‘I know that! But I do worry about you sometimes, Dan. If anything happened to you . . .’ she trailed off.

Daniel Bailey smiled in the darkness, he had chosen well with his Lena. She was a good woman, and still gorgeous too; with her rich chestnut hair and soft green eyes. She never asked for too much information about his lifestyle and his decisions either. He respected her enough to say in honesty, ‘I swear, Lena, on my mother’s life, you have nothing to worry about, darling. Everything is fine. In fact, it’s hunky fucking dory.’

He felt her relax in his arms, knew he had allayed her fears, and he hugged her to him tightly. As she drifted back to sleep he sighed in contentment. Jed Lanson had died well, he had accepted the inevitable, realising that he should have given the Bailey boys their due before they took it.

He lay in the darkness, listening to the church clock as it chimed the hours away, planning the next few weeks. It was the aftermath of their coup that would be the hardest, and both he and his brother knew that. Taking out the Lansons was the easy bit; it was waiting to see who would crawl out of the woodwork for revenge that was going to cause them headaches. And Lanson had a boss. He was a shrewd man; who had let Lanson take the accolades and earn the poke. This would be the hardest part of their coup, and they would have to plan their next move carefully.

Chapter Five

Peter Bailey knocked on the door of Kevin O’Neill’s house at four thirty in the morning. As he waited for the man to answer, he looked around him with genuine respect. O’Neill had left the East End, bought a large farm in Essex and had reinvented himself as a gentleman farmer.

Jed Lanson had just been a mouthpiece – O’Neill’s. And now that Lanson was well out of the way, Peter Bailey was determined to make sure that Kevin O’Neill knew where he stood in the grand scheme of things. He felt in his pocket for the Stanley knife he had brought with him. He had come here without telling Daniel because he wanted this over as quickly as possible, and because he had a personal grudge against O’Neill.