Jackie sat down on a stool and finished her drink, and as she poured herself out another one she heard Maggie leave the house.

Jimmy and Freddie were sharing a beer in Jimmy's new snooker room. Maddie had been asked over to watch Jimmy Junior, and when Jimmy had finally picked up Freddie in the early hours he had no other option than to bring him back to his.

He knew Maggie would not be best pleased, but what else could he do? Freddie, as far as he was concerned, had done a good thing, had done what Jimmy would have done in a similar situation. Though he admitted he would not have harmed Kimberley, Freddie and his temper were legendary and he felt bad about it now.

'Fucking some drum this, Jimmy.'

Jimmy shrugged. 'It's all relative, ain't it? I like this house and so does Mags, in fact she loves it.'

'At least she looks after it for you. Not like Jackie, she wouldn't clean up if her life depended on it.'

Jimmy smiled. 'She never was one for the Hoover, old Jackie.'

They both laughed. It was the first time they had actually sat and talked properly since the night that Lenny had died. They made a great pretence of friendship, but the tension was always there between them. Tonight, though, they seemed to be back on track.

'She tried, a few times she really tried, you know. But the drink and Jackie…' For the first time ever, Freddie was talking about his wife without a joke, or a nasty remark. 'Now my Kimberley is on the skag. Ironic, ain't it? I fucking shifted enough over the years, and now my daughter is a slave to the brown.'

Jimmy refilled their brandy glasses. 'Come on, Freddie, it could happen to anyone, any family, it's part of society now.'

Freddie held up his cut-glass brandy snifter and said sarcastically, 'Thanks to us, and people like us!'

They both laughed once more.

'How's me little fella, then?'

Jimmy grinned. 'I love that little boy, Fred. He is so fucking clever, only three and he can write his name.'

Freddie nodded. 'His father's son him, eh?'

It was said with a laugh but Jimmy felt, as always, that there was an underlying current he could not put his finger on. 'What do you mean by that?'

Freddie feigned innocence. 'What on earth is wrong with you, Jim? I said he was his father's son and you are his father, right? So where is there anything to fucking mean?'

Jimmy relaxed. 'Sorry, Freddie, but sometimes I feel you are taking the piss, and you do take the piss, you know.'

Freddie sipped his brandy before saying, 'I don't, Jimmy, not with you, anyway.'

It was heartfelt and it was enough to placate Jimmy.

'He is a lovely kid, Jimmy, and I think the world of him. He is a real little Brahma, bless him. How is Maggie, by the way?'

Jimmy shrugged. 'All right, why?'

'Nothing, mate. It's just she seems very offish with everyone. Now she's always been like it with me, but Jackie thinks she is not coping that well with motherhood.'

Jimmy wanted to laugh out loud, and Freddie said in a jokey voice, 'Talk about the pot calling the kettle, eh?'

Jimmy smiled. 'She is just a perfectionist, that's all. If Maggie does a job she does it to the best of her ability.'

'Now, Jimmy, if you had a son like mine you would know what worry was. That little fucker is out all hours, roaming the streets, causing havoc. I reckon they'll take him away soon, and do you know what? I think it would be for the best.'

Jimmy was astonished. 'You'd let him go away, into a home?'

He spoke in disbelief, and Freddie answered him as honestly as he could. Needing to say the words out loud.

'Look, Jimmy, this is strictly between me and you, right?'

Jimmy nodded, intrigued.

'The other week he was accused of sexual assault. Now the little girl said it was him and his mates, but she withdrew the allegation. Jackie won't have it. She thinks the girl was up for it, it was just a kids' game, but I think that he has got something drastically wrong with him. He killed the neighbours' dog a few months back. He put a fucking plastic bag over its head and suffocated it. I know it was him. They were too frightened to accuse him outright, obviously, but I knew it was him when Jackie told me, because he killed Bugsy's boy's rabbit the same way.'

Jimmy was in utter shock at these words.

'How do you know he killed the rabbit?'

Freddie shook his head in dismay. 'I caught him. He was supposed to be caring for it while they went on holiday. I went into his room and it was on his lap, dead, and the bag was stuck to its face.'

'What did you do?'

Freddie wiped his mouth nervously before saying in a quiet voice, 'I mullered him, and then I told him that he had to keep stumm. But I tell you I was sickened, and you know me, there ain't much that can bother me. But he is a kid, and he is mad as a cunt. As soon as they said about the dog I knew it wasn't the first time.'

Jimmy nodded, but he wondered if, in all his grief, Freddie remembered his own need to hurt and his own loss of control that had caused two deaths, to his knowledge. But then Freddie lived by a different set of rules to everyone else.

'Remember we were all laughing in the pub because I said the rabbit had died and we'd put out an APB on a white fluffy rabbit with a black tail? Well, I got a new rabbit and gave it to Bugsy's boy, and he never knew the difference. I told Bugsy the other rabbit had dropped dead, but I know he wondered, could see it in his eyes.'

Freddie swallowed down a big gulp of brandy before saying angrily, 'I blame her. She was drunk all through her pregnancy, you know that. I think that affected him. I love him, he's my son, but unless something is done about him he will end up on a psych wing somewhere on a fucking no-parole life sentence.'

Freddie had seen people in prison like his son, and he had experienced them first-hand. 'He is a big fucker for his age and all. What happens when he's a six footer? Even I won't be able to handle him then, do you see what I mean now? He has got to go, and fucking Jackie, well, she won't believe there's anything amiss. He could kill everyone in the house and she'd still give him an alibi.'

'Fucking hell, Freddie, that's outrageous. Can't you get him seen to privately?'

Freddie laughed then, a tired, sad little laugh. 'Do you think spending money will change the diagnosis? Only, according to his social worker he exhibits "classic signs" – her expression, not mine – of a sociopathic personality. In short, he has no morals, no remorse, no feelings for anyone or anything, no emotions whatsoever. So what he does, right, to hide his fucking nut nut status, is he mimics them. Pretends to feel things he cannot feel. At least that is what the book said in the library.'

Jimmy knew he spoke the truth, and he felt sorry for him because he knew that Freddie, for all his faults, did in his own way care for his kids. Little Freddie had kept this man tied to a drunken woman he loathed. Though, of course she also suited Freddie at times because she put up with anything he could throw at her.

He found it hard to believe this was his blood relative, the man he had once looked up to, loved and admired. Now he was often hard put to even talk with him, and if Freddie knew just how much Ozzy had given over to his cousin in the last few years, he knew that Freddie would not be able to cope with it. He knew Freddie saw himself as the instigator of their empire, and he accepted the truth of this. But Freddie also conveniently forgot that if it had been left to him, they would have both been back on the pavement hustling within a year. He had wiped out Clancy and that act had given them the opportunity, but it was him, Jimmy, who had brought them to where they were now. Freddie needed to accept and understand that, but instead he saw himself as having been done down, the street expression for his situation. If he only looked at how he lived, not a penny to call his own, expensive things bought for cash and then left to go to wrack and ruin. And Jimmy knew he had never once put a few quid away for a rainy day.