The Vito turned into a car park brimming with small trucks that had Gustafson Foods on their sides. Mick aimed the car towards the road and pointed a finger at a building about a hundred yards away. The curtains were drawn over the large front window and all was dark inside.

The businesses on their side of the street were housed in long structures of glass, metal and plastic, while across the road the buildings looked as if they had been born as homes: two storeys of brick, first-floor bay windows, single wooden front doors. The car parks ran right up to the front doors and windows, as if they had once been gardens. Behind both rows of buildings was agricultural land.

‘What now?’ Brad asked. The answer was: we wait.

And they did so in silence for half an hour, until Mick said: ‘You mentioned Fate the other day, right?’ He showed Brad his mobile phone and a Google Earth image of their location, which looked very green from 2,500 feet in the sky. ‘Check out this place for a showdown. London’s most rural borough, apparently. Fields, peace and quiet, no one around. Perfect. If this isn’t a sign of Fate then no such beast exists. This is meant to go our way. Just like before. This’ll go down the same way it did with Grafton.’

‘You mean she’ll run and be picked up on a back road and we’ll be hunting another guy all over again? Can’t wait.’

Brad felt Mick looking at him intently. He didn’t like it. He hadn’t liked much today, actually. And it included Mick’s refusal to mention Dave. The guy had run out on them, and even Brad, not half as paranoid as Mick, had wondered if his old friend was going to do something stupid, like talk to the cops. But Mick hadn’t mentioned him, never mind tried to call, or even asked Brad if he knew what was going on. He had sent a text message to someone on the drive here, but Brad doubted it had been Dave. So, he brought it up.

‘Think Dave got lost?’

‘No, you saw as well as I did that he bottled it and ran off.’

He sure did, but he wasn’t about to agree. He had to protect Dave, so said: ‘I thought he might have had something to do, that’s all. Thought he’d be here. He might still come.’

‘He won’t. I know. He’s not as loyal as these two.’

These two? Brad repeated in his mind, and then he understood.

Another van was cruising down the road, slowly, like something on the prowl. Brad, looking past Mick and out the passenger window, saw a handsome twenty-something guy with floppy blonde curls at the wheel, staring back. He looked like a surfer right out of a straight-to-video flick and totally fitted the ancient third generation Volkswagen Transporter.

He didn’t know this guy. But he now knew who Mick had texted earlier.

The driver got out and, beyond him, Brad saw a passenger, also in a boiler suit. A wide brute of a man. Compact, built for power. A guy designed for busting heads that his baby-faced partner couldn’t sweet talk.

Floppy put his face right up to Mick’s window, but Mick didn’t even look until the guy rapped the glass. He opened his door, forcing the guy to step back, and got out.

‘Stay here, Brad.’

The two men walked out of sight, behind the vans. Brad saw the brute glaring at him, like one bodyguard sizing up another. He glared right back. Neither guy backed down, and the game only ended when Mick and Floppy returned. Floppy got into his cheesy T3 with one of Mick’s bags. Mick got in and told Brad to get out.

‘You’re going with these guys on a job. Highly important. After this, I guarantee you’ll be free and clear.’

‘Who the fuck are this pair? And what job?’

‘You’ll know them quite well by the time you get to the job. And then you’ll know the answer to both your questions.’

‘I don’t work with guys I don’t know, Mick.’ He meant he didn’t trust them. But to camouflage that he added: ‘They could be fuck-ups, and I don’t like prison gruel.’

‘Fuck-ups they might be.’ He looked right into Brad’s eyes. ‘That’s why I need you there, Brad. Make sure it goes smoothly. Look, that young idiot is a guy I keep on the side. He was sixteen when I nabbed him for stealing computers. Let him go scot free, bit like you. Now we help each other, bit like me and you. Except maybe I’ve got something in the Loyalty Box to keep him motivated. He’s handy, but he hasn’t got your skills, and his brother there is brainless. I need you on this.’

For six years, ever since he’d made DCI, the Loyalty Box had been Mick’s leverage against the army of criminals he had under his spell, like Król, and his weapon against those he desired to stamp down, like Ramirez. Mick had found a jacket with blood on the sleeve, right where Rocker’s leaking nose would have gushed if he’d been choked by the wearer. Brad had watched Mick pull it from the laundry basket in the bathroom, just the two of them alone. Their eyes met. In that moment, staring at each other, they had come to a wordless understanding. Brad had said nothing as Mick held aloft the bloody jacket. Mick said nothing as he stuffed the item back into the laundry basket.

With any other man, he would have returned alone for the jacket, to rehome it in the Loyalty Box with other evidence lifted from crime scenes, where it would await the day it was called upon to ruin someone’s life. But here, in Brad, he’d sensed such action was not needed. A new, special partnership was being born.

Mick had handed him his card, and he hadn’t needed to voice that gesture: We help each other now. Call me if you think of anything I need to know. Then Mick had exited the bathroom and announced to his colleagues that the room was clean, nothing useful found.

Later, Brad called and outright admitted he’d killed the guy. Many suspected that pressure from Razor’s men up in Scotland would force Grafton to hand them someone. Grafton had already severed ties and withheld payment from Brad and Dave because they’d failed to kill Randolph. Suspecting that Grafton might try to have him killed to ensure his silence, he had been watching the street below. Had seen a strange car arrive and gone down to meet it. Rocker wanted Brad to accompany him back to Scotland. Brad said no. Rocker insisted. Stalemate – what could be done? A shopkeeper returning home from work found the dead Scotsman’s body ten minutes later and hit triple nine.

Brad trusted that Mick would not arrest him after the confession. And there was no arrest. There was only the start of a beautiful relationship between them. Brad had provided Mick with the one thing he’d desperately needed, and for that Mick felt he still needed to protect him. Still owed him.

‘And what’s the job?’ Brad asked.

‘Unconnected to this Grafton lark,’ Mick said. ‘You don’t need to know. Loose end I want tying up before I go away, that’s all. A guy needs to regret the error of his ways. Look, Brad, it’s a big ask, I know. Even for those two, which is why I just paid them twenty grand. I’ll give you twenty as well. Twenty extra big ones, and all you have to do is the same shit you’ve been doing for years. Drive half an hour, kick in a door, shout a bit, break a nose, drive away. If I’m done here, I’ll text you where to meet me for the cash.’

It beat doing this, Brad realised. Liz Grafton was Mick’s little pet obsession, not his. He didn’t really want to go break a stranger’s nose. But neither did he really want to do the alternative job. So, he said okay.

He got out, and into the back seat of the T3 via its rear hatch. Some owners would use this contraption as a bus and leave the rows of seats, while others, because it was popular as a weekend adventure ride, turned the interior into a bedsit. This pair of jokers had gone for just the sitting room part. An armchair against each side wall, under the curtained windows, facing each other. The floor was carpeted. Brad ignored the chairs, walked between them with his head bowed, and knelt behind the cabin seats. Floppy gave him a quick look, and a thumbs up, and said: ‘Hold tight and don’t sing.’ The brute turned his head almost 180, and glared again at Brad.

‘Let me save you some confusion,’ Brad said to him. ‘It’s you.’

‘What the fuck you talking about?’ the guy replied, his accent thick Irish.

‘You’re sizing me up and wondering if me and you got into it who would end up screaming for mummy’s help.’

That made Floppy laugh. But it also made the brute face forward.

‘Name’s Sink,’ Floppy said. Also an Irish guy. ‘Pleased to meet. This is Guff, my blood. Let’s do this.’