Jimmy grinned. 'I never begrudged him a thing, always a fifty-fifty split, and I still had to fucking bail him out. Do you know how much we have collared over the years? Fucking fortunes, and I watch him putting on his thirty-grand fucking bets, and his fucking cars that he runs into the ground and then fucking dumps. He don't even bother to fucking insure them half the time, a sixty-grand motor and he can't even be bothered to insure it. All that dough and he is still scratching a fucking living. I ain't giving him a fifty split any more. I haven't for years, and he has never once questioned it. He gets twenty per cent now because I couldn't bear to see that money being spunked. He ain't earned it anyway, I earn it. I use me fucking nous, he just threatens people, but it shows you how much working knowledge he has of the businesses that he ain't ever questioned it. It has never occurred to him that the wedge is huge for us. He has no concept of the real world whatsoever.'
Glenford listened carefully, and then he said, 'In all these years this is the first time you have ever said anything like that. This is really serious, isn't it?'
Jimmy smiled. 'Nah, it's just long overdue, that's all.'
He jumped into his motor. Glenford watched him as he sped away and he wondered at a man who was so relaxed when going into what was, in effect, the lion's den. Freddie was a nutter, Freddie was not all the ticket, and that meant you never knew what he was going to do next.
He only hoped Jimmy bore that in mind when he confronted him.
He made a mental note to ask around some of his cronies to see if he could shed any light on what had occurred between the two men. He didn't hold out much hope. He knew Freddie cunted Jimmy at every available opportunity, but Jimmy was aware of that and so it couldn't be starting to bug him now.
No, whatever this was it went deeper than anyone could imagine.
'Oh, Jackie, you're drunk as a lord!' Lena was furious and Jackie enjoyed the effect she was creating.
Joseph shook his head at Maddie, who was in the flat for her weekly chat and shop with Lena. It was hard to believe that those two had once been enemies over their children marrying, and yet now were like bosom buddies.
Joseph raised his eyebrows and Maddie pursed her lips primly. Jackie sober was bad enough, but drunk she was a nightmare. It was as if she grew with the drink, somehow. She was a big girl anyway, but with drink in her she seemed enormous. Maddie knew it was a silly way to think and that it was only because Jackie was so accident-prone while in her cups.
As she barrelled through the small flat into the kitchen, she caught sight of her mother-in-law and said loudly, 'Have you heard?'
Joseph sighed in annoyance and even in her drunken state Jackie saw the toll the boy's death had taken on her parents. They seemed much older, and her mother's usually spotless home was grubby, unkempt and uncared for.
'Heard what?' Joe sounded irritable and this irritated his daughter in turn.
'About your darling daughter Maggie.'
No one spoke, and Jackie felt on the verge of screaming. As usual, none of them thought the marvellous Maggie could do any wrong.
'You leave poor Maggie alone, she's enough to contend with.'
It was her mother's tone of voice, the reverence with which she spoke about Maggie, that set Jackie off and she hollered as loudly as she could, wincing at her own inebriated ramblings, 'She reckons my Freddie raped her. Have you ever heard anything like it?'
She now had what she always wanted, the attention of the whole room, and as three pairs of eyes looked at her in absolute disdain she bellowed, 'And she reckons, or so she told my Kimberley anyway, that Jimmy Junior was his baby, Freddie's son, not your fucking precious Jimmy's.'
'Get out, Jackie.' Her father's voice was harsher than she had heard it for years. He grabbed her by the hair and he physically dragged her to the front door. Opening it he threw her with all his might out into the small lobby.
'Fuck off, and don't you ever come back here again, you hear me?'
Jackie was unsure exactly what had happened until the door slammed and she scrambled to her feet. Her father's voice was so final, so full of dislike, that she understood that any last chances she might have had were long gone. Kneeling on the floor, she cried as she had not cried in years.
Melanie was aware that they were alone in the pub. Her uncle Paul had put a bottle of Scotch on the bar and Freddie was pouring it out for them both in huge quantities. The coke had made her higher than she had ever been, and the sudden exodus around her was making her feel uncomfortable for some reason.
She put it down to coke paranoia. She had experienced it before, but this stuff Freddie had was out of this world. Each snort had made her feel more and more adventurous, in fact she was almost willing to strip off and go for it as Freddie kept urging her. If her aunt had not been upstairs, she knew the temptation would have been too much for her.
This was the life she dreamed of, being with someone like Freddie where every day was a holiday and every night was just a round of pubs and clubs and getting out of it, and making yourself up for your bloke.
No job, no real income, just an endless round of enjoying yourself.
If she played her cards right, she knew she could find herself right on her feet with Freddie Jackson. She wasn't silly, she knew he was married and she knew his wife was a right headcase. But she would cross that bridge when she came to it.
She only wanted to be his bird. He was far too old to think of marrying, he was almost Jurassic, bless him.
She was still congratulating herself on her catch of the day when a younger, much better-looking version of Freddie walked into the pub.
Freddie, who had been regaling her with his tales of derring-do whilst in prison, was suddenly aware that the place was empty, quiet.
Even the jukebox was silent.
'Well, well, if it isn't fucking Livingstone.'
Jimmy smiled. 'Pissed, are you? What happened to you this morning? I was waiting for you.'
Jimmy was talking nicely, almost conversationally. But Melanie picked up the nuances in the conversation and a fright took hold of her. The two men were so alike, but the younger one, he had the stature and the standing of someone important, someone who was listened to.
Freddie Jackson, beside him, looked like the poor relation and she guessed that Freddie felt the same way as she did.
The younger man had on a smart pair of trousers and a smart shirt, his gold watch was thin-banded and obviously expensive. He had well-cut hair and manicured hands, and even his voice was modulated. He sounded educated, sounded like someone who, as she had first thought, was listened to.
Next to him Freddie looked what he was, a dishevelled and bloated also-ran. He had the button eyes of a grifter and the sneaky look of a con man. In her heightened state of awareness it occurred to her that Freddie Jackson was not such a prize after all. This man was a prize, though, this man was someone to aspire to.
She smiled at him as he stood in front of her.
'Fuck off.' His voice was cold, calculatingly cold, and it unnerved her.
She immediately looked at Freddie for his reaction to the man's rudeness. Freddie grinned and she now saw the nasty glint in his eyes, the sallow skin and the redness around his cheeks that told her he was a drinker.
She raised her eyebrows at him to see what she was supposed to do, and he kept his eyes on the younger man as he said nonchalantly, 'You heard the man, Mel, fuck off.'
She was shocked at the callous way he spoke to her. A few minutes earlier she had been contemplating stripping off and doing whatever he wanted, she had even contemplated a relationship of some kind with him.
Now he was pushing her away, discarding her without a backward glance. She was also aware that she was letting this man talk to her like she was dirt, letting him look down his nose at her.
Freddie was laughing now. The look on Melanie's face was priceless, and now that Jimmy had come to him he was feeling an adrenaline rush.