Jaime Raven - The Rebel - The new crime thriller that will have you gripped in 2018

She often joked that I was too pretty to be a copper and that it wasn’t fair that I could eat like a horse and still be a size ten.

But I had a sneaking suspicion that she resented the fact that I outranked her. And if she did I wouldn’t have blamed her because she was a better detective than most of those I’d worked with.

‘Did you drive or come here by tube?’ she asked me.

‘Tube,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ve got a pool car that’s parked around the corner. I can give you a lift to the pub, assuming you’re coming along for the booze up.’

‘Of course I am, which reminds me I ought to call Aidan to tell him what’s happened.’

Kate gestured towards Drummond. ‘I suspect your boyfriend already knows by now. Even before the governor’s finished telling the world how great we are I reckon that everyone with a TV, radio or smartphone will know about the fate of that ghastly gobshite Harry Fuller.’

The DCS was now being asked to reveal details about the crime syndicate which the task force would set its sights on next, and Kate and I listened with interest.

‘I won’t be drawn into naming names,’ Drummond said. ‘But I believe it’s an open secret that our aim now is to bring to justice this country’s most feared and revered organised criminal. He knows who he is and I’m sure he knows that we’re coming for him.’

It was the first time Roy Slack had heard himself described as the most feared and revered crime boss in the country, and it made him smile.

He knew it to be true, of course, just like he’d known for some time that the Old Bill were going to come after him with everything they had.

But he wasn’t going to make it easy for them. In fact he intended to ensure that it was a move they would come to regret.

He turned his attention away from the huge flat-screen TV on his office wall and said to Danny Carver, ‘Thirty frigging years. The poor sod might as well top himself because he won’t ever be coming out.’

Danny was his most trusted enforcer, a fifty-five-year-old former mercenary whose nickname in the underworld was The Rottweiler. He was a thickset individual with a boxer’s physique and a well-deserved reputation as a violent psychopath, qualities that made him perfect for the job he did.

‘My money was on a fifteen stretch, boss,’ he said. ‘But we should have guessed the bastards would use the poor bugger to send a message to us.’

Slack nodded. Danny was right. This was a crude example of the police and the judicial system working together to show they meant business.

‘The wankers are mistaken if they think it’ll have me shitting in my pants,’ Slack said. ‘Harry Fuller was a fairly easy target, but I won’t be.’

The two men, who were alone in the office, turned their attention back to the TV screen.

Sky News were reporting live from outside the Old Bailey and DCS George Drummond was still responding to questions. He was a smooth-looking bastard who clearly had an inflated opinion of himself.

Slack had met the man on two occasions and he knew their paths would cross again.

‘Seems to me that what that bloke is saying amounts to a declaration of all-out war,’ Danny said.

Slack leaned back in his padded leather chair and swung his shoes up onto the desk.

‘That’s exactly what it is, Danny,’ he said. ‘And if it’s a war they want, then it’s a war they’re gonna get.’

He’d known what was coming ever since the Home Office announced a major new offensive against organised crime in London. It was essentially a political move over widespread concern that the problem had got out of hand.

There had been an epidemic of gun and knife crime in the capital, and during the past three years no less than thirty people had been murdered during gang turf wars.

The press had also been making a big thing of the fact that the annual cost of organised crime on the London economy was now running at billions of pounds.

The task force that was put together was well resourced and had managed to rack up some early successes, Harry Fuller being the biggest scalp so far.

Before him there was Paul Mason, who’d run the East London mob for five years. And before Mason there were the Romanian brothers – Stefan and Anton Severin – who were known as the kings of crack cocaine north of the Thames.

Slack didn’t shed a tear for any of them. They were rivals, after all, and he’d been mopping up some of their business. But the downfall of such heavyweight villains was a sure sign that this time he couldn’t afford to be complacent.

The task force presented a credible threat to his illicit empire, which was spread across all of South London, as well as the lucrative West End.

But clinging on to what he’d built up over many years wasn’t the real driving force behind what he was planning.

And neither was fear of ending up behind bars like Harry Fuller and the others.

What Slack intended to do was motivated by something far more profound and much closer to his heart.

Revenge.

Slack hadn’t yet told anyone what he planned to do but that was about to change because he was going to confide in Danny Carver. He needed Danny to help him put the wheels in motion.

Now that the Fuller trial had ended they’d be coming after him with all guns blazing.

There’d be raids on his businesses and the homes of his employees and associates. Surveillance would be stepped up, all his financial affairs would be probed like never before, and the bastards would cause as much disruption as possible to his operations.

They’d push and squeeze and threaten in their desperate search for something to use against him. And if they weren’t successful then he wouldn’t put it past them to fit him up.

They were probably expecting him to batten down the hatches before pissing off to his villa on the Costa del Sol. So they were going to get a big fucking shock when he retaliated by launching a pre-emptive strike.

‘The slags won’t know what’s hit them, babe,’ he said to the framed photo on his desk. ‘Mine is going to be the loudest swansong this city has ever heard.’

His late wife’s smiling face stared back at him and brought a lump to his throat. Even after all this time he still found it hard to accept that Julie was gone.

The photo was taken on their honeymoon in Capri twenty-three years ago. They were standing together with the sea in the background and he had his arm around her shoulders.

She’d been at her most gorgeous then – blonde and tanned and slim, with a face that had squeezed his heart the moment he’d laid eyes on it.

Back then he hadn’t been so bad looking himself. His hair had been thick and black and there’d been no fat on his frame or lines on his face.

Now, at the age of fifty-seven, his hair was grey and wispy and he had a gut the size of a rugby ball. Years of hard living were evident in the creases on his forehead and neck, and in the dark pouches beneath his eyes.

‘You need to speak up, boss. I didn’t catch what you just said.’

Danny’s voice snapped him out of himself and he wrenched his attention away from the photo.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he said. ‘I was miles away and mumbling to myself.’

Danny was sitting on the sofa below the window that offered up a view of the rooftops of Rotherhithe. He leaned forward and picked up the TV remote from the coffee table in front of him. He used it to mute the sound of the Sky News reporter who was summing up what had happened at the Old Bailey.

‘This is serious shit, boss,’ he said. ‘So I think it’s time you told me how the fuck you intend to respond.’

Slack clamped his lips together and nodded. ‘You’re right, Danny old son. But what I’m going to say is just between you and me, at least to start with. I don’t want the other lads to freak out before the fun even begins.’