Milton merged onto the A-road and followed it toward the city. He drove for five minutes until they reached a busy four-way junction: roads fed into it from the left and right, the flow of traffic governed by a set of traffic lights. He flicked the indicator and turned off to the left. The road led into another business estate; Milton found a spot where he could park and pulled off to the side.

“What do you think?” he asked Ziggy.

“I think it could work. I’ll need to go and look at the control box. When are you thinking? Still tomorrow?”

“That long enough for you?”

“Should be easy. I’ll go when it’s quiet tonight.”

They heard a beep from one of Ziggy’s laptops. He tended to it and chuckled.

“What is it?” Chase asked him.

“Want to see Jackson? He’s headed this way now.”

* * *

Jackson left the warehouse and slid into the Bentley’s leather driver’s seat. He started the engine and enjoyed the powerful rumble for a moment, then switched over to CarPlay and played the old Sasha mixtape that he had been listening to on the way into the warehouse. He reversed out of his space, waited for McMahon to open the gate, and then drove away.

He knew that he could leave McMahon and Jacobs to supervise the unloading of the product. They would get it down off the back of the truck, transfer the pallets to the space against the wall and then, one by one, and with great care, they would slice open the ingots and extract the contents that had been hidden inside. Both men were trustworthy and good at their jobs. They both had incentives to do good work, too: they would each score half a million from this delivery alone.

He started to think about the stages after the product had been unpacked. He would contact his usual network and warm them up. He operated a professional wholesale business; his dealers were the retailers who delivered the product to the punters in Liverpool and Leeds and Manchester whose addictions had, ultimately, paid for Jackson to live this kind of life. They bought their fifty-quid wraps for their Friday and Saturday nights, then did it all again next week and the week after that. He had one dealer, a dubious Northern Irishman who lived in Stockport, who had made a very good living for himself supplying the bands who played the arenas in Liverpool and Manchester. Some of Jackson’s favourite musicians went on stage with his product buzzing in their veins; it was a trip, and one that gave Jackson a sense of enormous satisfaction.