Freddie tried for the sympathy vote. He could not be outed and he could not bang his boy up. He had been banged up and he knew what it was like.

'You can't fucking tell me what to do with my child. He is a kid. He is a big fucker I admit, but he ain't got the brains he was born with. Jackie was always out of her box when she was carrying him, you know that. That's what happened to him, Jimmy, that's why he is like he is… He is on the pills now and he is a changed boy.'

For the first time in years Jimmy heard a real emotion in Freddie's voice. He grinned. 'You don't honestly believe that I am going to swallow that load of old cods, do you? Let you off with another caution like I did with that poor Stephanie and fucking Jewish Lenny? You're a fucking animal and you bred an animal. You live like fucking animals in that filthy shit hole you call home. You are a man whose card has been well and truly marked, mate. No one will touch you with a fucking dodgy DVD now, Freddie. The word is out. You are finished, and if you are foolhardy enough to think that you can fucking resume your usual skulduggery, under my nose, then you are even more stupid than I thought.'

He poured himself a Scotch then, and he sipped at it before saying quietly, and without passion or even a hint of smugness, 'Do you know the funny thing, Freddie? No one defended you, not one person even asked what you had done to get a punishment like this. No one has been outed for years, yet no one was curious about why you were being blanked. They were all more relieved than anything else, and I can understand that, because I am relieved meself that I ain't got to fucking have you hanging round my neck like a cast-iron fucking albatross any more. And I made it perfectly clear that you are to be treated like a fucking pariah, and everyone from Glenford to the Blacks was over the moon about it.'

Freddie was once more in mortal agony at his words and it occurred to Jimmy that he had expected violence, extreme violence. In fact, he had placed a small axe in the back of his trousers. But Freddie was too busy trying to think his way out of the total blanking he was going to get when this all came to fruition.

Jimmy had taken Freddie's very livelihood from him, a serious step in their world where compensation was paid out liberally if anyone happened to accidentally tread on someone's toes, either by encroaching on their scams, or even something trivial like dealing in the same clubs. This was a world where your reputation was only as good as the firm that you worked with, drank with or was employed by you. Freddie was past killing him, because once Jimmy was dead he would lose all chance of ever getting another in, getting another take, and their take had been huge and yet he knew that Freddie was probably boracic lint as per usual. He just spunked it all up as he got it.

He had worked out one night that Freddie had spent over half a million pounds on his house over the last fifteen years and yet it was one of the scruffiest in the street. They had not even bought it on the Right to Buy Scheme. They were still on the fucking council and he knew they were still in rent arrears. It would be laughable if it wasn't so very sad.

The man he had visited all those years as a young boy had been a figment of his imagination. His boyhood hero was now reduced to less than nothing and he felt not one iota of compassion for him.

Freddie glared at him now, and Jimmy knew that the implications of what was going to happen to him in the future were starting to sink in properly.

'You would do this to me.' It was said without menace, it was said without a questioning tone, it was a statement of fact.

Jimmy nodded silently.

Freddie finally understood then that Jimmy would do it, more to the point had already done it. He had a nasty feeling that his predicament was being discussed by people even as they were standing here. He looked at the two of them in the bar mirror and saw they were evenly matched protagonists, except, as he looked properly, Jimmy, being of lighter years and larger build, looked already like the victor.

Freddie saw then, for the first time, what he could have been, should have been.

Jimmy looked the part, acted the part, he was the part.

'Have you served my boy up, grassed him?' This was said with accusation, with the disrespect that would normally be reserved for a grass, a supergrass in fact.

Jimmy didn't answer him. His face told Freddie what he thought of the accusation and that he would not give the question any credence by honouring it with a reply.

But he could grass. Freddie knew he could take the fucking lot down if he wanted to and the filth would reward him, he was sure. The idea took root as he knew it would, and he filed the thought away for future reference.

He stood there for long moments with his huge hands clenched into fists and an almost electric charge going through him as he gradually allowed the predicament he had caused to sink into his brain.

'Well, I ain't going quietly, Jimmy. I'll fucking kill you before I will let you do this to me. You'd fucking humiliate me, you fucking scumbag. When everything you got, you only got because of me!'

He was poking himself in the chest now as he began to lose his temper once more. 'I was the one who done the lump and set all this up. I was the one who had to listen to that boring cunt's stories of the old days over and over again, and set the meets up, and I brought you in with me because I loved you, and now you are snatching it off me. But you remember, Jimmy, that it was me, it was me who laid the foundations of everything we have now and you know it. I want my fucking compensation, because without me you would still be nicking fucking cars and selling dope on the side.'

Jimmy refilled his glass with whisky and sipped it once more. He was almost enjoying himself now. 'Without you, Freddie, I can grieve for my boy in peace without wondering if that mad cunt of yours will be nearby. I can work my living now, without worrying about what trouble or upset you are going to cause with your fucking big trap. Without you, I don't have to listen to your crap fucking stories or feed and water your fucking ugly wife. I know what you've said about me over the years, Freddie, you treacherous cunt. I hear everything, and do you know what? I expected better off of you, but deep inside somehow I always knew you were just a two-faced, jealous and fucking incompetent wanker. Without me, Freddie, it's you who are nothing, mate. You, not me.'

Freddie knew he was beaten and yet it just would not register in his brain. His life as he knew it was over, he would be suspect now that Jimmy was giving him the cold shoulder, and if no one knew the real reason, and he was confident that they didn't, then they would assume the worst. That he was a grass, or a fucking nonce, a poxy kiddy fiddler, or worse still that he had stolen off his own.

He suddenly realised with a stunning clarity that he had to kill Jimmy, if for no other reason than to make himself feel better, and also to make sure his son was safe for the future. Little Freddie might not be the child of his dreams but he was the child of his loins and as such he would see him all right.

He tried one last time to appeal to Jimmy's better nature. If it all went well he was back in and he would keep a low profile for a while until this all died down. If he was out then he would get his money's worth from this long streak of paralysed piss he had once called his kin.

'It was all a terrible tragedy, Jim, but he is my son. Can't you understand that?'

His voice sounded broken, and Jimmy had to give it to him, he was in the wrong profession. If ever anyone was born to be an actor it was Freddie Jackson.