The press had also been making a big thing of the fact that the annual cost of organised crime on the London economy was now running at billions of pounds.

The task force that was put together was well resourced and had managed to rack up some early successes, Harry Fuller being the biggest scalp so far.

Before him there was Paul Mason, who’d run the East London mob for five years. And before Mason there were the Romanian brothers – Stefan and Anton Severin – who were known as the kings of crack cocaine north of the Thames.

Slack didn’t shed a tear for any of them. They were rivals, after all, and he’d been mopping up some of their business. But the downfall of such heavyweight villains was a sure sign that this time he couldn’t afford to be complacent.

The task force presented a credible threat to his illicit empire, which was spread across all of South London, as well as the lucrative West End.

But clinging on to what he’d built up over many years wasn’t the real driving force behind what he was planning.

And neither was fear of ending up behind bars like Harry Fuller and the others.

What Slack intended to do was motivated by something far more profound and much closer to his heart.

Revenge.

Slack hadn’t yet told anyone what he planned to do but that was about to change because he was going to confide in Danny Carver. He needed Danny to help him put the wheels in motion.

Now that the Fuller trial had ended they’d be coming after him with all guns blazing.

There’d be raids on his businesses and the homes of his employees and associates. Surveillance would be stepped up, all his financial affairs would be probed like never before, and the bastards would cause as much disruption as possible to his operations.

They’d push and squeeze and threaten in their desperate search for something to use against him. And if they weren’t successful then he wouldn’t put it past them to fit him up.

They were probably expecting him to batten down the hatches before pissing off to his villa on the Costa del Sol. So they were going to get a big fucking shock when he retaliated by launching a pre-emptive strike.

‘The slags won’t know what’s hit them, babe,’ he said to the framed photo on his desk. ‘Mine is going to be the loudest swansong this city has ever heard.’

His late wife’s smiling face stared back at him and brought a lump to his throat. Even after all this time he still found it hard to accept that Julie was gone.

The photo was taken on their honeymoon in Capri twenty-three years ago. They were standing together with the sea in the background and he had his arm around her shoulders.