‘Well, the other day in the pub, I was watching the way your eyes moved.’ He paused. ‘You said you lived in Nottingham. And your eyes moved to the left. You weren’t lying about that.’

He paused again, this time for longer, for dramatic effect. He pointed a tiny index finger at her accusingly.

‘But when I asked you if you knew Barry Hale, your eyes moved to the right. You were lying.’

‘I didn’t say I knew him. I said I’d heard the name.’

‘Well, the thing is, it doesn’t surprise me that you were lying because,’ his eyes widened triumphantly, ‘there is no Barry Hale. I just made that name up to see if you were a liar. And it turns out that you are.’

Bailey forced herself to remain calm. She was really starting to dislike this guy.

‘I must have got the name muddled up with someone else,’ she said casually. ‘You know how it is. You meet loads of people in my line of work. Barry Hale. Garry Bale. Harry Gale. It gets confusing sometimes.’

‘Maybe we don’t like dealing with people who get “confused”,’ said Stephen, looking to Rick for support. But Rick was just staring at her with that unfathomable expression of his. What the hell was going through his mind right now? She just could not tell.

She took a deep breath and decided to opt for honesty.

‘Look, I just wanted to make a good impression on you, okay. You guys are major league. A big step-up in my operations.’

‘What?’ said Stephen, sounding deeply critical. ‘So you thought—’

Rick waved for him to be quiet. Stephen looked put out and lapsed into a sullen silence.

Rick’s coal-black eyes bored into Bailey.

‘You’re right,’ he said slowly. ‘Doing business with us will put you straight in the premier division.’

Bailey’s tension ratcheted down a notch.

‘My mother seems to approve of you,’ he added. He glanced around the flat. ‘And your place appears to check out. Doesn’t it, Stephen?’

Stephen gave a sulky, reluctant shrug, indicating that he hadn’t been able to find anything incriminating.

‘I think we can do business together,’ continued Rick. ‘But I want you to remember one thing. The more we have to do with someone, the more we have to lose, if you understand what I’m saying. And if you turn out to have been stringing us along…’ He left the threat hanging in the air. He didn’t need to say any more.

Bailey knew from past experience operating with people at this level, that the deeper she got with them, especially with a deal of this size, the less able they were to just walk away from her if it all went pear-shaped. The only sensible option to them would be to kill her.

And with those menacing words of warning, Rick got to his feet and stretched, making ready to go. But then she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Shane had begun to rummage around in the bowl of Quality Street which was sitting next to him on the sideboard by the entranceway. He was picking through the chocolates clearly searching for a flavour that he liked.