The Break

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  ‘But do you know what the best part is, Frankie?’ Dougie said, a smile now twitching at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘What?’

  ‘All those lovely little pieces we saw being set up in the Royal Academy the other day, they’re not the only pieces by those artists that will go up in value once we’ve pulled this off. Everything they’ve ever done will skyrocket in value.’

  Now Frankie saw it. What was really in it for Dougie. Charles Saatchi might own everything in there, everything that was being exhibited, but not everything those artists had done.

  ‘You’ve invested then? In them? In those artists? In their other works?’

  ‘Maybe me. Maybe some friends of mine.’ OK, right. His contacts. ‘It doesn’t really matter. All that’s important is that our little robbery leaves the whole art world scratching its head and digging into its collective wallet to invest in the artists concerned.’

  ‘And after the robbery?’ Frankie said. Because, really, that was all that mattered, wasn’t it? What happened then. What happened to him. How far in the clear he could put himself from this whole friggin’ caper. And how fast.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What are we going to do with them? All the exhibits we’re nicking? Ditch them? Destroy them?’

  ‘Now why on earth would we do that?’

  ‘You mean you’re planning on keeping them?’ Was he having a giraffe?

  ‘You sound surprised.’

  ‘But I thought you just said that the whole point of this robbery was publicity? To drive up the prices for all the other pieces you’ve invested in.’

  ‘The main point –’

  ‘Then why keep these other few bits that can implicate you in the crime?’ Implicate us. Implicate me.

  ‘Ah, yes. Well, that’s the other clever bit, you see. We’re going to sell them.’

  ‘Sell them?’ Proof, then, that he really was batshit crazy. ‘And who the hell is going to buy them? They’re going to be hotter than the surface of the sun.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean now. I mean perhaps in five years from now, or ten, or even fifteen, because why not? After all, their value’s only going to keep on going up. But don’t you worry, Frankie, there’ll always be buyers for this kind of thing. Maybe not the kind of buyer that will ever loan the piece to a museum, or even show it in daylight ever again. But buyers, all right, buyers with so much money they don’t care how much they spend, buyers who just want to possess something that no one else can.’ He grinned, fully this time, as wet and wide as a wound. ‘And besides,’ he then added, ‘who said I’m going to be keeping them at all?’

  Frankie didn’t like the sound of this. Not one bloody bit. Christ, was there any way, any way at all, he still might be able to somehow wriggle out of this? Or, even better, get himself thrown out? He turned quickly to Bram and looked pointedly at him.

  ‘You do know that I have absolutely no experience in this kind of work, don’t you?’ he said. Might as well just throw that out there. Who knew? Maybe old Gorbachev here might have some kind of veto he could play. ‘As in not a bloody clue,’ Frankie hurried on. ‘In fact, the last thing I stole was a handful of Black Jacks from the cornershop when I was nine years old.’ Meaning if old Dougie boy here has in any way led you to believe otherwise, then now’s your chance to give me the flick.

  No such luck. Old Gorby said nothing. Didn’t even shrug.

  Frankie sighed. All he could do not to hold his head in his hands. Because he was screwed, wasn’t he? Totally and utterly screwed. ‘Fine,’ he said, feeling his whole body slump, ‘so take me through it. What’s the sodding plan?’

  ‘Oh, no, Frankie,’ Dougie said. ‘One step at a time. This is just an introductory meeting. All that, the planning, Bram here will be contacting you separately about that.’

  Well, that was going to be an interesting meeting for sure, what with Frankie not being able to sign and Bram not being able to talk. Oh yeah, this little heist they’d got going on had success written all over it, right?

  *

  ‘Viollet said you were talking to a cop,’ Dougie said, a few minutes later after Bram had gone back inside. ‘Two cops, actually. A woman and a man.’

  Frankie glanced across at Dougie’s informer and shot her his best well, thanks a fucking bunch look. For what it was worth, which wasn’t much. Viollet still had her shades on and was giving nothing away. But, hell, she probably had photos of him with Sharon and Snaresby on that natty little camera of hers, didn’t she? So not much point in him denying they’d met.

  ‘They were involved in Jack’s case,’ he said.

