Young men like Delroy Junior were attracted to the trappings of the Life: the rewards, the cars, the birds, the excitement. They didn’t appreciate that it was a lifestyle; one you ultimately had to live twenty-four seven. They didn’t understand that with the Life came the constant threat of being harmed, murdered, getting a capture, and being banged up for the best part of your youth.

Knowing and accepting this was what kept you at the top of your game. Her boy was only just beginning to understand the real dangers that the name Bailey brought with it, and she hoped fervently that he could cope. Until Jack, this had never occurred to her; she had bowled through life believing that her name gave her some kind of security. But that was all an illusion.

Her confident boy was gone now. Delroy Junior was nervous, frightened of his old man – that really bothered her because she knew that Delroy had always idolised his father. But what bothered her most was that she wondered, in the dark of the night, if his father had been the person who had marked him, and that thought wouldn’t go away.

Jack was on her mind a lot these days. Her mother’s complete acceptance of his death was something Imelda had never come to terms with. She knew that she would fight hammer and tongs for her child, no matter what the consequences and no matter what he had done. If that meant she had to take on the whole Bailey clan, then so be it. Jack had been a victim of her family, and a victim of the Life. But her boy would not go the same way as her brother, not if Imelda had anything to do with it.

Chapter One Hundred and Four

Terrence Allen was finding it very hard to accept that the Baileys had taken away their main earn. The Allen brothers had previously been the biggest supplier of drugs to their Northern counterparts. Now, it seemed, that honour had been given to one Michael O’Toole, a man who had no idea what a fucking gram of coke looked like, let alone a key. It was a fucking joke – everyone knew that the Baileys had just given him the title, but they supplied his workforce. Michael O’Toole couldn’t broker a deal with a fucking eight year old selling conkers. He had spent more time in stir than a card-carrying Old Bill, and he still thought the Krays were someone, for fuck’s sake. It was nepotism at its worst.