‘You actually have to ask why we did that stinking junkie,’ she said, shaking her head with wonder. ‘Because your little cop-like brain can’t understand why anyone would want to remove someone like that – a drug addict who robbed and as good as killed an elderly war veteran for his pension money. You don’t get it, do you? You don’t understand that this country is better off without him, do you? Darren Donovan died because he deserved to die. Because your laws are too weak to deal with someone like that. Because your courts are too full, and the lawyers too slick, and the police too overworked – the poor little lambs.’ She was enjoying her cigarette. ‘Somebody had to do him,’ she said. ‘And it fell to us. He deserved to hang. Isn’t that reason enough?’

‘How did it work?’ I said. I looked at Barry Wilder. ‘Did Andrej Wozniak make contact with you when Mahmud Irani was on trial at the Old Bailey?’

‘My husband had nothing to do with it,’ Jean Wilder said. ‘Leave him out of it, will you?’

‘Leave him out of it?’ I said. ‘Nobody gets left out of it. Do you know the sentence for conspiracy to murder in this country? Life imprisonment.’

‘It was the women,’ Piper Maldini said quickly, one hand on her brother’s wheelchair. ‘It was only the women. Right from the start it was the women. Andrej contacted Jean. Jean approached me . . .’

‘And Wozniak brought in Doll Warboys,’ I said. ‘Where is she?’

‘Their lawyer just informed us that both Mr and Mrs Warboys respectfully decline to attend any further interviews voluntarily,’ Edie Wren said. ‘They’re making us do it the hard way.’

‘They’re probably on their way to the airport,’ I said. ‘Billy, check out today’s flights to Spain from all London airports. Don’t let them board a plane.’

Billy ran off to do it.

Piper Maldini was standing in front of her brother, shielding him, desperately pleading with Whitestone.

‘Do you understand me?’ she said. ‘It was always Andrej and the women. Always the women. Only the women.’

‘Because our men were too weak,’ Jean Wilder said, and her husband hung his head. ‘The men were too afraid of what would happen to them if they got caught.’ She stubbed out a cigarette on the floor and immediately lit another one.

Edie said, ‘There’s no—’

Jean Wilder raised a hand.

‘I’ve got lung cancer, darling,’ she said. ‘Terminal. It’s spread everywhere. Malignant tumours that are bigger than your breasts. I’m not scared of lung cancer. And I’m not scared of dying. So why the fuck should I be scared of you, you little ginger bitch?’

‘Because I’m the little ginger bitch,’ Edie said, stepping forward, ‘who is arresting you for murder.’