Harlan nodded and looked at Nula. Nula held out her hand. She wasn’t mother of the year, not by any means, but she could see how Harlan must be feeling right now. Yes, he might be a bit strange, maybe even sadistic – she could never forget him and Nipper burning the cat’s fur on the day they’d opened the petting zoo – but of course he was going to feel cast aside. Charlie was in raptures over the new baby. He had never been like this with Harlan, not even when he’d been a novelty, freshly adopted.

Nula forced a smile and said: ‘You’re going to help us get the nursery furnishings finished, aintcha, Harlan? Now that we’ve got it all decorated nicely.’

In fact Nula had felt so insecure, so uncertain about the baby’s arrival that she’d left all of this until the last minute. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to jinx it. It was that she didn’t believe that she and the kid would pull through. But here they were – to her shock – safe and well.

Harlan said nothing, and Nula felt a twinge of irritation. If the kid was just a bit livelier, a bit bubblier, then she felt that her arsehole of a husband would respond to him better. There would be similarities then, at least. But there were none. Harlan’s attitude niggled her more than she cared to admit, so God alone knew what it did to Charlie.

‘Can I hold him when we get home?’ asked Harlan.

Nula shot Charlie a look. To Harlan, she said: ‘We’ll see.’

43

When Charlie left the hospital with Harlan, Terry was waiting back at the house with Beezer. They both looked grim.

‘We got trouble,’ said Beezer.

‘Oh?’

There was a container coming into Southampton Docks from Ecuador, full of balsa wood. The wood had been hollowed out to accommodate the true payload: one metric tonne of cannabis and nearly two hundred kilos of cocaine. The cocaine alone had a street value of fifty million pounds sterling.

‘Customs and Excise been watching for months, our boys down there reckon,’ said Beezer. ‘Now they’ve seized it.’

‘And?’ demanded Charlie.

He felt sick with anxiety. This was bad. But he was bewildered. There was no way this shit could touch him or anyone near him, they were all rigorously careful. He was careful beyond measure. He told his crew – not Terry of course, Terry was different – only what they needed to know; nothing more. Then even under duress they couldn’t blab. He didn’t make calls from his house and neither did any of his men, he was meticulous about that. They all used public phone boxes in obscure places, they were all cautious to the point of obsession.

And yet this had happened.

‘But they can’t tie any of the shit to us,’ said Charlie, looking to Terry for confirmation.