The phone started ringing and she answered it gingerly, nervous in case it was Freddie. He rang sometimes in the night and asked for Jimmy, though she knew it was part of his campaign against her. But instead of Freddie's voice she heard a practically incoherent Jackie screaming and crying down the line.

Chapter Nineteen

Robin Williams, a name he saw as a curse thanks to a certain movie star and now a singer from a boy band whose sexuality was questioned, was carefully burning up some skag. A couple of young friends, young female friends, were happily going like lambs to his slaughterhouse as he showed them how to bubble it on the silver paper. Then he was going to explain the intricate mystery of how to load a syringe.

He was in his late thirties, but he looked younger. His hair had a ginger tinge and was long and straggly, as was his little goatee beard. He was tattooed everywhere, and these home-made drawings consisted mainly of skulls and other death-related objects. He only listened to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin or his idol Ozzy Osbourne, and his life revolved around his habit and/or the maintaining of his habit.

Like most heroin addicts, any kind of real life had been put on hold the day he had become addicted. He had no real friends, no real social life and no idea of conversation outside of the best high he had experienced or the death of people who were only friends now because they had overdosed and died and could not contradict anything that he said about them.

It was a lonely, depressing and seriously dangerous way of life. But to these two young people, who he saw as earners for himself in the future and nothing else, it seemed an exciting and fun-filled existence.

Robin, or Taffy Robin as he was known, had three children he never saw, a string of women he had destroyed and left, and a debt that was, in their world, the equivalent of a Third World country's which he could not pay back. Hence the new recruits.

He was also into crack when the fancy took him, and he smoked dope to mellow himself out. He sold his methadone but kept up the scripts, or prescriptions to give them their correct term for it, because that was his magic ticket to the dole office. He knew every scam going and he had never worked a day in his life.

He was an addict, and that meant that every agency the Labour Government funded was there expressly to help people like him. He had never had it so good, life had simply got better and better.

His addiction had helped keep him out of prison, had helped him get housed time and time again when the going had got a little too tough, and it had made sure he got his drugs whenever he needed them because he was, after all, big roll of drums, addicted.

Roll on Tony and his wonderful nanny state.

As he drew the brown into the syringe, his front door came off the hinges and his front-room door, which as usual was wide open because of the smell, brought into view his worst nightmare.

He had dealt with more than his fair share of irate fathers in his time, but this was not the usual angry dad. They were normally flabby, beer-drinking men who gave him a small dig that left him with a black eye, and gave them the prestige of their wives and friends.

This man was what he had been dreading all his life, this man was a lunatic and it was there in his eyes, in his demeanour and also in the crowbar he was holding with both hands and which Taffy knew was going to come down on to his skull in the very near future.

Like all addicts he tried to quickly put down the brown, to save it, so it wasn't wasted, because to him it was more important than his own life.

The two girls looked at the huge man with fear-filled eyes and when he bellowed, 'Out, you pair of useless junkie cunts!' they did not need to be told twice.

The two girls grabbed their belongings and made a run for the now-gaping hole that had once been the front door.

Freddie pointed at them with the crowbar to stop them leaving so quickly, and he said in a conversational tone, 'You phone the filth or anyone and I will come after you, understand?'

They stood stock still and nodded. He was talking like their dad, like a regular person and they nodded in unison again so hard they hurt their necks.

'Well, fuck off, then!'

They were running out the door now, and on the stairs they encountered neighbours who were all interested to see what was going down.

Taffy Robin was a thorn in their side. He had people in and out at all hours of the night and day, and they had to be careful of being robbed, because an addict would not go too far from his source to steal unless he had to. These people had come home from the shops to see their TV or a video recorder gone, just enough to get the thief a few quid until the next time. Get the thief a ten-pound bag.

The flats had gone downhill since they had been built just after the Second World War, and that meant that insurance was unheard of. No company would take on the responsibility. If something was stolen, it was gone, and that was that. It had to be replaced by the individual who had lost it. The police rarely came out if called for theft or burglary, and if by any miraculous chance they did bother to come, they told the victims what they had already sussed out for themselves. It was junkies. So, other than making a cup of tea for someone Taffy's neighbours instinctively saw as an enemy anyway, and everyone knew the filth could drink tea for England, they had to sort things out for themselves.

Now, it seemed that this was finally coming to pass.

An elderly man in pyjamas and a baseball cap shouted through the door, 'Fucking do him, Freddie, he's a cancer. Fucking do him, boy.'

Freddie did not need to be told twice.

The crowbar was brought down with all the force he could muster over and over again. When Taffy stopped moving, Freddie started on the front room and he trashed it, windows, TV and anything else that got in his way.

The whole thing took twenty minutes, and he walked from the flat a conquering hero.

'Who did this to your daughter, Mrs Jackson?'

The WPC was a kind girl with nicely cut blond hair and almond-shaped green eyes. Maggie looked her over with a professional eye and decided she could take five years off and make her look like a movie star.

Jackie was not talking, and Maggie sighed as she said seriously, 'She was attacked in the street, mugged. It was her mother's birthday party tonight, and she stayed at the pub. When she couldn't get a cab, she walked. It's only ten minutes away, you know. And from what we can gather she was jumped from behind.'

'But she managed to get home?'

Jackie and Maggie nodded.

'With a broken leg?'

Jackie shrugged then. 'We found her out the front. What can I say? Maybe someone helped her, we don't know. That's your job ain't it, at least it was last time I read a crime novel.'

'What about you, Mrs Jackson, how did you get the bloody nose?'

Maggie and Jackie could see what her questions were leading to now, and Jackie said with deliberate and calculated disrespect, 'Fuck off, sweetheart. We can see where you are going with this shit.'

Maggie winked at Jackie and she walked the WPC from the little family room. 'Look, love, my sister is an alcoholic, as I am sure you probably know. You spend enough time around there sorting out her different tantrums with the neighbours. She always has cuts and bruises, drunks tend to fall over a lot.'

She yawned delicately before continuing, but it was an insulting yawn, a bored yawn and the WPC knew without a shadow of a doubt that the person boring this well-turned-out and well-spoken woman was herself.

'Now you listen, and you listen good. That girl's father is Freddie Jackson, and you had better hope you find the culprit before he does. But don't you ever dare to insinuate anything like that about my sister again, not unless you want to deal with her and hers. All right?'