Jackie watched her son as he was punched across the room, landing in a crumpled heap on the sofa, and she saw his father descend on him with that look on his face she deplored. She was screaming now, she was like a mad woman. No one hurt her baby, no one.

'Leave him alone!'

Freddie grabbed her arms and forcefully threw her from the living room, shutting the door behind her. Then he carried on the interrogation as if they had never been interrupted.

'What mates?'

His son was looking at him with open hatred and Freddie didn't care. He needed to know where he had been.

'Were you in the subway today?'

He saw Little Freddie's eyes widen and knew that what he had suspected was true, and no one was more sorry than him.

'So you were, then?'

Little Freddie shook his head in denial, with tears in his eyes. 'No, Dad, please, it wasn't me, it was them…'

Freddie looked at his son and wondered if he should do the world a favour and wipe him off the face of the earth now.

'Where the fuck is he, Jimmy?'

Jimmy held his arms out in supplication. 'How the fuck am I supposed to know that? What am I all of a sudden, Freddie's fucking dad?'

The anger in his voice did not go unnoticed by the other men in the pub's back room. Glenford, ever the peacemaker, said in a reasonable way, 'Relax, this is only a meet.'

Amos Beardsley knew he had overstepped the mark and was contrite. Everyone knew Freddie was a nutter, but Jimmy was the one to be seriously frightened of. Jimmy didn't need anger to hurt people, Jimmy needed just cause. A different thing altogether. With Jimmy, violence was always the last resort, and that meant whoever was in the frame was in deep shit.

He might have started out as Ozzy's front man but he was a main man now in his own right and, like all the big money makers, no one heard about him until it was too late. He surrounded himself with names, and yet he had never personally even had a parking ticket.

'Any chance of a drink?'

Glenford's voice was jovial. They all breathed a sigh of relief, including Jimmy, who knew what his friend was doing. 'Come with me, Glen, and we'll bring in a few bottles.'

They left the room. Once outside and in the bar area, Jimmy said quietly, 'I could fucking stomp that cunt, I really could.'

Glenford ordered the drinks and then pulled Jimmy to the main door and out into the cold night air. 'Stop it, Jim, you need to do damage limitation now. Freddie has had them over. You know that, I know it, he knows it, but more importantly, they know it. Now, boy, you have to give them their due. Do it with a bit of respect and they will let it go. Then you have to collar Freddie and read him the riot act once and for all.'

Jimmy didn't answer, but Glenford's easy-going, slowly spoken but serious-sounding West Indian accent was penetrating his brain.

'Me mean it, Jimmy. This have affected my earn as well, you know, and my boys are fit to be tied. Blood is blood, we accept that, but this is not the first time. They have only come to you now because Freddie won't listen to any kind of reason. Now he has disrespected them by not even bothering to turn up here tonight. These are Africans, and they won't care who he is, or who he working for. They will not forget this. And they are earners, boy, good earners. Not a fucking liability like some I could mention.'

Jimmy looked at his friend, and he was a friend. He loved this man and he knew Glenford loved him. In their world, real friends were few and far between.

'What am I going to do about him, Glen? It's like he thinks he is a separate entity, like he believes he is a law unto himself.'

Glenford smiled then, that friendly gap-toothed smile that had guaranteed him women and sexual favours all his life, and he answered his friend now with absolute truthfulness. 'But he is his own law, Jimmy. You have seen to that. No matter what he does, you protect him, and now I am going to tell you something that you won't want to hear. He cunts you, he has even tried to cunt you to me. Many times, and he knows we are close. In drink he is a fucking treacherous bastard, and you got to rein him in, sooner rather than later, because if you don't, you will lose your self-respect as well as everyone else's.'

Glenford was telling Jimmy something he had known for a long time but had not allowed himself to accept. He had let himself believe that Freddie lived by the same rules as he did, but he knew in his heart that Freddie was not capable of that. Freddie saw himself as above them all, himself included. He had to put the hard word on him, and he had to do it soon, but he was dreading it. Not because he was frightened of him, but because he knew it would be the end of them.

'Leave him alone, Freddie, you'll fucking kill him.' Jackie had run back into the room and was trying to drag her husband off her son and stop the beating that was starting to look like a murder.

'You little bastard, you fucking little cunt!'

Freddie was so angry he was spitting, and Jackie knew in her heart that this was serious because he wouldn't bother unless it was for a good reason.

She pushed herself in between them. 'Tell me what he's supposed to have done.'

She sounded like she knew he was going to give her a load of old fanny. As if he would cunt his own son unless he had to! This was not getting them anywhere. All the time his mother was there Little Freddie felt that he would be in with a chance.

So Freddie pushed his wife away roughly, but even he felt sorry for the woman who was still trying to hang on to a child, to a dream, that had never been there.

Little Freddie hated her. He hated everyone.

Jackie, the drunken fucking prat, really seemed to think that Little Freddie was just a tearaway, that everything he did was just kids playing. She had to know by now that was not true, she had to have realised by now that he was not normal, that he was lacking something, was not the full ten shillings.

'Well, come on, tell me what you think he's done now.'

She was actually fronting him up, yet he could hear the fear in her voice. She suspected her son of being the perpetrator of something terrible, but she was more scared of hearing about it than of the actual deed. So, as usual, she would try to pretend that it was everyone else's fault but his.

She was yelling at the top of her voice. 'You never give him a chance, do you, Freddie? You always try and make out that he is doing something wrong. Well, he was with me all day. What have you got to say about that, then?'

Freddie shook his head, as was his usual habit when faced with Jackie and her ramblings. 'Go and have a drink, Jack. I brought you in a bottle of good vodka to keep you out of my fucking face while I sorted this ponce out once and for all.'

'But what is he supposed to have done?'

Freddie decided to tell her the score. He dropped his son on to the floor without even looking at him. He then walked his wife out to their kitchen, or what passed as a kitchen anyway, and he said in total seriousness, 'Pour yourself a large one, Jack, you are going to need it.'

She sat on the stool nearest to her and started to cry. Pouring her a neat vodka, Freddie said, 'Sexual assault and mugging, Jackie. That is just for starters, love. We bred a fucking right good one, us.'

Jackie was shaking her head vigorously, she was denying that anything like that could ever happen in their family. She was really sobbing now, a noisy, frightened crying that told her husband that despite this denial, on one level she believed everything he was going to say without even hearing the facts.