Chapter One
Detective Inspector Joe Rafferty thumped his fist into the scarred door of the council lock-up, and shouted, ‘I’ve had it with you two. If Ma hadn’t begged me to come over and sort you out, I wouldn’t be here.’ His two brothers squared up to him. ‘So come on: Which one of you is the thief?’
They stopped shouting at one another. But it was only so they could re-direct their abuse at him.
‘What the hell’s this to do with you, anyway?’ Patrick Sean, his middle brother, yelled. ‘Go back to your ‘pig’-pen, why don’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ Mickey, Little Sir Echo, added, ‘if we want to fight, we’ll fight. Just ‘cos you’re Ma’s blue-eyed boy you think you can—’
‘Bloody ingrate you are.’ Rafferty’s lips thinned to a taut line as his brain had time to process the pain from his fight with th
