Blood Betrayal

Contents

Prologue The Last Christmas

Act 1

Soldiers of Fortune

The Casual Inmate

Happy Birthday

Welcome to the Pleasure Dome

Act 2

The Unforgettable Fire

London Calling

Prince Charming

View to a Kill

Our House

For Whom the Bow Bells Toll

Nadsat Kicks

Danger Zone

The Company of Wolves

Who Can It Be Now?

Act 3

Glittering Prize

Near Darke

Clown World

Life in the Fast Lane

Union of the Snake

At Close Range

Two Tribes

Not Life As We Know It

Land of Confusion

Black Night

Money for Nothing

A Convention of Dunces

Fade to Grey

Live to Tell

Ruthless People

Risky Business

Appetite for Destruction

The Little Faggot

Ground Control to Major John

The Star Chamber

Fatal Attraction

London Confidential

Hand of Doom

Devil’s Advocate

Last Exit to Peckham

Material Girl

West End Girls

Pretty in Pink

The Model

The Pink Palace

Mad World

Dressed to Kill

White Wedding

Act 4

Risky Business

Novus Ordo Seclorum

Burn

Twisted Animators

Her Name is Rio

Murder by Delusion

Killing in the Name

Vision Quest

Charlie Says

The Means of Reproduction

Act 5

Cupid Stunt

Bloody Kisses

Dangerous Liaisons

Making Plans for Nigel

Whoops Apocalypse

Nightmare Walking, Psychopath Talking

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Society

About The Author

Prologue

The Last Christmas

"Duw helpa ni, muttered DCI McBride of Dalston CID as he brought the Ford Scorpio Granada to a halt and turned off the wailing sirens. Foot heavy on the gas and lights flashing, he’d made it over from Hackney to West London in record time. This wasn’t his patch, but he’d pulled strings using his rank and the fact that if anyone should have this case, it was him. The atrocities that had happened here tonight were linked to him like a ball and chain. It had been cleared by the top ranks of Scotland Yard between the Yard’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner and the Assistant Chief Constable. It overruled traditional practice, as this was far from conventional. A mother and her babies had been brutally murdered. When the husband and father heard of these horrific crimes, it would send shockwaves through the underbelly of London. The ramifications of this incident would create a bloodbath across the capital. From what he’d been told over the radio by PC Hutson, who was at the scene, the weapon that had been used to carry out the atrocities looked like a sawn-off shotgun. Flicking his seatbelt off, he opened the car door. He flinched as a cold gust of wind hit him in the face, cursing under his breath, Gwaed diniwed."

It was 11.30pm on 6th December 1989 and snow was falling on Curzon Street, Mayfair. Struggling to ease his large frame out of the car, McBride took the last bite of his bacon-and-egg roll. His fingers dripped egg as he locked the car and pocketed the keys. At fifty-two he’d been with the Met for over twenty years after transferring from Butetown Police Station. This was due to the level of corruption he’d witnessed there as a PC. He thought the Met would be different. Little did he know that his move from Cardiff was like going from the frying pan into the deepest fires of hell. Dante’s Inferno didn’t go to this sepulchral depth. There were epidemic levels of corruption, extortion and witness intimidation in East London, and no more so than by his own colleagues in the force. This dirty misconduct reached to the highest echelons of the Met. A firm within a firm. A police force where racism and misogyny were systemic. In Dalston, where there was a large population of Caribbeans, Cypriots, West Africans and Turks, the Met thought the best way forward was to employ glow-in-the-dark white men. Many officers started a progressive trend where they assaulted random, and yet always black people, then in a cunning twist, turned the tides and arrested their victims and charged them with assaulting them. It never failed to get convictions. With these crime-catching statistics, due to their ‘intelligent policing’, they met Home Secretary David Waddington with pride. The real menaces that the Met largely chose to ignore, as many were taking bungs from them, were the untouchable gangsters making millions per year, leaving a body count behind them to rival Auschwitz. A crime family that had been around for decades which had gone from controlling the East End into having their tentacles all over London. A gang McBride intended to bring crashing to the ground if it was the last thing he did.

