Eventually, though, the lock-ins returned and Tommy became less attentive. His mood swings seemed more frequent and managing them became hard work. He started to become paranoid that the dealer who was busted was out to get him. Apparently there were rumours of this circulating around town, largely based on the fact that Tommy had got away scot-free and the dealer had ended up with an eighteen-month prison sentence. We will never know for sure if the two things were linked, but one Sunday evening the restaurant was set on fire and completely gutted. Tommy managed to leave via the rear fire escape and declared, that very day, that we should leave Brighton for good. It wasn’t safe for us to stay. I didn’t openly oppose the decision, but when we drove out of town for the final time, we passed my parents’ hotel and for the first time ever it reminded me of happier days.

Our destination was south London. Tommy had an old friend from Yorkshire that put him in touch with a company called Cityside Investigations. They always needed trusted and verified blokes to help with rent collection, document serving, surveillance and the like. I don’t think Tommy really fancied the job, but it came with the promise of a nice two-bedroom ex-local authority flat on the Grange estate in Walworth that was owned and rented out by the boss of the business. He took the job as a stopgap but has ended up working there for these past four years. He didn’t like the idea of me having a job but, as his workload increased, I occasionally helped him out when it was felt a job required the female touch. If a summons or injunction needed to be served, the door was much more likely to open when the visitor was an innocent-looking lady in her mid-twenties. Some jobs, such as honeytraps, absolutely required a female. These are cases where a wife is certain that her husband is cheating on her and wants to test out his faithfulness by setting a trap in the form of a pretty and seemingly willing female lure. I only ever participated in two of these, and on both occasions Tommy was nearby to keep an eye on things. The one I remember most fondly took place in a wine bar on Camberwell New Road. I was told that the client was a suspicious wife who had contacted Tommy’s boss and told him that she suspected her husband was out on the pull that very night. The husband had telephoned her with some lame excuse about possibly not being able to make it home that evening. She was convinced that he would be at this particular wine bar and would be out to grab himself a lady.