Candy lit a small cheroot and shrugged. ‘The computer in Colombo went down a few weeks ago. We couldn’t get anything through to Liverpool at all. Stephen’s going to take back the merchandise with him. We need to keep up the momentum, see. Once we’re up and running in Germany, we won’t have any need of JoJo or Jack Coyne, but at the moment they’re our bread and butter, and we’re making a fortune. Jack Coyne got us the printers and the contacts so we have to tread warily with him, though as you probably know, Stephen wants to dump him once we hit Europe in favour of a bloke in Amsterdam. ’

Donna interrupted. ‘Look, Candy, can you just tell me what the merchandise is that we haven’t been able to receive and why, please?’

Donna was nonplussed at Candy’s talk of Germany, Europe, JoJo O’Neil and Jack Coyne. She wanted to know exactly what was going down.

Candy frowned at her in consternation. ‘It’s the same as it’s always been, love - the pictures of the kiddies. You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’ Her eyes were slits as she watched the elegant woman before her.

Donna sighed heavily. ‘I know what you’re talking about all right, I just want to know why the hell it hasn’t come through?’

‘The modem’s no good any more. We had someone hacking into us. We had to stop. Sending the stuff down the phone line is great, but we realised that some of it was going astray. Whoever it is has made a point of hacking into our system. Now it could be the government, but I don’t think so. It could be Interpol, they’re shit hot on child porn these days. Myself I think we have a nonce hacker! Anyway, as you know, we’ve stopped for a while. But Jake is going to set up another route from the Maldives. It should be operational in a few weeks. He’s also going to set this one up with so many passwords, it’ll take fucking Einstein to get into it!

‘I think the trouble was with the Internet. We sometimes got it up on the main computer ourselves; some of our contacts are on there. We need to make the contacts more difficult, and that is what is being done. The Maldives system will send everything straight to Germany. We’ll completely bypass London, which can only be for the best. We’ll leave it all in the hands of the Krauts; and just take the money.’

‘When is Stephen back?’