'I never had the chance at the service to thank you. I'm just going to keep…' Mrs Harris made a vague gesture towards the condolence cards. 'My poor boy, he – he lost his way. I couldn't help him, but I know you tried.'

'Frank – hey, Frank!' Jimmy hailed him from the gated archway to the crematorium, beckoning urgently. No respect for the dead; not much for the living either, come to that.

Ignoring him, Dillon said, 'Me and a few of the lads are starting up our own company, security work.'

'That's good, good.' Mrs Harris nodded emphatically, large brown eyes fixed on him. 'You stick together.'

Dillon gave her a quick, tight hug and hurried away. Jimmy was sitting in the jeep at the kerbside. As Dillon got in, he said, 'It was on the cards, Frank.' There was contempt in his voice. 'If he hadn't topped himself some bugger would have done it for him. He was a waster!'

Dillon didn't respond. He wasn't sure who he was most angry with – Jimmy, Steve, or himself. In the early spring sunshine they drove through Bethnal Green and up into Hackney. Somewhere near the London Fields mainline station Jimmy took a left off Mare Street, and in a few minutes drew up outside a row of rather shabby-looking shops and basement offices. There was a betting shop, greasy spoon cafe, and a travel agent's – super shine travel agency – with flyblown posters in its grimy windows. Dillon wasn't impressed, and even Jimmy's breezy enthusiasm failed to dispel his doubts.

'It's not the greatest, I know, but it's a start. Lick o' paint here an' there…' he swept out his hand as if unveiling the find of the century, '… we're in business!'

Jimmy skipped past a couple of overflowing dustbins and a small mountain of black plastic bags spilling rubbish onto the pavement and went down a short flight of stone steps bordered by rusting iron railings. 'Come on, follow me, sunshine…'

Inside, the dark passageway smelled of vintage cat piss. It was littered with bricks and half-empty cement bags gone hard, and everywhere thick with dust. 'All this'll be cleared,' Jimmy assured Dillon, bustling ahead. 'Harry's gettin' a skip, right…' He produced a key and unlocked a door that a puff of wind would have blown off its hinges. 'Here we go!'

Dillon nodded dubiously to the floor above. 'That Super Travel place looks like a knockin' shop,' he said, following Jimmy into a small dingy room with a plain wooden desk and few hardback chairs. The filthy window gave a grand view of the iron railings, rubbish tip, the legs and ankles of pedestrians. Above the bricked-up cast-iron fireplace, Jimmy had nailed the stag's head to the bare plaster.

'We got it for one hundred a week, plus there's a bog outside, washbasins, and -' Jimmy threw open the doors of a cupboard with a flourish. 'Ta-rrraaaaaaa!'

'Christ!' Dillon exclaimed, goggling at the two shelves of office equipment – telephones, answering machine, Xerox, fax, computer and laser printer, all brand-new, still in their boxes. 'Where did all this come from?'

'All legit, it's bankrupt stock,' said Jimmy smoothly, and before Dillon could even draw breath, he was onto the next item on the agenda, fingers clicking, busy-busy-busy. 'What you think? White walls, get some pictures up, carpet down – be a palace!'

Harry Travers blundered in carrying two four-litre drums of paint, two smaller cans under his arms, paintbrushes and rollers stuffed in his pockets. Jimmy did a double-take on the labels, glared at Harry.

'Pink? Pink?'

Harry shrugged. 'The white was double, an' we got one gallon free. Whack it over that corridor… it's not a bright pink,' he reassured them earnestly, 'it's soft shell…'

Dillon, wearing baggy blue overalls spattered with paint, trudged up the steps and heaved three bulging black plastic bags into the skip that was half on the pavement, half in the gutter. Cliff was sweeping up with a broom, his black face and short wiry black hair covered in a film of cement dust. Glancing left and right with a pugnacious frown, he said, 'Every bugger in the street is tossin' their rubbish on – I go inside for a minute an'… look,' he burst out angrily, 'that's not ours, that armchair.' Dillon turned to go back down. 'Hey, Frank, how's it lookin'?' Cliff asked.

'If you got a pair of sunglasses, I'd wear 'em,' Dillon advised.

He went along the passage, eyes half shut in a painful squint. The pink couldn't have been pinker. It coated every surface – walls, ceiling, skirting boards, including the wires running up by the door frames and across the ceiling. Even the cast-iron electric box Jimmy was working on, standing on a ladder, a screwdriver in his teeth. Holding a torch, he was poking round inside, a spaghetti of coloured wiring trailing down.

'You know what you're doin'?' Dillon asked him apprehensively.

'We got the telephones all connected, no charge,' Jimmy mumbled past the screwdriver.

'Until the GPO suss us.' Dillon sighed, wagging his head. Everything was moving fast, too fast. He wanted time to stop, to think, to consider, and Jimmy was charging on, as only Jimmy could, full steam ahead. Throwing caution and everything else to the winds.

'Ah!' Jimmy chortled triumphantly, and threw a switch. The fluorescent striplight in the passage buzzed and came to life. Dillon shielded his eyes against the shrieking pink glare. Jesus Wept. Like a bleeding boudoir. Or a Bangkok cathouse.

Jimmy hurtled past him, yelling excitedly, 'Cliff – Cliff, is the sign lit up?'

The four of them gathered on the pavement, grinning a bit self-consciously, looking up proudly at the glowing neon sign, a red arrow strobing the way down to the basement.

STAG SECURITY COMPANY

No one but a Para would know it, Dillon realised, but the name was sort of appropriate -'stag' being the term for sentry duty in the Parachute Regiment. Thus: 'stag on – stag off,' alternate periods on guard and standing down.

'Well, we got the premises, we got the phones,' beamed Cliff. 'How we doin' with the kitty, Frank?'

It was an innocent question, but it stung Dillon on the raw. He felt he was on a treadmill that was spinning faster and faster, and he couldn't keep pace, couldn't even pause to catch his breath.

'Still got a few quid!' he snapped irritably.

'Few quid?' Harry's eyebrows shot up in his big beefy face. 'What we gonna drive – dinky toys? We've not even got a motor, never mind a security wagon -'

'Friend of mine's got a garage,' Jimmy winked. Of course, Dillon thought, rely on Jimmy to have a friend who just happened to own a garage. 'He's got somethin' to show us,' Jimmy said, already vaulting into the jeep. He bashed the horn. 'Come on you dozy buggers!'

The treadmill was spinning out of control.

The 'garage' turned out to be more of a wrecker's yard. Half an acre of quagmire piled six-high with junked cars, vans and lorries. But Jimmy was confident that his mate Fernie would have just what they were after. He shoved open the double doors to the main workshop and disappeared inside, his voice echoing from the cavernous interior: 'Oi, Frank, come an' look over this baby, it's a cracker… armour-plated. Frank!'

Dillon stood with Harry and Cliff peering into the open bonnet of a metallic-gold Ford Granada with crimson stick-on speed stripes, Y reg, 94,000 miles on the clock. He glowered at the open workshop doors as Jimmy kept yelling for him to come take a look-see.

'I dunno, Frank,' said Cliff doubtfully, bent right over, his nose nearly touching the spark plugs. 'A lot of oil in here…'

Harry said scathingly, 'There would be, you soft git – that's the engine.'

A sudden shattering, stuttering roar, accompanied by a series of farting backfires, made them all spin round. An old rust-streaked security wagon, dents and scratches in every panel, radio antenna dangling over the smeared windscreen like a broken reed, chugged into the open, surrounded by a miasma of blue fumes. Jimmy leaned out, waggling his thumb. 'Hey, Frank – look at this mother!' He jumped down and at the third attempt managed to slam the door shut.