It was a dry night so Terry Malone decided to walk home. He hoped it would give him time to sober up and get over the shock of what he’d been told.
The revelation had knocked him for six and even now, two hours later, he still couldn’t get his mind around it.
It didn’t help that he’d had too much champagne. He wasn’t used to it. He preferred beer and whisky, but his boss had insisted on cracking open two bottles of Moët.
‘Get it down you, lad,’ Roy Slack had urged him back at the club. ‘This is a big fucking deal and we have to celebrate.’
The West End was still buzzing even though it was almost midnight, but Terry was oblivious to the crowds and the incessant hum of the traffic.
Forty-five minutes. That was about how long it would take him to trek to his home across the river in Lambeth. Amy would be in bed, of course, but she wouldn’t be asleep. Whenever he was this late she stayed awake and worried.
He supposed it was only to be expected. The wives and girlfriends of most of the other gang members were the same. Being a villain wasn’t like being an accountant or a teacher or a bus driver. It was a tough, stressful business that entailed risk and uncertainty. And it put an awful lot of strain on families and friends.
Amy had become far more anxious since discovering she was pregnant four months ago. She kept asking him what would happen to her and the baby if he got shot, stabbed or banged up for years.
That was why Terry had been giving serious consideration to packing it in and going straight. It was also why he was dreading her reaction to tonight’s bombshell revelation. The impact on their lives was going to be considerable and she was bound to freak out.
In all honesty he wouldn’t blame her. He was struggling to come to terms with it himself and it was making his head spin.
When he reached Lambeth Bridge he broke his stride and sparked up a fag. From his pocket he took the letter that Slack had given to him. He read it through for the umpteenth time and once again he felt a flash of heat in his chest. The words were already embedded in his mind. They were shocking, life-changing, terrifying. And they sent a cold chill down his spine.
He put the letter back in his pocket and stood looking down on the inky black Thames, his heart thudding in his chest.
After a couple of minutes he decided that he wouldn’t break the news to Amy for at least a couple of days. That’d give him time to take it all in and assess the implications. There was so much to think about, not least the kind of future he wanted for his unborn child.
He drew smoke deep into his lungs and reflected on what a momentous year it had already been.
Seven months ago he’d been pushing drugs for an Eastern European outfit in North London before its leaders became victims of the Met’s latest crackdown on organised crime. Their arrests had caused chaos inside the organisation and allowed rival gangs to move in on the territory and the various businesses.
Just weeks later his mother had died, aged
