Bertie swung the machete, a machete which had been sharpened into a lethal blade. It landed on Jonny’s shoulder and, as Bertie had promised, it took his arm off.

The blood was spraying everywhere, and Derek Greene felt the thrill that hunters feel when they finally take an animal down.

Linford watched in horror as his friend was butchered before his eyes. One thing in Jonny’s favour though, was he never screamed once, and that was remarked upon by all the men in the room. Even as they carried him, still alive, to the waiting car that was to be his tomb. He was slung into the boot like rubbish, and he was still cursing them loudly as they put the crushing machine in motion.

Linford watched every second with mounting dread; he had known this was not a kosher operation, had felt it in his water. It had all seemed too glib, too structured to be real. He looked into the blood-spattered face of Bertie Warner and accepted the inevitable.

Bertie took Linford’s head off his shoulders with one hefty slice of the machete. As it rolled across the dirty ground of the scrapyard and eventually stopped in a small hole, Bertie shouted gleefully, ‘Look, guys, a fucking hole in one!’

They were all laughing now, stacked up on adrenaline and the knowledge that their main adversaries were out of the picture. All that was left now was for them to take what they felt was rightfully theirs.

Young Vincent had watched it from the sidelines, and he felt the nausea rising up inside him. Of all the things he had expected of the night, this was not one of them. He was party to murder now, and he knew then and there that this kind of skulduggery wasn’t for him. He just wanted to be a blagger, a bank robber, nothing more and nothing less.

Linford’s body, minus its head, was bundled into the boot of Vincent’s car, and Derek Greene climbed in the passenger seat, saying happily, ‘We’re gonna dump this outside their main offices, then we lose the motor and get as far away from the scene as possible, OK?’

Vincent nodded.

‘You are part of a new guard tonight, mate, in on the ground floor.’

And, as Vincent thanked Derek, he wondered at just what he had signed himself up for. This was far too much for him; all he had wanted was to drive a few getaway cars. Now he was a witness to the murders of two of the most dangerous men in London. Life could be such shit at times.