After these early betrayals, after all the players have shown their intentions and taken the measure of their opponents, things turn quiet. Their bombast fades and they play cagily, stalking each other, sliding around their shadows as they try to amass power and wealth. For the most part, they stay out of each other's ways.

A train station brings Charlie around the board and he starts buying property. A lot of it. A good real estate base has always been essential to him; a combination of show homes to match the personas he takes on, boltholes for the darker moments. And a nice little home for himself at the Strand. He looks forward to buying Fleet Street, and all that is sure to come with that historic seat of journalism.

Mies, by disgustingly awful luck, skips all the way down the right side of the board, all through the green and blue, and the most she has the opportunity to buy is the train station. And since Jim is determined to take Marylebone, what on earth would be the point? She takes herself right around the board, collects her £200 and uses it to buy control of the Thimble.

"You know," Jim says to her, "When I looked at that token, and I thought, what a useless fecking thing, what purpose do I put this to?, I thought what I came up with was dead clever. Because it's a thimble, worn for sewing, and it occurred to me that it might be used to join two parties, or to repair certain relationships."

"It was dead clever," she told him, staying close, staying friends. "Still is."

"Yeah, but whenever you end up with it, I know exactly how you'd be joining or repairing relationships and I don't feel clever anymore. I just feel dirty."

She fought with herself. Maybe she should invest in the racing car instead, and that wouldn't annoy him. But things would only get worse for her if he thought she was pandering. He'd tear her to shreds if he thought she was doing anything just to please him, if only to prove that he didn't need her. Instead she sat back, apologetic, with the thimble hooked on the tip of her little finger, and for a turn or two she kept her head down.

Or she tried to, anyway.

Moran, you see, he's had a run of good fortune. It's given him his third token, the Scotty Dog. It's given him Mayfair and the possibility of control over those beautiful royal blues. A lucky chance card gave him an SIS agent to call his own, and it's not until he wants to put the man to use that he'll have to decide if he's MI5 or 6. And all of this in short order. It's buoyed him up. Given him a bit of confidence. Big mistake. You never let your first success puff you up. Goad you on, make you hungry, yes. But every good criminal knows, you can't let yourself think you're invincible after the first run. Mies is watching it happen and her heart sinks. That big idiot grin starts to spread across his face between rounds and she can't hold her silence, "Break for lunch, lads?"

"Not just yet," says Milverton. Thinks to himself she must be just dying to smoke and keeping her here can only work in his favour.

Jim sways his head, "Not hungry." He's more aware than Charlie is. He noticed Danielle protecting Moran before he noticed anything going wrong in the man himself. A turn ago, he would have welcomed lunch. Now his appetite is gone and he's not hungry. Not for anything except what Moran is about to so willingly give.

Moran's luck takes him back to the Old Kent Road again. It takes him somewhere stupid too. "I'll not buy it out from under you, Dani."

"I should think not. Now sit down, like a good boy, and hold your rotten tongue until the dice is yours again."

"No, no, hold on, hold on, love." Mies shuts her eyes. He's got that smile on his face. The one he wears when Liverpool are two goals up at half-time. The one where he can't even conceive of anything possibly going wrong. She could grab him now and whisper every detail in his ear. He wouldn't hear it. "I would like to pull a job, please. Seeing I'm amassing great Swiss accounts full of lovely money and not up to much, and seeing the Old Kent and me are meant to be, I would like to pull a job."

Jim hands him the black folder with all the casual neglect of Satan lending his pen to one who would sign the contract for his soul. As he begins to open it, Mies reaches out and grabs it shut again. "Sebastian, are you sure you're sure?"

"Of course he's sure. He took the file off me."

"We are barely hours in to this, Seb."

"He's a grown man, Danielle, he knows when he wants to make a mark."

Charlie, who is simply trying to increase his knowledge of the game and not at all stirring the pot, "But I don't understand. What's so dangerous about it? Jim did it on the first roll."

"Yeah, exactly, Charlie. I did it. Nothing to it, Moran. C'mon, lad, it's what you want."

