In reflection of his firm conviction that he was a player, ‘Flash Andy’, as they tended to call him, always adopted the playboy look: lots of gold and jewellery, big Hawaiian shirts, loafers, light-coloured linen pants. He even wore this kind of gear in winter; the impression he sought to make was that he was the kind of guy who, at a moment’s notice, might hop onto a private yacht and sail off into the sunset. Purely in physical terms, he was a big bloke – six-three, and well-built with it, despite his forty-five years. His red-gold hair implants matched his fake tan, and he worked out regularly to ensure that he stayed trim around the waist. His tattoos – and he bore many on both arms – were strictly of the ultra-expensive variety. But for all this self-evident ego, he was genuinely a good-looking guy, and he was undeniably generous to his guests.

Every Wednesday night, divorcee Andy, whose ex-wife, Raimunda, had already taken him for the apartment in Malaga, would invite five or six different but always important local faces to attend his house, where, to start with, there’d be poker (for big money of course), but also an amazing spread; each week he bought in the most expensive champagne and hired a different chef from one of Manchester’s swishest restaurants to provide an exquisite buffet. In addition, there’d be cocaine, lots and lots of it, and the usual bevy of the most beautiful girls his high-class stable could provide, who would taunt and flirt with the guests all evening, stroking their cheeks, cooing into their ears, and finally, after performing full stripteases and dancing naked while a drunken ‘girl-auction’ was held, going upstairs one by one with the highest bidders.

On this Wednesday evening in particular, the five guests were the usual assortment of powerbrokers, though perhaps not from the topmost league.

Paddy Drinkwater was a music promoter and nightclub owner, who’d once courted controversy by being the first club boss outside London to introduce ‘lap-dancing’ to certain of his establishments. Eric Klinsman was a successful sports agent who several times in recent years was alleged to have been involved with match-fixing in football, though thanks to the expertise of his legal reps, this had never been proven. Mervyn Grimshaw, a general-purpose entrepreneur, was a particularly close associate of Flash Andy’s, who’d mainly made his money importing marijuana from Morocco. Lenny Carmichael was a real estate hustler and the region’s unofficial go-to man for dodgy deals in that business. And lastly there was Mo Newman, superficially a successful road-haulier but also a fraudster, fence and the trusted ‘handler’ of several highly placed and very corrupt police officers.