‘I know who they are, but I’m not speaking to you about them.’ He suddenly seemed bored with the proceedings. ‘Doesn’t matter anyway, does it? Like I say … it’s all on me.’

‘We want the names of your two mates,’ Banks reiterated.

‘You can’t have them. I’m sorry, but there it is.’

‘We also want to know whose orders you were acting under?’ Lucy added.

‘Eh?’ Royton glanced at her, bemused, but as she’d already discovered, he wasn’t the best actor. ‘No one’s orders. No one orders me around.’

‘Oh, I think they do, Leon,’ she said. ‘In fact, I know they do. There are people out there who, if they told you to do the world a favour and jump on a bonfire, you’d do exactly that.’

‘I can’t help you with any of these daft questions.’ For the first time, he sounded vaguely irritated.

‘What about the Benton brothers?’ she asked.

‘What about them?’

‘Do you know them?’

‘Only as a pair of dickheads who were—’

‘Pushing their arses around … yeah you told us. But that’s not the whole truth, is it. Because a man with your connections, Leon, would also know that the Benton brothers have a bit of a rep themselves.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Did they owe you something?’

He hammed a frown. ‘Why would they owe me anything?’

‘Because they’re professional tea-leaves, Leon. Theft is what they do for a living.’

He grinned. ‘Maybe you should give me a medal. Two blaggers less in the world. Everyone’s happy, aren’t they?’

‘I said they were thieves, Leon. I didn’t say they were blaggers.’

He greeted this with silence.

‘And there was you,’ Lucy said, ‘pretending like you didn’t know them.’

He licked his lips, shrugged.

‘Robbed the wrong person, did they?’ she asked.

‘No further comment,’ he replied.

‘Very noble of you, Leon, taking the whole rap. Would your mates do that for you?’

‘No comment.’

Lucy leaned forward again. ‘Good old Bill Pentecost and his cronies, eh? Living five-star lifestyles in penthouse flats, never having to look over their shoulders because there’s always some buffoon like you to pay the price for them.’

‘No comment.’

She glanced at Banks, who arched a resigned eyebrow.

Lucy stood up. ‘Interview terminated, 4.30 p.m.’

Banks switched the tape recorder off and left the room, leaving Lucy with the prisoner.

‘Leon … we’ll almost certainly be charging you with violent disorder and causing grievous bodily harm to PC Cooper and DC Jepson. But it may well be attempted murder in the cases of George and Charlie Benton. You know what that means, don’t you? With your record?’

‘Never had a bad time in prison yet.’

‘We know something’s going on, Leon. All this unprecedented violence. Suddenly your gaffers aren’t having things all their own way, are they?’