‘Inconvenient? This is the kind of amateur shit these eighteen-year-old pushers round Longsight and Moss Side are always pulling. I’m amazed no dozy twat filmed the whole thing on his mobile and then lost it outside a fucking cop shop.’

‘You’ve got it right about the age, at least.’

McCracken glanced round at him. ‘I’m not following.’

‘Wild Bill wanted a big lesson taught. So he sent the Ripsaw Man.’

‘The Ripsaw Man,’ McCracken said with slow disbelief. ‘The same guy who’s carried out a hundred clean hits in the last ten years? Who’s been so clean, in fact, that most people on our network don’t even know he exists, let alone the fucking coppers? That Ripsaw Man?’

Shallicker shrugged apologetically. ‘It was Bill’s idea. He said O’Grady had overstepped the mark big time, and that it had to be special.’

‘It was special all right! What went wrong?’

‘What went wrong is it wasn’t the Ripsaw Man who filled the contract. From what I’ve heard, he’s looking to retire.’

‘So, who did it then?’

‘Seems he’s been training up his daughters.’ Shallicker shrugged again. ‘Wild Bill knew about it, liked the idea – said it was cute, two pretty slips of lasses carrying out nasty hits for him. But previously, he’d said only when they knew their stuff. Anyway, when he sent the contract through last night, there was a note on it: “The kids are all right.”’

McCracken’s astonishment was growing steadily. ‘And is he aware they were nowhere near all right … that it was a total fuck-up?’

‘All I know is that they’ve been practising, and Bill had been told they were almost good to go – and he wanted to see if that was true.’

McCracken pondered this, not believing for a second that Wild Bill would take such a chance without having an ulterior motive, and now thinking it far more likely that he himself was being served up, maybe as a punishment for letting one of his own victims get the better of him.

‘Look, Frank …’ Shallicker attempted some consolation. ‘If that gun’s any use to the cozzers – it’s been burned, remember, probably inside and out – it wasn’t like you fired it. It’ll bring a bit of heat down, but not very much …’