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Annie had the nous to keep her beak out and silence the questions that were hurling themselves around her head. The neighbours were vocal about the raid; speculation was rife as always and the dolt she called a daughter had not uttered one word about any of it. She could see that her daughter was not in the mood for a full and frank discussion of any description. Her daughter's plight affected her not one iota; she was there for no other reason than accruing some Brownie points. With them she could gain access to her Lance. Without that child her life was meaningless; her feelings for him were so strong she felt them as a physical force. She would endure anything to be near him, and do anything to keep others away from him.

Love was a strange emotion. It was something she had never felt before, or felt the need to express in any way. She saw herself in him, and that was enough to make her feel that finally her life was worth living.

Dwyer was trembling so much that he couldn't light his cigarette. Pat leaned over and struck a match, holding it out for him, watching him trying to inhale and make the cigarette work at last. His three attempts left them all embarrassed and the room was heavy with tension. Dwyer's breathing was loud, even to his own ears, and his actions were unnatural and overly dramatic. He looked what he was.

Patrick grinned at him in a friendly manner. 'You all right, mate? You on the gear as usual?'

Dwyer smiled then. His wrinkled face was suddenly familiar, his hangdog look back, he could have been a favourite uncle. Pat felt a smidgeon of sorrow for him. He was a product of circumstances, as they all were. The bloke Pat thought was filth was watching them nervously, but in fairness he was calm enough to get away with it. Patrick, however, was relaxed. Sitting back in the chair, he waited until Dwyer was puffing away on his Embassy before he spoke. 'Who are this lot? I think an introduction is on the cards, don't you?'

The suspect filth looked him in the face then and Pat smiled gently once more.

'We're friends of Freddie's…'

Pat pointed a finger at the suspect filth without looking at him directly, he was now leaning once more across the table staring into Freddie's eyes, but talking to the other man. 'Who gave you permission to address me, you cheeky cunt?'

Freddie was terrified again, this was not what was supposed to happen. Pat wasn't supposed to be like this, cocky and spoiling for a straightener. It was Pat who was supposed to be caught on the hop. Freddie was not geared up for this behaviour at all.

'You shut the fuck up until I speak to you directly, OK? You are a no-neck, a fucking ice-cream, a nothing.' The violence behind Pat's eyes was barely hidden, everyone was reminded of just how slippery he could be, especially when he thought he was being mugged-off.

Pat had a reputation and the people in the room had conveniently forgotten it because as a collective they had assumed they would be the stronger. Pat had just reminded them of how big a mistake an assumption could turn out to be.

The filth was unsure how to react to Brodie. He knew though that he had been tumbled. Pat snapped his head round to look at the man, his eyes were dead now, he was in work mode and anyone who really knew him would be seriously worried. Pat was capable of anything when he felt even remotely threatened, extreme violence was how he had attained his position in the first place. Tonight he was not going down without taking this lot with him, and they were now all aware of that. He planned ahead and he thought on his feet; he was ready for whatever these pieces of shit were intending to lay on him. So when he smiled once more it was with a chilling certainty that he would be the victor no matter what happened.

'Two fucking deaths and you are here with strangers, Fred, fucking
strangers.
Suspect strangers at that.' He looked at Dwyer again, his voice high with utter contempt, not only for them but for the situation they had all found themselves in.

'Have I got cunt tattooed on my fucking forehead or what?' Pat held his arms up in a gesture of supplication. It was overly dramatic, and it was also a warning that he was playing with them, enjoying the moment.

Dwyer puffed furiously on his cigarette, not even attempting to justify himself and, more to the point, not trying to even introduce his new-found friends. He knew it was over, he knew they were finished. His terror was now communicating itself to the other men in the room.

