Roper retreated to the pub’s front door. He looked strangely sad. ‘That’s right, Miles. But I always knew it was too good to last.’

‘You walk out now, you don’t get another ha’penny.’

‘I’ve done all right in the brief time we’ve been active. I’ll live.’

‘I’ll tell the world what a nonce you are.’

‘What? A disgraced ex-copper … living on his own … in a crappy backstreet flat … with no job and a wife and kids that won’t talk to him? You think the world’ll care?’

‘You fucking pathetic specimen,’ O’Grady snarled. ‘You’d give it up just like that, at the first sign of trouble.’

‘Not easily. I want it to go on for ever. But I want to live more.’

Jon Roper didn’t wait for another scathing response. He turned and left the pub.

Churning with suppressed anger, O’Grady stomped back down the passage. Stone was waiting for him in the doorway connecting with the tap-room.

‘Looks like it’s just me and you, Bern,’ he said. ‘But that’s all right. Means there’s more to go around.’

‘More of what?’ Stone grunted. ‘The goodies that should rightly be going to Frank McCracken. We can’t take him down, Miles. Even I can see that. Besides, I’m more interested in getting a proper answer to that question I asked you earlier. How much are the Crew into us for? If it’s fifty per cent, why don’t we just say yes? The two of us can live on that cosily.’

‘Jesus, Bernie!’ O’Grady all but threw his arms into the air. ‘Fifty! In your fucking dreams, fifty! The best deal we’re going to get is thirty.’

‘Thirty?’ Stone looked bewildered. ‘They seriously thought you’d go for that?’

‘Who knows what they thought …’

‘But it doesn’t make sense. We stop operating and they get nothing. Surely if we went back to them and tried to negotiate …’

‘The negotiations are over!’ O’Grady didn’t want to admit it, but now felt as if he had no choice. ‘They came in at fifty but ended up knocking me down.’

Stone’s bemused expression slowly changed, became scornful. ‘You mean you tried to play tough with them?’

‘Wouldn’t you have done?’

‘And you’re the bloke who reckons he’s going to go and fight McCracken in the jungle like some wildcat?’

‘Listen, you fucking idiotic gorilla … even if we do get a deal, there’s only two of us now. You think we’ll be able to track bastards like Dean Chesham down and put the knuckle on them? Even if they are spoiled, rich dickheads, two of us alone can’t handle it!’

But Stone’s face was now as blank as the substance he was named after. ‘How much have I got coming to me from the Chesham gig? Now that Roper’s out.’