Billy Stavropoulos had a large cigar clamped between his teeth. Edward looked at him, sitting there like the cock of the walk, and had the same anxious thoughts again. He was not the least bit contrite about his behaviour that morning. He’d made a joke of the beating he had meted out, laughing at the guard’s request that he should be marked and suggesting that he would have no trouble now in persuading his employers of his innocence. He’d get a raise, he reckoned, on account of the fight he must have put up. Edward thought Billy was hideous. He was cruel and unpleasant, uneducated even by the standards of the others, untroubled by the faintest shred of culture. If there was a potential impediment to his plan then he, undoubtedly, was it. There was a feral cunning to him, a natural wariness so that Edward knew he would always have to be watchful when he was around. He would never be able to truly relax. Billy made another crack about the morning’s work and looked around the table, gawking at the others to ensure that they found it amusing. Add a needy insecurity to his emotional make-up, Edward thought. The man was horrid from his head to his toes.

Lennie Masters chuckled at Billy’s joke, baring a yellowed set of teeth. Joseph smiled with a forbearing expression and Edward realised that he had come to accept the extremities of his behaviour. It was “just Billy,” he had explained by way of explanation earlier. He had “always been like that.” That really was not good enough so far as Edward was concerned. They were already taking significant risks and it made no sense to him to tolerate behaviour that made the risk worse. If he had been in control, that would be something that he would not allow. Billy’s behaviour was clumsy, stupid, dangerous and unnecessary. He knew he would have to discuss him with Joseph and he wondered how best to do that without annoying him. Billy was an old friend, after all. His oldest. Edward was new to the scene and knew it. It was difficult.

The bets were called, hands were folded. Billy, Jack and Edward were the last men standing.

“Let’s see your hand, then,” Billy said to Jack.

Jack gleefully laid the cards on the table. “Three Queens,” he said.

Edward had a pair of jacks, and he hadn’t played them well at all. Jack’s trio beat him. “Damn,” he said. “I’m out.”

Jack reached across the table for the pile of chips.

Billy raised a hand. “Hold on, my old mate,” he said.

“Piss off, Bubble––you ain’t never beating that.”

“Sorry,” he said with a grin that said he wasn’t sorry at all. “I am.” He put his cards face up on the velvet. “Full boat, kings over tens.”

A full house? Edward chuckled. Billy had played them both like a cheap fiddle.

Joseph and Lennie, long since out of the hand and undamaged, could afford to laugh. Jack and Edward were out of chips. It was just Billy, Joseph, Lennie and one of the businessmen left in the game.

Edward and Jack stepped away from the table and delivered their empty glasses to the bar.

Edward had quizzed Joseph about Jack McVitie as they made their way across Soho to the club. He had been involved with Joseph almost as long as Billy had. He had been born in Islington, and had had a difficult childhood, dropping out of school at an early age and falling into petty crime. He met Joseph in borstal in 1936 when both boys were twelve. Joseph had been sent down for burglary, Jack for stabbing another boy in the back with a pair of scissors. The two endured their inside year together, and, when they were released, they started thieving. Then, Joseph had gone to war while Jack had paid a dodgy quack to sign him off with asthma. He had spent the duration robbing whatever he could get his hands on and feeding the black market, but it had been hard graft and he had been glad to get cracking again with Joseph once he got back from the fighting. He was six foot two, heavily built, and crippled by vanity. He kept his balding thatch covered with his ubiquitous hat and had pushed a broken glass into the face of the last bastard who made a joke about it. That had done the trick. The subject hadn’t come up since.

“We were fooled,” Edward complained. “I could have sworn I had him beaten.”

“It’s a bad night when you let someone like Bubble gull you. He’s as subtle as a slap in the face. I must be drunker than I thought I was.”

“Might as well keep drinking then. Another one?”

“Why not. Whisky.”

Edward ordered the drinks and they took them to the large, deep-buttoned red leather Chesterfield next to the bar. They touched glasses.

“You’ve known Joseph for a while, haven’t you?”

Jack nodded. “Since we was nippers.”

“Do you know his family well?”

“Course.”

“You know George?”

“Well enough.”

“Everyone seems to be scared of him.”

Jack smiled at him as if he was a small child. “Have you met him yet?”

“Only briefly.”

“You want to be careful. His temper… Jesus.”

“Really?”

“You having a laugh? George Costello? Bloody right. Let me tell you a story.” Jack sipped his drink thoughtfully. “There was this one time, last year, just before Christmas, the family was having trouble with a bent slip out of West End Central. This bloke was on the take like they all are but this one was greedy, he wanted more and more, said he’d turn up the heat if he didn’t get another few notes when he stuck his hand out each month. So George meets him in the Greek dive on Old Compton Street, says he’s going to pay him what he wants but then he goes and pours a boiling hot coffee-urn over his head. In front of everyone. The slip got awful burns. In hospital for a week. They had to peel the skin off him, like an onion. He was bloody horrible to look at after.”

“He did that to a policeman?”

Jack nodded.

“And he didn’t get nicked?”

“Don’t be daft. The slip was out of order––his bosses would’ve given him a right going over. George has too many of them in his pocket. No-one wants to upset the gravy train.”

“And Violet?”

“If anything, she’s worse. It was her who set George on the copper. Between you and me, she’s a devious bitch and she ain’t got no scruples whatsoever. She might pretend to be sweet and light, but that’s only if you’re on the right side of her. She don’t do the sorting out herself, but then she don’t need to, not when she’s got a evil swine like George to sic on people.”

A shout of indignation signalled the end of the game. Billy had fooled Joseph, too, busting his aces with a trio of fours. They had each put ten pounds into the middle, winner takes all: a tidy amount. The businessman and Billy agreed a split of the pot, Billy gloatingly fanning himself with his winnings.

“Bugger this,” Joseph said, disgusted.

“Don’t be a sore loser,” Billy crowed.

They both joined Edward and Jack at the bar. The proprietor of the spieler was a man in a satin and quilted smoking jacket, of average height and Mediterranean colouring and with a pencil moustache that recalled Clark Gable. He opened a door at the far end of the room and led four girls inside. He brought over a humidor of excellent cigars and offered them around. “Gentlemen,” he said, his accent inflected with Latin accents, “allow me to introduce you to these delightful ladies.”

The four girls came over to them, each wearing a fine dress that shimmered in the subtle light, each of them smiling a knowing smile as if they were party to an excellent joke of which the poor chaps were hopelessly ignorant. They were superbly dressed, expensively and precisely made-up and with hair arranged in various fashionable cuts: one had a chignon, another the modishly popular Eton crop. Their décolletages were immodest and Jack whistled soft approval.

Billy made a show of sniffing his cigar––they were fine Cohibas––and placed it behind the ruffled handkerchief in his top pocket, patting it, grinning the whole time. “Alright, darling,” he said to the nearest girl, grabbing her slender wrist and tugging her closer. “Have a seat.” She giggled and allowed herself to be pulled down into his lap.