‘He’s very low,’ said his mother Susan as they sat in the kitchen eating their tea – boiled beef and carrots.

William was in the saved-for-best front room, eating alone in there. Lately he hadn’t wanted to eat with the rest of the family, and that worried them all.

‘He’ll get over it,’ said Donny, although he wasn’t sure about that. He thought of Dora O’Brien brushing his brother aside outside the house; the look on William’s face when she turned away from him. That bitch.

What he thought was this: William was soft on Dora, and had been since schooldays. Her rejection of him, her indifference, had wounded him badly. And now he was in a chair, unable to walk, an invalid, a failure, while she, the cow, was out hooking her pearly with con merchants and gangsters.

Mum and Dad were worried to death. And they didn’t know the half of it. William hadn’t told them about the gold ring on Dickie’s hand, but he’d told Donny. Of course he could pursue this through the proper channels, and Donny realized that as a copper that was what he ought to do. But there was no need. In all the furore over the murder of Tony Dillon the gang boss, William’s woes would be overlooked anyway, forgotten. Whatever way you sliced it, Dickie Cole’s arse was well and truly fried.

This was all down to Dora. She was the reason William was a cripple. She was the sort of girl you saw all the time, moving around the big gangs, beautiful to look at but sordid and soiled underneath. Rotten to the core.

After tea, Donny went in to see William. His brother was sitting there, staring at the floor, his uneaten dinner pushed aside on its tray. Once, Wills had been the life and soul of any party; since all this, he’d been like a burst balloon.

Donny sat down and stared at him. Then he said: ‘Mate, you got to stop this.’

William looked at him dully. ‘What?’

‘This. Sitting around moping. Not eating. You’re still alive, Wills. Rotten things happen. What about all the blokes coming back from the war with arms and legs gone? They get on with it, don’t they.’

‘Bully for them,’ said William.

‘You know what I mean. Whatever shit life chucks at you, it’s no good falling in a heap.’

‘Not even when you can’t fucking walk?’ William half-sobbed. ‘You don’t know what this is like. You don’t. So stop pretending you do.’

Donny cast a glance toward the closed door and lowered his voice. ‘Mate, don’t shout about the place. You’re worrying Mum, you know. She’s at her wits’ end over it all. And you not eating ain’t going to help anything.’

William nodded his head, over and over. ‘I’m a burden,’ he said.

‘You’re not. Don’t talk stupid.’

‘I am.’

‘Stop that!’

‘Go away, Don,’ said William, turning his chair so that it faced the wall. ‘Just leave me the fuck alone, will you?’