Patrick started to laugh. He could feel the power flowing into him, knew he had them on the hop. He was an unknown quantity, all they knew of him was his reputation, none of them had experienced him first-hand. Pat was more than a handful when the fancy took him, and the fancy was on him tonight, he could feel the menace inside him desperate to be unleashed. He was actually enjoying himself. He was willing to go away to avenge this fucking atrocity, and go away for a long time. This was an out-and-out fucking liberty of Olympian standards and, because of that, he was not going to swallow his knob. He wanted blood and retribution and he was determined to get it, no matter what the personal cost might be.

'I came here to try and make some kind of fucking sense out of the deliberate and wilful dereliction of your fucking duties.
You
had a tug and
you
fucking sold us down the river, you treacherous cunt. You are the cause of two good men being outed, and the most heinous crime of all is that none of you thought that I might have cottoned on, that you thought I was too thick to suss this lot out? Is this the best you could fucking do, the best you could come up with?'

He laughed once more, and pointed at Dwyer. 'Him? You relied on him? Fucking Freezing Freddie? And you are the so-called Sweeney Todd, the scourge of the criminal classes? Oh fuck off!'

There was no anger in his voice now, just righteous indignation, sarcasm and a smattering of honest disbelief. 'You're a fucking joke.'

The suspect filth was a big lad, he had broad shoulders, but the soft, pudgy body of a lazy man. Like most plain-clothes filth he had never really worked at anything since promotion; he relied on other people to make his cases for him. He was dependent on grasses like Dwyer and statements from the general public. In short, he chased rumours, gossip and idle chit-chat. His mentality was such that he actually thought that a man like Pat Brodie could be brought to book. Would roll over because they might have garnered some information that could put him away. He did not have the experience or intelligence to see that a man like Brodie would go down for a twenty-stretch without letting them hear one of his farts, let alone anything that would incriminate anyone else.

Took, Pat, you got this all wrong… We want you with us…'

The suspect filth had finally spoken, was trying to get him onside, actually thought he would roll over and grass on his mates. The man had a deep voice, a pleasing voice in fact; it had an underlying lilt to it, Welsh maybe. He was playing at the London accent though, so many CID and Flying Squad were guilty of that. They thought it made them seem harder and more on the ball. These upper working-class boys from the Home Counties now saw themselves as the new and improved Z Cars. Patrick looked around the table and sighed in disappointment. This was the legendary Sweeney? He had seen harder nuts in his Christmas stocking. There was even a television programme about them and, after tonight, he could only assume it was a fucking comedy.

Too late, the suspect filth realised he had said the wrong thing. He was still secure enough in his job to believe that even if Brodie didn't play the game he would not have the nerve to do any real damage to them; after all they were Lily Law, when all was said and done. He was wondering, though, if Brodie might be tempted to wallop one of them, just to prove a point.

'Who're you calling, Pat? How dare you attempt any kind of familiarity with me?'

The room was now steeped in animosity and righteous indignation; Patrick's natural-born hatred of any kind of authority was in evidence and he was offended, really offended. Then, from underneath his coat, he produced a machete. He brandished it with relish, watching the men around him as the realisation of their situation dawned on them. Spider and his Jamaican cousin were standing in the doorway, their own weapons, a scythe and a Japanese samurai sword, clearly visible.

The three men at the table finally understood that they were in grave danger and the fact that they were part of the establishment guaranteed them nothing from the bunch of psychopaths looking at them with excitement in their eyes and malice in their hearts.

Standing up, Patrick brought the machete down with all the force he could muster, on to Freddie Dwyer's head. Spider and Pat laughed out loud as they systematically hacked him to pieces, the blood splattering on to the scandalised faces of the Old Bill as they awaited their turn, making it all the more hilarious.

A lesson was administered swiftly and with the maximum of brutality. It was a lesson well learned by everyone who had to deal with Patrick Brodie from that day on.

He had gone from hard nut to headcase overnight, and it was a well-planned, well-executed and deliberate ploy to ensure that anyone who had dreams of grassing him up would remember that Dwyer, and the Old Bill he had been fool enough to associate with, had been sentenced to death without any repercussions whatsoever.

