Jed laughed out loud. ‘Never caught the geezer who murdered your father, did they? Ever wondered why, have ya? That’s why Frankie stabbed me. She found out I was the culprit.’

Eddie stared at Jed. It couldn’t be; Jed had to be winding him up. ‘You weren’t fit enough to clean my father’s shoes, let alone kill him,’ he snarled.

Jed grabbed Eddie by the chin and manoeuvred his face so it was only inches away. ‘I killed your shitcunt of an old man, and do you know what? He begged me for mercy. Fifteen years old I was and I beat him senseless. Cried like a baby, the old cunt did, so don’t tell me I weren’t good enough to clean his shoes.’

‘You’re a fucking liar. My Frankie would never keep something like that from me,’ Ed yelled.

‘You fucking scumbag cunt,’ Gary shouted. He would have killed Jed with his bare hands, if only they weren’t tied up.

Raymond shut his eyes. He just wanted to die now, get it all over with as quickly as possible.

Eddie was turning redder and redder in the face. ‘You fucking spineless piece of shit. I’m gonna kill you,’ he yelled, as he tried to thrust his incapable body towards Jed.

Jed laughed at Eddie’s feeble attempt to attack him and turned to his father. ‘I’m sorry I never told ya, but I did it for me Grandad Butch. He was never the same man after Harry shot him. I waited and waited for you to do something about it, but you never did, so me and Sammy took it into our own hands. It had to be done, Dad. Revenge had to be taken.’

Eddie took deep breaths to calm himself down. He knew he had mugged himself off by wriggling about like a deranged eel, but his reaction had been spontaneous. He wasn’t even thinking of his dead son or Gina and his kids any more; all he could think about was his dad and how Frankie had betrayed him. He was so annoyed with his father, absolutely fucking seething. How could a man of Harry Mitchell’s stance be battered to death by a boy who was barely out of nappies? For years Ed had looked up to his big bad gangster of a dad, and now he’d lost all respect, even though he was about to die in a not dissimilar way himself. As for Frankie, her actions were despicable and if by any chance he came out of tonight alive, she was out of his life for good.

‘Dad?’ he heard Gary say.

With tears of disappointment in his eyes, Eddie looked at his eldest son. The O’Haras were still busy talking among themselves.

‘Keep your chin up. Don’t make yourself look a cunt,’ Gary mouthed.