She watched and listened, but kept her own counsel.

'You and him are tight, so tell me, what's the fucker had to say to you about it?'

Jimmy knew his father hated the closeness he had with Freddie, and he sighed. 'He ain't said a dicky bird, but I heard it was over him leaving his wife high and dry, not a penny piece or a bit of grub in the house, while he shagged that Kitty and snorted drugs.' Jimmy knew he was trying to justify what Freddie had done.

James Jackson Senior was annoyed. He loved his brother and though he knew his faults better than anyone, what Freddie had done was wrong. It was out of order and, worst of all, in their world there was no precedent for it. He had attacked his own father, left him maimed for life and to compound that act it had been on the night his son was born.

'Nothing warrants what he did. Freddie will find out soon enough that people will not tolerate that kind of behaviour, no matter who they fucking work for.'

It was a veiled threat and Jimmy felt his heart sink down to his boots at the words.

'You keep out of it, Dad.' His voice was sharper than he had intended and his father looked at him in abject shock.

'Don't you fucking talk to me like that, I ain't me brother. I'll rip your fucking nuts off, boy, you disrespect me like I am a fucking cunt!'

Jimmy could see the fright on his mother's face and hastily tried to make amends. 'Look, Dad, just let it go. I would never disrespect you and you know that. All I am saying is that Freddie must have had his reasons, and at the end of the day it is nothing to do with me or you.'

James Jackson was on the point of hysteria as he listened to his only child's words. Then he was bellowing out at the top of his considerable voice, 'Nothing to do with me? My fucking brother looks like the Elephant Man and you say it's nothing to do with me? His own child fucking mugs him off and leaves him for dead, and you think it's a private fight? What fucking planet are you on?'

He looked at his wife for confirmation of this statement. Jimmy knew they hated Freddie and all he stood for, but she shrugged as if in complete bewilderment at what she was hearing. She had done this many times before, she knew how to play the game.

James Senior was a shouter, he shouted at the least provocation. It was something that had irritated his wife and son for many years. Yet while he was shouting they were safe. When he finally stopped shouting, trouble was sure to follow. Thankfully, nine times out often, he shouted himself out. Jimmy was hoping against hope that that would be the case now. Freddie would take Jimmy's own father apart, without a second's thought, and he had a sneaky feeling that James knew that. He was depending on him to make sure that if it all went off, he would protect him from a similar fate, and Jimmy would do that. His father was safe, safer than he realised.

This was a worrying time for Jimmy, he knew that everything could collapse around them if this was not handled properly. And if it all came on top he would have to take Freddie out. That would mean out of the ball game, out, once and for all.

Because Freddie was not a person you could fight and beat, and then expect to be left in peace with a cheery wave and a handshake. Freddie would hunt you down like a dog until he had wiped you off the face of the earth. It was his nature, it was why he was so good at his job. It was what was frightening everyone in their orbit. Everyone was thinking like his father, but no one actually wanted to do anything about it. They were all hoping someone else would do the dirty work for them.

Anyway, Jimmy wasn't sure he could beat Freddie in an out-and-out straightener. If it went off with Freddie, he knew he would have to kill him stone dead. He hoped it wouldn't come to that, but at the end of the day, family was family.

He left the house a little while later, and, going in the shed at the end of their tiny garden, he took out a small handgun he had hidden there. If necessary he would use it without a second's thought. Freddie was a man where a gun was mandatory if you needed to explain anything serious to him.

Deep in his boots Jimmy knew he was just waiting to see how Ozzy took this latest turn of events, because no matter what anyone else said or did, he knew it would be Ozzy who would decide what the final outcome was going to be.

The new baby was being adored by his mother, his grandmothers and his sisters. He was a happy child who was never alone.

All the females in his orbit were absolutely thrilled with him and he was thrilled with them. He was ruined. Only a week old, and already he was crying every time he was laid down. The grandmothers were convinced that this cleverness on his part denoted a brain the size of Albert Einstein's.

His father, however, was impressed that his little son was shrewd enough to already have women running at his every beck and call. Even Jackie was still enamoured of her child, although her nerves were shot with the events of the last few weeks. He allowed for that because he knew that women and hormones were a lethal mix. Jackie had the brain capacity of a gnat, and he was not about to turn her into a fucking gibbering idiot. He would leave the drink and the drugs to do that to her. But either way he would not be blamed for that as well.

She had given him a son, and he was quite happy to give her a pass until she pushed him too far once more. He knew it would happen, Jackie was the kind of person who always fucked things up for herself. It was what she was good at.

Since the turnout with his dad, Freddie had stuck close to home. He was being father of the year, and who could denigrate a man who wanted to be with his new-born son? It was the perfect alibi, it was the perfect excuse and he was determined that no one would ever put two and two together.

He knew he was being discussed from one end of the manor to the other and he didn't give a flying fuck about that. He was worried, though, about how Ozzy might perceive what he had done. He would swallow his knob if Ozzy took umbrage, but even then he knew it would only leave him with a grudge against Ozzy, and he held grudges like other people held bags of shopping.

No one scared him. He was not so much proud of that fact, as he accepted it as the truth. There was not a man walking who could put any kind of fear in his heart. He was completely confident of his capabilities. He was always focused on the job in hand, he never deviated from anything he decided to do and he would die before he admitted he was wrong.

At the end of the day he had seriously injured his own father, a man he had loved and revered, because he had crossed the line. His dad had left his wife without even the price of a packet of biscuits, left the woman who had visited him in prison, kept the home going while he sat on his ring doing fuck all, or spent most of his time with his birds. This was the same woman who had never once made his father ashamed of or embarrassed by her. She was respected around and about for her clean-living ways and her devotion to the church.

How dare he think he could abandon her for a slag like Kitty Mason? Freddie would not have given a shit if he'd had a hundred birds on the go, so long as he took care of his business beforehand. His mother should have had first grab at his wallet, then what he did with the rest of his poke would have been his business.

Freddie knew he was trying to convince himself, as well as everyone around him, of why he had taken his father out. If he was completely honest, he knew that the confrontation with his father had been a long time coming. He had needed to make the man aware of who he was now. Freddie Senior had still treated him like a kid, had talked over him when they were in the pub. Expected Freddie to finance him and his legion of hangers-on. It was all wrong. He was due the respect of everyone, his father included, and over the months it had been eating at him like a cancer. Even his father was competition to Freddie, and he should have bowed down to the superiority of his son's new status.