Luciano smiled malevolently at Maria and then, a moment later, his eyes flicked to the man sitting next to her, who was brandishing the knife. His head gave an almost imperceptible nod.

For a brief moment, Maria felt an intense pain as the knife ripped into her skin and lodged itself inside her heart. Everything went black. The killing had begun.

Luciano stood outside the front door with three of his men, who were awaiting instructions. He turned to the driver. “Thiago, looks like the garden runs all the way around the back. You check out the grounds. Boys, you two come in with me. We will have a chat with Señor Gonzales and then we will tear his fucking house apart.”

As Maria had indicated, the key with the blue tape turned the lock, and, seconds later, all three men were inside the house. The TV was blaring out from the sitting room. Luciano and his two associates followed the noise. Raúl Gonzales was engrossed in the game show and didn’t sense the intruders enter the room, but that all changed when Luciano yanked the plug powering the TV set out of the wall socket.

The old man turned in his chair and saw the three men standing in his living room. “What the fuck do you guys want with me? If you’ve come to burgle my home, help yourself. There is fuck all left in this house to steal, unless you are desperately in need of toilet rolls and soap.”

“Calm down, old man. I just want to have a talk with you about this.” Luciano walked across the room and held the diamond ring up in front of Gonzales’s face. “I want to know where you got this bit of ice from and if you have anything else like it in your house.”

Realising that Gonzales was an invalid and offered no physical threat, he sent his two men upstairs with instructions to start the search. He then turned back to the old man. “So, Señor Gonzales, while my friends have a look around, why don’t you tell me about the diamond.”

“Fuck you and fuck your diamond. Why don’t you shove it up your arse? Look at me. Do you really think I’m a man who owns diamonds? Are you fucking mad? I can hardly afford to pay my weekly food bills and I live off benefits.”

The sheer anger and contempt that Gonzales exuded seemed totally genuine and Luciano wasn’t sure what to do next. That all changed a second later when his earpiece buzzed into life.

“Boss, I’m in the shed at the bottom of the garden. You won’t believe it. It’s a fucking Aladdin’s cave.”

The two men, who’d begun tearing the bedroom apart upstairs, also heard Thiago’s message and came running down the stairs, joining Luciano in the sitting room.