Outwardly at least.
But he did not have ‘wanker’ tattooed on his forehead, and he was tired of being treated like one. Inside, he was fuming.
And now he had exactly what he had been waiting for. The fact it had come at such a timely pass just made it seem all the more enjoyable.
The Blacks were kicking off over every little thing, he had seen to that himself. He had been having little digs at every available opportunity, and had made sure they were now both sick of him.
Their main supplier was over from Amsterdam and, oh dear, it seemed he was in Glasgow, which meant little Jimmy had to get his arse up there quick smart. The man was supposed to have been in London, where the main action was to take place. The Blacks were doing their nuts, as was the Amsterdam bloke, and now poor Jimmy had to go and smooth it all over. Well, such was life, eh? He grinned to himself. He had made a point of fucking up the arrangements and the Blacks and he didn’t augur well, so Jimmy would have to go.
Maggie was doing her crust because she wanted to go out for their anniversary, and now that was all gone skew-whiff and, judging by the telephone conversation Jimmy had just had with her, she was not a happy bunny.
Well fuck her, and fuck Jimmy.
Freddie smiled again. As Jimmy left to pack a bag and get a flight to Scotland, he stayed in the pub with Paul and Liselle, happier than he had been for ages, and started the serious drinking of the night.
Maggie was fuming, and she made sure that when Jimmy got home she would not be there. She knew he hated coming home to an empty house. He liked her being there all of the time, and she also knew that Jimmy, being Jimmy, had no real idea where his clothes were kept. So she drove to her mother’s and smiled grimly at the thought he would have to drag the dressing room apart to find his underclothes.
Well, let him. She was sick to death of him always being available for everyone else in the world, except her. She was so angry with him that she had no interest in his trip, or anything else for that matter. She had talked to Pat, who had been her usual high-handed self about everything. She was another one who thought she was the dog’s bollocks and she was nothing, without her brother she was nothing. Like Jackie she was only as good as the man they were embroiled with.
Well, Maggie had her own life and her own businesses ... but deep inside she knew she needed Jimmy just as much. They were trying for a baby, and somehow she’d felt sure it would finally happen. This was to have been their special night, and when he told her he had to go to Scotland she had felt like launching him into outer space. She had new underwear, a bottle of champagne being chilled and strawberries and cream waiting to be consumed. All the things the women’s magazines told her would make the night sexy, romantic and ultimately exciting.
She smiled wryly. Pity the magazines never allowed for when the man in the scenario was a fucking drug-dealing shit-bag who would have to fly to Scotland at the last minute because another couple of drug barons had made a fuck-up of momentous proportions. She supposed they assumed everyone reading their crap were like them, middle class, married to bankers or advertising men, people in suits. No doubt the nearest they got to the criminal fraternity was if they published the crime figures.
At this moment in time Maggie really envied them. Sometimes, when the women came into her salon and talked about their lives, she really loathed them. Not the ones from her world, with their bleached hair and their permatans, but the ones that came in over the weekend. The execs, they had nicknamed them, the ones who talked about their holidays and their jobs. The women who didn’t think it normal to discuss a friend’s husband’s court case, or his latest encounter with the female sex. Who saved up for things, and wanted to get promoted at work because the money would mean they could start a family.
Women whose husbands were not called away at a second’s notice, or who didn’t put their lives on the line every day and risk a hefty prison sentence.
She had wanted to give Jimmy an ultimatum at one point this night, but she suddenly knew she would be wasting her breath. It had taken this to make her see her life for what it really was.
Nothing she said would stop him going, so she decided that just for once she would not be there like a good little girl. He could sort himself out and he could see how he got on without her doing everything for him. She was being silly, probably being petty, or at least that was what her husband would think. She rarely kicked off and so the fact she had now would mean fuck all to Jimmy.
She knew he had to go, because the bad blood between Freddie and the Blacks stopped him from being able to take any real part in the deals, but it still rankled. Freddie walked away from everything, it was what he did, the ponce. He was a fucking waster, he pulled in serious wedge yet he always had an excuse never to do any of the real collar. She wished he would just once do what he was paid for. Instead of always leaving it to her Jimmy.
Jimmy was Ozzy’s right-hand man. He earned well for them and she really loved him. She tried to imagine herself with someone else and she couldn’t. There had never been anyone else, never would be, and she knew that was also true for him. She felt bad suddenly, felt disloyal, and in her world loyalty was everything. Her Jimmy was a good provider, and they were young, they had plenty of other nights.
As she pulled up outside her mother’s she was sorry she had not stayed behind to see him on his way. Bless him, he was a lovely man, really. The guilt was starting to eat into her thinking now, and she was calming down. She didn’t really want him to go off on his own, without her even throwing him a kind word. Anger was a terrible emotion, it made you do things you knew were wrong.
She sat in her Mercedes Sport and she wept for a few minutes. She knew that Jimmy would ring her from Glasgow and she would answer his call, and then everything would be all right once more. But she couldn’t let him get on the plane without making her peace with him. Supposing something happened to him?
