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The whole place stank of despair and front. The front most people put on for family and friends when they were looking at a long sentence. Front was how you coped with being told by a judge that you were being locked away for the best years of your life, that you were a menace to society and prison was all you would know from now on. Front was pretending that you accepted what had happened. Front was what made you get up in the morning after such an abomination, and was what made you carry on through every day after that. Front was, in the end, all you had to rely on.

Front was also, unfortunately, more often than not what had put the majority of the convicts there in the first place.

Kevin Craig sat down and Lil smiled at him tremulously.

'Thanks for coming.' He afforded her the respect her husband's reputation automatically afforded her. 'That's all right, mate.' Her smile was wide, but her nerves were making her feel faint.

She was heavily pregnant once more and her huge belly was evident as she sat down and tried to make herself comfortable.

As she looked around the visiting room she felt the fear once more. She looked at the women with their kids; dilapidated, scruffy, trying to be cheerful, trying to make some kind of connection with the men who had fathered their children and who might not hold any of them close again for years.

This was all her nightmares come to life, losing her Pat to the prison system. Seeing him banged up and vulnerable and watching him shrink a bit more as every year passed, she knew that her physical make-up would make her seek solace elsewhere even though the man would not, could not, ever match up to the man she had lost through no fault of her own.

Kevin smiled at her then as if reading her mind. 'Tell Pat and Dicky that I have put me hand up, wiped me mouth and took the onus off them. But my old woman
has
to be taken care of. I am only a bagman, I collected the rents, that's all. Make sure the protection is paid; they owe me, they owe me big time.'

Lil didn't hear the underlying threat in his voice, she just felt relieved; this was something she could cope with, something she knew all about. He was telling her what she was supposed to be telling him. Keep your trap shut, your head down and your arse up and everything would be all right.

Kevin's wife, Amy, was a mate of sorts. They lived near each other and they talked if they met in the market. She knew his kids by sight and she talked to him about them, assuring him that they would be well taken care of. That they would not go without, even though she knew that they would be going without the most important person in their life after their mother.

Although, from what she had heard from Amy, she wasn't so sure about that now. But she knew better than to say these thoughts out loud.

Instead, she told this troubled man that he was not to worry, his family were safe, and at the same time she was praying that she would never have to visit her husband or children in a place like this.

Lil hated the whole depressing aura of prison. It was like a living tomb to her. People lived inside the prison walls, but they might as well have been long dead because they were only existing, and that was not what life was supposed to be about.

'Lil is sorting it, relax.' Patrick sounded far more confident than he felt, but he knew that Dicky would not pick up on that. Kevin had been nabbed completely by accident, and they were all still trying to clear up the mess.

Pat was shrewd enough to know that Kevin had been served up, and he would be very interested to know who the culprit was. It had to be someone close, because he kept his business dealings quiet; even Dicky didn't have any real idea of how enormous his empire had become. But then again, no one did. He used different people for different things. Never telling his right hand what the left hand was doing.

It worked better that way. People only know what you tell them. Well, if you didn't tell them anything then you were safe.

So whoever had put Kevin away had either a working knowledge of his business practices, or a vested interest in seeing Kevin Craig off the pavement. The former he doubted, the latter he suspected.

Kevin had never had the gift of friendship. He was like a fucking old woman, looking for slights everywhere, taking offence at nothing and, worst of all, he thought he was the lynchpin of the protection business.

People amazed him: if they were so fucking clever why were they on a wage? Why depend on someone else for their daily bread? So he had once had affiliations with Barry Caldwell, why would he think that gave him any street credibility? Barry had been mugged off, he was yesterday's news. He would see about bailing Kevin out if he could, he would concentrate on lessening the blow of his sentence, and finally he would take care of his family until such time as the courts saw fit to release him back into society. It was the usual, it was what anyone could expect in his employ and it wasn't fucking rocket science. It also meant he was about two grand down a week, and that was the real priority here; when all was said and done, he wasn't about to lose any income. Still, he would find out the score soon enough, and like any problem, the sooner it was dealt with, the better.

Lil was still nervous after her prison visit. The place made her nerves bad, undermined her life in every way imaginable. Reminded her of what could happen, reminded her of how difficult her life could easily become.

But it also reminded her of how she had to keep these thoughts to herself. All her life she had felt as if she was walking on quicksand and that feeling overwhelmed her every time she walked through the prison doors.

It was an ending, a big lump, it was society's way of telling people they were being excluded, it was also like a time warp. All her life she had heard the phrase 'let the punishment fit the crime', and she was agreeable to that.

Money and property were what got people banged up for years, and as her husband now fell into that category, it bothered her. Especially as she knew that the prison lifestyle would kill him.

But it was so true, crimes against money and property guaranteed a seriously long sentence, murder and sex crimes guaranteed a much lesser sentence. It was to her, at first, an unbelievable truth. She had believed it, because it had been explained to her by her husband. Now though, the papers had proved the case in point, and it scared her. That her husband would do less time for murdering a complete stranger on the street than for robbing a bank was outrageous. He was breaking the law of course, but how was that a worse offence than a murder or a rape? It was these thoughts that were stopping her from sleeping at night.

It did occur to her that he might be a murderer, but she forced those thoughts away. If he did murder someone there would have to be a good reason for it, she was convinced. It was like her mother had said, it would be like an occupational hazard to him. But he wouldn't do that, she knew he wouldn't do anything like that.