McBride being many things – never married and with no family and friends – corrupt he wasn’t. The DCI took his job very seriously. Born in Blaen-Y-Maes, Swansea, he and his Mam had moved to Tiger Bay when he was ten. He didn’t speak with the harsh Cardiff twang, more the spit-inducing South Walian accent, further pronounced by his unfortunate underbite. McBride’s Mam worked as a cleaner to keep a roof over their heads. He had no recollection of his Da, who’d gone back to Glasgow before he was born. His Mam told him on many occasions his Da was a no-good waster and better off out of their lives. They lived hand to mouth in a flat infested with vermin and plagued with black mould. His Mam worked her way into an early grave. Not long before she’d informed him his Da had died years ago of a heroin overdose while living rough on the streets of Haghill. He saw the police force as a way out of the life he’d been born into. Ninian McBride would be somebody. To spare him from a lifetime down the pits in Nantgarw Colliery, where at aged thirty-eight he would die an excruciating death of pneumoconiosis, coughing up bloody phlegm and wheezing like Muttley.

It’s bloody nobbling, mun, mumbled McBride as he stepped onto the road shuddering with cold. He turned into Curzon Place. Snowflakes swirled around him, and in less-tragic circumstances this would’ve been a Dickensian magical scene, had it not been for the heavy presence of police cars, personnel and ambulances. Rubbing his greasy hands on his shirt, he just added to the stains that were already there. McBride didn’t see the necessity of washing his clothes; he had police work to do. His personal hygiene didn’t factor at all in his life. When he was in uniform in Cardiff, he’d been reprimanded about his lax approach to cleanliness. Complaints had been made of having to endure sitting near to him at the station, where he reeked. When he moved to CID in London and was plain clothed, he thought things might improve. Unfortunately, they didn’t, and McBride wore the same brown cords, frayed shirt and crumpled Mackintosh.

As he waddled along, McBride couldn’t help but be impressed by the majestic architecture and regal beauty of Mayfair. The street’s Christmas tree sparkled with festooned tawdry lights, the smell of pine needles heavy in the air. McBride made his way to the main door of the building that was 9 Curzon Place. An impressive black-brick Georgian townhouse. It was four stories tall and included a basement which housed five luxurious apartments. The slaughter he was here to investigate had happened on the top floor. Doing a little tap dance as his feet hit an icy patch on the pavement, he cursed between gritted teeth, letting out a ghostly plume of cold breath followed by a noisy belch. McBride ran his fingers through his scraggy beard, unlodging food debris that was festering in his matted bristles. He surveyed the scene in front of him. There were four police cars and three ambulances parked outside. Crime tape marked out the area – ‘POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS’. As he approached the doorway, he flashed his warrant card so the uniformed plebs knew he was the man in charge. The porch was white-marble pillared with gold torch snufflers. Overhead a lantern set off a soft tawny glow. A brass lion door knocker hung on the front door. They say it acted as a guardian to your home, but not tonight; there’d been no paladin knight visitation, but a demon hellbent on bloody slaughter. McBride was met by a stout female PC.

Guv, the pathologist and SOCO are upstairs.

Barging past, McBride huffed and puffed his way up the spiral staircase. The Chief Inspector was greeted at the door of Flat 5 by PC Hutson, who looked very green around the gills.

PC Hutson, guv. Glad to have you here. This is the most shocking thing I’ve ever seen.

You don’t say. Sometimes we as the police have to deal with things other than catching diplomats’ wives stealing silk scarves. Serious crime, like.

PC Hutson, who’d come from the local police station, West End Central on Saville Row, no doubt didn’t deal with the daily carnage that he did in Hackney. He noted forensics dusting for fingerprints and bagging evidence and thought, good luck on that. London’s major faces’ fingerprints were probably all over the flat. Only last week intelligence had seen Terry and Patsy Adams entering the building.

Which rooms? asked McBride.