  ‘Susan’s case,’ Dougie hissed, his cheeks suddenly mottling.

  ‘Er, yeah. Sorry. Right.’

  ‘Snaresby and Granger,’ Dougie said. ‘Viollet said you and the Granger woman looked like you were friends.’

  ‘Snug, Dougie,’ Viollet said. ‘The word I used was “snug”.’

  Snug. The same word Frankie had used to describe Viollet in the back of Dougie’s car. Frankie rolled his eyes. Couldn’t help himself. So that’s what this was about, her shopping him like this? Some kind of petty revenge?

  ‘Something you’d like to say?’ Dougie asked.

  ‘Nah. Nothing. Just something in my eye.’

  ‘And the two cops?’

  ‘We went to school together.’

  ‘What? You and the Detective Inspector?’ Dougie dead-panned. ‘I always thought he was older than you.’

  A shit joke. But the smartarse bastard had given something away with it too, hadn’t he? Always. So this wasn’t the first time Snaresby had popped up on his radar then. The two of them had history. Doing what? Just Susan Tilley’s case, or something else?

  ‘I meant Sharon,’ Frankie said, realizing his mistake as soon as he’d said it.

  ‘Oh, so you’re on first name terms, are you?’ said Dougie. ‘That is properly snug.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Frankie said. ‘She just saw me there, said hello, end of.’

  Dougie watched him the same way he’d watched him back at the Cobden Club, when he’d been grilling him about what he knew about Jack’s involvement in Susan Tilley’s death.

  ‘Yeah, well do yourself a favour, Frankie, and choose your friends a little more wisely in future. We wouldn’t want to think that you were getting too close to the other side.’

  The other side? Christ, like Frankie was now on Dougie’s team for good. He pictured Listerman. Felt bile rising up in his throat. Because of what he’d said. About it being one of life’s great truisms that people who ended up working for more than one master generally ended up getting ripped apart.

  ‘Sure,’ Frankie said, ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

  Dougie beckoned Viollet over with a wave of his manicured hand. She leant down beside him and he whispered something in her ear.

  ‘Viollet will drive you home,’ he then said.

  ‘It’s fine, I can get a cab,’ Frankie told him. Right now, even the thought of that woman made his skin crawl.

  ‘No, I insist. I want you to realize that even dogs get to taste some of the finer things in life, so long as they’re well behaved.’

  Frankie was just opening his mouth to ask him what the hell he was talking about, but Dougie held up his hand.

  ‘But first,’ he said, ‘before you go, there’s something else I’d like you to see. Or, rather, someone.’

  Viollet grimaced, as though the point Dougie was making was somehow moot.

  ‘This way,’ she said, setting off across the grassy lawn, back towards the building.

  Frankie followed her. But where? Back inside to meet more of Bram’s people? No. She kept to the right of the huge conservatory, skirting around it to the building’s back wall, to where a flight of worn brick steps led down. Neither of them spoke. Frankie was still smarting about her having shopped him to Dougie like that about talking to Sharon. And, yeah, well fine, if she wanted to keep this strictly business then he’d mak
e sure to skip the small talk too.

  At the bottom of the steps was a solid-looking, black wooden door. She knocked on it loudly three times.

  ‘Who’s there?’ a muffled voice called out a few seconds later.

  ‘Me. Viollet.’

  A key turned in the lock. The door opened. A short, thickset man in his mid-fifties peered out of the shadows inside, sweat glistening on his forehead.

  ‘Who’s he?’ he grunted, looking Frankie suspiciously up and down.

  ‘The boss told me to bring him here.’

  ‘For keeps?’ The man grinned as he said it.

  Viollet didn’t answer. The man pulled the door wider. He was naked from the waist up, with what looked horribly like dried blood smeared and spattered all over his chest-hair and arms. Frankie’s heart skipped a beat. What the hell was this? He didn’t like the look of this at all. He turned to look back over his shoulder. Because, yeah, maybe he should just get the hell out of here now. But there were already two blokes standing up there at the top of the steps, the same slick, suited geezers who’d been stood over by the garden wall before. Up close, he recognized one of them from the Paradise. Mob muscle, then. Must have been told to follow him and Viollet here. No way was he going to be able to slip past them.

