Contrary to their musical names, the only art Ludwig and Wolfgang Smith have mastered is that of violence. Career criminals from London’s fearsome East End gangs, they are Sir John Charnage’s chief henchmen, negotiating with their fists or their lethal apache weapons.
“Their names were Wolfgang and Ludwig Smith, and they were brothers. Ludwig was the older of the two and all his life he had looked like a skeleton. He was so pale and thin when he was born, and his skin clung so tightly to his bones, that the midwife had gasped in horror, fearing that his mother had given birth to a corpse … In contrast, Wolfgang had always looked perfectly normal. Boringly normal, in fact, so that people often questioned whether the two of them were really brothers at all.”