For quite some time, Joe Lazenby had been deeply frustrated by his none too awe-inspiring status. Throughout his adulthood, he’d felt that, unless he was to diversify into something much more lucrative, and dare he say it, dangerous, he was never going to fulfil his lifetime’s ambition, which was to be a man of substance, of ingenuity, of latent but undeniable power.

And so he had diversified, and it had been a rocky road – he’d taken chances, both financial and actual, first getting into the drugs-importation market through former school-friends who’d long ago taken to crime and shipped their produce in through the Liverpool docks. But having earned the trust of his Colombian suppliers by providing all the cash required upfront and on time, and wowing them with tales of his previously untapped middle-class market, he had completely divested himself of those awkward, insolent middlemen. Lazenby got a huge kick from this alone, convinced that his forward-planning was second-to-none, and that his nose for a deal and an innate working knowledge of the real world made those elitist, muddle-headed book-dwellers at the college shrink to childlike insignificance. He’d been running his low-key op for three years now, the money had poured in, and the respect he’d so long yearned for had finally arrived; perhaps not up there in the surface world, but certainly among those who mattered.

And then today had come along.

When Lazenby got home that night, he couldn’t settle. His wife, Geraldine, had already made dinner. He was late and so it had gone cold, but she didn’t comment about this because she knew he was putting in such enormously long hours at the college these days – at least, that was what he told her – which meant they were far better off financially than they’d ever been before.

After dinner, Lazenby kissed his two children, Maggie and Joseph junior, and Geraldine put them to bed. The normal process now would be for Lazenby and his wife to shower, change into their pyjamas, slippers and dressing gowns, and snuggle up on the sofa in front of the real-flame gas fire and mid-evening TV, sipping mugs of cocoa and commenting casually on the events of their respective days; Geraldine cosy in her knowledge that they were living the middle-class dream, Lazenby cosy with thoughts of his secret but ever-expanding empire.