He looked at the men as he spoke and Eric nodded in agreement. ‘I know what you mean, I’ve seen it happen before in wartime.’

‘Anyway, when we were all cornered by the screws in the rec room, in comes the Governor, Hanningfield. A prize prick if ever there was one. He was surrounded by his armed men and thought he was fucking something else, you know? Looking down his nose at us. We could see that the dead men had frightened him, shocked him, but he acted like he was the big king pin.

‘Well, Georgio shit him up, man, Georgio shit up the Governor! You should have seen Hanningfield’s face when the bucket of slops hit him. It was a picture, it was pure genius. I realise now this was to get on the laydown and meet with you lot. And that’s what would have happened, except it all went wrong for him.’

Alan sipped at his brandy and demanded, ‘How? What went wrong?’

‘There’s a TV called Sadie. Georgio was friendly with her - nothing funny, I think Sadie had stayed in her cell throughout the riot. No one even realised that she wasn’t there, to be honest. It all happened so fast, you know? Anyway, as I was saying, as we were all being led out, they were locking us up in our cells - I expect they were sorting out who were the ringleaders and whether to remove them - when Sadie shouts out: “Georgio was in with Hall and Denning! He’s part of their business!”

‘No one took any notice. If Georgio had had any sense he would have ignored it. Instead he went crazy, man! And Sadie, this little queer Sadie, she fucking stabbed him, man, right through the heart! She went fucking loopy. I ran to help Georgio but they thought I was going to start the riot again and the armed screws nabbed me. I was off on a GOAD, and well, you know the rest. I think Sadie was put under sedation, she was off her head. There’s no way they could have moved her with me.’

The four men were silent then Alan said, ‘Is he dead?’

Ricky shrugged enormous shoulders. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. They put the others in the cells at gun-point, and then I was removed and blamed for being the leader, I suppose because Brunos was out of the way.’

He nodded at Eric and said, ‘Thanks for taking me, man. I appreciate it.’

Eric shook his head in wonderment.

‘You’re welcome. We’d come for a jump and you were there. Call it fate! Now, who wants another drink while we sort out what the fuck happened here, and more importantly, who’s going to pay all our bills?’

Donna and Carol arrived home to find Mario waiting with Dolly in the kitchen.

‘Hello, Mario, what brings you here?’