Needless to say no new evidence linking Slack to any criminal activities had emerged. But then he hadn’t been subjected to the kind of scrutiny and pressure that we were about to apply.

I spent the best part of an hour studying everything we had on Slack, and making copious notes along the way.

Included in the paperwork was the interview that was conducted just under a week ago following the disappearance of firearms officer Hugh Wallis who shot and killed Slack’s employee Terry Malone.

Slack, accompanied by one of his high-flying lawyers, presented the officers with a cast-iron alibi for the period when Wallis vanished. He insisted he had not asked his people to seek out the identity of the firearms officer after the shooting and claimed Malone had been employed as a bouncer with the security company he ran.

He was asked why Malone had a shotgun and drugs in his house, to which he replied, ‘You should ask him that question. Oh, but you can’t, can you, because you murdered the poor bugger and at the same time killed his unborn baby.’

What had happened that night was indeed unfortunate and it was questionable as to whether Wallis had made the right call. But the inquiry into the incident had given him the benefit of the doubt.

However, the manner of Malone’s death might well have prompted someone to seek revenge against Wallis. And since Malone had no living relatives, suspicion had fallen on Slack.

But if he had arranged for Wallis to be kidnapped and killed, then I was sure we would never be able to prove it.

The story was always the same with Roy Slack. He managed to avoid any link between himself and the dirty deeds carried out on his behalf.

I had never interviewed or questioned the man myself but those who had had generally formed similar opinions of him. He was smart, they said, and paranoid. And he treated all police officers with utter contempt.

The profile we’d been building also included descriptions provided by underworld figures who had dared to tell us what they knew about him.

Certain words cropped up repeatedly. They were: cruel, brutal, heartless, tyrannical and vicious.

Reading back through all the stuff we had on the guy, I found myself hoping to God that he wasn’t the person who had sent the text. Because if it was him then I feared that there was a good chance it wasn’t just an empty threat.

12

Slack

Everything was in hand for Rosa Lopez’s arrival. The plane was due to touch down at Heathrow just after four o’clock and Danny was going to pick her up.