The Break

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  ‘So who is he, then? This Bram?’ Frankie said, as they stepped out onto the street and headed for the club. ‘Just what is it that makes him such a . . . expert in this field?’

  ‘I believe the phrase you rooineks use is he’s got form.’

  ‘Rooineks?’

  ‘It’s how we back home refer to you rednecks who always get so badly burned in the sun.’

  Frankie thought back to the Hamilton boys in the Paradise, and yeah, fair enough, she wasn’t far wrong.

  ‘And how would a yarpie like you know what form someone like Bram has got?’

  ‘Yarpie?’ Her eyebrows arched in amusement. ‘Touché. Though for your information yarpie generally tends to refer to someone who’s worked on a farm – which I can assure you I have not.’

  ‘No, I already know where you’ve worked. Ex-police, right?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I’ve got my sources . . .’ He’d wanted it to sound mysterious, as well as knowing, to try and get one up on her, but instead she just smiled.

  ‘The Saint? Yeah. He’s got an appropriately big mouth for a guy his size.’

  ‘And is that how you know Bram’s form, from back when you were a cop?’

  ‘No, I moved to Europe after that. The Netherlands, if you must know. Private sector. Security.’

  ‘A broad church that . . . and Bram was a colleague of yours there, was he?’

  ‘More the other side of the fence . . .’

  A crim then. Someone she’d caught? Or had maybe worked with? Because she must have crossed over to the wrong side of the fence herself at some point, or she wouldn’t be working for Dougie now.

  ‘But you trust him, right?’

  ‘Trust is a very broad word.’

  ‘I don’t mean with your wallet. I mean with this gig, this heist.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have brought him in if I didn’t.’

  ‘Then I guess I’m just going to have to trust him too.’ Frankie slowly shook his head, because, come, come, of course, he didn’t have a choice. ‘After you,’ he said, opening the Ambassador Club’s door.

  ‘Hey, thar, boss,’ Slim said, as Frankie led Viollet up to the bar.

  ‘Hey yourself. Everything OK?’ Frankie looked round. Ten or so punters in here. A few locals having a drink. But what did she make of it? Viollet. Hard to tell with those shades of hers on. And why should he care anyway? This was just business to her. Just like he was too. So what if she had incredible blue eyes? The sooner he got her out of here, the better.

  ‘And can I get either of you a nice cold beverage to tickle your tastebuds on this far from inclement day?’ Slim asked.

  ‘Sorry, he’s a bit of a walking dictionary,’ Frankie told Viollet. ‘No, we’re good thanks, Slim. Vio – I mean Miss Coetzee here, she’s with the, er . . .’ Christ, what was she with? The Hamiltons? Murder Inc. ‘ . . . er, council,’ he said. ‘And we just need to run through a few quick fire regulation issues before she can sign off on the certificate for the tournament.’

  Slim looked Viollet up and down, from her Gucci shades to her Jimmy Choos.

  ‘The council, eh?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Frankie felt his skin prickle. He’d never been much of a liar, especially where friends were concerned.

  ‘No clipboard?’ Slim asked Viollet.

  ‘Everything I need, I keep it up here,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll bet you do.’

  ‘Just chuck us the keys, will you?’ Frankie said.

  ‘Whatever you say, boss.’ Slim blew a thin plume of smoke towards Viollet, before turning to the till.

  ‘So, er . . . where do you want to start?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘The basement.’

  Slim tossed Frankie the keys and he caught them clean and led Viollet through to the back of the club and unlocked the basement door.

  ‘It’s kind of creepy and spidery down here,’ he warned, resisting the urge to add, So you should fit in just fine.

  He hit the light switch and led her down into the windowless room. It was still pretty empty in here from when him and Xandra had cleared the worst of the crap out the year before last.

  Viollet walked slowly around, gently drumming her knuckles on the bare brickwork every couple of feet. Even with the single bare light bulb on, it was still gloomy enough for Viollet to have had to take off her shades, so he could now see those eyes of hers again. So, yeah, maybe not such a terrible environment, after all.

