Seeing as they had arrived early, Eddie designated Ricky to keep lookout and then decided to run over their other plans again. He turned to Raymond. ‘Right, tell me about Baldwin now. I couldn’t speak properly when you rang earlier, Gina was in the room. Where did you say he was going of a night?’

‘He’s been leaving the house between seven and half past every evening. I’ve followed him a few times and he headed towards a real quiet road, so I had to stop tailing him. I was worried he might clock me because there was no other bastard about. I went back to the same road to have a nose in daylight and all there is is a load of garages down the bottom of it. Maybe he’s dealing in stolen goods and has a lock-up down there or something.’

Eddie paused for a minute. He needed to think things through before he made a decision. ‘Any idea what time he gets back indoors?’

‘I’ve checked three times and he definitely don’t get back before midnight,’ Raymond replied.

‘Well, we can’t ambush him at seven in the evening, so we’re gonna have to park outside his gaff and wait for him to come back. We’ll strike tomorrow, as planned. His old woman might be back any day now and we don’t wanna have to top her an’ all,’ Eddie said thoughtfully.

‘What about the O’Haras? Is that still on for Wednesday night?’ Gary asked his father.

‘Yeah, of course it’s still on. I just wanna get all this shit over and done with as quickly as possible. Flatnose Freddie knows the score and he wants to sort the bodies his end ASAP. I’ve changed me mind about us breaking into the house, though. I’ve had a long, hard think about it since we had our original meeting, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s far too risky. We’re better off ambushing Jed and Jimmy alone as they near the house.’

Gary, Ricky and Raymond all breathed an enormous sigh of relief. They’d all thought that breaking into the O’Haras’ was an extremely stupid idea. If Georgie or Harry woke up, they’d all be in shit street.

‘What about Alice, though? I thought you wanted her out of the picture as well,’ Stuart asked, bemused. It was only because Ed had insisted that Alice must also be killed that he had suggested breaking into the O’Haras’ gaff in the first place.