What a cruel joke. I’d finally given Harry what he so desperately wanted, and he wasn’t around to see it. As planned, I went to the clinic appointment the morning of Harry’s death, and it was there that I was given the news. Even though the pregnancy was very much planned at the time, it still filled me with dread. Harry wasn’t at the appointment, of course, and I tried desperately to get hold of him on the phone, though the calls never went through. When I found out he’d died, it sounded crazy, but I’d convinced myself I wasn’t pregnant. I couldn’t cope with that on top of everything else. I cradled my stomach lightly and rose to my feet.

“You don’t have to do this. I don’t care about you or anything illegal you’ve been doing. I just want to know what you know about Harry. That’s all.”

“I’m not killing a pregnant woman, Nick,” Damien uttered.

“John is going to take you back now. You keep our names out of your mouth, you hear? Or we’ll find you,” Nick warned.

“You still haven’t told me about Harry,” I said sternly.

“Are you taking the piss?” Nick stormed closer, his forehead almost touching mine, “We let you walk out of here unharmed, and you ask more questions?”

“Come on, love,” John said, delicately gripping my arm, “we need to leave.”

John led me out of the warehouse, the way we came, and to his car. He opened the passenger door to usher me inside. I’d risked my life and that of my unborn child, and for what? A few crumbs of information that I already knew. John got back in the car, and I remained staring into space.

“Are you actually pregnant?” John asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Why haven’t you told anyone?”

“It never came up.”

“You should have said earlier. I wouldn’t have let you go in there if I knew.”

“Well, you know now.”

“Is it Harry’s?”

“Of course. It’s Harry’s,” I snapped.

“I’ll drive you back. We’re going to have to tell Yvonne, you know.”

Throughout the journey back I felt sick to my bones. I hadn’t even accepted it truly myself. I’d just blurted it out in the heat of the moment to save my own skin without so much as thinking about the repercussions of Yvonne knowing. She would now feel some kind of claim on my body, there mere thought of which made me wince. John started the car, and we began the journey back to Filey. We hadn’t exchanged words with each other for about thirty minutes. John looked as if it was business as usual, although my heart rate was still going through the roof.

Harry wasn’t the kind of person who would go to them for money. He was a financial adviser for a start, and he’d never had a fight in his life. We should have been able to tell each other anything, but for some unknown reason, he was withholding all these financial secrets that he was involved in from his wife. Just meeting the Broadheads was enough to make me terrified of ever returning, but he actually did take money from them. I couldn’t fathom what was going through his head when he agreed to that or why he did it in the first place.

“You must know more about Harry,” I said.

“Listen, love. You need to let it go. The Broadheads had nothing to do with it.”

“Fine. So, tell me what happened.”

John stopped the car abruptly next to a farmer’s field and turned the engine off. He turned to me with a sigh, obviously weighing up the pros and cons of what he was about to say. I waited patiently.

“Not a word of any of this to Yvonne, deal?” He said.

“Deal.”

“Any of it. The meeting went fine, I’m not involved, and they didn’t have anything to do with it. No leads.”

“Fine.”

John sighed and leaned back in the seat slightly, returning eye contact intermittently. I could see he was obviously wrestling with the idea of letting me on something that he might know.

“Yvonne is going to kill me if I tell you,” John reasoned.

“John. Seriously, spit it out,” I said.

“Harry had a son.”

VIII

THE EMPEROR

HARRY - BEFORE

Steve’s face was utterly unrecognisable after the beating he had received from the Broadheads. He barely looked human anymore, and his face was swelled to the point he was struggling to see or breathe. He was producing a wet wheezing sound punctuated by the occasional bloody cough. It took every ounce of my strength to drag him back to the car and get him inside. When I asked the Broadheads for help, they almost turned their knuckles to me. I’d literally never seen anything like it, simply because I’d barely even had a fistfight when I was a kid. Steve seemed bizarrely unperturbed by the whole thing, and he was lying back in the seat like a corpse, only being able to breathe through one nostril. My hands were shaking so much that I could barely get the key in the ignition.

“I’m taking you to the hospital, Steve,” I said frantically.

“No, you aren’t. Just take me home. I’ve had worse.”

“Steve, you might be in serious trouble here. You need to get seen by someone.”

“Take me home,” Steve groaned painfully.

I finally managed to get the key in the ignition, and the car started. I immediately peeled out of the warehouse car park like we were running for dear life. We’d got what we came for. After Steve got beaten half to death, the Broadheads and I did a deal, whereby I had all the money I needed. Obviously, after what I’d just witnessed, I would rather have left empty-handed, but I didn’t have a choice. I came there to loan some money, and I was either leaving with a bag of cash or leaving in a plastic one with my toes turned up. As bad as Steve’s condition was, he didn’t seem bothered by it; he was fumbling around in his pockets only to produce a pack of cigarettes and light one. He coughed violently when he took the first drag on it.

“Why did they do that to you?” I asked.

“Fell behind on payments.”

“Christ.”

“Like I said, I’ve had worse.”

“Why the hell did you suggest we go to them then?”

“I thought bringing them a new customer might have afforded me a bit of flexibility. I was right.”

“That was flexibility?”

“Yes. If I hadn’t brought you, they’d have finished the job.”

Every corner I drove around, Steve wailed like a wounded animal. He must have had some broken ribs, at least, to say the least, but he refused to go to the hospital despite my constant protests. We’d finally arrived at the caravan park, and I helped him inside. He collapsed on the couch on a pile of takeaway food containers. I couldn’t believe the sordid life Steve was leading and how little he had told me of it. We used to be best mates growing up, but I’d moved on with my life, and Steve never really did. I felt sorry for him; he was obviously in a bad way and needed help, but I wasn’t in any position to give it to him.