‘Even if you hate these bastards, why would you go to all the trouble of stringing them up?’

I smiled at him. ‘What would you do? Beat them to death with your spatula?’

He didn’t smile back. His dark eyes slid away from me.

‘If I wanted to kill someone that deserved to die, I wouldn’t hang them.’

‘What would you do, Jackson?’

He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t put a rope around his neck.’

‘But what would you do? Put a bullet in their brains from half a mile away?’

‘I’m no sniper, Max. I’m a chef. But I’d get close enough to smell what they had for breakfast.’ He stared at the open palms of his hands as though noticing them for the first time. ‘Then one in the head,’ he said. ‘And one in the heart.’

We were silent. Then he gave me his gap-toothed grin and the moment was broken. He gestured at my bag.

Fourteen-ounce gloves. Shirt. Shorts. Trainers. Gum shield.

‘Can you lend me some kit?’ said my friend.

We banged the bags at Smithfield ABC.

One of Fred’s famous circuits – ten three-minute rounds on the bags, alternating the heavy bag and the speedball, with one minute between rounds for ten burpies and ten press-ups. No rest for your heart. Recover while you work.

‘You’re so lucky to be training!’ Fred shouted at us. ‘If it was easy, everybody would do it! Pain is just weakness leaving the body!’

Halfway through I stood back from the speedball, trying to catch my breath, reaching for that second wind while Jackson whaled away at the heavy bag, the dull thud of leather against leather. He had on one of my long-sleeved T-shirts that was a size too big for him.

He laughed at my exhaustion.

‘I was always tougher than you!’ he shouted.

It wasn’t true. I was always tougher.

But he was wilder.

There was a crowd of drunks in Charterhouse Street.

More than anywhere in the city, Smithfield was the neighbourhood that never slept. The meat market worked all night. The clubs on Charterhouse Street had them dancing till dawn. Pubs had licensing laws that saw the clubbers and meat porters having a pint at first light. Drunks were no big deal in this part of town.

But the men in front of us now were the ugly kind of drunks. They were standing outside one of the clubs, being refused entry. Politely but firmly. Jackson and I stepped into the road to walk around them as they argued with the men on the door.

‘I smell pig,’ one of them said. The smallest one. The runt. They are often the mouthiest. Napoleons in polo shirts.

We kept walking.

I saw Jackson glance over his shoulder and then look at me.

‘Keep walking,’ I said.

‘That might not be an option,’ he said.