John almost missed Noreen as she came tearing down the hospital stairs. She grabbed him by the arm and told him to drive her back to the flat urgently. She filled him in on Matthew and the dangerous stepfather on the way.

Noreen could not believe she had got it so wrong about Annie. She felt sick with worry and fear for her flatmate as well as a frightful anguish that all this could be her fault.

‘I invited this man back into her life. John, supposing something happens – supposing he…’

‘Don’t think about that now, pet,’ John said trying to sound reassuring. It was the measure of how upset Noreen was that she allowed him to call her pet without violent contradiction. John was not at all sure that this situation was going to sort itself out. It sounded like a very messy business. More messy and violent, indeed, than anything he’d ever encountered in his life as a guard in Carney. Although he would do anything that was necessary, of course, to protect the women, John still rather hoped he wouldn’t be called upon to henchman this nasty character into submission. However, with Noreen at the helm of this problem, it seemed highly likely that he would. The woman really did know how to attract bother. He had to bite his tongue to not give her a severe talking to about minding her own business.

When they arrived at the house everything seemed quiet.

‘No sign of forced entry,’ John said, hopefully.

Noreen looked terrified. ‘She would have let him in.’

John walked up the stairs ahead, knocked on the door of the flat then tried to open it.

‘It’s locked,’ he said, ‘maybe there’s no one in. Maybe they went out or he didn’t come.’

Noreen pushed him aside, rapped firmly on the door and shouted, ‘Annie! Annie! Open up! It’s Noreen.’

A tiny voice came from inside. Like a mouse squeaking. John didn’t hear it but Noreen did.

‘Matthew?’

‘Can you open the door, Annie?’ Noreen had her face up to the door and was speaking gently. ‘Are you alone? Is there anyone with you? Come and open the door, Annie, please.’

Another tiny whimper.

Noreen turned to John and said, ‘Break the door down.’

‘I can’t just break down a door like that, Noreen.’

‘He’s probably got her at knifepoint,’ she spat in an angry whisper. ‘Just do it or I will!’

‘Annie,’ John called out in his booming voice. ‘It’s John here. Noreen’s erm…’ He looked at Noreen and she raised her eyes to heaven.

‘Annie, John’s going to break the door down if you don’t…’

They heard a bolt go back, then Annie opened the door and collapsed into Noreen’s arms.

The two women sank to the floor of the small landing and Noreen comforted Annie as she shook and wept in her arms.

‘I’m sorry, Annie,’ she said. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

Noreen was crying herself, bereft at having caused her friend such pain and trouble. So upset, in fact, that she forgot her own curiosity and did not look beyond the door into the flat before John closed the door firmly on them both.

Not in a million years could he ever imagine the scene before him. Certainly not at the hands of that wee girleen who knew how to make such delicious mushroom vol-au-vents.

Lying on the chair was the body of a middle-aged man, with his throat cut. His eyes were open and looked up as if pleading with his attacker. The back of the chair was covered in blood as was the front of his shirt, but, otherwise, it was not as messy as John would have imagined. Not indeed, that he had ever imagined walking in on such a scene.

The garrotte was still dug into the wound and hanging off the sides of his neck. John observed the cheeseboard on the counter suggesting that the kitchen appliance had come to hand rather than an actual murder weapon. Self-defence. John didn’t think there was any doubt about that after what he had heard. But by God, this was going to be something to explain away in a court of law.

He didn’t touch anything and went out to the hall to the two women.

Annie had calmed down and found breath through the sobbing. Her head was resting on Noreen’s chest and Noreen was stroking her hair.

He looked at Noreen and shook his head to indicate what had happened. Her head craned to look round the door and he closed it firmly. Not even Noreen with her morbid curiosity and strong stomach should have to look at a scene like that.

‘I’d better go downstairs and ring the police,’ he said.