She loved him, would always love him, and she knew that she was wrong to make him suffer like this. But she wanted a child so badly, and this was their time for making one, making a perfect, gorgeous little Jackson.
She plastered a smile on her face and, turning the car around, she raced back home as fast as she could.
The Blacks were fuming. Freddie had made a point of causing a row and they were now at screaming point.
Freddie had always caused more fights than John Wayne, and now he had made sure that the chemist had come to them instead of coming to London. London, where the fucking gear was going to be made and distributed. According to Freddie, they were also going to be given first dibs on the best gear.
He was a wind-up and he’d been about to find out that they were not going to be mugged off, and what did they end up with?
Little Jimmy.
Now, they liked and respected Jimmy, but they wanted Freddie. They wanted a straightener with him, they wanted him off his home turf, and they wanted him without weapons, because everyone knew he was a weapons master.
They had also heard a rumour that he had taken out a poor working girl, and a working girl with his kiddie, no less. Even without the aggravation already between them, that on its own was enough for them to have a row with him.
He thought he was better than everyone around him, and he was also under the mistaken apprehension that they really had swallowed over the last lot. They were also aware that Freddie was on his last chance, not just with them, but with everyone he had ever come in contact with. The Blacks were decent men, with wives and girlfriends, and kids outside the marriage as well as inside. They took care of their dependants, which is more than they could say about that fucking wanker Jackson.
Word on the street was that even Ozzy had the pox with him. If that was so, then they would not only settle a large score, but get a few Brownie points into the bargain. This was a mission now. Both the brothers were up for it and if that meant taking on Jimmy then so be it. He was a nice lad and a hard lad, but he was also related to that piece of murderi
ng scum. They were wary of Jimmy, however, because by all accounts he was right up Ozzy’s arse. Ozzy might be gone but he would never be forgotten.
Looking up from the mess he’d created in the dressing room, Jimmy saw his wife’s headlights hit the wall and smiled. He had hoped she would come back. He understood her anger, and he was sorry, but at the end of the day, work was work and he had to sort it all out. It was what he got paid for, what bought their houses and provided their way of life.
She was aware of that, and he knew she was upset because they had already made arrangements. But Ozzy was their employer, and he had to make sure everything went along according to plan with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of efficiency.
He heard Maggie walk into the house and run up the stairs, and he went to the bedroom itself. The dressing room looked like a bomb had dropped on it and he knew she would be angry with him over it.
She was standing there with that dear little face. Her blond hair looked immaculate as ever, and her make-up was not heavy but as always made her look healthy, made her look like the girl next door. The really good-looking and sexy girl next door.
‘I am so sorry, babe.’
She knew he meant it.
‘So am I, but I was so looking forward to tonight. I really wanted us to have a good one.’
‘We will, babe, when I get back from Jockland.’
He was making her laugh, ‘Jockland? That’s a new one.’
He pulled her into his arms. ‘The Blacks are up in arms and it’s all because that useless cunt Freddie . . .’ He didn’t finish the sentence, he really didn’t need to. ‘He has wound them up from day one, and now I have to make a point of going there and sorting it all out.’
Maggie looked into his handsome face, saw his deep blue eyes and his dark-skinned handsomeness, and she wanted him like she had never wanted him before.
He kissed her hard on her lips. ‘You know I don’t want to go, and that if I had a choice I would be here with you, so please, babe, give me a break, eh? This is work, heart, just work and you know thanks to that cunt I am the only one that they listen to.’
She smiled then, a real smile. This was the man she loved, the only man she had ever loved. In her life there had never been anyone else she had ever wanted to be with. Even as a girl, when her friends had spent their time dreaming of pop stars, she had only ever been interested in her Jimmy.
He was everything she had ever wanted and everything she would ever need. As he pushed her on the bed she allowed him to take her as she had always allowed him to take her. Grateful that he wanted her, grateful that she had him in her life and grateful that he was as in love with her as she was with him.
She often wondered if he took a flier with other birds. She knew they stalked him, and why wouldn’t they? He was a fucking god in more ways than one. But she pushed the thoughts from her head. What the heart didn’t see . . .
‘Sweetheart, we will have the most beautiful baby ever, right? A handsome lovely little baby and it will look just like you.’
‘I love you so much, Jimmy.’
He grinned then and kissed her on her lips tenderly. ‘You will never know what love is until you feel the love inside me, darling.’
Her heart was swelling up inside her chest with pride. He meant it and she knew he meant it. He was her love, her only love as she was his. He was like the Barry White record she adored. It was their record, they had danced their first dance to it in the youth club. He was her first, her last, her everything.
And he always would be, it was just the way they were. Without him she was nothing, she felt nothing. She was his, and he knew that better than she did.
Freddie was watching the clock, and Liselle wondered what he had going down. After all the years she had run the pub with Paul she could tell when someone was waiting for something to go down. It was a knack she had acquired.