  ‘Good and solid, and plenty of room for what we’ve got in mind,’ she said. ‘Dry too. Of course, you’re going to need to put in a dehumidifier, just to be on the safe side. And make sure the filter’s changed on a daily basis. By you. Not Hopalong Cassidy up there or anyone else. Oh, and get the locks changed too. We don’t want anyone else down here but you.’ She glanced back up the stairs. ‘And the door. We’re going to need something much more secure.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Sarcasm. Boom.

  She ignored it. ‘Uh-huh, these old pipes . . .’ She meant the ones running across the ceiling and was tall enough to press her fingers up against them. ‘They’re cold. Are they even connected to anything?’

  ‘What do I look like, a plumber?’

  She looked him up and down. ‘I thought I already told you I thought you were more boy band.’

  ‘Crappy boy band,’ he corrected her.

  ‘Like there’s another kind?’

  ‘Fair enough. But no, I’m not exactly the practical kind.’

  She tapped the pipes again. ‘OK, so find out what these are doing here. Then get them either stripped out or rerouted. And have the ceiling checked too. It looks solid enough, but we need to be sure.’ She was already walking back up the stairs. ‘Oh, and cost isn’t an issue. Just get the best. Dougie and his associates will be picking up the bill.’

  Huh, well that was something, at least. Frankie grimaced. Idiot. Because he was falling, wasn’t he? Right into Dougie’s trap. Into doing what he was told, when he was told. And into then feeling grateful too for whatever pathetic scraps he was thrown.

  ‘Oh, and Frankie?’

  ‘What?’ Those blue eyes of hers were staring right into his.

  ‘I really can’t impress on you how important it is that you don’t talk to anyone else about what you’re going to be keeping here.’

  She didn’t need to say any more. Frankie could still see him, that man . . . or what was left of him. Had he had kids? A wife? Did anyone even know he was gone?

  He followed Viollet back up the stairs.

  ‘What’s through there?’ she asked, pointing at the door at the end of the corridor.

  ‘Xandra’s place.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘I’m she,’ said Xandra, coming up behind them, walking through from the bar with a stack of empty beer crates in her arms. ‘Full-time lodger. Part-time manager, caretaker. At your service.’ She put down the crates and stood arms folded, that black panther of hers flexing. ‘And who might you be?’ she asked.

  ‘Miss Coetzee? From the council. Fire regs,’ Frankie said.

  Xandra stared Viollet dead in the eyes, clearly thinking she didn’t exactly look like your regular council type. ‘You will forgive me if I don’t drop down on one knee,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, curtsy, I get it,’ Viollet dead-toned. ‘What a very original sense of humour you have.’

  Xandra smiled at her flatly. ‘So what’s fire regs got to do with the basement?’ she asked.

  ‘Er . . .’ A good point. Frankie’s mind went blank. He looked to Viollet.

  ‘Wine,’ she said. ‘He’s applied for a licence to keep wine down here. With proper heating and humidity controls.’

  Wine. Of course. In a cellar. A wine cellar. The perfect cover.

  ‘But you don’t even like wine,’ Xandra said to Frankie.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t even drink.’

  Viollet raised an eyebrow at this.

  ‘It’s not for me,’ Frank
ie said.

  ‘Then who? The club? What’s wrong with the storeroom round the back of the bar that we already use?’

  ‘This wine’s, er, different,’ said Frankie. ‘Expensive. An investment. It has to, er, be kept in the right conditions, or else it will . . .’

  ‘Degrade,’ Viollet said.

  ‘And that seriously needs a council licence?’ Xandra said, still not fully buying it. But the last thing Frankie needed was her or anyone else sticking their nose in. Do that and they’d only end up in danger too.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘because of the temperature control equipment, right?’

  ‘Correct,’ Viollet said, turning her back on Xandra. ‘There’s also a back alley here running along the buildings that your fire escape leads out onto,’ she said to Frankie. Another statement, not a question.