‘You will do no such thing!’ Noreen snapped. ‘Look at Annie. She’s in no fit state to talk to the police. Whatever happened between Annie and that wicked bastard, it was self-defence. He nearly killed my brother remember? Certainly, he intended to.’

‘Well, this is really a matter for the police.’

‘Well, you’re a policeman.’

‘I’m an Irish guard, I don’t have any jurisd—’

‘And I’m telling you we just need to sit on this and figure out what to do for the best.’

‘We can’t just leave him there.’

‘No of course we can’t. We have to get rid of the body somehow. I’m going to go downstairs and get Arthur.’

‘And by the way,’ Noreen turned on the way down the stairs and said to Annie, ‘Matthew is my brother.’

‘Matthew?’ Annie suddenly woke from her catatonic state. Had she heard Noreen correctly through the fog of her shock? ‘So he’s alive? Matthew’s not dead?’

‘He certainly is not dead,’ she said. ‘He’s not looking very pretty right now, but he’s alive.’ Then she sunnily added, ‘Welcome to the family!’

Under the circumstances, John thought it sounded rather more like a threat.

❊

Coleman stood in front of the body with his gun pointing at the floor. He had just shot a man. Shot him dead, deliberately – without stopping to think. Now the body was lying in front of him. Two seconds ago, Handsome had been alive and now he was lying there in front of him, lifeless and naked. Coleman focussed on the fact that Handsome was naked and reminded himself that he had been about to rape Lara. The creep would almost certainly have stabbed her, maybe hit an artery and killed her, if Coleman hadn’t fired at him quickly. However, Coleman should have shot him in the leg and left it at that. If the cops had been alerted, they might have looked the other way and put it down to a gangster tiff. Handsome would probably have let it go. He might even have learned his lesson and laid off the women, for a while anyway.

But Coleman had not done that. Rage had taken him over and he shot to kill. He stood there, with the gun hanging limply from his hands, paralysed. He couldn’t take his eyes off the man he had just shot. Dead. Alive – then dead. Alive – then dead.

Coleman had seen men beaten, thumped, have their faces smashed in, their noses broken. He’d seen them shot in the leg, the knee, and, as of earlier that day, the foot. He had seen guns pointed at their heads and he pointed guns at the heads of men. He had listened as they begged for mercy, begged for their lives. Once or twice, he had helped lift dead bodies into the back of cars. But, probably more by coincidence than design, Coleman had never seen a man die before. He had certainly never killed anybody himself.

Men got angry with each other and somebody had to win. Coleman understood that as a rule of life. If you wanted to stop a man fighting, you had to hit hard to quench their fire, to bring them down. Now he realised it was quite another thing to put out the light entirely.

Alive – then dead. Alive – then dead.

Coleman had not thought of God since he was a child.

But he thought of Him now that he had killed someone. Nobody had the right to do that except God.

He tried to think of all of the men Chevron had snuffed out over the years. He imagined Arthur there, telling him to pull himself together. Handsome was a scumbag, a rapist – the lowest of the low. He deserved to die. He had it coming.

But still, Coleman could not move or speak. He was paralysed with shock.

Lara manoeuvred herself off the chaise longue and he untied her hands. She unbound herself and said, ‘Jesus, Coleman. What the hell are we going to do now?’

Coleman looked at her and then looked down at his hands. She followed his eyes and saw they were shaking. Then she looked back up at his face and saw that he had started to cry.

Lara was in shock, too. She had nearly been raped and killed, there was a dead body on her changing-room floor with blood and brains everywhere, including, she noted with horror, on her half-naked torso. And Coleman was falling apart. What the hell kind of a gangster was he?

She wanted to slap him, bring him to his senses. But then, he looked at her and she saw in his eyes the pain of a small, gentle child. The immeasurable yearning for love in the vulnerable. Something terrible had happened and all he wanted now was for somebody to tell him it was all right. When she saw him shoot Handsome with such certain confidence, Lara had been shocked, assuming this was an everyday occurrence with him. Clearly, by the expression in his eyes, fear, grief, pleading, it wasn’t. Coleman was a hard man but he was not a killer. He had just killed a man to protect her.

