Various voices rose. Men in suits arrived. Kim started talking urgently, and Will set his teeth and wondered how badly he’d fucked up.

Chapter Five

It was badly.

“Christ,” Kim said, stalking down the street. “There went any hope of getting back in there. Let alone any future cooperation from Harry, to whom I now owe a grovelling apology. Thank you so much.”

“Were you just going to let him talk like that?”

“Yes. And so should you have.”

“Why? Johnnie Cheveley sodding shot me!”

“So? Alan Cheveley didn’t.”

“Alan was pretending Johnnie didn’t! That or he doesn’t think it mattered either way because I’m not posh enough to count.”

“Who gives a damn what he thinks? Johnnie Cheveley’s dead, his brother is unimportant, and now I can kiss goodbye to any help from Harry or access to the Symposium! I did not need another problem, Will!”

“You already had a problem. He called you a murderer.”

“If I let that upset me, I’d have put an end to myself years ago,” Kim said flatly. “I don’t care what that idiot says. I care about the faint possibility that I might be able to prevent Chingford swinging, and you just made that several times harder. And if you think this won’t be all over Clubland by tomorrow lunchtime, as if I needed the last shreds of my reputation hung out to dry—”

“They weren’t going to help you anyway. You do realise that? That Knowle bloke’s only interested in his precious Club, and you said yourself you weren’t welcome. What good was hanging around that place going to do?”

“We won’t find out now, will we? I would have liked to go back there one day, you know!”

“Well, I’m sorry I spoiled that,” Will said furiously. “Sorry I got in the way of you getting back together with your posh mates. There was me thinking I’d rather keep a bit of self-respect than let that wanker spit in your face and mine!”

“Well, enjoy it,” Kim snarled. “Not that I see a great deal of self-respect in picking a fight with a bereaved man. It looked a lot more like you taking out your endless bloody class-consciousness without the slightest regard for what we—I—actually need to achieve. But I’m sure you know best and I hope it keeps you warm at night. I need some air.”

He turned on his heel and strode off. Will felt the urge to march after him, to get his own last word in, and had just enough sense not to. He set off back home instead in a snarling stew of anger.