It was Monday morning, just a few days after the events at the building development. Working off Bailey’s tip, the NCA had swooped on a fishing trawler called Kaia that had sailed from Dieppe to Torquay. They had arrived at the harbour just in time, armed police in black balaclavas dramatically storming the scene.

On the trawler, they had discovered one hundred and twenty brand-new seven-point-six-two-millimetre CZ 805 BREN assault rifles, one hundred and forty brand-new nine-millimetre K100 pistols, seventy silencers and one hundred and thirty thousand rounds of assorted ammunition. It was exactly the arsenal of weaponry that Rick been planning to sell to her.

With a shipment of this size and importance, the main players often liked to be present and Rick had been no exception in this respect. He had been there to meet the boat. And he had been arrested, along with the crew of the trawler. However, none of the other key members of the Molloy family had been captured with him. Nancy, for one thing, had retired from attending these kinds of meetings. Shane, Bailey was certain, had died in the explosion at the building site, although his body had yet to be formally identified. And as for Stephen, he had either been indisposed for some reason, or just plain lucky not to have been there. Nevertheless, to have netted Rick was still a major result.

He’d been charged with a variety of offences, including the illegal importation of firearms into the UK and being part of a conspiracy to supply firearms, as well as leading and coordinating the activities of a large-scale organised crime group. No lawyer, however expensive, was going to be able to get him off the hook for this one. He’d been caught red-handed and he was looking at a major stretch inside before any chance of parole. It was a significant coup and one that could conceivably spell the end of the Molloy crime family.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps not.

Nancy Molloy was still at liberty, and knowing the vindictive old matriarch as she did, Bailey imagined that she was stewing somewhere plotting her revenge, probably with Stephen’s enthusiastic assistance. When it came to reprisals, Bailey was less concerned for herself and more for her parents, her mother in particular. Her father wouldn’t be around for too much longer but her mother would still be potentially vulnerable to harm… if Nancy Molloy or her underlings found out a way to get to her. But would they really stoop so low as to harm a ‘civilian’ like her mother in order to get back at Bailey?

Bailey attempted to push the worrying thoughts from her mind for the time being and focus her attention on her father. All she cared about right now was being with him as much as possible before he left them forever.

She stroked his hand lovingly. His skin had taken on a papery parchment-like feel and he seemed semi-substantial somehow, as if he had already passed halfway into whatever came next.