He could feel the old rage welling up inside him, and he welcomed it. Since Lena had died, he had once again felt it gradually building, hour by hour, until he was only hanging on by a thread. This man, unbeknownst to him, was exactly what he needed – an excuse to let off some steam.

‘Get the secateurs out of the drawer there, and tie him to the chair.’

Noel and Jamsie rushed to do what he asked. Danny poured them each a drink, listening with a half smile to the grunts and protestations of Billy Allen, as he was forced on to the metal typist chair, and bound tightly so he couldn’t move.

‘For fuck’s sake, Daniel! Surely you don’t think you can scare me.’ Billy was almost laughing in derision, as if they were fools and he was the only person there with even a speck of intelligence.

Billy Allen was a known hard man, and he prided himself on that fact. His enormous strength was everything to him – it defined him. He had the old-school loyalty as well – something else he felt was important to who he was, and how he was perceived by the people he dealt with. But he couldn’t prevent a note of trepidation creeping into his voice. It was strange how the threat of violence was always so much more intimidating than people imagined. Now that he was trussed up like a turkey, the younger Allen brother was finally becoming aware of how precarious his position was. He had assumed he could talk his way out of anything, and now it was sinking in that that was not the case.

Danny stood holding Billy’s hand flat against the metal arm of the chair as his father began to remove the first of the man’s fingers. Billy Allen steeled himself for the pain, his body tensed, the veins standing out on his forehead. But he was determined to stay silent, not beg as a lesser man would have done.

Outside Tania had seen the man being dragged from the van which had arrived earlier, and she had waited until the van had left the yard and her brothers had shut the gates, before she slipped out of the small night-watchman’s shed. Shivering with cold, she had crept over to the Portakabin, and positioned herself so she could watch what was going on. She saw Jamsie standing in the open doorway, and her other brothers spread around the small office; like them, she watched her father as he went to work. After long moments the man began to groan. Listening to his agony, she was shocked that she had no adverse reaction to what she was seeing.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Four