  ‘Dog Shit Alley’s its official nomenclature,’ Xandra said. ‘Sorry, another one of Slim’s,’ she added. ‘It must be catching.’

  Viollet ignored her. ‘Show me,’ she told Frankie.

  He unlocked the back door and stepped outside with her into the sun. For a second, he felt the months and years hurtling backwards, and remembered shoving Jack out here on the morning he’d turned up covered in blood, with Snaresby’s thug cops already smashing down the club’s front door.

  Viollet looked up and down the alley which ran along the backs of the buildings, then her eyes seemed to settle on something just past the bins at the south end. She walked towards it. What the hell was she up to now?

  ‘What is it?’ he said, following her. ‘Oh, and by the way, if you wouldn’t mind not actually ordering me around in front of the people I work with, then that might, just might, make them think that you haven’t actually got me doing all this shit for you under duress.’

  She ignored him and kept walking, finally stopping next to a single-storey red-brick building at the end of the alley. Well, building was being generous. Because, whatever this was, it was strictly utilitarian. No windows. Just the one door, made out of metal, and painted green. Plastered across its centre was a fluorescent sticker, with the words ‘Thames Water’ printed beneath a running tap symbol. Frankie had never even noticed it before, even though he must have snuck down here for hundreds of crafty cigarettes as a teenager over the years.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, as he watched her reading it. ‘You’re planning on getting a real job? An honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work? Giving something back to the community for a change?’

  ‘Is that meant to be funny?’

  ‘Ah, well, the test for that is if it makes you do this.’ Frankie smiled.

  ‘It doesn’t.’

  She walked back down the alley to the back of the club and stared up the fire escape leading onto the roof.

  ‘What’s up there?’

  ‘The sky.’

  ‘I mean lower than that.’

  ‘My flat.’

  ‘There next.’

  He opened his mouth to protest. But why bother? She’d already made the unilateral decision to use his basement as a lock-up for stolen art. What on earth would make her think that she couldn’t do whatever the hell she wanted in his home as well?

  He led her back out through the front of the club and in at the flat’s street entrance, rather than going up from the club. Both Slim and Xandra were already busy behind the bar and dealing with customers, thank God, because he didn’t want either of them seeing him taking her upstairs, not with their suspicions already aroused as it was. What he had to avoid at all costs was them getting even a sniff of the truth. It was one thing his life potentially being ruined over this, but no bloody way was he going to be taking either of them down with him. The less they knew, the better. The only way to keep them safe.

  Frankie’s mum stared disapprovingly down at Viollet from her vantage point on the hallway wall.

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘My mum.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘She just seems too pretty to be related to you.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha.’

  ‘She live here with you?’

  ‘No, she’s . . .’ He didn’t want to get into this. Not with her. ‘ . . . no longer around.’

  ‘Nice feel to the place,’ Viollet said, walking ahead of him down the corridor, trailing her fingertips across the flock wallpaper.

  ‘I’m getting it done up.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Though why the hell was he telling her that? Who gave a shit what she thought?

  She walked through into the lounge. Xandra had already finished redecorating the bathroom and kitchen and had now started prepping in here. Groundsheets covered the furniture and floor. The walls and ceilings had all been sugar-soaped and fillered.

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t the practical kind?’ Viollet said, as Frankie joined her.

  ‘I’m not. This is Xandra’s work. The girl you met downstairs.’

  ‘And she’s . . . ?’

  ‘Not my girlfriend. I’m not her type.’ Viollet waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. Xandra’s private life was none of Viollet Coetzee’s friggin’ business. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I really don’t know why we need to be here.’ Because what was she planning now? Christ, he dreaded to think.

  She stuck her head round the bathroom and spare-room doors, then walked through to the kitchen. ‘You live here on your own, then.’ Another statement.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ And more to the point, what bloody business of yours is it, anyway?

  ‘One plate in the sink. One knife. One fork. Football clutter all over the walls.’

