‘Oh, well. It’ll all come out in the wash, Hats.’

‘How’s the phone business going then, Steve?’

Stephen grinned again. ‘Going like the clappers, Hats. Can’t get enough lines, in fact. The demand is phenomenal. ’

‘All this safe sex, I suppose. Better a wank over the trombone than a shag and a dose. That’s the logic behind it.’

Stephen laughed out loud at her resigned voice. ‘I expect you’re right, Hattie, old girl. I expect you’re dead right.’

Hattie punched him playfully on the arm. ‘Not so much of the bleedin’ old, if you don’t mind.’

Stephen was back in his office in Soho within the hour. He walked past his secretary and told her to hold any calls until he said otherwise. Then he locked his office door and picked up his private line. He dialled and lit himself a cigarette while he waited for the connection.

‘Hello, Hinckley? This is Stephen Brunos. I want a bit of information and I want it soon. It concerns my brother Georgio and Donald Lewis.’

He stubbed out the cigarette and listened carefully, his face growing redder by the second.

Nuala and Donna were going over the invoicing for the building sites. The two women worked in silence. Nuala glanced at the clock every few minutes.

‘He’ll ring, Nuala, don’t worry.’

Nuala smiled wryly. ‘He’d better.’

Donna picked up the folder she was working on and passed it over the table. ‘What do you make of this?’

Nuala opened the file and stared at the columns of figures, then she looked at the front of the file once more, scanning the writing as if it might tell her something.

‘I don’t know what this is about, to be honest. What site is the Armageddon site? Never heard of it.’

Donna frowned. ‘Neither have I. Look at the figures, Nuala - they’re running into millions.’

Nuala scanned the closely-typed figures once more in silence. ‘I can’t make head nor tail of them. It seems to me to be one of those projection tables. Maybe it’s something Georgio was working out on paper. I mean, Armageddon site - that sounds fanciful in itself. It’s probably just a projection table he made up. You know, if I build so many houses, I can double up. Treble up. Build the last thirty houses for next to nothing. Builders do this sort of thing all the time.’

Donna nodded impatiently. ‘I understand that, Nuala, but this starts with single pounds - look.’ She pointed to the first table of figures.

Nuala sighed heavily. ‘That definitely goes to show it’s only pretend then, doesn’t it? How many houses do you know get sold for a quid?’

‘Maybe it’s not houses. Maybe it’s something else?’