Then, a breakthrough so small he only recognised it in hindsight. An errand for Will, who was nothing much in himself but whose second cousin Rob was the nephew of Albert’s right-hand man Victor. Even that wouldn’t have done him much good at any other time. But Victor was temporarily in charge while Albert sat out five years and kept his mouth shut, so everyone underneath had just a little more freedom.

Slow progression. Catching Rob’s eye one afternoon, being taken under his wing. He was being tested even though he didn’t know it at first; small errands attracting small payments, progressing from cryptic verbal messages to equally cryptic slips of paper to the occasional package.

His first time being stopped by the police. First time in the cells. First invitation to phone someone. He thought about calling his mother, but dialled Rob instead.

Sitting quietly in the interview room, the officers looking at him, him looking back. Two men, big and burly, probably chosen because they looked intimidating but fatherly, trying to make him feel like a child even though he was old enough to be charged as an adult. He was scared, but he knew this was a moment that could open the doorway to the whole secret world. He fell back on what he knew, what he’d learned in the playground. Silence.

Rob arrived with a solicitor.

“You don’t have to say a bloody word to these pigs,” Rob said. Donald heard his real message: You’d better not have said a bloody word to these pigs, and savoured the elation of realising he’d called it right.

“I know,” he said.

“So?”

It felt like someone had peeled back the top layer to expose the workings of reality. He saw everything. The police must have clocked him weeks ago – new kid on the block, green and untested and therefore interesting despite his lowly status. They’d been watching him for weeks, seeing him work his way in, climbing the rungs from not even worth looking at to fun to scare when we’re bored to might just possibly know something worthwhile. They’d timed it carefully, wanting to get him after he’d taken the first important steps into frank criminality, but before his shell hardened and made him impossible to prise open. They were hoping that he, Donald, would be a chink in the armour of Albert’s boys. They’d already tried to storm the citadel, had gone in gunning for the top man but had come away with nothing more than possession of a sawn-off shotgun. They needed a new way in. Rob was acting cool – the big man with the tame brief in his pocket – but really he was shitting himself, aware of the world of trouble he’d be in if this callow lad turned out to be a liability.

Donald looked at Rob, slick and sharp in his good suit, gold at his neck and wrist. He thought about the police officers who had just left the room.