The travel agent had long known the havala method would be the perfect way to move black money, and now he would prove it. With no paper trail, and no actual movement of goods, there was no way for the police to prove anything. He had tried to explain the system to Nowak when they had met the year before. ‘We use my havaladar in Rawalpindi. He is a trustworthy man. He inherited the broker job from his family, and they’ve been doing this for generations. You give me the money to be transferred to his country. I contact him by phone and ask him to pass on an equivalent sum of money to your man in Pakistan. Your man can then transfer it to the Isle of Man. We move thousands of pounds in a matter of minutes, with no questions asked and no record of any kind. Between us – the brokers in Rawalpindi and myself – we balance our books through a reverse transaction…when someone on his side wants to send money here. But, and this is the clever part, because the system is based on our long-standing relationship and trust among the havaladar, there is no need to balance accounts at the end of the day, or even at the end of each month. We don’t keep records for long and it’s all perfectly legal.’

‘What does that mean to me?’ Nowak had asked.

‘It means that the transactions are difficult to track,’ Akram had said. ‘It means we balance our books on both sides and no one ever really knows what money is where or how it got there. It means your money gets to your tax haven safely.’

Nowak was sold. It sounded complicated and risky, but he’d liked that.

As Akram counted the cash and calculated his share, he was thinking all the while about ‘the great Akbar Khan’ and what a shame it was that he hadn’t lived to witness his rise and Jia Khan’s failed attempts to take the city. He had once craved the Khan’s respect – what a fool he had been. He looked at Nowak. The man was ambitious but impatient. He was here for the game and the money but not for the people. It would be a shame to see him take over Yorkshire operations, but not that much of a shame. Akram carried on counting. A loud noise made him glance up at the CCTV screen across the room.

He watched as Nowak sprang into action, moving quickly towards the doorway to see what was happening outside. The sounds of the riot hit before the CCTV images registered what was going on. Loud and angry, it was hulking closer.