A strong hand snatched Pugh by the collar and hauled him to his feet. Pugh headed up the stairs at a petrified stumble, the second gunman treading stealthily at his rear.

There was a corridor at the top, all loose boards and rotted, hanging wallpaper. Only one door led off it, down at its far end. The occupant of the room beyond, Roy ‘the Shank’ Shankhill, a hefty porcine individual with pinkish features, slit-eyes, a mat of lank, gingery hair, and as always, wearing a patterned house-robe over his stained shirt and scruffily-knotted tie, sat behind a broad, leather-topped desk, which, aside from the free-standing electric fire in one corner and the small, steel safe in another, was the only furnishing in an otherwise empty shell of a room.

Shankhill thought he’d heard a bump downstairs – he even put on his glasses, which normally hung on his chest from a chain, and squinted across the room at the half-open door. But no other sound had followed, and he’d soon written it off as Turk knocking over his stool or something. It might even be Malcolm Pugh arriving for his appointment – though frankly Shankhill would believe that when he saw it. It wouldn’t be the first time the inveterate gambler had failed to show when he was due to make a repayment. Even if it was Pugh, it wouldn’t be the whole whack. It was never the whole whack – and it wouldn’t even suit Shankhill if it was. He could hardly have his debtors paying him back before they’d accrued some real interest. It wasn’t like he needed full and immediate repayment anyway, as the heaps of used banknotes on his desk, which he was currently sorting into orderly piles, would attest – along with the chunky gold rings on all his fingers, the chains around his neck and the various bracelets adorning his wrists, not to mention his diamond-studded Rolex.

Then the door to his office slammed open, hitting the wall with such force that plasterwork flew, and Shankhill – a juggernaut of a bloke in physical terms – almost leapt from his seat.

Turk came wheeling in as though pushed, the lower half of his face a mask of glutinous blood. A balding, runty short-arse of a bloke – Malcolm Pugh, Shankhill realised – tottered in alongside him. The pair had been kicked through the door with such energy that both now fell onto all fours. Their two abductors came in behind them, also side by side, sub-machine guns levelled.

Shankill went rigid with disbelief, regarding the intruders through his lenses with a blank, fishlike stare, his podgy, sweaty hands hovering over the piles of money. Then he turned sharply – a Winchester pump was propped against the wall, perhaps only a yard away.

‘Uh-uh!’ the taller gunman said, cocking his weapon.

Shankhill scrutinised them intently, eyes almost popping behind his thick glasses.