I drove to the canals of Little Venice and parked up next to a line of houseboats showing no lights. I turned off the engine.

‘Give me the gun, Jackson.’

He half-twisted, reached under his polo shirt and pulled it out. Then he gave it to me. I hefted it in my hand, feeling the weight of the thing, a bit less than a kilo, noting the way just the feel of it made my heart hammer in my chest.

‘It’s a Glock 17,’ Jackson said, as if I might be wondering. ‘Sometimes called a Glock Safe Action Pistol. It’s a nine-millimetre, polymer-framed, short recoil semi-automatic.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Polymer is what its frame is made of instead of steel – that hard plastic-type material makes it much lighter. Easier to carry, easier to conceal. Semi-automatic just means that when you fire a round, the spent brass is ejected and the chamber is reloaded.’

‘I mean – I don’t understand why you have it.’

He shrugged.

‘The Glock 17 is standard issue these days, although the British Army’s pistol of choice was the Browning for seventy years.’ He nodded at the gun in my hand. ‘I prefer this one,’ he said. ‘The Glock holds seventeen bullets – that’s why it’s a Glock 17 – the Browning only thirteen. And the Glock 17 is lighter, safer, more effective at close quarters when the fuzzy-wuzzies have got their hands around your throat.’

‘And you just decided to steal one, did you?’

He looked offended.

‘It’s not stealing. The British Army has got twenty-five thousand of these things. I need it more than they do.’

‘You fucking idiot.’

He watched me slip the handgun in the gap in my jeans where the bottom of my spine met the top of my butt. Then he smiled at me. The gap-toothed smile of Jackson Rose.

I felt like punching him in the face.

‘You’re not going to shoot yourself in the arse, are you, Max?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to shoot myself in the arse.’

He chuckled. ‘Good.’

My mouth was totally dry.

‘We did enough tonight to be put away,’ I said.

‘Only if they catch us. And they’re not going to catch us.’

‘Do you know who CO19 are, Jackson? They’re the Specialist Firearms Command of the Met. If they had seen you in that car park tonight, they would have killed you.’

He stared straight ahead.

He was getting tired of being told off.

He sighed.

‘So you want me to contain that little creep but you don’t want me to – what, Max? – violate his human rights?’

‘I can’t be put away, Jackson. I’ve got Scout. I’ve got a daughter to bring up. I’ve got a life. A home. A family. I can’t be around this stuff. I’m not like you,’ I said, starting the engine. ‘I’ve got something to lose.’