  ‘Well, then, don’t be shy, come on in,’ said the short man, bowing theatrically, as he waved Viollet and Frankie through.

  Frankie felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle as he walked past. What was this place? What did Dougie want him to see? A dank corridor led them deeper into the building. Cobwebbed brick walls. Yellow light bulbs flickering every couple of yards. A damp stink in the air. No, something worse than damp. More animal. More like old sweat and piss. Footsteps behind. Looking back, Frankie saw the bare-chested man was following. A white grin of uneven teeth in the gloom. He’d shut the door behind them leading out. Then voices up ahead. Chatter. A debate. A crackle of static. A radio show, then. Had to be.

  Frankie stepped out into a vast, arched brick storage room. Then stopped dead in his tracks. His heartbeat stuttered, then hammered. Spit filled his mouth. He had to bite down on his tongue just to stop himself from throwing up.

  There, right ahead of him, with two spotlights shining down, was a man manacled in a crucifix position on the wall. Or what was left of a man. If it even was a man. Whoever it was had been so beaten and battered and torn it was impossible to tell. He was literally drenched in blood.

  ‘Pretty, i’nt he?’ grinned the bare-chested man, resting a hand on Frankie’s shoulder.

  ‘Get the fuck off me,’ Frankie snapped, pushing him away.

  ‘Touchy, touchy. No need to be so rude,’ the man laughed.

  A groan. Bloody hell. Was it the man on the wall? The radio? Frankie couldn’t tell. The bare-chested man walked over to a table set up against the wall. It had bats on it, crowbars, knives, even a sodding blood-stained electric iron. He picked up an apple sitting next to it and took a noisy bite.

  ‘The fucking echo in here,’ he complained, ‘it’s doing me head in. I’ll be glad to see the back of this fucker, I tell you. When is it they’re moving him out?’

  ‘Just as soon as we’re done,’ Viollet said, pressing up against Frankie.

  He was trembling now. From fear. She must be able to feel it too.

  ‘Dougie wanted you to see what happens to people who let him down,’ she whispered softly in his ear. ‘And what will happen to you if, for whatever reason, you decide that pistol isn’t enough to keep you doing what he tells you, and you decide to go squealing to your cop friends instead.’

  Frankie slowly turned to face her. But to say what? That they weren’t his friends? That he had already considered it, but had already chickened out? Because what was the point of telling her anything? Because she wasn’t even a real person anyway, was she? Just another face of Dougie’s. Another set of limbs doing whatever he said. Just exactly like Frankie was himself. But the coldness in her face then flickered, just for a second.

  ‘Please, Frankie,’ she whispered, pressing her finger to his lips, ‘just do us all a favour and don’t end up in here like him.’

  10

  The Aston Martin DB5 pulled out of the warehouse garage and onto Narrow Street with a roar so loud that people walking by stopped and stared. But up front, in the driver and passenger seats, Viollet and Frankie said nothing. He just stared straight ahead, trying not to close his eyes. Because whenever he did, he saw him again – whoever he was – those manacles . . . that blood . . . his pulpy mess of a face . . .

  Was it him who’d groaned? Could he really have still been alive? Was there any way he could help him? But how? They’d already been moving him out – his body . . . It was already too late.

  Frankie just wanted this journey done, just wanted out of here, and back into his own life. Problem was, instead Viollet was taking them the scenic route, nice and slow, like they were on a friggin’ jolly, out along the river and then round Parliament, before finally gunning the Aston Martin up the Haymarket and on through Piccadilly Circus.

  ‘Do us a favour,’ Frankie said, the first time he’d spoken since he’d entered that basement, ‘and drop us off somewhere I might not actually get seen by the whole bleedin’ world.’

  His world, he meant. Or Tommy Riley’s, at least. Because that’s where they were now. Right in the middle of Tommy’s turf. And the last person Frankie needed to be seen with right now was Dougie Hamilton’s right-hand man . . . or woman, Alsatian, whatever. Because that was the other thing, what he’d seen in that basement, he knew Tommy could match it. Tommy could and would hurt him just as bad.