Lara was terrified. This violence was outside of her experience. Nonetheless, she knew she had to step up.

She put her arms around Coleman, led him out of the changing room and made him sit on a chair behind the till.

‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘I’m going to get Arthur. Don’t move.’

Coleman realised that he could not move anyway. He had untied her hands at her request then allowed himself to be guided to this chair but without her hand on him to guide him, he was powerless. He looked up at her, disbelieving his own weakness.

‘I’ll be back in a moment. We’ll sort this out.’ She kissed him sweetly on the forehead, and, grabbing a trench coat on her way, ran out the door, locking it behind her.

❊

‘So let me get this straight,’ Arthur said. ‘We’ve got two dead bodies.’

Lara and Noreen were standing in front of him, both in a state of dishevelment. The left side of Lara’s hair was stuck to her cheek with a lump of congealed blood and there was what looked like a small piece of somebody else’s brain nestling in her neck, just under her ear. Noreen was in slightly better shape but had blood all over her hands and the front of her blouse.

‘Yes,’ the two girls said in unison.

‘Handsome got shot by Coleman while he was trying to have a go at Lara?’

‘That’s right,’ Lara said.

‘Then some scary creep from Ireland was strangled by your pretty flatmate who wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’

‘Yes,’ Noreen said.

Arthur smiled.

‘You Irish are some piece of work.’

Truth be told, he was rather delighted with himself. Two damsels in distress and he was the first person they called to sort this out. This had taken his mind right off his foot. And the other imminent problem with Chevron. In fact, he was beginning to think that one problem might just sort out the other.

‘We need to get rid of the bodies, Arthur. Quickly.’

‘Ladies. I make bodies. I don’t get rid of them.’

‘Who does?’

‘I dunno. Let’s have a look and see what we’ve got.’

First, Arthur went to the shop with Lara.

‘Anyone else got a key to this place?’ Arthur asked.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Good, because this lot will take some cleaning up.’

Coleman had rallied somewhat but was quiet. Uncharacteristically he allowed Arthur to take charge. Arthur took the responsibility on board without judgement or comment. Coleman had spared his life earlier. It wasn’t easy killing people. Death could discombobulate the toughest hard man. Arthur knew that.

They locked up. Lara took Coleman and Annie down to the Chevrons’ office to clean up; Noreen and Arthur went back to the flat.

‘Shit,’ Arthur said. ‘Annie did that?’

Noreen nodded. ‘Him, I could understand,’ he said looking at John. John did not laugh. He was not happy taking orders from Arthur, but Noreen had warned him.

Arthur walked over and examined the body. Looking Dorian up and down. ‘Neat job,’ he said approvingly, ‘although, fuck me, he’s one mean looking dude.’

‘Language, Arthur,’ Noreen said.

‘Sorry,’ he apologised.

John was not impressed with the familiar talk between this lowdown gangster and his girl.

‘I think we should call the police,’ John said in his most assertive guard’s voice.

Arthur gave him a look that left John in no doubt whatsoever as to his meaning.

‘Inadvisable,’ is all he said.

‘You will in your decking hole,’ said Noreen, furious. ‘Arthur will sort this out.’

‘I’ll make some calls,’ he said. Now that the problem had come to a head, the novelty of being in charge was beginning to wear off. Arthur was worried. He didn’t know anyone who could clean up this kind of carnage. Chevron had hit out on Coleman this very night. If he got wind of this, which with two dead bodies on his premises he would, God knows what would follow. Chevron didn’t mind dead bodies as long as they were his dead bodies. This was a right mess and no mistake.

Two dead bodies and neither of them Coleman.

Then it came to him in a flash. Normally, when Arthur had flashes, it meant somebody was going to get hurt. This flash was different. It was a sudden, problem solving idea and it was quite, quite brilliant. If he could make it work. Although, for the life of him he could not imagine how.