As she poured out a cup of tea, she looked around her kitchen and tried to take in everything about it. Compared to her upbringing, this place was luxury, yet even she was now aware that they did not live within her husband's means. They lived well but not excessively so. Pat always said that the first interest from Old Bill was if there was a nice house and a decent motor and no real means of employment. His legal business would have provided this standard of living so that is how they lived. It was still a better lifestyle than most people's.

If she was to be taken away from here at a moment's notice, what would she really remember? What would she miss? Like her husband, she lived for the moment. If it all fell out of bed, she would pack a bag and walk away from here without a backward glance. Somewhere in her head she knew that was wrong. She had a child, another on the way, she should feel settled here instead of feeling like this was just another stop. Somewhere to sit and wait for the man who dominated her existence. Yet she knew she wasn't alone, that a lot of the women in her position lived their lives in exactly the same way.

For the first time though, she was really worried about what the future might bring. Pat wasn't a fool, he would dodge the law as best he could, but, pregnant once more, she was terrified of being alone. Seeing the prisons up close and personal, she was frightened of the power the thought of them had over her. As she looked at her little son playing with his toys on the lino, she felt the familiar sickness wash over her. Patrick said it was just the baby; once the new one arrived she would be OK, but she wasn't so sure.

She had the same feelings in the prison as she had felt as a child growing up. The utter loneliness that pervaded the place was bad enough, but to then be told when to eat, sleep and even shit, was terrifying. To live your whole life on a rota, even worse, a rota planned and executed by people you would cross the road to avoid, was to her the worst thing she could ever imagine.

Being at the mercy of other people was something she understood very well, and it was something she hated with a passion that surprised her.

She picked up Pat Junior and held him close, even though he wriggled to get away from her to continue his playing. She needed bodily contact constantly: after being starved of affection for so long, she now craved it desperately. Her husband's arm across her belly was like her life's blood, a necessity.

Since Pat had started using her to visit and relay messages, she was now frighteningly aware of just how precarious her life actually was. She put the squealing child down and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. Needing people brought its own set of problems; at times like this she wondered if she had been better off as she was before. Then she had felt she was missing out on something, she just had not known what that something was. Now she knew, it was even worse.

She took a deep breath and sighed once more.

Life, after all, was what you made it, and Pat was making sure her life was wonderful. Even to her own ears that sounded hollow.

Chapter Three

Everyone, especially the police, knew that Pat had taken out his arch rivals. And as luck would have it, nobody, including the police, cared. Billy Spot's demise had been on the cards for a while, it was just a case of who would be responsible, as opposed to when it would happen. Pat Brodie had been a contender for a while and the sensible money had been on him.

When he had wiped out Spot he had opened up the West End for everyone. Unlike Spot and his cronies though, Pat and his cohorts were quite happy to let people work their trades in relative peace and tranquillity. Providing they made sure that a percentage of the money earned made its way into their pockets they were happy. Life was good for everyone; Pat was fair, and the numerous Williams brothers who were on his leash were amicable and easy enough to get along with. Business thrived for everyone, from the street vendors to the club owners. Life was easier than it had been for years and, as Pat and his cohorts made a point of being seen on the very streets they policed, no one was worried about late-night visits and protection money being demanded twice in one night. Spot had not watched over his troops and that had been when the rot had set in. So now, everyone was earning, and everyone was feeling relaxed enough to unload the shotguns they kept under their bars and hide away the handguns they might have kept in their cars.

Until, that is, they had all been brought to the notice of the local filth by a disgruntled punter. Kevin Craig had been served up by a man called Denny Harris and, even though it had been a worry at the time, it had ended up being a blessing in disguise.

Denny had a grievance, a fair grievance as it turned out, because Kevin was a greedy ponce who was taking more than he was entitled to. He was in effect shaking him down twice, something that normally would have been frowned upon by everyone concerned. That, however, was another story. The main thrust of the whole saga was that Denny had grassed, and even though Kevin was out of order, there was still no justifiable reason in their world for Denny's outrageous actions. Grassing anyone up to the Old Bill was tantamount to treason, and Denny's mistake came at a time when a well-earned lesson was not only needed, but was also welcomed by the powers that be.

Pat and the Williams brothers knew that in order to cement their new-found notoriety, they would need to make an example of someone. In short, Billy Spot and Barry Caldwell had been big fish, and big fish expected to be challenged eventually. Now they needed to show the smaller fish, the hustlers, the pimps, the bookies and the club owners, the people who would ultimately be their bread and butter, that they had their fingers on every pulse in the smoke, and would know immediately if anyone was trying to hold back any of their earnings. Pat knew that anyone who was waltzing through life without paying their due was going to brag about it eventually, and because they had had a touch without any kind of redress, they would not see them as a real threat. Instead, they would eventually take on more businesses without consulting anyone about it first, and that would be how the rot could set in. The first serious mugging off had to be sorted quickly, violently and with the maximum of fuss. If they let it go, people would soon cotton on, and that was how you lost face, because it was the smaller businesses that were the staple of any empire. The rents, as they were known, were what kept everyone on their toes. If you would go to war for a few quid, it was assumed you would be capable of murder for the larger amounts. This was a natural dilemma for anyone who was in control of any business, legit or otherwise.

So Denny, by rights, should have brought his problem to them, and they would have sorted it out. Everyone would have been a winner, Kevin would have had his wrist slapped and it would have been a five-minute wonder and of no consequence to anyone. Instead, Denny had actually had the gall to overlook them, to try to sort it out with Kevin, who was a bona fide arsehole at the best of times, and so far down the pecking order he was virtually classed as a serf. And when that had failed and knowing he had naused himself up with Kevin's bosses, he had then had the audacity to go to the Old Bill. Unbelievable as it was, this had been what had happened.