Jean Wilder went for her, throwing one big wild right that failed to connect before her husband had a chance to grab her. Piper Maldini was screaming something at Jean Wilder as Whitestone attempted to pull her away.

Nobody paid much attention to the young man in the wheelchair.

One hour later Paul Warboys opened the front door of his Essex mansion.

Every time we had met, the last of London’s celebrity gangsters had dressed for either Majorca, Spain – shorts, Hawaiian shirt, leather sandals – or Brentwood, Essex – polo shirt, chinos, Asics.

But today he was dressed for a wedding.

Paul Warboys wore a formal morning suit. A long-tailed black jacket, grey trousers and a pale lemon waistcoat. White shirt, blue tie, and a white carnation in the buttonhole. The flower was fresh but the suit, while high-end Savile Row, looked as though it was perhaps forty years old.

He smiled at me with what looked like genuine affection.

‘Hello, Max.’

‘Going to a wedding, Paul? I thought you might be on your way to the airport.’

‘I don’t run away. Never have. Never will.’

His eyes flickered on Billy Greene’s face and then to the BMW X5 parked on his gravel drive.

‘Is this it?’ he said. ‘Just you and this young man?’

‘This is it,’ I said.

‘You could have come mob-handed,’ Warboys said.

‘No need, is there?’

He shook his head. ‘No need. But I appreciate it anyway, Max.’

‘Andrej Wozniak is dead,’ I said. ‘Jean Wilder and Piper Maldini have been arrested for the murder of Mahmud Irani, Hector Welles and Darren Donovan. That just leaves Doll Warboys. That just leaves your wife.’

He stood to one side to let us enter.

A white English bull terrier came padding down the hallway. He had tiny black eyes that gleamed with life and a forehead that sloped the entire length of his head.

He sniffed my hand with recognition.

‘Hello, Bullseye,’ I said. ‘Hello, old buddy.’

‘I didn’t know until today,’ Paul Warboys said.

When I didn’t reply I felt his mood change, and saw his tanned face darken. The rage that had helped him stand his ground against the Krays and the Richardsons half a lifetime ago was never far from the surface.