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She wasn't sure how she felt about any of them any more. But this man who sat at home and tried to please her just got on her nerves. He was like a caricature of the man she had known. He was polite, he was agreeable, he was the antithesis of the man she had loved.

She did not know this man. He disappeared into the bedroom if there was a knock on the door, he refused to see anyone, even his brother, and he had no interest in anything that was going on around him. He ate whatever she put in front of him, he nodded and smiled in thanks, and he frightened her.

It was hard for her to accept that Freddie had in effect emasculated his own father. It was harder for her to understand how her son could have justified the violence of the attack, even though what he had done had made her, in the eyes of every woman she knew, the luckiest of mothers.

Her friends were actually jealous of a son who would look after his mother in such a public way, though their husbands thought it was a disgrace. Not that any of them would say that to Freddie Junior's face, of course.

Life was strange. You never knew what was going to happen to you and you never knew what was going to be the outcome of the most normal and simplest of days.

Jimmy watched as Freddie spoke to Ozzy on the phone.

He watched the changing expressions on his face and knew instinctively that Ozzy was with him on the event that had caused so much bad blood. He could practically see him puffing himself up with his own self-importance.

Freddie Jackson had been given permission to do what he wanted.

Now that Freddie had the big man's approval he was back in the fold. No one was going to say a word about him, or to him. Ozzy had just made what Freddie had done acceptable.

It was about women being taken care of, it was about men being reminded of their responsibilities, but it was mainly about Ozzy keeping everyone sweet. He needed a nutter and Freddie fitted the bill. More than fitted the bill. Ozzy knew that Freddie would never be trusted after what he had done. That no one would ever forget the breach of etiquette, or the fact it had been condoned by Ozzy.

Freddie for his part had no idea that he was actually working for someone even more slippery than Old Bill.

Jimmy waited until the call was over, then he went out with Freddie and in silence they disposed of two bodies.

Poor Ruby was found three days later on a rubbish tip in Essex. The man was burned away, he would spend eternity in a school furnace just south of Brentford. He had been disposed of with the usual rubbish collected in and around a school yard. In this case that consisted of needles, wraps and empty condom wrappers.

The school really livened up after dark, a bit like Freddie and his cronies.

Chapter Nine

Maggie opened her eyes and looked at the badly artexed ceiling in wonderment.

She would end this day as a Jackson, she would be a married woman. The excitement was filling her body and affecting her senses. All her life she had wanted this one thing and now it was here.

She could never remember not wanting to be joined with Jimmy Jackson, as his better half, as his wife. Today it was going to come true.

She looked around her bedroom, at the pink lampshade, at the dark-green candlewick bedspread and the posters of Chrissie Hynde, and was euphoric that she would never wake up in this room ever again.

She stretched, her arms were over her head and she wiggled in happiness as she surveyed her little world. Then she knelt up in the bed, and looked out of the bedroom window at the same view she had seen for the best part of her life. The other flats, the same curtains, the rain-stained concrete and the underground garages where no one would dream of keeping a car because it was too dangerous.

She had loved this view. It had always been there, it had been her world. Now she was ready for a different world, and their new little house was never going to be like this. Her kids would have everything. Their rooms would be themed, they would be beautiful little palaces for her little princes and princesses. Her children would have an environment fit for them. They would not have to fight their neighbours to get to the ice-cream van, they would not have to listen to people arguing when they were drunk, or see people fighting outside their bedroom windows.

They would have the best that could be offered to them, the best that could be bought. Not like this place. This place was concrete hate. It was what was wrong with the world they lived in, and the worst of it all was, in her own way, she loved it. It was all she knew. Yet it was everything she wanted to get away from.

She and Jimmy had already bought a house to live in, and she would only ever come back here to visit. It was a small, semi-detached place in Leytonstone. It had a lounge diner, it was decorated in browns and creams, and it was beautiful to her. It was also a bus ride away from her family, which was eventually the deciding factor.

She leaped off the bed. It was six a.m. and she felt as if she was a newborn, as if the world was waiting for her to become a whole person.

She was eighteen in three weeks. Before then she would be a married woman, and she would be the happiest girl alive.

Jimmy saw the girl beside him and groaned.

The night before was a complete blank, and he knew that was how this was meant to be. He had been drinking brandy and port, a lethal combination, and he felt as if someone had hit him over the head with a billiard ball in a sock. Even that scenario was not too off the wall, given the company he kept most nights.

The girl was young, he could see that much, and she was also snoring, which had woken him up. She sounded like one of the seven dwarfs and he grinned to himself. Trust him to end up with fucking Sleepy. Yet he knew if she woke and tried to strike up a conversation he would then have to change her name to Dopey.

He sat up and sighed. He felt terrible. His clothes were nowhere to be seen and the window was shut tightly, which was why the smell of sex was so overpowering in the tiny room.

He had woken up with a tom, and at a glance he couldn't see any condoms anywhere. He could be clapped up to the eyebrows on his wedding day, and no one would think it was funny other than Freddie.

He got out of bed and stepped gingerly on to the carpet. It had the tacky feel of a tom's carpet. Covered in everything that was disgusting, it had the stickiness of what was commonly known as crud, and it smelt of cigarettes and punters.

He felt as if twenty Paddies with hammers were knocking holes in his skull. It was only after he had spent five minutes trying to open the window that he realised it had been nailed shut.

He groaned. It followed that the door would be nailed shut as well. The heating in the house was full on, which accounted for the heat and the smell, and he would lay his next paycheque on Freddie already being home and dry and laughing his head off at the predicament he was now in.

This was Freddie's idea of a joke.

If it had happened to anyone but him Jimmy would have been the first person guffawing. As it was he couldn't just see the funny side. That Freddie had done it to him made him feel as always where Freddie was concerned – that there was an underlying nastiness behind it.

His only glimmer of hope was a used condom glistening in a green glass ashtray. He breathed a sigh of relief and then tried to escape.

Patricia had been woken at five thirty, by a phone call from one of her girls.

She walked into the house in Bayswater all sheepskin coat and Chloe perfume. The elder, a girl of thirty-five with a bad tit job and crooked teeth, was panicking, and Patricia had to talk her down for twenty minutes before she could ring round and locate Freddie.

She then walked into the bedroom of a black girl called Bernice. The girl was nineteen, looked thirty, and was one of the best earners they had ever had. Unfortunately, one of her regulars, a managing director of a multinational company, had chosen her bed to have a heart attack in an hour earlier. It was put down to amyl nitrate and Patricia thought that this was probably an accurate diagnosis.