fighting for every breath, lying on the filthy floor. The crossbow had hit him square in the chest, but it had obviously missed his heart. Jonny was surprised at the lack of blood, though he knew that a weapon such as a knife, or a crossbow dart in this case, stopped the bleeding if it was left in situ. If a knife was pulled out of a stab wound it brought tissue, muscle, guts, all sorts with it, and caused serious bleeding. If the knife was left in the wound, then it was unable to do any real damage – it stopped the bleeding for a start. Ironically, the dart was the reason his brother was still alive.

He could hear the conversation that was going on behind the door. The noise was comforting in some ways – there was a radio on somewhere; he could hear the music in the background. It almost sounded normal.

He sighed. He had tried to talk to Dicky, but he was already away with the fairies. Terror at the realisation of what he had brought on them all had robbed him of his reason. Lucky Dicky.

At least he was assured that his family would be all right. Patrick Costello was a lot of things but he was first and foremost a gentleman. Jonny thought back on the road that had brought him to this. He had been a man who had embraced violence; he had lived by it and, like his brothers, he had enjoyed it. The Barbers had been big fish in a very small pond – now that pond would be owned by the Costello brothers. Jonny had no doubt that all the people who had been forced to pay homage to him would be overjoyed at his sudden demise; there were very few who would have been willing to stand by his side. Oh, hindsight was a wonderful thing.

His old dad’s favourite saying had been ‘those who live by the sword, die by the sword’. He should know – the wife-beating ponce. He had finally beaten his wife once too often, and had then been taken out by his own sons. What goes around comes around, that was another of his old man’s sayings.

Jonny Barber was astounded by how calm he was about his own situation, and how easily he seemed to have accepted his fate.