‘I quite understand,’ Pentecost said. ‘Couldn’t have some old lady catching you in the act. You needed a safer way to make a living.’

‘This is the reason I am here, sir. I wish to be absolutely frank with you about the role I have played in this drama.’

‘And what drama would that be?’

‘I understand that you gentlemen are, as the saying goes …’ McGlaglen lowered his voice for dramatic effect, ‘under the cosh?’

‘And what do you know about that?’ Spicer asked, grabbing him by the collar and twisting it in a handful, constricting his throat.

‘Very little, I assure you,’ McGlaglen gasped. ‘But the little there is I am here of my own free will to share.’

Pentecost nodded at Spicer, who released him.

McGlaglen gasped again, but now with relief.

‘And what’s it going to cost us?’ Pentecost wondered. ‘You sharing?’

‘Oh …’ McGlaglen tended to his bruised throat, ‘merely my life.’

Pentecost considered. ‘Sadly, there are no guarantees in this world, Mr McGlaglen. But I will say this, you police informers might sometimes have your uses. As I told you, we already know who and what you are. So do lots of others. Hence the good hiding you’ve clearly received. For quite a few years now, your sort have been … you like clever words, McGlaglen, so what’s a good one here? I know … a conduit. Your sort have been a conduit between us and the police. If there’s someone at it who we don’t like or approve of, it isn’t always convenient to just make them disappear, you understand. So, sometimes we take steps to ensure that people like you do it for us.’

McGlaglen pondered this with a wondering expression, as if he’d never imagined that the info he’d sold to law enforcement over the years might have been fed to him. He’d done well out of it of course, but it was a strange and somehow unedifying thought that, for all his independence of spirit, he might in truth have never been more than another minor cog in the dirty machinery of the underworld.

‘Note that I say you might have your uses,’ Pentecost added. ‘Because … well, you see, I don’t know about you personally. I’d have to check your status with one of my deputies. See where you stand. Whether you’ve been useful to us, whether you’re an asset or a nuisance.’

McGlaglen spread his palms. ‘I am here, sir, in an effort to persuade you of the former.’

‘So …’ The Chairman of the Board shrugged. ‘Persuade me.’

‘There is a female police officer,’ McGlaglen said hurriedly. ‘A detective constable with Crowley CID. And she is in pursuit of the very gang who have been making your life, and the lives of your associates, so difficult of late …’ McGlaglen allowed that to hang, hoping to maximise its impact.

‘Keep talking,’ Pentecost said.