A few weeks earlier, Daniel had kneecapped someone who owed a debt. Peter felt it was beneath them to do such a task themselves – they should give those jobs to the men who they employed. As his mother always said, why have a dog and bark yourself?

But Daniel felt it kept them on top, made people realise that they were still very involved and knew what was going on. He didn’t allow for the fact that, if he got his collar felt, he would end up going down for what amounted to no more than what a local thug would be tried for. Plus, it would bring all sorts of Old Bill down on their heads, from the Serious Crime Squad, to the Sweeney themselves, as well as other newly formed task forces that, as yet, no one had managed to penetrate.

It was a new world, and they had to work out how to live safely and securely within it. It wasn’t the sixties any more, and the police were suddenly acting like they knew what they were doing. The newspapers didn’t glamorise the underworld now, Princess Margaret didn’t fraternise with them – not in public anyway – and the Krays were a distant memory. The tabloids asked questions these days, wanted to know why certain people were not being nicked. The front pages of the Sunday papers demanded to know why certain people were still walking about even though they were almost certainly living off criminal proceeds – usually immoral earnings. It was an anomaly to him how newspapers that made their poke off sex scandals involving vicars and politicians could have the cheek to talk about living off immoral earnings, but there you go. That was the new world, the new order.

This should be the era of the low profile for men such as themselves, but Daniel couldn’t or wouldn’t accept that as a fact of life. Since they had become the new Faces, he seemed more determined than ever to be known, to be lauded – to be feared. And Peter felt that was wrong; they should be content simply with everyone in their world knowing their status. Outsiders meant nothing to him personally, and they should mean nothing to Daniel. What the fuck was he trying to prove? If he wasn’t careful they would have their collars felt and, like the Krays, they would be over before they were even really getting started. They had worked so hard for this. Peter was not going to sit back and let his brother destroy it all before they had even really begun.