Adam considered that and then said, ‘He’s in the security business. You know that, right?’

Jack nodded. ‘I’m doing a piece on the rough edges of Blackley. Don’s name comes up a lot.’

‘And what are people saying?’

‘Not much,’ Jack said. ‘I know that Don runs a security firm, but no one wants to talk.’

‘Well, that doesn’t surprise me,’ Adam said. ‘It’s all a sham, just a front for extortion.’

Jack tried to hide his smile. ‘How do you know this?’

‘Because Jane told me.’

‘Did Jane tell you a lot about Don?’

Adam took a deep breath and said, ‘Yes, everything. I don’t like Don because of the sort of person he is, but he was protective of Jane, tried to look after her. He had money, he could give her the things she wanted. He wanted her to do well at school, and so he paid for extra tuition, things like that. So she was no rough girl from a criminal family. She was well-balanced, educated, clever, and Don didn’t want her to know how he really made his money, but she found out anyway, from things that she heard. She didn’t like it, but he was her father and she loved him, and so it made it hard for her, being well brought up but knowing that her father was just the local thug. I suppose you can imagine how it went down when she wanted to join the police?’

‘Was her career choice such a bad thing for Don?’ Jack said.

‘To Don, yes. He was expanding his business, building up his retirement fund. He thought he was about to hit the big money, had his sights set on one of the big houses on the top road that overlooks the town. Her timing couldn’t have been worse.’

‘How?’

‘Because he knew that Jane would do the right thing if she came across one of his henchmen, because she knew her career would be short if she covered up for him. It would only take one whiff of a leak and she would be out.’

‘Isn’t that what he’d want?’ Jack said.

Adam smiled and shook his head. ‘Don loved his daughter, there is no doubt about that, and I reckon he would give it all up to give her the life she wanted. He was just hoping she would change her mind so he could carry on.’

‘And he thought you were the bad influence, for making her think of the police?’

Adam nodded. ‘Something like that.’

‘So how does he make his money?’

‘Same way as always: intimidation.’ Adam leaned forward. ‘Tell me: what do you think Don’s business interests are?’

Jack thought about that. ‘Working the doors is what comes to mind, running a team of bouncers. He’s trying to squeeze into neighbourhood security.’

Adam nodded. ‘That’s right, he’s got to keep on moving, because the government took the money out of door work, made him go all legit.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Go back a few years,’ Adam said. ‘It was easy for Don to take charge of the doors. He had a bunch of thugs he would offer out to the local pubs and clubs. Except that it wasn’t really an offer, because if someone refused, they would just create mayhem inside. Fights would get started on Saturday nights, chairs thrown, tables going over, the police running in. They always seemed like cases of random drunkenness, but they weren’t. They were Don’s men getting frisky. And so Don’s men ended up on all the doors in town, the clubs paying over the odds just to stop their premises from getting trashed. Remember, this is Blackley, not Manchester, easy to take over with a bit of muscle. And then there were the extras?’

‘Extras?’

‘Drug profits mainly. Don Roberts didn’t touch drugs, but he touched money. The doormen knew who was dealing in their clubs, and they turned a blind eye provided that they got a slice of the profits. And if they got a slice, Don got a slice of that, so that Don controlled the club drug scene for a while.’

‘So what’s going wrong?’

‘The SIA,’ Adam said. ‘The Security Industry Authority. To be a doorman now, you’ve got to be accredited, and that means criminal record checks and courses. That ruled out a lot of Don’s men, and so Don’s influence on the doors weakened. He runs an agency now. If the clubs need a few extra bodies, they call Don and he sorts them out.’

‘So he’s hit hard times?’

‘Not straight away,’ Adam said. ‘He was into car clamping as well, and he stepped it up when the door staff went legal. Don’s men would hang out where they had put up their crappy signs and wait for someone to leave their car. As soon as they were out of sight, the clamp would come out. When they went down to release the clamp, the poor sod in the car had a bill of whatever was the maximum withdrawal on the nearest cash machine. It was legalised blackmail.’ Adam smiled. ‘The same problem again. The government is going to take the money out of that soon, and so now clamping isn’t the racket it used to be.’

‘And wayward shoppers aren’t going to be mugged for their money anymore,’ Jack said. ‘So how is he expanding when the government has forced him to cut back?’

Adam looked nervous for a moment. ‘You have to be careful what you print, is that right?’

‘The papers won’t print it if it’s libel, but if you tell me, I can decide that.’

‘Okay, if you’re sure,’ he said, wringing his hands, his tongue flicking onto his lip. ‘It’s footballer burglaries and estate security.’

‘Hang on, you’ve lost me now.’

‘It’s the same thing really,’ Adam said. ‘Take the footballer burglaries. It’s easy to figure out when the man of the house will be out, because you just have to look at the fixture list. So Don’s men make out like they are burglars and pay the footballers’ houses a visit, particularly during a winter evening game or when they are abroad. If you scare the lady of the house enough, she’ll want security, at any cost. Don would pretend that he’d read about the burglary and would offer his services. He didn’t do too well with the top players, but if you drop a couple of football divisions, you get the cheaper players who like the status symbols, like private security.’

‘What about the estate security?’ Jack said. He knew some of the answer, but he wanted to hear Adam’s take on it.

Adam sighed. ‘This is the thing I liked least, because it’s just squeezing money out of people who’ve got nothing, just an old-fashioned protection racket. You’ve read all the stories about the police not being on the beat as much? Or at least, that’s what the politicians say. People feel frightened, that the police are no longer protecting them, that it’s all about targets and paperwork.’

‘It can’t be that bad,’ Jack said. ‘Most anti-police stories are just headline-grabbers.’

‘Maybe, but people feed off those stories. How do they know that the stories aren’t accurate, because they’re certainly written up to sound accurate? What do you do when you’ve got the local idiots outside your window, taunting you, those rat-faced kids, all dressed in black, who never go home because their parents are rounding off a day of doing nothing with the contents of a stolen bottle of vodka, and the police don’t take you seriously?’ Adam gave Jack a sneer. ‘Unless, of course, Uncle Don Roberts is there to provide some neighbourhood security, with his thugs wandering the streets, checking on those homes who have signed up, chasing the kids from outside, all for a modest fee, of course.’

‘Isn’t that just the free market?’ Jack said. ‘He fulfils a need.’

Adam laughed bitterly and shook his head. ‘Do you think it’s that innocent? He creates the need. Who do you think is getting the kids to act like that? You see, there’s never a confrontation with the private security, because they know who is paying and who isn’t, and the ones who are not paying get it. Eggs at the windows, beer cans, shouting, tyres slashed. If someone gets CCTV, the cables get snipped. It’s fucking warfare out there, and it will only get quiet again when everyone has signed up to Don’s private security. Everyone thinks that he’s doing a good job, so even when the prices go up, families with no spare cash don’t mind putting some Don’s way.’