There was a brief silence before Pentecost spoke again. ‘Benny, you know what to do.’

Then he cut the call.

Benny B dug his pistol into Shallicker’s back again. ‘You know what to do too, Mick.’

Shallicker nodded and started issuing directions. The Audi pulled off the estate and headed south towards the motorway. The second Audi and McCracken’s Bentley, now with one of Benny’s goons at the wheel, fell into line behind it.

From the M60, they joined the M56, heading west. Gradually the South Manchester conurbation melted away behind them, replaced by the occasional woods and flat, quilt-work fields of rural Cheshire. About forty minutes later, night had fallen completely, and they’d pulled off the main road network and were following rutted back-lanes between deep, dark hedgerows. They finally drew up against the verge at an unmarked crossroads. There were no streetlights now, their headlamp beams illuminating a white-painted fingerpost offering arrows to destinations like Winsford, Weaverham and Cuddington, which remained mostly unknown to Benny B and his crew. What was most noticeable was the mileages involved. They were all in double-figures, which meant that Frank McCracken had chosen this particular safehouse carefully; it was a long way out.

‘It’s that one.’ Shallicker nodded to the lane on their left. It didn’t promise much, disappearing beneath a canopy of trees into complete blackness. ‘Why don’t you let me go in alone, Ben? I can talk to him first. Then there’ll be no hassle.’

‘There’ll be no hassle anyway,’ Benny replied. ‘How far down there is it?’

‘Hundred or so yards. There’s a layby about thirty yards along, where we can leave the cars. They’ll be okay there. No one else ever uses it.’

Benny instructed the driver to go left. A short distance along, they pulled into the layby and went the remaining way on foot, the big minder at the front, still being prodded in the back with a pistol. The road, which was so narrow that even a tractor would have trouble negotiating it, curved sharply and an opening appeared on their left. Shallicker went through, the others following silently, now with deep bushes on either side. These only ended another fifty yards on, when a broken-down farm gate on the right revealed a thatched cottage with several dilapidated outbuildings ranged to the left of it in horseshoe formation. Light streamed out onto a courtyard of beaten earth, but everything else lay in darkness.

‘Any motion sensors out here?’ Benny wondered quietly.

Shallicker shook his head.

‘So we’re not going to get bathed in a glorious light-show?’

Again, Shallicker shook his head. ‘The idea of this place was that it wouldn’t draw attention to itself.’