Jonny forced his mind back to the matter at hand and, looking straight at DI Jones, he said seriously, ‘So I am paying you a serious fucking wedge to be told sweet fuck-all? Bertie Warner could be hiding under this table for all you know, is that it?’

Jones sighed heavily, he knew he was on borrowed time. ‘That’s about the strength of it, yeah. As I say, unless he shows up somewhere . . .’ His voice trailed off, it sounded futile even to him.

‘Get this fucking muppet out of here.’

Jones didn’t need telling twice, he couldn’t wait to get out the door.

Linford was laughing as the man left the room shamefaced. ‘I hate bent Filth, worse than a fucking grass. They fuck up their own. Give me a straight copper and a fair nick every time.’

Jonny nodded his agreement, most of his associates felt the same.

‘How’s Celeste?’ Linford asked.

Jonny shrugged. ‘How’d you think? Scared, frightened, timid.’ Even he could hear the irritation in his own voice, and Linford raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment.

He knew Jonny blamed himself and a man would not forget that he, and he alone, was responsible for his wife’s condition. He had left her hanging in the wind, and that was something no man could live with easily. Of course, luckily, Cynthia had come up trumps. Linford found what she had done admirable but distasteful, if he was honest. A woman who could do that and not even feel remorse was not a woman to him. Jimmy Tailor was welcome to the hard-faced bitch; he wouldn’t want to lie beside her of a night – who knew what she was capable of if you fucked her off? No, thank you. He thought Jimmy should out her at the first available opportunity. After all, she wasn’t a wife who inspired love and affection, and she had the mothering skills of a fucking demented hyena. At least hyenas looked after their young; by all accounts Cynthia dumped hers at her mother’s for weeks at a time. Jimmy was a fucking cokehead, and that was because he had nothing to go home to. That pristine mausoleum was not a home, it was a show place. Linford had been there twice and each time he had felt as welcome as a sausage at a Bar Mitzvah. No, he didn’t envy poor Jimmy Tailor in the least.