Alan Cox was up early, had breakfasted alone, and was now on his fourth cup of coffee. He lit his first cigar of the day, a small cheroot, and blowing the smoke lazily out of his mouth, grimaced as the first spasm of coughing attacked him. He had a lot to do today, a lot of arranging. He had missed pitting his wits against the police, missed the element of uncertainty that became like a drug to many bank robbers and that always proved their downfall. He’d missed the suppressed excitement of knowing something big was going down and being a major part of it.

Amigo’s was doing well, exceptionally well, but the urge to succeed was long gone, as he’d known from the first few nights of its opening that it was already a foregone conclusion. Alan liked setting things up. Once they were up and running and doing well, they bored him. He liked the element of risk. Now he was arranging Georgio’s break out, he felt the familiar rush of adrenaline and thanked God for it. It was what he had needed.

The only bugbear was Donna Brunos. He had tried every trick in the book to put her off taking the job of number two. He knew in his heart that she was shit scared, yet still she insisted she was going to do it. He admired and respected her for that, even as she annoyed him, because he had a feeling she would prove to be a liability.

In a way, Alan also admitted to himself, he was a bit jealous of Georgio. His own wife would never have even countenanced doing anything remotely similar for him. She would have been scandalised and disgusted if he had even suggested it. Yet Georgio had, Georgio Brunos, ‘the hostesses’ friend’ as Alan used to call him, who ran around on that lovely wife of his with young tarts - and they were tarts. By Christ, a few were jailbait, barely out of school. One girl Georgio had had couldn’t have been more than fifteen for all her big tits and backcombed blonde hair - yet Georgio’s woman, Donna Brunos, was willing to risk a prison sentence for him. It was laughable really. But then she didn’t know the half of it. Which was probably just as well.

What really troubled him was why Georgio was involving her. There was something fishy about it, nothing that Alan could put his finger on . . . but it just seemed wrong somehow.