‘I think we’d be better off keeping this to ourselves,’ he said.

Noreen and John agreed. John was still reluctant, but the fewer gangsters he knew in person the better. If he could confine his acquaintance to Arthur and Coleman, he might be able to salvage something of his moral integrity somewhat.

‘We need to bury these lads. Deep. Somewhere they can’t be found.’

Noreen nodded. John despaired. His life lay in the hands of this half-witted cockney.

‘What we need,’ Arthur continued, ‘is a bloody big hole. Problem is where the hell are we going to find one?’

Noreen looked at John and John looked right back at her.

He was shaking his head but, as always in the company of his girl, John was utterly powerless.

❊

Once they established they had access to the foundations of the World’s End site, they put their heads together and refined the plan.

Before they cleaned up the shop, Coleman lay on his side on the dressing room floor and Lara took a photograph of him with Handsome’s body.

Arthur borrowed a van from a friend who did not ask questions. Nonetheless, in case Chevron checked in later, he assured him he needed it overnight to transport some stuff from the boutique to a supplier. Handsome’s slim body was wrapped in a clothes bag and flung over John’s shoulder with a couple of other clothes bags, as if it weighed no more than a shirt. Then, they took Dorian’s body out of the flat using the same principle. It was not uncommon for the neighbours to see Lara coming in and out of the flat with clothes bags and she stood outside instructing the men to be careful with her precious collection. That night, Noreen, Lara and Annie set about the two scenes with buckets of bleach. The following day they took turns in the launderette washing soiled curtains and fabrics on boil wash, running in and out of their workplaces keeping everything looking normal. John worked the World’s End site and made sure that things were in place before going for pints as usual. While his foreman was in the bathroom John managed to steal the padlock keys from his pocket and handed them to Arthur. Coleman had the van parked at the back entrance of the site. Between them, they managed to get the two bodies into the foundations hole. Arthur took a photograph to show Chevron, of the two bodies in a heaped mash of flailing limbs at the bottom of the pit. They found the two shovels that John left for them and threw sand and gravel on top of the bodies until they were hidden from view.

The following day the concrete went down and Handsome and Dorian disappeared, forever.

❊

Chevron was told that Coleman killed Handsome because he tried to get up on his girl and that Arthur had taken the opportunity to shoot him then. Best to keep the mess all in one place, boss. When you are lying, Arthur found, it was always good to stay as close to the truth as possible.

Chevron asked for evidence. Eventually. ‘Not that I don’t trust you, my son,’ he said. Bobby had never called him son when Coleman was alive. When Coleman was alive he was just Ironing Board. Now he was the boss. The man in charge.

Bobby never questioned why Arthur had taken the trouble of photographing the bodies for him, but it made him think there was more to Ironing Board than he had given him credit for. The way he got rid of Coleman had showed a ruthless streak he hadn’t known was there. Honestly, he had not really been expecting him to do it. Shirley had surprised him though. Cried like a bloody baby down the phone to him. She was very cut up saying that she hoped her grassing him up hadn’t resulted in Chevron taking Coleman out. Bobby had reassured her that he would never dream of killing Coleman. He never hit women, and he never took out mates. That was the rules.

‘He’s probably off somewhere living it up and all that. That designer dolly of his moved back to Ireland after I closed the shop. Maybe he followed her?’

Shirley didn’t like that.

❊

Matthew recovered and left the priesthood. He and Annie got married immediately. Her modelling career paid for him to finish his studies and get work teaching. Whereupon she gave up modelling and started having babies.

❊

Coleman laid low with Lara’s Auntie Una in Cricklewood for a month before leaving for New York. Lara followed him a month later, after organising their affairs so that they could start again. She continued designing, but for other people. Coleman’s smart appearance, business nous and a few forged references got him a job on Wall Street where he made a fortune. Lara was sorry to leave Swinging London but discovered, with Coleman, that everywhere swings when you’re in love.