‘Meaning?’

‘Money laundering. That was the bulk of it. I heard from one of the boys in the know that Len charged five per cent of the total amount he laundered to hand the money back to the European dealers. He’s a fucking millionaire many times over. Or he was. Oh Christ, what they up to now?’ exclaimed Tom as they saw two bailiffs pass by the open kitchen door. Now they were heading for the stairs.

Angel and Tom got up and walked through to the hallway to watch. Angel was thinking of all Lenny’s trips up to the loft, hiding . . . what? She didn’t know. She hadn’t wanted to know. Now, it looked like she was going to find out. Whether she wanted to or not.

‘Mrs Axelford? Where is the loft opener?’ called down one of the men.

Angel heaved a sigh. ‘Under the bed in the master suite,’ she called back.

One of the men went into the bedroom and emerged moments later with the opener. He inserted it into the notch, turned it. The loft door swung open. One of the men pulled down the metal loft ladder. His mate flicked on a torch.

‘There’s a light switch just there,’ called up Angel.

They turned the loft light on. Pale light glimmered down as Angel and Tom stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up.

‘Shit a brick,’ said the bloke who’d gone up into the loft.

‘Bung it down then,’ said his mate.

As they watched, the man in the loft started handing down large transparent plastic-wrapped packages. Inside, Angel and Tom could see banknotes. Fifties. Bag after bag was coming down. There had to be many thousands of pounds up there. And all of them hooky.

‘Fuck,’ said Tom breathlessly.

Angel said nothing. Well, that explained Lenny’s frequent trips up there. She turned and walked back into the kitchen, picked up her empty cup and went over to the sink and placed it neatly in the dishwasher. Tom followed, watching her moving around as if everything was normal, when it certainly bloody wasn’t.

‘He was always paranoid about security,’ said Angel blankly. ‘He always said about hotel rooms, which struck me as really funny, really odd, and how easy they’d be to bug, and he said he was running a legit business in the bureaux de change, and that he had couriers delivering money to people in France, Amsterdam, Spain and Ireland. And all the time he was money laundering, wasn’t he. None of what he was doing was legal. And now he’s been found out.’

Tom was silent for a long moment. Then he said: ‘What will you do? They’ll take the house, won’t they? And he owns the gaff in Majorca. Won’t they take that too?’

‘Yeah. I suppose they will. Anyway, they’ll give me time to pack up at least. Then I’ll have to go.’

‘You going to visit him?’

Lenny was banged up in Wandsworth, on remand. He wouldn’t be getting bail, Angel knew that. He was too big a flight risk.