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'You got my money?'

Cain laughed, his white, even teeth glinting in the sunlight. 'Shut the fucking door. You the one who told me never to talk business in the street or me own backyard!'

As he locked up once more, Spider could hear his brother chatting about his nephew's good looks and flirting with Rochelle. The boy was a natural-born womaniser and, listening to him talking and joking with his Rochelle, he felt the love that many men reserved for their children. He loved his life. It was times like this that made him realise just how lucky he was.

'They are coining it in and walking all over us, Dave, and we are being fucking mugged-off.'

Dave Williams sighed as he listened once more to his brother De

'Relax, for fuck's sake! You're like an old woman.'

'Fucking relax? You have the audacity to tell me to relax?'

De

'No one can get a fucking foot on the front line and that is what's giving me the fucking hump. Spider and his brother have sewn it all up.'

Dave sipped his coffee in silence and waited for the rant to continue as he knew it would. This had been a daily occurrence since De

De

'To add insult to fucking injury, Dave, that black cunt and his cohorts are dealing all over the show. They are in every nook and cra

'We have nowhere to peddle anything. They've sewn up the Lacy Lady, Room at the Top and the fucking Tavern. Lautrec's is already part of their domain and Southend is sewn up tighter than a nun's crack. It's everywhere we go; Raquel's in Basildon, the fucking Roxy, the Vortex, Dingwall's in Camden. There is not a pub or a club left that we can call our own, from the Old Rose to the Dean Swift, and that even includes The Green Man, my watering-hole. They have Callie Road, the fucking main pubs, the fucking docks and all the poxy local boozers. They are like fucking leeches taking the food out of my kid's mouth.' He spat into the fireplace for maximum effect.

'We have got fuck all left, their boys are even selling speed in the fucking Beehive on Brixton Road and they are, by nature, puffers. The West End and Islington are overrun with that smooth-talking ponce's fucking minions and I ain't swallowing no more. We either have a touch or we take it over once and for all.'

'Will you fucking calm down?'

'Calm down? You want me to calm down? Who are you, the fucking yoga king of East London? Up yours, Dave. I want this fucking sorted, and I want it sorted soon. Spider and his brother are riding around in fucking flash cars with all sorts of fucking weapons. They are kinging it up like they own the fucking show and we are expected to just fucking tug our forelocks and not say a word? We can't even shift anything in Manchester, Liverpool or fucking Scotland. We have been frozen out, fucked off like recalcitrant school boys and all you can say is calm down? Are you stuck up Brodie's arse or what?'

Dave didn't answer, it was pointless, but he was digesting the information. He knew that he was going to have to sort this out sooner rather than later, because his brothers were on his case now. Drugs, speed in particular, was big business and they had invested a lot of money into it. The problem was that Pat was not only a good mate but he was also their biggest rival and, short of selling to him personally at a loss, they were in right lumber. Pat wasn't going to pay over the odds for the gear and who could blame him?

But he was out of order to assume that they wouldn't want a bite of what was a fucking lucrative business. Just because they had not bothered with it in the begi

Dave chose to ignore the fact that Pat Brodie was ru

But, as De

They were feeling left out, feeling that they were being overlooked, insulted even. The boys were men and, like all up-and-coming youngsters, they were ripe for an excuse to flex their muscles, to make their mark. They were greedy little fuckers, and they were dangerous because of that. The only reason they had been given such a ride over the last couple of years was because of Patrick Brodie, but they were not intelligent enough to suss that out and he was not about to mention that fact just yet. De

They were conveniently forgetting all the graft they had because of Pat, all the money they were raking in with him on other businesses. The speed was making them greedy; the money to be earned was astronomical and naturally they wanted in on it. The groundwork had been done, as it had always been done for them, though they couldn't see that of course. They were heavies, no more and no less, and their egos were bigger than King Kong's cock, but they were adamant they were not going to take 'no' for an answer.