He would then drive her to the hotel she’d been booked into before taking her to the pub where Slack would meet her. There she’d be given a detailed briefing and the equipment that she’d requested via Carlos Cruz, which included weapons.

Before then Slack had some business to attend to in Dulwich. It was something he’d been putting off for a week because he’d had other things to deal with. But now seemed like a good time to get it done, since he had to go out anyway in order to rendezvous with The Slayer.

Before leaving the building he had lunch in the pub’s restaurant with some of the lads. After a few wines and beers with their steaks, they were more willing to express their fears about what was happening.

‘Most of my days are now spent making sure the plods are not watching or listening to me,’ Frank Piper said. ‘I know that a couple of Harry Fuller’s guys came unstuck because they didn’t know that the task force had placed bugs in their homes and tracking devices in their cars.’

‘They were fucking careless,’ Danny Carver said. ‘It’s not that hard to stop the snooping if you know how to.’

‘And we do know how to,’ Slack said. ‘That’s why they’ve struggled to get close to us.’

But he could see that whatever he told Piper and the others it was not going to ease their anxiety. So after a while he gave up trying and focused on his meal.

At three o’clock he told Mike Walker to bring the car around the front.

‘We’re going to the house in Park Crescent,’ he said. ‘And you need to make bloody sure we’re not followed.’

It’s only about six miles from Rotherhithe to Dulwich, but the route Mike took to get there added two miles to the journey.

He used to be a cabbie so he knew the area like the back of his hand. There was no way the Old Bill could have tailed them without being spotted.

Dulwich was one of the more serene parts of South London with a picturesque park and a famous college. It was also a good place to invest in property, which was why Slack had bought the house in Park Crescent a few years ago.