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rest of Gresham ’s crew – sat quietly finishing their own breakfasts.
    Keane placed a crisp ten pound note on the table and then found a five in his wallet and placed that on top.
    ‘I’ve got these, ’ he said, his voice noticeably deeper than its usual pitch.
    ‘Chee rs, ’ said Slater. Warren only grunted his thanks. ‘What’s the time?’ asked Slater and belched quietly into his hand.
    The polite gesture seemed out of place from a man whom the others knew to be a very dangerous individual in the right – or wrong – circumstances. The man was full of contradictions.
    ‘Too fucking early, ’ growled Keane.
    Slater regarded him coldly. He had made no secret of his contempt for the way Keane had handled the situation on Saturday night and had made it clear to him that was the way he felt.
    ‘It’s half seven, ’ Warren said as he tugged his sleeve back over his wrist. ‘Guess we should get cracking on round two.’
    ‘George knows we’ve already looked doesn’t he?’ asked Keane, determined not to let Slater intimidate him.
    Warren had long thought that the younger man had a cruel and ambitious streak that made him so competitive that he might create a problem for them. That one day, in his haste to impress the rest of them, Gresham especially, he would slip up. And so he had.
    The defiant look on Keane’s face now told him that he wasn’t about to admit to it though. Perhaps they’d miscalculated this, misjudged Keane.
    Warren was nodding his head. ‘Yeah. But Slater spoke to him after me, once he’d calmed down,’ he said and nodded toward the big man. ‘Decided that it would’ve looked too dodgy to keep snooping around on a Sunday, especially once the rain started like that. We aren’t going to find him today, but we need to find out where he got to.’
    ‘I s’pose. So where do we kick off then?’ said Keane.
    He already knew what they would be doing but he was probably trying to sound breezy, as if he wasn’t bothered by Slater’s sneering, as if he wasn’t going to blame himself for the situation even if the others did. He ignored another look from Slater although Warren could see his irritation rising alrea dy.  ‘Back to where we left him, ’ Slater said before Warren cou ld answer. ‘Back to square one.’
    A n hour later they stood in a small alleyway staring at a section of the wall. Blood streaked across the top of the wall and splashed around the floor at their feet had caught their attention. Kane insisted that there had been much more, that the downpour the day before must have washed it away.
    They all stood peering over the wall into the garden beyond.
    ‘He went in there. Must have, ’ said Slater trying to see between the small gap in the curtains of the nearest window.
    ‘ Yeah but to get help? Call the Bill? Hide?’ said Warren .
    ‘Not the Bill or we’d have heard by now. Maybe to get help but that would probably have meant Old Bill again so probably to hide. In which case w e may never hear from him again, ’ reasoned Slater. ‘In which case, we’d better get moving. Make sure whoever lives here is at work or whatever and check the place out.’
    ‘What if they aren’t at work?’ asked Warren .
    Slater turned back and stared over the wall but he didn’t say anything and Warren didn’t press him.

 
7
 
 
    Monday . 9.30am.
     
     
    The offices of Griffin Holdings Ltd stood gleaming in glass and steel alongside The Great West Road in Hammersmith. Ten stories high it stood not much taller than the small church next door but still made the older building look quaint and out of place in the changing environment.
    G riffin Holdings Ltd occupied the top three floors of the building and had done so for almost four years. In that time, its Chief Executive, Andrew Griffin, had carefully rebuilt the company from the floundering mess he had found it in, back into a formidable reflection of its former glory. It traded now on the slogan that reflected its