‘Any heat is too much,’ McCracken retorted. ‘And the fact an innocent guy got chopped as well means that it won’t be minor heat. Like it or not, the gun will link it to us … and to these stupid young bitches. And if they’re so pathetic as to have left it there in the first place, they could have left other stuff too … which the forensics teams will find. Christ, if this isn’t a fuck-up enough! I mean, how do we know they won’t talk? GMP have brought the Serious Crimes Division in. You know how good they are when it comes to asking questions. These two stupid kids’ll be meat and drink to ’em.’

‘Come on, Frank …’ Shallicker still tried to lighten it. ‘We don’t know they’ll talk.’

‘And we don’t know they won’t. And we can’t afford that.’ McCracken’s good fist clenched till his knuckles cracked. ‘Think about it, Mick. It’s not just this incident. It’s all of them … every job Ripsaw’s ever done for us. Think how many that is. And these two bitches aren’t just his daughters, they’re his students, his protégées. They’ll likely know everything.’

Shallicker looked uncertain how to respond, but the penny was slowly dropping. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘You don’t really think …?’

‘They’ve got to go.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me,’ McCracken said. ‘They’ve got to go.’

The minder dug out his mobile. ‘You want to get on the blower to Wild Bill?’

‘He’ll say no. He’ll have to. Because if he doesn’t he’ll lose face … it’d be admitting that he made a mistake.’

‘But if it’s this serious …’

‘Wild Bill’s losing it too, Mick.’ McCracken’s face was pale and tense. ‘I’ve been saying that for a while. He was always a nutter, let’s be honest. But now it’s getting serious. Look at those three lunatics he sent after our Lucy last year. They levelled half the town and didn’t hit a single target.’

Shallicker thought this through, and as usual, it was a lengthy process.

And this time he’s so bent on trying to bring me down, that he’s endangered the entire organisation, McCracken almost added. He doesn’t like someone who tells him stuff he doesn’t want to hear, especially when it’s right.

But he withheld those charges in case it made him sound a touch too paranoid.

Shallicker shrugged. ‘So they’ve got to go? Seriously? Without the board okaying it?’

‘Wild Bill owns the board … so how else?’

The big guy looked even more discomfited. Small-time wipe-outs were no real issue and were nearly always left to the discretion of Crew underbosses. But names, associates, coppers, judges and the like were a different story.

‘What about Ripsaw?’ he asked.