'Get him dressed for me, would you?'

Colleen picked the little boy up and walked from the room happily.

Pat came in then and, smiling at everyone, he said nonchalantly, 'You're going to see a bloke in Harley Street tomorrow, Mum. Might as well get you a full MOT, eh?'

'Don't be so fucking silly. I'm just tired, that's all.'

Pat was kneeling down and giving little Shawn a packet of Jelly Tots as he said, in a firm voice that brooked no arguments, 'You're going and that's that.'

Lil lay back on the sofa once more, feeling worse than ever.

'What is it with you, Lance? What the fuck goes through your head?'

The two men were laughing as they walked up the driveway of a large house in Chigwell. The gates had been jemmied open by Lance with the aid of a set of bolt cutters. The drive was gravelled and their footsteps alerted the owner to their presence. He opened the front door with a baseball bat in one hand and a twelve-inch carving knife in the other.

'Oooh, that's not very friendly, is it?'

The man was grinning but the men knew he was frightened, the sweat rolling down his face told them that, plus the trembling of the hand that held the knife.

'Fuck off. You ain't coming in here.'

'But that's just where you're wrong. We are coming in and we are removing certain objects; two of those said objects will be your bollocks if you don't get out of the way.'

Lance pulled out a shotgun from underneath his raincoat; it was sawn-off and he cocked it over his knee. Then, holding it up to his chin, he sited it on the man's crotch.

'I think a sawn-off beats a knife any day of the week, don't you, Donny?'

Donny Barker nodded as if thinking the question over seriously, and he eventually answered in a game-show-host voice, 'Without a doubt. Now, if you don't mind, we have chosen to forfeit the prizes and take the money.'

The man was shaking his head. He was bald with small dark eyes and overlarge lips, and was not an attractive man at all. His wife, however, was a real looker, as he was wont to tell anyone who would listen. Fortunately, his children looked like her side of the family. It was these children and that wife he was trying to protect.

'I ain't got the fucking money, how many times? I'll get it as soon as I can.'

Lance advanced on him, still aiming the gun, and he walked the man back through his large entrance hall and into his kitchen.

It was a beautiful property and Lance and Donny were both pricing everything in their heads as they made their way to the kitchen with him.

'Put the weapons on the worktop, please, and step back towards the table.'

The man did as he was asked, and Donny picked them up and studied them as if they were the most interesting things he had ever seen in his life.

'This knife is really sharp. You could do someone a real damage with this.'

As he spoke, Donny smiled at Lance and he nodded his agreement.

'You could cut someone's eyes out or slice off a few fingers, anything really.'

The man was white now and his eyes were on overdrive with nervous blinking. It was a reaction that Lance had seen many times over the years. He knew the man was thinking about how to get out of this, play for time, and then working out how to get the money required and get out of this once and for all. Lance also knew that he kept a small fortune in a safe, somewhere in this sprawling mansion that was hocked up to the hilt. The cars, everything in the place was rented or bought on the knock. He was like a lot of them he dealt with, all top show. Living far beyond their means and what for? That was the thing Lance had never understood. So a group of people he drank with knew he had a nice car and a nice drum. It was a fucking con, all a con. Now he had borrowed his last fucking wedge and they were not about to give him any kind of a pass.

'You owe me the money now, us. We bought the debt, see, and we are like the Mounties, we always get our man.'

'Look, I can get you the money all right…'

Lance grinned. 'Can you get it before your wife turns up with the kids? Your Bianca's ballet lesson should be over by now and it would be a shame if they were to walk into all this, eh?'

Donny nodded again. His ugly face was screwed up in mock concern.

'Poor little mares, coming in to all this. Good at ballet, is she?'

He ran a well-manicured nail down the knife blade. 'Shame if she lost a toe or two, wouldn't it? I mean, toes are what help you balance, ain't they?'

He looked at the man then and saw his fear, his terror.

'You wouldn't. Not a kid, you can't hurt kids.'

Lance answered him then. 'I can. I'll fucking hurt anyone who owes me money. I take it personally, like an insult or a fucking piss take. Now, where is your safe? Open it and pay us and we'll go. If you don't, I will slice up everyone in the house, even the new baby you're so proud of.'

As he spoke, they all heard the front door opening and a loud voice saying, 'Oi, have you seen the gates? They're wide open. You told me to keep them closed.'

The wife walked into the kitchen and saw what was going on. She turned quickly, but not quickly enough. She was holding her baby boy, and her older daughter, who had just turned twelve, was still in the hallway taking off her coat and boots. She looked up at the noise and she started crying when she saw the way her mother was flinching in fear, a man pulling her roughly back into the kitchen. The woman hunched over her baby. After seeing the gun she instinctively tried to shield the child from any shot that might be fired.

'Please, I don't want any trouble, we don't know anything, let us go…' Her voice was drenched with tears and she was stuttering with fright.

Her daughter ran to her, crying noisily, and that set the baby off. The noise was loud and Lance shouted above it. 'Give me her, now.'

Donny was as shocked as the parents of the child.

'I said, give me that kid, now.'

'Leave it out, Lance, this don't warrant anything of that magnitude.'

Lance stormed over to the little crowd and dragged the girl from her mother's arms.

The woman was now hysterical and Lance shouted at her. 'Shut the fuck up or I'll shoot the lot of you, just for the peace and fucking quiet.' He held the sobbing child in front of him and he pointed the gun at her head.

The child was quiet suddenly, as if she knew exactly how serious the situation was. The tears were rolling down her cheeks and yet not a sound emerged from her.

'All right, for fuck's sakes, let her go. You fucking bastards. Let her go and I'll give you what you want.'

Lance pushed the little girl away and she stumbled, her fear so acute she couldn't walk properly. Lance shouted at the sobbing woman, who was attempting to help her daughter up from the floor and hold on to her baby at the same time.

'Get out and shut the fucking door. Remember we can see you, so don't get clever. All right?'

The woman nodded and Donny could see she was on the verge of nervous collapse. The girl was almost in a trance and he knew fear could do that. He knew that the terror she had experienced would be there all her life.

'Well, fuck off then!'

She walked out of the kitchen towards their new conservatory, which was actually the reason her husband had wanked all his money away. As she passed him, she said angrily, 'My mother was right about you. She said you'd end up in jail or being topped and now you've brought all this into my home.'

She was pushed through the glass doors into the conservatory, and then Lance said, 'I can always top her for you, as a sort of bonus for paying up. She sounds like a right fucking nag and those kids and that racket all day and night. I don't discriminate, I'll fucking shoot anyone.' Lance waited for the man to tell them what they wanted to know.