Eric and Jonnie H. were with Alan Cox and Anthony Calder at Eric’s safe house in Ilford. The four men were listening in silence to the huge black man sitting before them.

‘Listen, before I speak, I have to have some kind of assurance that what I tell you won’t come back on me?’

Anthony Calder said levelly, ‘Just tell us the truth. We can get the buzz from inside so don’t worry about lying to us, all right?’

He poured Ricky out another large white rum and the four men sat back to listen.

‘Georgio came to me to set up the nonces, right? I went along with him on the proviso that I could take out Donald Lewis at the same time. I wanted the big spot, I was sick of Lewis and his henchmen. I was doing a big one and didn’t want to do it with Lewis hanging round my neck, you understand that?’

The men nodded.

‘Well, this morning it all went off at ten a.m. We done two paedophiles, Hall and Denning. They were the two who turned Queen’s evidence in that big trial a few months ago. You know, killing all the kids and that? So anyway, Georgio found out who they were and that was what he asked me to get him a weapon for. I asked why he wanted the weapon and he told me. That’s when we cooked up the scam between us. I knew he was having hassle off of Lewis over money, the whole Wing knew that, so it seemed logical for the two of us to team up. We did. Well, four men died this morning.’

‘There ain’t been a dicky bird on the News yet, but there wouldn’t be, would there? They’ll keep a lid on it until they can announce that they’ve sorted it all out. There’s been nothing about the jump either. If there was I’d have had a call by now.’

Ricky nodded at Alan and continued. ‘It was pandemonium, man. The Wing went crazy. Like, one guy was decapitated. There’s this nutter, a schiz called Eros. He’s had to have this guy’s head forcibly removed from his arms. It was fucking weird man, really weird. Like it wasn’t really happening. It was like we all got caught up in the violence, you know? You had to be there to see it.

‘Georgio took out Lewis and I took out Lewis’s minder, and then it all seemed to die down. The screws were in, we had made our point: No nonces in with the lifers. And then it was all quiet again. We were in a state of shock really at what we had done. I mean, you never seen blood like it. We were like animals, man. Like we all caught everyone else’s excitement.’