Female victim was found in the second room on the right, just down the hallway, and the babies in the next-door bedroom, said Hutson as he gestured in that direction and followed his superior.

Offering just a grunt in response, McBride made his way down a black-and-white-tiled hallway with mirrored walls. The hall was furnished with a King Edward chair and a walnut desk. It was a hive of activity with assorted police personnel. McBride barely acknowledged them, just giving the most cursory nods. He walked past the first door. It was open and revealed a lounge elegantly decorated in cream and pale gold. There were plush sofas and chairs around a glass coffee table. An elaborate chandelier hung from the ceiling. The bare Christmas tree was surrounded by unopened bags from Harrods probably full of Christmas decorations. He’d always wondered what this flat looked like inside. It was almost surreal to literally be walking through it. "Sy’n dweud nad yw trosedd yn talu," muttered McBride.

This place reeked of death, and not just of tonight’s bloody slayings. This house had a gruesome history. In the 1970s, when the building housed twelve flats, before they were knocked into five by a property developer, the singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson owned Flat 12, a flat which had been interior decorated by Ringo Starr. He’d let the flat out to Mama Cass of the supergroup The Mamas & the Papas. In 1974 she died there of a heart attack, although conspiracy theories surfaced that she had choked on a ham sandwich. Later he rented the flat to Keith Moon, the party-animal drummer of the rock band The Who, a man with a penchant for playing live drugged up on Ketamine, used by vets to castrate horses. In 1978 he died in Flat 12 from an overdose of clomethiazole. It was ironically a drug he’d been prescribed to alleviate his alcohol-withdrawal symptoms. Some would say coincidence, but others a curse. Believing in the latter, Nilsson sold the hexed apartment to Moon’s guitarist bandmate Pete Townsend.

McBride moved towards the bedroom and walked in. It hit him like a steam train coming at him at full speed, the coppery smell of blood. And there was so much blood. Innocent blood. Doctor Albert Fish, the pathologist, evaded pleasantries. An arrogant man with a bulbous nose and close-set eyes. The only other person in the room was the police photographer, a portly man in his late forties, who took pictures of the macabre scene from all angles.

I see CID are quick on the scene, but this really isn’t your patch is it. Not enough bodies in your neck of the woods, said Fish, his jowly cheeks flapping as he munched on a sweet.

We’ve got plenty in Hackney. As yew know it keeps the body-bag industry afloat, it does. This case yere is of special interest to me, it is. I’m Senior Investigating Officer on it; no one else has any business heading this investigation up.

I’ve declared life extinct on all three bodies.

Well done, yew. Must have been a difficult one to work out, like.

Fish just gave the inspector a cavalier flick of his hand while rolling his eyes on his smug face.

The site before McBride was one of sheer horror. The female victim was lying on the floor by the foot of the king-size bed covered in blood, her long blonde hair dripping with crimson liquid. She was in her early twenties, extremely pretty, angelic almost, with a petite body and large, pert breasts. Her open blue eyes were haunted with terror. No doubt her final thoughts would have been what would happen to her babies. Whose eyes was she looking into pleading for her life when the trigger was pulled? The victim wore a pink camisole and knickers. They were now saturated with scarlet gore and splattered with intestines. Bits of her ribs, now pulverised, stuck out of her torso. The fatal wound tinged with burn marks. McBride stifled the urge to shut her eyes, as if by doing so he could put her out of her pain.

"Duw duw cariad," said McBride.

But the inspector had seen her before, when she’d been very much alive. A woman as beautiful on the outside as she was on the inside. Her name was Suzi Hunter. McBride looked around the decadently furnished bedroom. He noted the silk bedspread was ruffled, as if someone had pulled on it, and the dressing table had been upset. Expensive bottles of perfume and jewellery were strewn across the floor. She’d tried to fight back. A tailored suit was laid out on a Baroque armchair. Feeling his blood boiling, knowing exactly who the suit belonged to, McBride turned his attention back to Fish.

All right, what yew got, butt?

