He was going to start a row with her if she didn't let him out of the house without a fight. He had as usual presented her with two choices: either he goes out and she smiles, or he stays and fights and then storms out leaving her angry and upset. If she let him go happily, then he may be inclined to come home sooner rather than later.
A few seconds later, he got a beer from the fridge and placed the bottle of cheap Liebfraumilch she kept there on the kitchen worktop with a bang. 'Chilling it now, are we? Not necking it straight from the bottle?'
His voice was telling her he was ready to row, and as Jackie looked through the doorway into the small hallway she saw Roxanna, all big eyes and nervous twitch.
Closing her eyes she said as gaily as she could, 'You better get a move on, babe, it's getting late.'
He snapped the beer open and took a deep drink. Then, putting the can on the cluttered draining board, he ran into the hall. Grabbing Roxanna he threw her to the ground and pretended to bite her. She was shrieking in delight and the noise was going through Jackie's head.
'Who's her daddy's girl then, eh?'
She was screaming, 'I am, I am,' when he stopped and, kissing her gently, got up and with a small wave and a blown kiss to his daughter he was gone.
Roxanna got up and ran to her mother, her happy face glowing. Jackie pushed her away none too gently and barked, 'Get off me, for fuck's sake. You're like a fucking leech, you are.'
Roxanna was upset and, her natural belligerence coming to the fore, she shouted, 'Don't take it out on me because you made him go away.'
The girls always blamed her. He charmed them and he gave them what they wanted, and she was relegated as usual to nothing in their eyes, and her own.
The slap was loud and it was painful when it came and, as Rox ran crying from the room, Jackie felt the usual guilt and devastation at the turn her life had taken.
The first glass of wine took the edge off her anger, the second stilled her racing heart and the third saw her go up the stairs to try to make peace with her girls.
Jimmy was sitting in a pub with a man he really did not want to be with, and until Freddie and Bernie Sands arrived he had to smile and provide large Scotches for someone he instinctively loathed.
Jimmy was anxious about the whereabouts of Freddie and his new crony Bernie. They were an hour late already. Bernie had been banged up with Freddie for a couple of years, and now he was home they were both making up for lost time. Much to the detriment of wives and families.
Kindred spirits, they were hardly apart and even though this was a cause for celebration as far as Maggie was concerned, it worried Jimmy. Without a stabilising influence Freddie was as mad as a brush – that had been proven time and again since they had taken over from the Clancys. Now Freddie had Bernie, and the last thing Freddie needed was someone geeing him up even more than he did himself. Bernie was a short, fat man with shaggy blond hair and a face that belied his friendly reputation. He looked miserable even when he was ecstatically happy.
Bernie was a bank robber and a collector, he could get a debt off a dead man, or so his reputation said. And even on short acquaintance Jimmy felt this was an understatement. Jimmy knew that they were out robbing on a daily basis and this was what was giving him sleepless nights.
Since the rise in armed robberies in the seventies, security firms had upped their own security measures in defence of their cargoes, until now, in 1986, the only security vans without bullet-proof windshields were Group 4's. They were being targeted because with a well-placed sledgehammer, a few choice words, a handgun, and enough bottle, their vans could be knocked over in less than ten minutes.
The adrenaline rush alone was enough to have made Freddie already addicted. They had been averaging two a day, every few days, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon for the last few weeks. It was so easy that they were unable to even contemplate getting a capture.
The blags, as they were referred to in the appropriate circles, were excellent bread winners and they were also something that could be done on the spur of the moment and without the usual elaborate planning of, say, a proper bank job or jewellery heist. For example, the money they had blagged that day was for a reason, it was like bunce, it was for sundries, it was to them pocket money. Some people popped security vans for bail money, or just for a decent stake.
The man sitting opposite Jimmy held up his empty whisky glass and shook it at him. His eyebrows were raised and his red-veined cheeks were stretched in what Jimmy assumed was a smile. His thoughts interrupted, Jimmy got up and went to the bar once more, aware of the looks he was getting because of the company he was keeping, and wishing with all his heart that Freddie would arrive. Even though he had his creds and could take care of himself, he didn't fancy his chances with some of the blokes sitting around, looking at him suspiciously, if they decided to come at him en masse.
Paul filled the glass with ice, and then, surreptitiously spitting into it, he filled it from the drunks' optic. The drunks' optics were the watered-down shorts. They were not used until the end of the night, then used only on people who were well gone and could have a fight, but still insisted on drinking. People who could not be told enough was enough, and who might be armed, or were nursing a grudge.
They were the optics they made money from by keeping their stocks up, and the ones that stopped murders from being committed.
The phlegm looked like normal bubbles on top of the whisky and Jimmy felt his stomach rebelling as he handed the glass to the tall skinny policeman with the sarcastic smile and the air of someone who was under the impression he was far too good for the place he had landed up in.
DI Halpin was a tame filth, but he was not tame enough for Jimmy. In fact he was a flash prat until he had accidentally got himself on to the Serious Crime Squad through severe boot licking and serious amounts of cash provided, naturally, by people like Freddie and Jimmy. He was making the mistake all treacherous people eventually made. They believed their own press, they saw themselves as not only above the law they had sworn to uphold, but above the people they traded with, and they always got the fright of their life when they finally realised just how deeply they were entrenched in the shit of their own making.
They were quite happy to lie and cheat old friends and colleagues, were comfortable with their double dealing and the fact that violent criminals, as well as the usual blaggers, walked free and clear while they fitted up someone they either had a grudge against or who they had once more been paid serious money to take off the street.
Consequently, the criminals they dealt with saw them as the lowest of the low. When he was a humble filth, if Halpin busted a dealer with five weights of dope, the dealer knew that only two weights would be taken into evidence, the other three would be back on the street within hours. He helped himself to monies and firearms located on searches, which he also recycled back on to the streets. He honestly believed he was above the law.
It was this greed that had brought him to the attention of Freddie and Jimmy in the first place, and tonight he was going to find out the real reason they had bought him. For the last six months he had been courted by them, had taken a luxurious holiday, and pleased his wife no end because he had finally agreed to the conservatory she had been desperate to have built on to the back of their mock-Tudor, four-bedroomed detached house in Manor Park.
Halpin was flavour of the month at the moment and he was loving it. He did not see what he was doing was wrong in any way, he saw it as a means to an end. He was still young enough to feather his nest, and after talking to colleagues he was determined that he was not going to end his days on a police pension, reminiscing about a bygone era when he was useful, and when he was still being listened to.