Eddie sat on the bed next to his pregnant wife, pulled back the quilt cover and laid his head on her stomach. Gina was four months gone now and Ed could hardly wait to become a father again. Having a newborn at his age might seem like madness to some people, but he looked and acted more like a forty-year-old, instead of his true age of fifty-three.

‘I’ve got an early morning meeting, babe. In fact, I’ve got a few meetings today, so I probably won’t be back until teatime. What about you? You going out, or staying in all day?’

‘I might go for a mooch round Lakeside. Most of my clothes don’t fit me any more, so I’m gonna have to get some bigger sizes. I hope I don’t get enormous and then struggle to lose the weight after the baby’s born.’

Eddie chuckled. He’d never met a woman as paranoid about her weight as Gina. ‘It’ll all be worth it when you give birth to a little Mitchell. You should think yourself extremely lucky, you know. There ain’t many women in the world that wouldn’t give their right arm to breed with an ’andsome bastard like me.’

Gina punched him playfully on the arm. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re so full of shit, Eddie Mitchell?’

Ed kissed her gently on the forehead and stood up. ‘You wouldn’t have me any other way, sweetheart.’

An hour later, Ed was sitting in the office of his salvage yard in Dagenham. He had very little to do with the business any more. He’d had a guy called Big Pete running it for him for years, but he liked to keep hold of it in case the Old Bill ever came sniffing around. In Ed’s eyes, every wise man should have at least one legal business to cover their arse.

Eddie had told Terry Baldwin to meet him at the salvage yard at half-seven.

‘Take an hour off, Pete. Go and grab yourself a bit of scran down the café,’ he told his employee.

When Pete left the yard, Ed put his feet up on the desk in the Portakabin and as he often did when he was deep in thought, rubbed the stubble on his chin. At his end, everything had gone to plan the previous night. He and Raymond had stayed in the Bell and had had afters with the landlord and four other geezers, and he knew everything had gone OK with the others, as Stuart had got home at half-two and said both the restaurant and pub were full of people who knew both Gary and Ricky.