It looks like a sawn-off-shotgun wound at close range to the stomach. There are some flame burns, and the wound is so big you could fit Tyson’s fist through it. But I can’t confirm anything at the moment, said Fish as if he was discussing the weather.

Anything else? asked McBride as he moved nearer to the body.

Fish grimaced at the stench coming from the DCI. Some of the dead bodies he’d encountered in his career had smelt better.

Judging by the stages of mortis, I would say she’s freshly dead; a few hours tops.

Hutson, come in yere now, like, shouted McBride.

Obeying his superior, Hutson stepped into the bedroom from the hallway.

Who called it in, PC?

"The lady who lives in the apartment below. Mrs Burlington-Befrey. She’s the only resident in the building. The bottom two flats are up for sale and the basement is owned by Phillip and Wendy Paddock – you know, the ones who do the Morning Medley show on TV – but it’s in darkness and we got no answer. She heard a bang that she thought was a car backfiring at approximately 10pm, then a few minutes later she heard a further two bangs in quick succession, prompting her to think they were gunshots. She didn’t call for over half an hour. She was hiding under the bed with Boots."

Boots? Who the bloody buggary is Boots, PC?

It’s her cat, guv. A seal point ragdoll.

Not being funny, mun, but I very much doubt the cat did it, I don’t; but if yew want, I can go downstairs and try to eliminate Boots from the inquiry.

Sorry, guv. I just thought I’d give you as much detail as possible. When she did make the 999 call, she was barely making any sense. She said that she was probably just being silly. Mrs Burlington-Befrey is a recluse. She hasn’t left the building in twenty years. A PC has been to see her and taken a statement.

Bloody useless, said McBride. Like a sheep’s fart in a jam jar. Do we know how the perp got into the building and apartment door?

It looks like the locks were picked on both occasions, so I think we can rule out that she knew the attacker.

To be honest, like, Hutson, let me do all the thinking around yere.

Understood, guv, said the PC, trying not to sound too miffed. The strange thing is, nothing seems to have been stolen, and there are expensive things everywhere. There’s a top-of-the-range alarm system, but it’s been disarmed or maybe not switched on.

"Bydd hyn yn achosi gwaedbath," said McBride distractedly, as he doubted the motive for the triple murder was robbery. Mat Hunter owned this apartment. Hunter was without doubt the biggest gangland boss in London, head of the Hunter clan he ran closely with his brother, Nic, and twin cousins, Sparky and Flint. Mat was said to be worth around £50 million. The gang were so wealthy they had high-ranking police officers in their back pockets feeding them intelligence. The Hunter crime syndicate had become untouchable. Mat had taken the gang from being the most feared in the East End to controlling much of the very lucrative West End. The Hunters were linked to numerous gangland murders and disappearances. The problem for law enforcement officers who were not corrupt and entangled in their spider’s web of corruption was that the bodies seldom turned up. The gang became masters at covering up their lawlessness. If no body was found, there was no crime. They had become so powerful they could afford the best accountants, lawyers and barristers, having the finances and proclivity for violence to silence people with whatever method they chose. Cross them and you disappeared forever. The syndicate had dozens of henchmen with clump and shooter power around London and hundreds of snitches and snouts. They collected bent coppers like stamps. Fuck-you money bought you eyes, ears and fists everywhere. The gangland boss collected secrets as ammunition about powerful people, people he may need services from in the future, those who were too high profile to use the preferred method of just torturing to death. Mat’s criminal empire had done well for him. His assets included a six-bedroomed house in Brentwood and a sprawling villa in Marbella. Commercially, he owned many going concerns, including a large scrapyard in Hackney, businesses he needed to keep his dirty money clean, as the main reason for Mat’s wealth was drugs. He was the biggest cocaine importer in the UK. The world was going mad for the narcotic. It crossed all social boundaries – politicians, journalists and bricklayers were hoovering it up their noses. London by 1989 was awash with the white powder. It was Scotland Yard Intelligence that Mat dealt directly with the Medellín Cartel. This meant he had a pipeline of cocaine coming into the UK with a street value of multi-millions.

