Bertie Warner stood in the cemetery and watched the proceedings with a suitably respectful expression. He didn’t like things like this at all; he saw death as an inevitable thing, but he hoped that he would go naturally when the time came and not by the hand of someone else. In his opinion, cancer was preferable to a bullet in the brain – at least then you had the opportunity to tie up loose ends and say your goodbyes.

A child’s funeral was a bastard; it was the wrong order, and it made everyone who attended feel they were blessed because it wasn’t their child who had died. There were times when he could launch his lot into the atmosphere, but he wouldn’t part with them for the world. If one of them died he would be distraught, and that was exactly how poor young Vincent and Gabriella looked.

Truth be told, though, it was Cynthia who was the star turn at this funeral, stealing all the attention. She looked like something from an American mini-series; black fitted suit, high-heeled shoes, and a small hat with a lacey bit hiding her boat race from the world. She still had the looks, he had to admit – not that he would touch her if she begged him. Well, he might if she begged him really nicely.

It was a sad day and no mistake. So why did he feel that there was something awry – he liked that word, it was something an old-fashioned Filth would use. But his shit detector, and he prided himself on his shit detector, was telling him there was something fishy about all this. It smelt wrong and, even though that nutter James was capable of something this heinous, it all felt a bit too convenient for his liking.

Now, it was common knowledge that he hated Cynthia; she had outed a close friend of his, even if he couldn’t fault her actions at the time. But that hatred he had for her also made him suspicious of her, and what she was capable of. Though, from what he could gather, she loved those kids, so he was most probably barking up the wrong tree.

Still, he liked a nice little snoop occasionally, and he had plenty of Filth who owed him favours. If nothing else he would be able to give Vincent a proper update on his son’s murder case, because this was murder, whichever way you looked at it.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Three

As they lowered little Vincent’s coffin into the grave, Cynthia’s crying could be heard above everyone else’s, and that only proved to the onlookers how much she had loved that child. The gossips speculated how that boy would still be alive if he had been at his nanny’s where, in fairness, he had lived most of his life.