‘That’s just being pedantic,’ said Errol.

‘Listen, man, if the stonecold truth is pedantic, then I guess that’s what I’m being, because I’ll bet if you was to ask every person within one hundred miles of where we’re standing if they’d ever seen a haystack, let alone left their works in one, they’d say, “Get the fuck outa here, motherfucker.” ’

Errol spotted the point of confusion. ‘It don’t mean no works,’ he said.

‘Say what?’

‘The needle which is referred to in the expression “a needle in a haystack” does not mean no drug paraphernalia. It means a needle for sewing.’

Mr Snuff seized upon the point like the practised debater he was. ‘It don’t matter what kind of needle we’re talking about here, you dumb motherfucker,’ he explained. ‘The point is that no one is going to lose it in no haystack. You need to bring your metaphors into the twentieth century, man.’

Bob, still hanging from the chain, groaned a little. The two gangsters ignored him.

‘How about if you was to say it’s like trying to find a line of coke in a snowdrift? Now there’s an image a person can understand.’

Now it was Errol’s turn to be contrary. ‘No, man, that’s bullshit,’ he said angrily. ‘The whole point about a needle and a haystack is that they are very different things, and although it would be difficult to locate the former within the latter, it would not be impossible. Cocaine and snow are basically identical. You could never tell one from the other. One concept is improbable, the other is impossible – which is an entirely different thing.’

‘Less you snorted up the entire motherfucker. You could sure tell them apart if you was to stick them up your nose.’

Errol laughed. It was a relief for both men. The discussion had been in danger of turning acrimonious, but now the tension was broken. For the two gangsters, that is; for Toni and Bob things remained stressful.