Krasic curled his lip in a sneer. ‘Marlene believes I’m capable of anything. She’s not going to play games with her child’s life. Don’t worry, Tadzio, it’s all boxed off.’

‘I wish I could say the same about the English end of things. The people who are trying to fill Colin’s shoes, they’re nothing but a bunch of clowns. They’re too small-time to run a competent operation. I don’t trust them to deliver. Meanwhile, we’ve got a bottleneck in Rotterdam. We can’t go on warehousing illegals indefinitely.’

‘Can’t we just take them over to England and dump them?’ Krasic sounded like a petulant child who can’t understand why the world doesn’t turn to suit him.

‘Not in the sort of numbers we’ve got stockpiled. It’d be far too obvious that something on a large scale was going down. The last thing we want is to attract the attention of the immigration authorities. I’ve been successful for so long precisely because I haven’t done things like that,’ Tadeusz pointed out. ‘We had such a convenient arrangement with Colin. I can’t believe he was stupid enough to get caught in some minor league gangland shoot-out.’

‘It should be a warning to you,’ Krasic said. ‘That’s the kind of thing that can happen when you get too close to the action. You shouldn’t have made that trip the other week. I don’t like it when you’re exposed like that.’

Tadeusz glowered out of the window. He knew Krasic was right, but he didn’t like being told what to do by anyone, not even his trusted assistant. Now he felt mean. ‘It doesn’t hurt sometimes to remind people who’s in charge,’ he said.

‘Tadzio, it could have blown up in your face. If they’d got Kamal to talk … Well, we might not be so lucky next time.’

‘There was no element of luck there. We’ve got all our bases covered.’ He turned and gave Krasic a hard stare. ‘We do have all our bases covered, don’t we?’

‘Of course we do. That’s why we keep cops on the payroll.’

‘And speaking of the cops on our payroll, why haven’t we heard anything more about the investigation into Katerina’s accident? This has been going on far too long. I want to know about that fucking motorbike. Lean on them, Darko. Don’t let them think they can ignore me on this.’

Krasic nodded. ‘I’ll chase them up, boss.’

‘Do that. And remind them that whoever pays the piper calls the tune. I want the man who killed Katerina. I don’t give a fuck about the legal process. I want to make him pay in a way he’ll remember for the rest of his life. So tell those bastards to stop fucking around and produce some results.’