Raymond glanced around and saw Pat with the phone pressed to her ear. Eddie liked his employees to keep their noses clean and he couldn’t afford to get nicked for kidnapping his own father. Polly wouldn’t be overly impressed, either.

As Raymond let go of him, Stanley fell backwards and landed on his backside. Ray stared at him with a look of pure hatred on his face. ‘You’re no father of mine any more. Mum can do better than you, anyway. You and that old trollop deserve one another.’

Eddie Mitchell got to Milton Keynes long before the Victoria Inn opened its doors. He checked out the park the dog-walker had told him about on his last visit and decided it was too open.

‘What about over there, Dad? There’s more woodland over that side,’ Gary suggested.

Eddie shrugged. ‘We’ll have to see if we can park over that way somewhere. There’s too many people over here and we’ll stand out like sore thumbs dragging Colin across the park. We ain’t even got a fucking dog to make it look kosher.’

‘We can always put Colin on a lead,’ Ricky joked.

Eddie chuckled, then turned to Stuart. ‘We’ll have a little drive around, there’s bound to be somewhere more remote than this.’

The lads jumped back into the Range Rover and within ten minutes Eddie had found the exact kind of spot they were looking for. It was a dirt track over the other side of the park. There were no houses, no people and thick clumps of trees.

‘Right, this will do nicely. Now, remember exactly where it is and we’ll take a drive towards the pub. It will be open in half-hour and I wanna grab hold of the cunt before he goes in there,’ Eddie said.

Fifteen minutes later, the Range Rover was parked in a turning between the pub and the road where Colin Griffiths lived.

‘How do you know he walks there? He might take his motor,’ Ricky said.

‘Would you fucking drive if you lived less than a five-minute walk away?’ Eddie replied sarcastically.

At five to twelve exactly, Ricky spotted Colin. ‘That’s him with the brown leather jacket on,’ he told Stuart.

Stuart put on his baseball cap and got out of the Range Rover. He felt no nerves; the whole experience was exhilarating for him.

‘All right, mate?’ Stuart said as he crept up behind Colin and put a friendly arm around his neck.

‘Get off me, you weirdo,’ Colin said trying to push him away.

Stuart was tall and strong and Colin was no match for him. Stu glanced around and, positive that no one was watching him, flicked open the knife and held the blade against Colin’s throat.

‘Walk with me and you won’t get hurt,’ he said, as he led him towards the Range Rover.