'He had been accused of touching that little girl across the road, that little Karen. You know who I mean, Sammy's daughter.'
'What do you mean, touching her?' Maggie's voice came out sharper than she had intended.
Lena was pink with embarrassment. 'You know what I mean. What do I have to do, draw you a picture?'
Maggie swallowed hard. What her mother was saying was too outrageous even for that little sod. 'I don't believe it…'
Lena interrupted her. 'Neither did I, but now I ain't so sure. There is something radically wrong with that child.'
'Oh, Mum, leave it out. He's a little boy, a fucker, I admit, but he's only seven.'
She didn't want to believe it.
She was dismissing her mother's words and Lena was aware of that. Looking down at the floor, she said, 'One of his sisters saw him, and stopped it from going any further.'
Maggie sat back on her stool, and as the words penetrated her brain she felt as though someone had punched her in the tummy.
At her old house, Little Freddie had stayed over one night, when her neighbour was holding a party for her daughter, who was turning four. She had never got to the bottom of why the child was screaming but she had guessed it was something to do with her nephew. Everyone had gone home suddenly, all saying the same things. The kids were tired, they were whacked out. But in her heart she had known it had been something to do with Little Freddie. The neighbour, a pleasant woman with two kids and a nice home, had basically blanked her after that day. It had been nothing you could put your finger on – she had been OK, she said hello, asked how they were, gossiped on the drive – but Maggie had never been invited inside that house again.
When she had mentioned they were moving home, the poor woman had looked relieved, she would have sworn to that on a stack of Bibles. Maggie had assumed she had found out about Jimmy's other businesses, which would not have been too far off the wall because he was a Face in the neighbourhood. But now she wondered if it was something far more sinister.
'Was anything done? Was he brought to book over it?'
Lena shook her head. 'Jackie doesn't know, at least I think she doesn't. You know what she's like, she wouldn't believe it anyway, not about her golden boy. But it happened, and it was a serious assault. That's what Kim said anyway, and she ain't a spinner.'
'He's seven, for fuck's sake. If he did do something bad, then he must have seen it somewhere, must be copying something he's seen.'
Lena looked defeated, she was nearly in tears. She lit another cigarette from the butt of the previous one. This was the first time Maggie had realised that she was chainsmoking these days.
'Have you seen the films he watches?' Lena asked her. 'Jackie doesn't police him, no one does. He sits up all night watching videos, watching filth and violence. They let him do what the fuck he wants.'
Maggie was more than aware of that but she decided not to mention it. She was guilty of it herself. Little Freddie was a nightmare of a child and she had a feeling in her bones that what she had been told was true. Kimberley didn't make things up, as her mother had pointed out. If she said it had happened, then it had happened.
She felt sick suddenly. This was something that she had never dreamed happened to people like them. But then Jackie was not like them, Jackie thought she was a law unto herself.
'What's Sammy said about it?'
Lena shrugged. 'What can she say? Who in their right mind is going to accuse Freddie's boy of noncing? But, as bad as this may sound, I believe it. I think he is more than capable of doing something like that.'
Maggie knew her mother would never say a thing like that unless she was absolutely sure there was truth in it.
She heard her father laughing with the girls in her lounge, where they were watching a film. The girls were all staying over, they usually did of a weekend. Jackie and Little Freddie were long gone, otherwise they would not be having this conversation.
She glanced at the clock and saw it was nearly midnight. She was not expecting Jimmy home for a while yet but at this moment she wanted him more than ever.
'You know what we want, so why are you stronging it?' Freddie was flexing his muscles, and everyone in the room was aware of that fact. But he was also dealing with his counterparts, Joey and Timmy Black. They were from Glasgow and they were hard men who had fought to get to the top of their game. They wanted a merger with London. Drugs were now their staple diet, so it was natural that they should merge with Ozzy's crew.
Between them all they could become the biggest distributors in Europe. They had the money, the brains and the acumen. They also had a friend who, while on the run, had made contact with some very nice Russians who could smuggle in live rattlesnakes dressed as geisha girls and get away with it. In short they now owned most of the customs officers in the southeast ports.
It was a doddle really, but Ozzy and the Blacks knew that they would be more powerful if they became partners. Between them, they could sew the trade up. As it was, with so many different firms plying their trade at the one time, it was inevitable that they would eventually step on each other's toes. When that happened, it would cause ructions and bad blood between the warring parties.
At the moment, the Scots had the second-largest handle on the drugs trade, since even though they had more heroin addicts per square foot than anywhere else in Great Britain, there was still a booming market for every other kind of narcotic. The coke and amphetamine market was mainly English. The Welsh were still dependent on magic mushrooms and LSD, while the Irish were more puffers, cannabis smokers. But the trade was changing rapidly, thanks to the club scene and a new drug from the States called ecstasy. PCP had never really taken off in the UK, mescaline had made a small inroad, but this new drug was everything anyone could want. And because everyone wanted in, these mergers were now becoming quite frequent across the European union.
Ecstasy was a feel-good, high-inducing dance drug, and although it was expensive and currently hard to come by, they knew that soon it would be everywhere. This was the money-making time, when they could charge the earth for it. They needed to hunt down anyone with a factory and bring them on side.
This needed to be well planned and well thought-out. Then they could all distribute it wisely and make sure it was only peddled by their people. It was in reality no different to a large organisation wanting to bring in a new product. It would be advertised and talked about, and then all the different retailers would eventually want to stock it.
This merger was about to bring in more money in one go than anything ever before. It was Mickey Mouse money, Monopoly money. It would be in huge quantities and it would all be in cash.
The only bugbear was that Freddie and Joey had bad blood between them. They had both been banged up in Parkhurst and they had fallen out over contraband. Freddie had run the tobacco and alcohol for Ozzy, and when Joey Black had arrived, with a body full of tats and the Glaswegian head-butt, it had caused them to go head to head.
Freddie had won hands down and Joey had always given him the credit for it, but that did not mean that he did not want a rematch at some time to reestablish what he felt was his rightful position. He had swallowed his knob in prison, you had to, and he had also known that he could not ask for any kind of replay because it was all done and dusted as far as everyone was concerned.
In prison he had been able if not to forget, at least to put it out of his mind. On the street, however, he knew it was discussed and talked about. For his own peace of mind, and to make sure that people still saw him as the undisputed king of his world, he needed to take Freddie out.