Patricia smiled at Freddie in a friendly way for the first time in weeks, and he felt his heart lift. He knew she must have heard about the altercation with his father and her smiling told him that she must believe he was in the right. It heartened him that someone he respected could see the justice in his actions. He needed her approbation at the moment.
'You know that you have a call coming here tonight, don't you?'
He nodded. 'Jimmy relayed the message, don't worry.'
His voice told her he felt that Jimmy passing on the message to him was out of order, but he would swallow because it was from Ozzy.
Patricia smiled once more. 'I am sorry for your troubles.'
It was an Irish saying, something that was said at funerals. She was telling him she agreed with his actions, agreed with what he had done. He had not been imagining it, she liked him really. The world was once more an exciting place to be. He loved the chase and this bird would make him chase her all over the show. He couldn't wait.
Suddenly there was a crashing sound from upstairs. Two of the girls ran towards the sound through force of habit. They tried to get up the narrow staircase together, and Jimmy lifted them backwards bodily as he rushed up to the bedroom with Freddie.
The girls were good at taking care of each other, especially if there was trouble from a punter. They might fight, argue and try to muscle in on each other's action, but if one was threatened they knew they were safer in a pack than they were on their own. They needed each other because of the loneliness of their occupation. When you were alone with a complete stranger the danger was astronomical, and they all tried in their way to see that they were as safe as possible. They looked out for one another and they set aside personal grudges if one of them was at risk. Most of them could fight, but even the hardest had trouble fighting a big irate man.
The small crowd of half-dressed females huddled together at the bottom of the stairs and listened out for what was happening. They knew it would be Ruby who had the trouble, it was always Ruby because she was tiny, and she was innocent looking and she had a mouth like a docker and never tired of using it.
Freddie was first into the room and he looked around him in shocked disbelief. The room was a small back bedroom, it had old-fashioned wallpaper with big pink roses, and a princess-sized bed with pink nylon sheets. There was a small dressing table that held baby oil, Durex and Johnson's Baby Powder, these items being the mainstay of a prostitute's trade: A large man with a beer belly was sitting on the grubby blue shag-pile carpet holding his head in his hands.
The girl was nowhere to be seen. The room looked tidy enough, and Freddie guessed the noise had been the dressing table being smashed back against the wall because the mirror was cracked.
The man was fat and had sparse grey hairs all over his chest and shoulders, home-made tattoos and thick, wiry grey hair. The stench in the room was overpowering, and wrinkling his nose Freddie shouted, 'Where the fuck is the girl?'
It was more than a question and they all knew it. The doorway was now jammed with Patricia and the girls, whose eyes were round and full of bewilderment.
No one could understand what had happened, and they had seen everything in their time. The man was crying, an ugly, guttural sound, and Freddie proceeded to drag him up bodily from the floor.
'Where is she?'
Freddie was looking round the room, demented now. How could the girl have got out without them seeing her? His sensible head was telling him how, but he did not want to believe that. It was too outrageous even for this place. But he turned and motioned with his head to Jimmy, who he could see had already sussed out the situation.
Jimmy stepped carefully across the room and popped his head out of the open sash window. Ruby was lying across the dustbins and the angle of her neck told him she was dead.
He turned to Freddie and said quietly, 'She is down there. He must have slung her out the window, the cunt.'
Freddie did the unexpected. He threw the man across the bed and, without looking at him again, he walked from the room and Jimmy heard him taking the stairs three at time. Ten seconds later he heard the first of the screams from the girls and all hell breaking loose.
He threw the man's trousers at him and said in a loud voice, 'Get dressed, me and you have to take a ride.'
The man was still crying and Jimmy was reminded once more why he hated men who used brasses. There was something lacking in them, something radically wrong with a man who needed to rent a hole to vent his spleen.
Ozzy was walking with the vicar towards the chapel. He made a point of going to Mass at every opportunity. It was worth the time. In the lifers' unit the born-again were the majority because of the different treatment they received. They were always looking at parole, and if that meant becoming a God-gobbler then so be it.
The vicar was a nice man, but very gullible. He also had a lot of the different weaknesses he talked about in his sermons.
Patricia's doctor had rung that morning from a psychiatric unit in London explaining to him that she was suicidal and needed desperately to talk to her brother. This phone call had been backed up by another reputable doctor who had assured the vicar that Ozzy talking to her would be a big help in her recovery. They had arranged for the phone call to be at seven o'clock that evening.
This was classed as an act of God, it was what happened when men's wives or children died, when some kind of access to the outside world was important to the wellbeing of either prisoner or family. It was also very rare, and Ozzy knew the favour he was being done. The vicar knew he would get a serious drink for this little day's work. He was a gambler, and he was into local bookies for a small fortune. Ozzy had made it his business to find this out and now the vicar, who thought he was doing a one-off favour, would become their lifeline to the outside world. No one had pointed that fact out to him yet, they would let it dawn on him gradually.
Ozzy was given a cup of tea and the vicar was very solicitous, making sure he had plenty of sugar and a plate of biscuits. Ozzy smiled at him as he slipped from the room quietly to enable the poor man to have some privacy. The vicar's phone was never tapped. It was what was called an open line and Ozzy was going to use this to his advantage now and in the future.
On the other end of the phone was Patricia, who took a few moments to fill him in on recent events. He listened quietly and then waited while the phone was passed over to Freddie Jackson.
Maddie placed a large plate of steak and chips in front of her husband, and he nodded gratefully.
She hated him like this. He kowtowed to her, he agreed with everything she said, it was as if all his strength had been taken away from him. She forced herself to look at his face because she knew it was important that he did not look hideous to her.
The pain was bad, she knew that, and he looked awful even now the swelling had gone down. He had had over sixty stitches in his face and if it had been inflicted by anyone other than his son, he could have borne it. But the fact it was their only child – the son he loved, the son he had brought up to be just like him – that had annihilated him, the fact it was his son who attacked him so viciously, made it so hard to accept.
Yet her husband was the man who had made the monster, he was the man who had taken him on his robberies, who had taught him to fight. Had made sure his education had been sparse, but also that he could work out a bet to the last half point.
He had made sure there was food on the table and that their home was nice. He had always had his outside women, and she had accepted him for what he was. Yet the monster he had created was the only person she had ever really loved in all her life. Her son had become everything to her, because his father had never really been there since his birth. Freddie Senior had been her life, then his son had been her life.