‘He’s an enforcer,’ said Donny. ‘Not one to cross. Used to work for Tony Dillon. Tough bastard.’

‘Well he was. Extremely tough. Now extremely dead, like his boss. Seems there’s a pattern here.’

‘What’s going on then?’ asked Donny, shuffling the papers. He glanced up. DI Crompton was looking at him with pity in his eyes.

Wills’s death and then his mum’s too had hit Donny hard, made him question everything in his life – his ambitions, his job, everything. He’d worked hard on the force, moved on to plain clothes, passed his sergeant’s exams. Done well for himself. All right, he did dodgy bits and pieces, exploited his position. Who didn’t? Now he wondered what the hell was it all about, what on earth was it all for, if an innocent like William – bumbling happily through life as he always had – could come so badly unstuck? What the hell did it all mean, when a sweetheart like his mum could be snatched away like that?

But now, for the first time in a long while, he felt a glimmer of interest.

‘You remember that scrote Dickie Cole?’ asked Crompton.

‘Sure I do.’ Donny thought of Lil O’Brien’s wedding, and poor William with his massive crush on beautiful feckless Dora, getting in Dickie’s way. That bastard. Scrote was too good a term for that lowlife. ‘I heard he got done over in jail. Which was the best thing that could have happened to him.’

‘I know. It’s the talk of the station. Done under orders of Frank Pargeter, I heard.’

‘You think so?’ asked Donny.

‘Dickie started off well enough but word is reality bit and he couldn’t do the time. Heard he’d been bleating to the governor, saying he’d been set up, that Frank was the real murderer, not him. Well, Frank wasn’t going to stand still for that, now, was he? We all thought that Dickie was a small-time crook, a patsy, set up to take the rap. Didn’t seem the type to do that sort of crime. Probably due to be paid off handsomely when he’d done the time. But Frank didn’t reckon on the fact that Dickie’s got no backbone. It was a lot of time, after all. And Frank got worried. So now there’s Dickie. They rushed him to the hospital wing, but couldn’t save him.’

Donny could feel his copper’s nose twitching. He picked up the three sheets of paper. ‘So these three . . . ?’

‘Picked off. One by one. Looks like Frank’s having a tidy-up. Doing a spot of housework. First he sees to Dickie and now it looks as if he’s picking off anyone who was there at the party on the afternoon that Tony Dillon got done.’

‘Interesting,’ said Donny, and it was. ‘How many people were at the party?’

‘Ten. And now four of them, including Dickie, are dead. No, five. Tony Dillon. Missed him off the roll call.’

‘Half the people at the party.’ Donny gave a low whistle. ‘Some fucking party, boss.’