Lil was lying on the sofa trying to get comfortable. Her belly was tight once more, and the devastation of her home was still in evidence. She had put everything back as neatly as she could, but the police had done a thorough job inasmuch as most of the soft furnishings would have to be replaced.

She took a few deep breaths and tried to calm the beating of her heart, which was pounding inside her breast with such force it was almost painful. She still had not heard anything from Pat and the time was crawling by. Every time she looked at the clock on her mantelpiece it seemed that an hour had passed, but in fact it had been only minutes. Her mother was still in with the boys and she blocked out the thoughts that were crowding her mind. Her belly was tightening once more and she knew on some level that she was in labour.

However, the pain was nothing she couldn't handle and her mind was still racing and reliving the last few hours. She lit a cigarette and pulled on it deeply, the nicotine hitting her brain and making her feel dizzy. The second draw was better and the third eased her nerves. She looked down at herself and saw the movement of her belly that she knew heralded the arrival of a new person into the world. It was early and she was too tired to make a fuss.

If Patrick had experienced a capture it might be eight or even ten years before he came home to her and his kids; it was a sobering and frightening thought. She felt so alone and so vulnerable, and all she kept focusing on was the fact she had only eight quid to her name.

Eight poxy quid and a new child fighting for its place in the world. What the fuck was she going to do?

Spider and Pat were in a house just off the Railton Road. They were soaked with blood and still on the high that often followed a bout of extreme violence.

Dicky and the Williams brothers were over the moon at the retribution Pat had doled out in their names. Dicky had been disappointed that he had missed out on the shenanigans but he was also secretly pleased that no one could put him or his brothers anywhere near the crime scene. Dead filth tended to cause serious aggravation, even bent dead filth. His brother's untimely demise had hit them all hard and he knew that Pat's logic for keeping this away from them was the act of a good mate. Their boat races would be the first in the frame and they had genuinely been somewhere else, so they had the perfect alibi.

They were now pouring drinks and assuring each other that if the filth had any intention of feeling their collars it would have happened already. Pat knew, as Spider knew, that the filth were taking time to lick their wounds, especially the ones they had something on. They would regroup at some point, that was human nature, but at this particular moment in time the Old Bill felt it was better to retreat, smile and nod, wait till the time was right then, when they were at their weakest, they would come for them mob-handed. Until then, fuck them! The murder of young Terry Williams had not been a smart move and the up-and-coming young Face they had bought with promises of aggrandisement was now the most wanted Face in the Smoke, for all the wrong reasons, running scared and, suddenly, without any protection whatsoever. Jamie the Book's death had barely registered on the Richter scale of criminal London, so even that had not given the Flying Squad anything that they could use against the Williamses or Brodie. It was a catastrophic fuck up but lessons had been learned.

In reality, anything that had been gained from the whole sorry business was in Brodie's favour; he was the new king of the swingers and the bent police he had gathered made him a no-go because he had been astute enough to buy only the best. As his mum had always told him, you get what you pay for and how true those words had turned out to be.

Spider had been a good mate to Pat over the years but he had made a life-changing choice this night: he had chosen Pat over the guaranteed protection of filth. If he had gone along with Dwyer, he would have been given a free rein to serve up his puff with no hassle whatsoever. But, like Patrick Brodie, he would rather take his chances in their world than live under the protective umbrella and sickening stench of Old Bill.

Patrick was filled with enthusiasm now: as he had showered the blood from his body he had relived the feelings of excitement that the night had created inside him. That he had enjoyed the violence so much made him question everything about himself; he had watched Dwyer die slowly and painfully and he had been fascinated by it. As the others had waited for their turn, he had observed their absolute terror, could smell the fear emanating from their pores. As he had remarked to Spider, it was absolute power; the knowledge that you chose whether someone lived or died was the greatest buzz of all. It was their horror and the realisation that they were in over their heads that had made him feel so good, that had made him prolong the agony of Dwyer so he could enjoy their fear, feed off it and make it work for him, for his benefit.