She had watched bank robbers as they waited to go on the off, she had also seen murderers as they waited until their victim left. And more than a few murders had been conceived on these premises, not to mention perpetrated, she knew that better than anyone. She had lied to the filth enough times for her regulars.
This was a rough old pub, and now as she watched Freddie Jackson she knew that he was going to do something he was ashamed of. It was in the cut of his jib, a favoured saying of her father’s. He was up to serious skulduggery. People like Freddie did not know any other kind.
Jackie tried her best, there was no doubt about that, but her kids were the biggest bastards in recorded history. Deep in her heart she hated them. They were such hard work.
Her house was far too hot as always. It was also very dirty, and it was extremely smelly. They had eaten fish and chips earlier and the house stank of vinegar and cheap cod. In addition, Little Freddie often urinated where he sat, and consequently every time the heating went on the smell was overpowering.
Now Jackie sat at home and watched her daughters as they watched their favourite movie, Pretty Woman, and she felt like screaming. Why did they love a film about a prostitute? She felt at times that they were mocking her, that they knew what their father had done. Especially Kim, who would look into her mother’s eyes and bring her shoulders up to her head in an innocent yet knowing way. Jackie drank her drink quickly. This was all she needed, this lot reminding her of how shit her life was.
Sometimes she wondered why she bothered with any of it. Little Freddie was off his shopping trolley, and it took all her wits to keep him out of care. The girls had no real interest in her whatsoever, and she knew that when they were old enough they would be off. Out of it, and who could blame them?
They would rather be at Maggie’s, anyway. They loved it there, thought the house was cool, thought it was the best place in the world. Anyone would think Maggie was their mother the way they carried on about her. About her salons and her clothes and her fucking regular tanning sessions. Who the fuck did this lot think they were?
She was their mother, she was the one who had given birth to them, she was the one who had brought them up. When Freddie had been banged up, she had done everything she could for them all.
But did they thank her for it? Did they fuck. They were the most ungrateful bastards ever to walk the earth, and she had given birth to them all.
Little Freddie spat at her as he walked past to go and get himself some sweets from the kitchen. He often spat at her, he spat at everyone and thought it was funny. But when her hand shot out and slapped him hard across his buttocks he yelped out loud and then, as always, when he was hurting, he attacked her.
Pulling her hair and spitting and screaming at her, calling her names.
In the end she punched him with all her might in the tummy and winded him. He crumpled to the floor, and just once, for the first time ever, he shut the fuck up.
She finally felt the sense of victory he usually felt when he pushed her to the limit of her patience.
His next attack knocked her on to her back and it took all the girls to drag him off his mother.
And the worst of it all was, they were laughing at him as always.
The house was quiet, and Maggie lay in the bath, luxuriating in the absolute happiness she was feeling.
She was glad she had not stayed at her mother’s house. Even though the house felt far too big for her when she was alone, she was so glad she had come back to her husband.
She knew husband was not a word the women used these days, it was almost a derogatory term, but she was proud that Jimmy was hers, glad he was her husband, her old man, her bit of all right, as her mum would say.
She sipped her wine and lit herself a cigarette, and as she pulled on it she felt the fluttering inside her that she often felt when she remembered making love with Jimmy. It felt like she was going over a steep hill in her Merc, that exciting feel of his hands on her. His tongue, his heavy body on top of hers as he brought her to climax.
She closed her eyes and pulled once more on her cigarette. She had
Barry White on the player in her bedroom. His deep baritone was sneaking into her en suite and she was thinking of her Jimmy and his lovemaking when she felt a hand touch her shoulder.
Her eyes flew open and she dropped the cigarette on to her chest. Sitting up in pain and terror, she looked into the laughing face of Freddie Jackson.
‘All right, Mags?’
He was grinning at her, and she was astonished to see that he was undressed.
She felt the bile in her stomach rise up as he licked his lips slowly and then, laughing once more, he said, ‘What’s the matter, sweetheart, you all tired out?’
She felt vulnerable, frightened and worse than anything she felt the utter loneliness of a woman who knew she was completely alone, and completely at someone else’s mercy.
She sank under the bubbles, ashamed of him seeing her naked, ashamed that she had not protected herself enough and ashamed because she had known in her heart that this day would come and now it was here she wasn’t sure she had the strength to fight him off.
And the fact she had not asked him what he was doing there or what he wanted told him all he needed to know.
‘Please, Freddie, go home, leave me alone . . .’
‘Oh fuck off, Maggie, you want this as much as I do, and you’ve made me wait. I ain’t waiting any longer.’ Then he dragged her from the bath by her hair, lifting her up as if she was nothing, a featherweight.
She screamed, knowing her screams were a waste of time. No one was going to hear her, that was the downside of large, well-built houses. She could feel her feet dragging across the floor, and she was twisting and turning, trying to get free from his grip.
But as she squirmed he was laughing harder and harder, and when he threw her on the bed, the bed she had lovingly made not two hours earlier after the lovemaking with her Jimmy, she was still trying to cover herself up, cover her nakedness, cover her perfectly toned and very attractive body. That only her husband had ever had access to.