As much as it saddened him to lose the man who brought him up, Malky had been waiting for this day for a long time, too long. He was quite unsentimental about it. His dad Gerry had been happy enough to sit with the small territory they had, and not push the boundaries into the more traditional Sharkey territories.

Malky resented the Sharkeys, especially Thomas and Nikki. Since they went legitimate in the eighties, they thought themselves better than those in the Glasgow criminal underworld they had apparently left.

“I don’t need your sorries about my dad. I need you to do what I tell you and when I tell you, and that means selling our merchandise where and when I tell you, along with my other little junkie minions.”

Kevin was starting to sweat. Malky loved this, the surge of power you got from people being terrified of you. He remembered being picked on at school because of his height. When he’d complained to his dad, he told him to look after himself and stop running to him like a crybaby.

The next day he went into school with a knife, waited for one of the boys in the bathroom, and stabbed him through the hand. No one bothered him again, and the stories that grew arms and legs around this incident made people terrified of Malky.

“I want you to move into the city centre.”

Kevin gulped hard. “The Sharkeys—”

Malky jumped up and leaned over the desk. “I don’t give a fuck what the Sharkeys say. My da has let them have it all their own way for years. Not any more. I want you selling on those streets and making me money.”

“But Mack’s out of prison.”

“I know that, but if they touch you, they’ll incriminate themselves. Has Thomas or Nikki come after you in the last year and a half?”

“No,” Kevin said, “but there’s no way Nikki will let me off after trying to get her daughter. She’ll put me in hospital for a month.”

“And I’ll put you in the ground if you don’t do as I say. You have a debt to the McDade family,” Malky said.

“You said if I could get to her daughter, my debt would be paid.”

“But you didn’t, did you? You only got the girl’s friend, and every day thereafter the interest in what you owe has grown.”

“They’ll kill me. I came after Nikki’s daughter, and her friend died.”

Malky flew around the desk and slammed Kevin up against the wall. “I’ll kill you if you don’t. At least you’ll have a fighting chance with me, ya fuckwit.”

Kevin was choking for breath. “Okay, okay.”