The old affable Jonny P, always ready to buy a round of drinks, always the first with a good joke, and always the first to arrange a big party, was long gone. He was a serious, rather dour man now, who occasionally reverted to his old ways while in his cups. He had still never touched a drug – alcohol being his only real vice – and he took his job and its responsibilities very seriously indeed. As his father-in-law always said, getting to the top was the easy part, it was staying there that took the real hard graft.

The truth of the statement was not lost on Jonny now as he sat working. He had fought to get the top prize and it was getting harder and harder to hang on to it. London in the nineties was run by him and a few other Faces – they had minor roles, of course. But it was being swamped by Eastern Europeans, Russians, and the like. They were like no other adversary seen on these turfs before; they had unlimited money and they were ruthless, and that meant he had to become more ruthless. That was the law of their game, but it was a hard graft all the same.

The girls in many of his clubs were Eastern European. The men he dealt with had a constant supply, and the girls were brought over, relieved of their passports, and then told they had to work off their debts. Jonny also had fingers in more than a few pies concerning some Eastern-European brothels. These were constant money-spinners and, though he had found the whole thing distasteful at first, he knew if he didn’t become a part of it some other enterprising fucker soon would. That would mean a serious rival for him and he could not allow that.

All the same he didn’t like the business – but then he didn’t bet and he still had plenty of betting shops. Betting was a fucking mug’s game as far as he was concerned; only fools and bigger fools thought they could really beat the odds. If they had a win, it was rarely enough to cover the years of spending in his shops that preceded it. Still, each to their own and if the Good Lord had not invented lust, greed and all the other vices, he would not have been able to live the life of a biblical king. And live like a king he did, though he was clever enough not to live too ostentatiously. He did though have property all over the world, and that was thanks to his Eastern-European connections. They were masters at the long game and he was learning shitloads of stuff from them.