  ‘Oi, that’s not clutter, those are collector’s items that –’

  ‘One PlayStation control on the living-room sofa . . . one Mission: Impossible DVD case on the table . . . one dirty running kit and one wet towel on the bathroom floor . . .’ She pressed ‘Play’ on the little midi sound system on top of the microwave. AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ started pumping out. She just raised one eyebrow as though that settled the argument.

  ‘That’s not proof of anything. I know plenty of girls who like AC/DC, actually,’ Frankie said, but she was already walking back down the corridor.

  ‘And through here?’ she said.

  ‘My bedroom.’

  She walked in ahead of him.

  ‘It’s not exactly very homely, is it?’

  She had a point. The Old Man had never been one for clutter when this had been his, and in spite of Frankie’s decision to try and make the place feel a bit more his, all he’d actually done was move his Arsenal scarf – another collector’s item, thank you very much – in from where it had been hanging off his top bunk in the spare room and pinned it up here on the wall above the window. But who the hell was she to be criticizing his choice in interior decor anyway? Surely not even Dougie thought his current control of Frankie ran to that?

  ‘Oh, and let me guess,’ he said, ‘your bedroom, wherever the fuck that is, is no doubt jam-packed with loving little domestic flourishes . . . crystal perfume bottles on the windowsills, fluffy toy bunnies on the crocheted pillow cases?’ More like a razor-sharp bloody samurai sword on the wall and a sawn-off shotgun under the bed.

  She smiled at him tolerantly, the same way he always did himself whenever one of the locals got pissed and on a political rant down at the bar.

  ‘If you even have a home,’ he said. ‘I mean, of your own. Not wherever it is that Dougie’s got you shacked up.’

  Her cocksure smile slipped at that. A sore point. Because it was true? Because he was right and something serious was going on between them?

  ‘Just to be clear,’ he said, ‘I’m not saying that just because you’re a bird.’

  ‘Bird?’ That raised right eyebrow again.

  ‘Girl.’

  And again.

  ‘All right, woman. Whatever. No, I’m saying it because I saw you in the back of that limo with him outside the Para
dise on the day of his dad’s funeral and –’

  ‘Yeah, a point you’ve already raised.’

  ‘Only I didn’t just see you getting into it and sitting beside him . . .’ Frankie watched her carefully. ‘. . . I saw you kissing him too.’

  ‘And you’re telling me this because . . . ?’

  What a question. But why was he telling her this? Because he was annoyed at her? For marching him round his own club and now his own bloody flat too? Because her whole bleedin’ holier-than-thou attitude was making him feel even bloody worse about himself than he already was? Or just because he wanted to knock her down a peg or two and remind her that she was every bit as much a pawn in Dougie’s games as he was himself?

  She answered her own question with another: ‘Because you’d rather it was you in the back of that car instead of him?’

  Frankie’s cheeks prickled. ‘If you mean would I rather it was me calling the shots . . .’ And not being shat upon. ‘. . . then, yeah, I would.’

  She looked him dead in the eyes. ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’

  That prickle turned to a burn. ‘Look, I don’t know what kind of power play this is –’

  She ignored him. ‘Mind if I take a seat?’

  ‘Or whether there is an actual reason why we’re up here.’

  But she was still ignoring him. She sat down on the edge of the mattress and used the toe of her left shoe to prise off the heel of her right.

  ‘As in a real reason,’ he said, ‘like to do with our business, this whole fucking scheme that you and Dougie have cooked up . . .’ Frankie was trying his best not to look down at her legs. Trying, and almost succeeding too. ‘. . . and if there is, I think that maybe you should just, you know, cut to the fucking chase, OK?’

  ‘OK then. Strip.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, come on, it’s not like one of your friend Slim’s long words. Not like inclement,’ she said, removing her shades and unleashing those blue eyes again. ‘I’m sure you know what it means.’

  ‘Huh?’ Had Frankie just heard right?

  ‘Just take your clothes off.’

  OK, so he had.

  ‘Seriously. I want to see what you look like. Under that.’

  Frankie tugged at his shirt. ‘This?’

  ‘Yeah. But not just that. Those too.’