‘Look, Pete, I loathe him. He looks down his nose at us. And what the fuck have we really achieved with him on our payroll? I’ve heard he’s mugging us off. So are we going to take that? Come on, you tell me.’

Peter shook his head in abject disbelief; he knew that Daniel was drunk – he was always drunk lately – but he had heard rumours he was not averse to a line or two of coke. That had to be the reason for this paranoia. He had always been a bit paranoid had Daniel, but lately he was completely out of it.

‘What we have achieved, Dan, is all this –’ he opened his arms wide – ‘this and much more. If you can’t see that then I’m wasting my fucking time here, ain’t I? Clarke is no more than a fucking drone, a worker, and he delivers. He delivers regularly, and he is well respected. Now, I am asking you for the last time. Don’t rock the boat, we have a lot of money riding on him.’

Daniel looked at his brother, then around the office. He liked it here, it was a nice room, big enough to accommodate up to ten people, and smart enough to feel you were on the up. There were no windows, so no fear of a petrol bomb, or a shooting. He felt the same need as his brother to feel safe. Unlike his brother, he knew he didn’t always have his eye on the ball. He was easily sidetracked, he was not a man who really embraced the nitty gritty, whereas for Peter all that kind of stuff came naturally. Peter always read the small print, he saw the little things, things that to most people meant nothing, but were often the cause of a major problem, mainly because the person concerned didn’t bother to look for them, or didn’t understand the importance of them. Peter was the voice of reason.

Now Daniel could see that Peter had no trust for him any more, that he saw him as a liability. He knew at that moment, with stunning clarity, that Peter had every right to feel that way.

He had made the cardinal mistake, he had succumbed to the worst thing men like them could succumb to.

He was taking his own drugs.

Chapter Twenty

Daniel was sweating, but he was not going to let that bother him. He looked down at the man on the floor and, smiling craftily, he began laying into him once more.

His two eldest sons watched as their father carried out the attack. He’d said that the man owed them money, and had brought them with him so that they could see what happened to anyone who mugged off the Baileys.