The eldest Hunter was the brains behind the operation, then there was Nic the younger brother, a complete psychopath. Whereas Mat used violence as an indifferent necessary part of his life, Nic actively enjoyed inflicting pain. It was a high no different to the high he got from sex and drugs. He owned strip clubs and nightclubs. The first cousins were Chad and Nathan, aka Sparky and Flint. The twins had a special love for arson. Setting light to things and watching them burn was the ultimate high. The pièce de resistance was watching a human being burning to death screaming in agony as the amber blaze devoured their skin. At age six they’d set their neighbour’s pet bunny alight after dousing it in cooking oil. It was their Uncle Len who had affectionately given them the nicknames. This was the new generation of Hunters, their fathers now living the life of Riley in the Costa Del Sol. But not before leaving behind carnage.

That the bathroom bu there, is it? asked McBride to no one in particular as he made his way to the doorway. Sticking his head around the corner, he saw the bath had recently been used. There were remnants of bubbles lining the bottom. A towel lay discarded on the floor. The waste basket held nothing more than make-up-smudged cottonwool. He went to turn tail, but something caught his eye near to the toilet. On the ledge above was a small plastic object obscured by a bottle of Chanel. McBride walked over and peered. It was a used pregnancy test. "Annwyl Duw," he muttered as he went back into the bedroom.

The babies next door, or what? asked McBride.

Yes. You may want to brace yourself before you enter, said Fish with the hint of a grin on his face.

McBride made his way next door. He entered a child’s room decorated in Winnie the Pooh wallpaper. There was a soft light coming from the mobiles above two cots. Moving further into the room, the DCI could see blood splatter dripping from Tigger and Piglet. The white sheets of the cots were saturated in blood. The babies had gunshot wounds to their tiny chests, their little bodies so small the wounds had nearly obliterated their torsos. Both little boys cuddled teddies. Blond-haired cherubs whose hair was now drenched in sanguine fluid. Lying on the floor next to the toybox splattered in blood was a card: Mr Potts the Painter. Suppressing the urge to be sick, McBride turned away from the carnage and took a moment to compose himself. Trying to hold down the butty he’d eaten earlier, McBride could feel a vomit infusion creeping up his oesophagus into his mouth. He was a bit sick in his hand, so he wiped it on the back of his cords; the rest he swallowed back down, letting out a foul-smelling burp. He turned to walk back into the hallway, looking back one last time at the grisly horror. The wife and babies didn’t deserve to die in this heinous manner because they had an diafol as a husband and father. Suzie and the twins were innocent, just more bodies to be added to Hunter’s never-ending list. If she’d never let him in and been pulled into his murky world... it was like Babes in the Wood meeting Vlad the Impaler. Walking back into the main bedroom, he noted that the photographer had left but Fish was still there.

McBride, I’ll let you know as soon as I can determine the cause of death and time, he said as he rummaged in his pocket until he found what he was looking for and proceeded to stuff into his mouth the Liquorice Allsort he’d freed from the paper bag.

I’m not being funny, mun. I’d hazard a guess it was around 10pm tonight, and I don’t think they were poisoned by cyanide, I don’t.

Not rising to the bait, Fish replied in an irksome tone while swallowing the sweet, You’ll have to wait for the results of the autopsy.

Yew may want to run a pregnancy test. I think yew’ll find there were four deaths yere tonight, butt.

