‘You can live or die, Spicer,’ McCracken said in a voice that brooked no discussion. ‘Your call. But if it’s the latter, Benny dies first.’

Spicer and his sidekicks gazed past the great, quivering lump of uselessness that was Benny Bartholomew into Frank McCracken’s cold eye and they didn’t need to hear what had happened at the safehouse to know that no further assistance was coming.

Later on, they’d be told how it went down. Namely, that as Benny and his boys, who’d been led to the isolated cottage with remarkable ease by Mick Shallicker, went smashing through its front door, other doors – stable blocks, barns and the like – had opened behind them, and Frank’s men had come out blazing. The ones at the back had fallen immediately, leaving those not caught in that first fusillade to unhesitatingly surrender. As for Benny, who’d now entered the cottage, he’d barely had time to react to the shooting behind him when he’d found two pump shotguns levelled on him by a pair of likely lads on the nearby staircase. When McCracken had casually emerged from the living room, he was unarmed. But it didn’t matter – it was already over.

‘What sickens me to the pit of my stomach,’ McCracken now said, as the stand-off in the penthouse continued, ‘is that our inner sanctum has been penetrated so easily. What do you think Bill’s going to say, Spicer, that we got this far? And it’s not just us. There’s another seven or eight of my lads waiting to come up.’

As he spoke, the lift doors closed, and the elevator commenced its descent.

Spicer and his men backed away, dumbstruck. Spicer’s eyes were drawn constantly to the black hole at the end of the Uzi. In truth, he didn’t care about Benny B. The guy was ballast, a makeweight, a passenger from Wild Bill’s early days. But that bloody submachine gun would tear all three of them apart, and the bloke on the other end of it, Mick Shallicker, who was grinning like an overlarge devil, looked like he couldn’t wait to pull the trigger.

‘But I’m actually prepared to make a deal with you, Spicey, old mate,’ McCracken said, now stepping around Benny’s bulk, still keeping the pistol in his ear but, perhaps to show trust, presenting himself as a clear target. ‘I want to start from scratch. I want to make everything right again with minimum trouble. That’s why I’ve been talking on the phone all the way here from Cheshire. That’s why I’ve called another emergency meeting. That’s why the entire board of directors are on their way here as we speak. And I want you to be at that meeting too, Spicer.’

Spicer’s face registered surprise.