It was ironic really, considering how hard his brother had come down on Daniel in the past. Peter never felt the urge to hold back when pointing out that he had caused a major fuck-up. But, whatever Daniel might have done, he had never once been disloyal to his own. Peter had always held himself up as a beacon of fucking respectability, yet he had bred a fucking junkie as well as a fucking traitorous cunt to boot; two of his sons had been slayers of women, had been men without any kind of moral fibre. That his brother could have bred children who were capable of such crimes was beyond Daniel’s belief. The fact that his brother believed it so readily told him that Peter had obviously had his own suspicions for a good while. Daniel knew that, deep down, his brother had to have had at least an inkling about his eldest son.

He said as much, furious that his wife’s death was being laid at the family’s door. ‘You must have fucking had some idea about young Petey. I know you, there ain’t much that escapes your fucking notice.’

Danny understood where his dad was coming from. He lit a cigarette, before saying quietly, ‘I requested the forensic reports over and over again from Petey, but he never gave us anything worth having. He was always treated like the heir to the throne, and I swallowed that – we all did – but I knew from the get-go that we should have been privy to any information pertaining to my mum’s death. Uncle Pete, you know as well as I do that you didn’t pursue the culprit as forcefully as you should have. You were frightened of what you were going to find out, weren’t you? Well, your son was in league with the Allens. He left a fingerprint in the squat when he took Terrence out. He paid a lot of money for that to go away – he knew the Filth that we didn’t own would have been all over that like a rash. Because for every Filth that we have made a point of cultivating, there’s always two more we can’t get to.’

Peter Bailey felt, for the first time in years, real fear, real panic. The knowledge that his son was capable of planning his own father’s death was something he could not get his head around. Petey had been willing to take his own father out so callously, so violently, and had mourned his auntie’s death, all the while knowing that he had been responsible for it. It was too much to take in. It was the sheer effrontery of it that was the hardest to comprehend.