McBride made his way out the door and back down to the main foyer, which was now an even bigger hive of activity. Walking out of the building, the atmosphere was sombre. No copper had any enjoyment out of murder, especially child murder, apart from those who’d managed to slip under the radar of what should’ve been protocol police checks. Heading back to his car, McBride was in heavy contemplation. The powers that be would be eager to solve this pronto. This would cause major ripples in the criminal underworld, not wanted by the force, especially those who were neck deep in cachu. This needed to be solved pronto, before Hunter put in place a bloodbath across London. Whoever was responsible for these barbarous crimes had better wish that the police got to them before he did. A triple life sentence in a hellhole locked in your cell for twenty-four hours a day would be preferable to the punishment he’d administer. It was one thing to try to take out Mat or any of his associates, Gangstercide being actively encouraged by the Met, but an innocent woman and her children slain. Even the underworld had a code of honour where civilians were concerned. But then again, there was a new breed of gangster – the Turks, the Yardies and the Albanians – who didn’t adhere to these rules. But it made no sense. It would only make Mat more deadly. Other gangs knew the Hunters had the money and soldiers to crush them into oblivion. And make no mistake, he had no doubt that the crime lord would seek bloody retribution, and after what had happened, the old school rules wouldn’t apply. He would take out the perpetrator and his family. One by one he’d track them down, and they wouldn’t die quickly or quietly. It didn’t add up. As he opened the Granada, he wondered whether Mat knew Suzie was expecting, or was that a loving conversation she was yet to have with him and would now never have. "Bydd uffern yn cael ei ryddhau, said McBride. Shutting the car door and starting the car up, McBride made his way back to Hackney. He whispered, Gwelaf Yr Afon Tafwys yn ewynnu â gwaed."

Act 1

Soldiers of Fortune

All empires are created of blood and fire.

– Pablo Escobar

We know that no one ever seizes power with the

intention of relinquishing it.

– George Orwell, 1984

Fuck me, said Den Hunter, choking on the dense fumes the thermic lance was making. The orange fiery rain sprinkled down around them as the lance cut through the reinforced concrete of the vault floor, fizzing like a giant sparkler. He was happy that he and his brother Pat were wearing the full protective kit – head shield, goggles, gloves. They were very much seasoned professionals in their line of work.

We can’t use this; it’s just not working. Gotta go to the next plan, said Den as he turned his ruggedly handsome face, gasping for breath as the smoke engulfed them.

How could they have come so far to give up now? The thermic lance had cut through half of the concrete. They just needed to get through the other half to gain access to the vault which held a safe full of gold.

Right, Pat, ovah to you, bruv. You’re the explosives expert.

Checking his Rolex Sea-Dweller 4000, Pat got the explosives ready. It wouldn’t be an easy feat. It was a small, enclosed area, and it needed to be dead right. He drilled holes in the underside of the vault floor and packed the gelignite in tightly, an explosive more stable than dynamite, which could suffer from sweating nitro-glycerine. This meant it could become extremely touch sensitive, whereby even a gentle touch could detonate it. He expertly taped up the explosive to the floor and pushed the detonator. The duo stood back while there was a controlled boom. A 12-inch-wide hole was blasted. Pat started to clear the debris with his hands.

Grab the ’ammah and chisel, will ya, bruv. We need to widen the ’ole to get us lumps in.

Both were big, muscular men, well over six feet tall. Den slung Pat a hammer and he started to use the chisel. They hacked away, and when they finished, the exit hole measured 12 inches by 14 inches.

We’re in, said Pat as he swatted the air full of thick dust.

They made their way into the vault where the safe was kept. As Linda, Den’s wife, had described it, it was a small room, with the safe taking up most of it.

Right, Den, ovah to you to crack the safe. Not like those days when we used to use a chainsaw to open up the back of security vans like cans of beans. We’re talking propah precision work. Fuck, the buzz on these jobs is betta than any drugs. All the adrenalin pumping frough me right now is fucking incredible. Every job; it nevah gets any less.

You evah fink on these jobs our old man and Ray’s looking down on us?

Nah, bruv. Where they are they’re looking up at us surrounded by naked birds wiv ’orns on their ’eads.

