It should have been a perfect day. He wasn't looking at twenty, twenty-five years, but at coming home to his Princess… but Cruncher hadn't been there.

There was a bleat in the Eagle's voice. 'You know what I worry about. I mean it, lose sleep about? One day you overreach – know what I mean – take a step too far. I worry… It was close run this time.'

He hit the Eagle with a closed fist, where it hurt, just below the heart. It was a short jabbed punch, and his solicitor let out a little stifled gasp. Mister owned a detective inspector at the heart of organized-crime investigations, a prison officer, telephone engineers in the sections where taps were monitored, had a man in place wherever he was needed; he could strike terror into rivals, turncoats and lawyers. He employed the best of solicitors on retainer, and the best of accounting number crunchers… so where the hell was Cruncher?

The taxi pulled up. Mister slipped out of the cab with his bin bag, didn't offer an invitation to the Eagle to come in with him. He hadn't thanked the Eagle, the work was well paid for. He would never be in debt – money or for services rendered – to any man, never under obligation.

'Hello, Mr Packer, nice to see you back.'

He smiled at the young woman pushing the buggy with the sleeping baby along the pavement. She was from four doors down and her husband imported Italian fashionwear. 'Good to be back, Rosie.'

A woman was clipping the early spring growth on her hedge two doors up. Her husband owned a garden centre in Edmonton, and her garden was always a picture. They supplied the labour that kept the Princess's lawns and herbaceous borders neat.

'Afternoon, Mr Packer, welcome home.'

'Thanks, Carol, thanks very much.'

Rosie and Carol, and all the rest of the road, would have remembered clearly that morning, the last day of last July, when the road had swarmed with armed police and white-overalled forensics people, as he had been led away in handcuffs by the Church.