He offered an empty hand. ‘We’ll take your neck chains and your rings, while you’re at it. And the Rolex. Jesus … you wash your hair in chip-fat, or what?’

Shankhill scowled as he handed the valuables over. ‘I’ll find you,’ he said quietly.

‘Yeah?’ The taller gunman stepped backward. ‘Maybe my bootprint’ll give you a head start.’

Then he opened fire at Shankhill’s legs. A fusillade of lead shredded through muscle and bone, all but blowing the ungainly limbs away completely, hurling the overweight money-lender down onto the blood and urine-spattered floorboards.

To prove he was a man of his word, the taller bandit concluded by stamping on Shankhill’s pale, sweat-soggy face some two, three times. When he’d finished that, the two of them rounded on Malcolm Pugh, who wailed even more loudly than before.

‘Shut it or you die!’ The taller one stabbed a warning finger into Pugh’s face.

But the little gambler was wild-eyed and wet-mouthed with fear. ‘My inside pocket!’ he gibbered. ‘It’s in my inside pocket … all of it. Take what you want …’

‘We don’t want your money,’ the taller one said.

When Pugh filched a handful of twenties from under his jacket and waved it at them, the shorter one simply knocked it out of his grasp, sending it fluttering across the room, and then twisted his hands behind his back, causing him to shriek again, his time with agony, before binding them together with duct tape. He repeated the process with Pugh’s ankles.

‘It’s dead simple … Malcolm,’ the taller bandit advised him, when Pugh lay trussed in a corner. He’d read the first name on a credit card from Pugh’s wallet, though he now reinserted the card into the wallet, and replaced it in the captive’s pocket. ‘You’ve survived this. You even get to keep your own cash … you’ll be able to get yourself free in a few minutes. But it isn’t over. We know who you are. So, you go to the cozzers about this … you even call an ambulance for these two goons, and we’ll come back for you. And you won’t need me to tell you … it won’t just be your legs we shoot off.’

Pugh said nothing, closing his eyes against the stinging sweat dabbling his lashes.

When he finally risked opening them, the masked assailants had gone.

Chapter 5