Den stood in front of the large steel structure mentally sussing it out. Everything hinged on him opening the safe without setting off any alarms. Precision was everything, which was tricky when you had hands like shovels, but surprisingly he was highly dexterous. Running his fingers through his stubble, Den aimed the cobalt-blend power drill into the top of the safe. A small sweat broke over his forehead, dripping onto his boxer’s nose. This had to be meticulous. He skilfully drilled into the safe. When he’d drilled just enough, he removed the drill, prompting steel curls of silver like confetti spilling up through the small hole. Den brushed these away. Now he could peek through the small incision and see the internal state of the combination lock. He took out a torch and peered through the tiny gap. While looking at the lock, Den manipulated the dial to align the lock gates so that the fence fell and the bolt mechanism was disengaged. It was the sound of success, but this job had been a scrupulous operation.

The job had taken them six months to plan and put into action. Many days had been spent in Ye Olde Mitre, located in an alleyway just off Hatton Garden. There they’d downed pints and chain smoked while waiting for a rental lease to come up on a shop near to one of the many jewellery shops of Hatton Garden, the jewellery district of London. The game they played was one of waiting and patience. The ploy had paid off when a shop became free to rent one door down from E Katz & Co Jewellers. The only premises between them was P. R. Deltoid Newsagent’s. The shop had a basement that was at the same level as the jeweller’s vault. Within thirty minutes of Savills putting the ‘TO LET’ sign outside, Den had made a call to their commercial property lawyer, Thomas Hewitt of Sawyer and Jedediah Solicitors. The property was leased to Den under a false name, Charles Lytton. The three brothers had got to work as soon as they had the keys. The windows were whited out and a sign went up saying ‘OPENING SOON – MONA LISA OF PEARLS’. With larceny equipment, they’d drilled a tunnel under the shop to the vault of the jewellers. This had taken them a whole month. It was a painstaking operation. They tunnelled forty feet using jackhammers and picks up through the vault floor. Not to arouse suspicion, they only dug from close of business on a Saturday until the early hours of Monday morning.

Den’s beautiful wife visited E Katz & Co, her five-foot-eight slim figure wearing Prada, her long blonde hair tied in a chignon. She went in with the rouse of buying a gold chain for her son Mathew. The jewellery owner, Mr Katz, who was mesmerised by her, insisted she called him George. What she was really doing was getting the ins and outs of the shop’s diameters, her mathematical brain working out measurements. She made three trips to scout the place and work out dimensions, even managing to go down to the vault with George. On the third visit she picked a twenty-four-carat gold chain. Telling the jeweller that it was the perfect purchase, she gave him a warm smile that went all the way up to her piercing blue eyes.

The brothers heaped the debris and rubble into the back storeroom; there was around 8 long tons of it. They tunnelled under the vault, because the walls and ceilings were protected by vibration alarms and trembler switches which could sense any unusual vibrations or shockwaves and automate a trigger alarm directly to the police. Fortuitously, the tremblers in the vault floor were being switched off due to ongoing roadworks which had triggered numerous false alarms to Islington Police Station. All this information had been supplied to them by a moody security guard working for the jeweller’s security company.

But it hadn’t all been plain sailing. Once they had dug the tunnel, they realised that they had a major obstacle, this being three feet of concrete reinforced with steel between them and the vault. First the brothers had tried to use a 100-ton jack to force a hole into it. Two railway sleepers were placed on the floor to support it. Unbeknown to the brothers, there was an old well beneath the end of the tunnel. The strength of the jack thrust the bottom of the tunnel down into the well instead of lifting the vault floor skywards.

Once the job was done, Len, their younger brother, would drive them over to Castle Hedingham in Essex, where their wives were holed up in an abandoned farmhouse should anything go wrong. Linda and Lorraine, Pat’s wife, were used to it; it was the usual drill – bags packed and tickets to Spain. All legal eventualities could be sorted out in just a few phone calls. But tonight everything had gone perfectly, so it was just a matter of Len getting them over to Essex, where they could lay low for a while. Then they could start to unload their ill-gotten gains with their fences. Should something untoward happen, Den would have to make the call he’d spent his life drumming into his eldest boy, Mat. The call that would tell him he was now in charge of their criminal enterprise, with Nic and the twins at his side. Den had no worries passing things on to Mat. He was razor smart and extremely ruthless – key characteristics to make it in this life. Nic was currently