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into the turmoil. At first his part was minor; he held down a regular job as a doorman at a central London hotel and was only occasionally called on forintimidation or debt collection. He kept trying to get out, but, as he explained with a wry smile, his reliability, diligence, and honesty were like balloons and stones in his pockets: the top-ranking badmen trusted him more than his Yardie brethren, who were, for the most part, grasping, crooked, so he rose in the order, even as he sank in crime. So when a boss known to all as the Count needed muscle for a big cocaine deal, he asked Clifton. Planning had been painstaking, and the first part of the undertaking, gone without a hitch. The coke had been flown into Heathrow from Jamaica, hidden in guitar cases, delivered to the Count. He’d had it cooked up and was ready to sell it on to the dealers. A night-time meet, at an isolated, abandoned church in rural North Bedfordshire, was set up.
    When, on the evening of the sale, the Count pulled up outside Clifton’s Harlesden flat, in a blue van, with, as cover, the name of a glazier’s firm on the side, Clifton felt dread, fear greater than fitted the risks of the deal, almost hid or ran. But he did not, went out, got in the van.
    The drive out of the city, passed uneventful, in smoking ganja, talking about music. Then, several miles after they’d come off the M1, on a narrow, winding country lane, bordered by high verges, a badger darted out in front of them, froze in the glare of the headlights. It was too late to swerve or brake – there was a thud, then two jolts, as they rolled over the thickset beast.
    The Count got out to look over the damage. It wasn’t too bad: a headlight smashed and the front grille dented, that was all.
    ‘Rahtid! Surprise we not broke a axle, dread,’ he said, scratching his head.
    Sheepish, pointing back down the road with his thumb, Clifton asked if he could go, check on the badger.
    ‘Fool!’ the Count barked, slapping his forehead. ‘We dey pon haste, mon!’
    ‘Is choble, is crosses,’ Clifton said, kissed his teeth, turned away.
    The Count smirked. Anyone else he would have beaten down, but he was fond of Clifton and his do-gooding ways. He bowed low, so low his forehead almost scraped the ground.
    ‘Alright, I ease up. Gwan, if you must, Saint Clifton.’
    ‘Saint Clifton’ was the epithet the other gang members mocked him with. He pretended to hate it, but in truth, prided in it, a little.
    After going back down the road a short way, Clifton came across a smear of blood on the tarmac. But there was no sign of the badger. He paused, cast about him. Overhead, the moon shone brightly behind a winding sheet of cloud; the hawthorns lining the verges cast twisted shadows. He returned to the van and they drove on.
    It wasn’t long afterwards they arrived at the assigned meeting place. Their contacts were already there, awaited them in a nondescript brown saloon. When the Count parked up on the grass, two men got out of the car. One, fairly old, short, wrinkled, hard-faced, flint-eyed, with slicked-back grey hair, dressed smartly in a black suit, camel coat, and paisley scarf, and carelessly toting a revolver, was the very image of an East End gangland boss. Age had not withered, but toughened him. The second man, who also wore a suit – his a grey pinstripe, which, though in cut and material less fine than his companion’s, was still of good quality, if ruined by stains, dark splashes up the trouser leg as far as the knee – whose coat was a pea jacket, collar turned up against the cold, and who’d a pumpkin-shaped head and broken nose, was a thug, there for heft and thew.
    The Yardies got out of the van, stretched, stood, shivering, wrapped their arms about them for warmth. To Clifton the country night seemed eerily quiet – there was no noise save the purling of a nearby rill.
    The breath of the four men plumed in the cold, damp air, as if their spirits had been loosed from