‘And I’ll repeat what I told you before,’ he said. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me.’

‘We know you blame us for the deaths of your wife and father,’ Marsden said. ‘And you told someone at your son’s funeral that his death was the last straw. That’s given rise to speculation that you’ve decided to wage war against the Met, your aim being to cause a lot of harm before you bow out.’

He laughed. ‘That’s total bollocks. I’ll admit I hate coppers with a vengeance, just like other people hate blacks and Muslims and gays. But that doesn’t mean I’d pay someone to go out and kill a bunch of them.’

‘It’s also an outrageous allegation to make,’ Peacock said. ‘Especially since you don’t have a single piece of evidence to back it up.’

And that was why Slack was able to sit there feeling so supremely confident. It didn’t matter what the stupid cunts believed or suspected. Without proof they couldn’t touch him and they knew it.

It took them another half an hour to accept that they weren’t going to get anything out of him. They asked him a range of questions relating to his business interests and his private life. To some of them his answer was a firm: no comment.

He could have called a halt sooner, but he liked to see them struggling. They were desperate to get him to incriminate himself in some way, but that was never going to happen.

In the end they left frustrated and dispirited, and Marsden’s parting words were: ‘I’ll be seeing you again, Roy. And when I do I’ll make sure I wipe that fucking smile off your ugly face.’

47

Laura

The morning dragged after Kate left. I spent most of the time at Aidan’s bedside and I spoke to him even when I knew he was asleep.

My mind was in turmoil, and my heart was in overdrive because I was drinking so much coffee.

The latest text message to arrive on our phones had given me something else to think about, other than Aidan and the fact that I’d miscarried even though I hadn’t known I was pregnant.

… I’m going to do something that will make them reconsider their position.

It sounded so ominous. What the hell did it mean? What was going to happen? And could it really be any worse than what had happened already?

I wondered if the leather-clad assassin was poised to commit another despicable act. Perhaps Roy Slack had instructed her to step up her game. Or maybe she wasn’t the only one whose strings he was pulling.

It was an appalling thought that there might be more than one contract killer out there, but the Commissioner himself cast doubt on that when a reporter put it to him during one of several appearances on camera.