Nancy absorbed what her son was saying. She knew how careful he was and this was typical of his way of operating.

‘Have you got any proof?’ she asked, desperate to keep Adrian’s name intact. ‘Maybe he just accidentally blabbed it to the wrong person?’

‘Blabbed it to the wrong person? I don’t think so. He knew the rules. Even he wasn’t that stupid. Even with all those drugs he took. No… this was calculated and deliberate.’

‘Was there a specific reason why you decided to lay this trap?’

‘I wanted to flush out any rats before we close this upcoming gun deal,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of cash at stake.’

‘You thought there was a rat?’ she said doubtfully. Back when he was alive, Arthur had run a pretty tight ship, and after his demise she’d run an even tighter one, and in all those years grasses had been few and far between, and those that they had rooted out had been dealt with in the harshest way possible. Anyone possessing more than half a brain cell and the slightest modicum of self-preservation knew that it was a very dumb idea indeed to try and stitch up the Molloys.

‘Little things here and there,’ retorted Rick. ‘Seizures when people were supposed to have been paid off. Raids on places that were supposed to have been secret. Old Bill just seemed to be one step ahead and I felt that something was wrong. So I had Stephen come up with this little plan to locate the leak.’

Nancy glanced at Stephen sitting there twiddling his bottle of hand sanitiser. Trust Stephen to come up with such a sneaky plan, she thought. But then he excelled at that kind of thing. That’s why he was their head of security.

‘I can’t accept that Adrian was a grass,’ she persisted, but her voice was starting to waver now.

‘Believe it,’ said Rick. ‘I didn’t want to either. But it’s the only explanation.’

She frowned. ‘The third of February?’ she said. ‘That was last week! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’

‘I would have told you sooner, but I wanted to check the details and make double sure. You know how I like to be certain.’

They both gazed at each other in silence for a long while, two pairs of jet-black eyes staring into one another.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he said finally. ‘I really am.’

Shane, Stephen and Archie kept their heads bowed diplomatically. This was about family – blood – and they all knew just how much that meant to her. And now Rick was telling her that her own son – her own flesh and blood – was a Judas of the first order.

‘Adrian always hated me,’ Rick continued. ‘You know how he was. He couldn’t accept it when you put me in charge. It must have twisted his mind.’

As she slowly let the reality sink in, a deep sense of sadness pervaded her. Her eldest son had committed the cardinal sin and his betrayal cut deep. She tried to rationalise it in her head. It was the drugs. It must have been all that cocaine he took. It had made him sick. He hadn’t been acting in his right mind. When she framed it like that, it made his treachery slightly more palatable.