"Don't listen to him, Charlie; the chance card forced him too. And alright, so it worked out, but that doesn't mean it'll work out for you, Seb darling. You not so well-off this couldn't ruin you, and not so well connected that prison isn't a very real option."

"But what's life without a risk or two? Don't let her talk you out of it, Moran."

"Seb, just remember, as soon as you open the folder you're committed. You have to pull something once you've said you will."

Moran drops his head into his hands, "Will you shut up, both of you?! I feel like no man's land!" They fall silent, waiting. And when he releases his skull, he starts to open the file. "It'll be fine. I'll be alright."

Now, what's he got, what's he got… He finds the right page and skims it. Realizes, with dismay, that his current location doesn't have an awful lot to offer him. He's got the option to go into property redevelopment; it'll give him a pay-out on every turn, regardless of whether he owns the place or not. It'll give him the power to veto anyone who decides to buy, if he so chooses. But it's a £2000 buy-in, and that still has the power to bankrupt him if the dice should suddenly turn. And what else is here? An assassination he has no use for and a blackmail option he really doesn't want.

"What's the bank's cut," he asks Jim, "if I borrow, say, a grand, to invest?"

"Ten percent, every round. So a hundred quid every time you pass go, mate." Jim smiles. He's not getting anything out of it, of course, but he likes seeing it go away from his opponent. And as Moran works it out in his head, it's leaving him with almost nothing to gain from taking this chance in the first place. But what can he do? What can he do, when he's committed, when he has to do something?

Quietly, forgotten amongst the sofa cushions, Mies says, "Eight hundred for a fifty percent stake in your profits, and you don't oppose me when I come to buy and build down there."

Moran swings his head, "It's a lot to ask."

"It's the best offer you've got. I'm saving you, Sebastian. Don't throw it back in my face."

Yeah. Yeah, she's saving him. Because she likes him, because they're friends. Because she needs him for later on so that she can take Charlie for every penny he's got, but mostly because she likes him and they're friends.

"I'll stake you the grand."

And all those who have been most involved look sharply at Milverton. This is as close as he's gottn to real gameplay. It comes out of nowhere, and it is directed (in Jim's opinion anyway) at totally the wrong person. He'll never get between Mies and Moran. Not over a measly thousand, not over some crumbling pubs in the Old Kent Road. Even if he gets this, it's no guarantee of an alliance. Why, Jim asks himself, isn't the silly prick trying to get in with him? What's Moran offering, for God's sake?

But Moran considers it. Asks cautiously, "And your conditions are?"

"Conditions? Oh, no, let's not bother with anything quite so tawdry as that." Moran draws back. Shakes his head fervently. "Gift horses, Moran," Charlie mutters in pretty singsong, "mouths…"

"Nah. Nah, mate. No such thing. Dani, welcome to the exciting world of property development."

"Wait!" Charlie calls out, "What did I do wrong?"

"You're going to call it in," Moran moans. "I'll be in the middle of something really delicate and you'll just be in my ear hissing that you staked me when I fucked up at the Old Kent Road and I just can't be having that, Charlie."

"No, no, I wouldn't do that." And Milverton has to pause here, under the sheer force of disbelief. Four eyes full of disbelief and two full of 'oh please'. "Honestly, you'll never hear from me again. I'm just taking a ripe opportunity away from her."

"And I've got your word on that?"

"Sebastian!"

"My word as a gentleman."

Moran puts out his hand, and they shake on it as Mies throws herself reeling from the couch and goes to smoke sullenly at the window. Their transaction goes on beneath her notice. All she knows is that her dearest friend is being bought away from her for a poxy thousand, and that there's not a hope on God's green nor Satan's scarlet earth that Milverton intends to keep his word.

The business partners themselves are caught up, both pretty proud of themselves. Moran shouldn't be. It's another trap.

And Jim? He looks at Mies' back and decides maybe he shouldn't' be paying her any attention. Maybe he shouldn't' be paying any attention to Charlie either. Maybe the one he should really be looking at is Sebastian. After all, that's the one he's going to end up fighting. The other two need only be left to their own devices. That cold war of theirs will do his job for him.