The two of them walked onto the main floor of the warehouse. It was a large space, kitted out with the equipment that they needed to at least make it look like the business was running as a going concern. They had a big automatic ingot casting and stacking machine along one wall. It was used to cast liquid lead into moulds, to cool it so that it could be condensed into standard ingots, and then to stack those ingots layer by layer. Another machine turned the liquid lead into balls, and a third used high-pressure water to slice the metal into workable chunks. The machinery had cost several hundred thousand pounds to buy and install, and had been a sizeable investment for what was a fig leaf to disguise what really went on behind the tall roller doors: the extraction, processing and distribution of millions of pounds worth of high-grade Colombian blow.

“You heard anything from Jacobs?”

“He cleared customs,” McMahon said.

“I know that,” Jackson said. “He’s supposed to be here at four, though, right? It’s ten past.”

They both heard the sound of the horn from outside before McMahon could answer. Jackson looked at the monitor and saw the truck that had turned off the road.

“Speak of the devil,” he said.

McMahon jogged across the warehouse and pressed the button to raise the roller doors. Jackson watched as the truck with the Northwest Lead livery reversed into the warehouse. McMahon waited until it was all the way inside and then lowered the door again. Jackson strolled over as the driver’s door opened, and Christopher Jacobs climbed out and dropped down to the floor. He was grinning.

“Everything go okay?”

“Like clockwork,” Jacobs said. “It was waiting for me on the dock. We got it onto the back and that was that.”

“Customs?”

“Already handled.”

Jackson grinned too, bumping fists with Jacobs. There had been checks of the lead before, but the cartel’s deliveries were so sophisticated that the only way they could have found themselves in trouble was if someone had tipped off the authorities. None of his men would do something as stupid as that; Jackson had worked with all of them for years, and they all knew exactly what would happen to them and their families if they were ever tempted to rat him out.

“Let’s have a look,” Jackson said.