  He stared out the window, trying to swallow down the panic building up inside of him. But fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What the hell was he going to do? How the hell was he going to stop Dougie or Tommy ending by cutting him up?

  ‘I said not here. Did you hear me?’ he snapped.

  She still didn’t answer, but she didn’t turn down Poland Street either. She carried on instead to the same multi-storey where Frankie kept his Capri. Drove right up to the top floor and – wouldn’t you know it? – parked up in the bay right alongside it. Shit a brick. Was there anything this bloody woman and her even bloodier boss didn’t know?

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to say thanks?’ she said, still firmly in her shades-down mode.

  ‘For what? Showing me your handiwork down in that basement?’

  ‘Who said it was mine?’

  ‘Who said it wasn’t?’

  She didn’t answer. Meaning what? She’d had a part in it? In whatever had been done to that poor bastard? Or not?

  ‘Who was he?’

  She shrugged. ‘Someone Dougie didn’t like.’

  ‘And you? Did you . . . did you do any of that to him?’

  ‘Would you believe me if I said I didn’t?’

  He didn’t know.

  ‘So maybe let’s just not talk about it at all. Anything else on your mind?’

  ‘Well, yeah, as a matter of fact, there is.’

  ‘So shoot,’ she said.

  ‘Like thanks for grassing me up,’ he said, ‘to your boss about me talking to those two cops.’ Because, Christ, that was making him shiver now too. And could have landed him right there in that basement as well, if Dougie had got it into his head even for a second that Frankie was some kind of snitch.

  ‘Our boss,’ Viollet said, getting out. ‘And don’t take it so personally, Frankie. I work for Dougie. Keeping him in the picture’s just part of my job.’

  ‘And where do you think you’re going?’ he asked, getting out too.

  She pipped the car’s alarm and walked towards the lift. ‘Oh, didn’t I say? You’re taking me back to your place.’

  ‘No, you bloody didn’t. And, no, I’m bloody not.’

  ‘It’s not a question, Frankie.’ She hit the lift button. ‘It’s not even my idea.’

  ‘Dougie wants you to come back to my place?’ Frankie didn’t understand. I want you to
realize that even dogs get to taste some of the finer things in life, so long as they’re well behaved. What the hell? So that hadn’t just been about the car ride? But about Dougie putting Viollet on the menu? No way. He couldn’t believe that was true. No way could he see her taking an order like that. Even from him.

  She took out her camera, the same one she’d had at the Royal Academy, the one that had no doubt provided all those photos Frankie had seen the rest of Bram’s crew poring over inside David Lean’s old pad just now.

  ‘He wants me to check how much storage space you’ve got,’ she said. ‘Along with a few other things.’

  Storage space? Oh, shit. What else was it Dougie had said? And besides, who said I’m going to be keeping them at all? The alarm bell that had started ringing in Frankie’s head back then started up a right old clattering now.

  ‘That wanker’s planning on keeping all his nicked gear round at mine?’

  Viollet nodded.

  ‘But . . . but that’s not even just my business, that’s my bloody home.’ The lift doors opened. ‘I mean, you are joking, right?’

  ‘Nope. You see, Dougie’s got a very healthy attitude towards risks.’ She stepped into the lift.

  ‘Yeah?’ He followed her inside. ‘How bleedin’ so?’

  ‘He doesn’t take any. He gets other people to take them for him.’

  ‘Like him not coming with us on his little dog-stealing expedition?’ Something changed in her expression as he said it. ‘Oh, and let me guess, you’re not coming either, right?’

  ‘I just do what I’m told.’

  ‘But all this shit he wants me and Bram and whatever to nick –’

  ‘Art, Frankie. Remember, it’s art,’ she told him, as the lift doors closed.

  ‘What-fucking-ever. Even if we do somehow get whatever pieces he wants out of there, why can’t he just keep them somewhere else?’ Anywhere else. Anywhere nowhere near bloody me.

  She finally lowered her shades and looked him briefly in the eyes. ‘Oh, come, come now, Frankie. Let’s not pretend that either of us has got a choice.’

  More silence. But what did she mean? Did Dougie have something on her too?