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The Break

Page 24

by Ronnie O'Sullivan


  ‘So why didn’t you tell me?’ Frankie said. ‘When I admitted what I’d got myself caught up in? Why didn’t you tell me then that you already knew?’

  Tommy smiled, blowing a thin plume of grey smoke up towards the spotless ceiling. ‘Well, because then I’d have had to admit that I’d been testing you.’

  ‘To see which way I’d flip?’

  ‘To see where your loyalties truly lay.’

  ‘To see if you could trust me?’

  ‘Which I can.’

  Frankie remembered his last meeting here, that day before the heist. When Tommy had asked him, And there’s nothing else I need to know? Thank God, he’d changed his mind and told him everything he knew. Because if he hadn’t, well . . . he’d probably be as dead as a dodo by now. Or a Dougie. Or a Saint.

  ‘And that’s another reason why I decided to call off the fix in the tournament,’ Tommy said. ‘You fronting up like that, it got me to thinking, that maybe some people really are trustworthy enough to go into legitimate business with, not like that dishonest, double-dealing, unreliable prick who let Hackney track go to the dogs . . . ’

  ‘An unfortunate turn of phrase,’ Tam said.

  ‘Eh? Oh, “to the dogs” . . . hah hah, good one, Tam, nice spot . . . get it, Darren? Get it?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, Unc. Brilliant.’ Darren reached for a third peach brioche, but Tommy slapped his hand away.

  ‘Yeah,’ Riley said, ‘because, see, you’re maybe not like him and more now like a . . . like a trusted . . .’

  ‘Junior partner,’ said Tam. ‘Very junior,’ he added, glaring at Frankie.

  ‘Yeah, more like that,’ Tommy smiled. ‘So how do you like them apples, then, Frankie?’ he asked.

  A lot more than ending up like Dougie and The Saint, that was for sure. ‘Yeah,’ Frankie said. ‘Junior partner sounds just about right.’ But did it? Sure, at least in the context of the Soho Open. But was that really all Riley was talking about?

  ‘Good. All’s well that ends well, then,’ said Tommy.

  But it wasn’t over. Not for Frankie.

  ‘When . . . when whatever it was that happened to Dougie . . . happened,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Grew happened to Dougie,’ Tommy said, flicking ash off his cigar into his herbal tea. ‘But what about it? You want details? Photos?’ Tommy grinned like a skull. ‘Because you know me, I love a snap or two to keep as souvenirs, especially of people who I wasn’t there in person to say goodbye to . . . and that twat even left me a snazzy new little camera.’

  ‘No, it’s not that.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Was there a pistol?’

  Tommy frowned. ‘No, I think Grew used a piano. At least for the coup de . . . de . . . ?’ He glanced sidelong at Tam.

  ‘Grâce,’ Tam said.

  ‘Yeah, grâce.’

  ‘No, I mean did Dougie have the pistol on him? The one I told you about. The Browning Hi-Power?’

  ‘The one he was using to blackmail you with? The one with your sticky little prints all over it?’

  Frankie had had no choice but to tell Tommy about the gun the same morning he’d told him about Dougie’s plans, because right away Tommy had demanded to know why the hell Frankie was working with him. But Frankie still hadn’t told him that it was the same pistol that had been used to kill Mario Baotic, because that would have been giving Tommy the same power over him that it had given Dougie.

  ‘Yeah, that one.’

  ‘No, or at least I didn’t hear nothing about it.’

  ‘No, boss,’ Tam said. ‘There was no gun, apart from that sawn-off.’

  Was he telling the truth? Was it possible that Dougie had got rid of it before Jesús and Grew had arrived? Could someone else really have come round and taken it away? Frankie couldn’t see how.

  Tommy stubbed out his cigar and held up both hands. ‘A mystery then. But you know what? We can’t ask little Dougie now . . . not with him having been . . .’ He nodded at the bottom of the pool and crossed himself. ‘. . . so permanently laid to rest.’

  Oh, Jesus, he didn’t mean that . . . but, yeah, from the grin on Tommy’s face, as he gazed down at the freshly laid pool foundations, it was obvious that he did.

  ‘But you know what, Frankie?’ he went on. ‘Don’t let it prey on your mind too much. Because if it ever were to turn up and come into my possession, I’d make sure to keep it somewhere nice and safe and out of sight.’

  If . . . the way he said it . . . it sounded more like it already had.

  ‘After all, we’re friends, right?’ said Tommy. ‘And friends always watch each other’s backs.’ Rising, Riley slipped off his robe to reveal his shiny purple budgie smugglers beneath.

  ‘One last question,’ Frankie said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Once you found out what Dougie was planning, why didn’t you just stop it? The whole heist?’ Because Grew had already told Frankie about how Bram, Rivet and Lola had never been working direct for Dougie Hamilton at all, but for Viollet. And how, after showing Dougie the photos on that camera and getting their payment, Viollet had then told them where their new loyalties lay. Rivet and Bram had swung back round and taken all that art back in through the sewers into the Royal Academy, where they’d also then cleared the roof. ‘Why did you let them go to all the trouble of stealing all that stuff to begin with, if you were only planning on putting it back? Why didn’t you just, I don’t know, call the whole thing off and make your move on Dougie then?’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s because I wanted to see if it was possible,’ Tommy said. ‘To really get in there, into the Royal Academy, and nick something and then get back out without being noticed at all.’

  ‘What, out of academic curiosity?’ Frankie somehow doubted it.

  ‘Not exactly.’ Tommy walked over to the pool steps and slowly lowered himself into the water. ‘So what do you think of the decor?’ he asked, setting off in a gentle doggy paddle towards the far end of the pool.

  ‘Yeah, it’s like I said last time I was here, it’s classy. Real classy,’ Frankie said.

  ‘No, I’m not talking about the fucking columns, son. Here, Darren, hit that bloody switch.’

  ‘Sure, Unc,’ Darren said, waddling over to the wall next to the jacuzzi.

  A light came on at the end of the pool. It was only then that Frankie noticed it, the curtains covering the alcove there. They slowly began to part.

  Frankie just gawped. Because, Christ, was he really seeing what he thought he was? The Taddei Tondo . . . the same priceless work of art by Michelangelo that he’d nearly used to bash that skylight in?

  ‘Tah dah!’ said Riley. ‘Or Taddei, at least!’

  ‘Hah hah. You’re on fire today, Unc,’ chuckled Darren.

  Frankie’s mouth was still flapping wide. Because, surely, surely, he couldn’t actually mean that . . . ? No . . . it had to be a fake . . . Yeah, there’d been that Italian bloke here, hadn’t there? That forger, Matteo, or whatever he’d been called. He must have just copied the design for Tommy . . . because there was no way that Tommy . . . that the real reason that Tommy had let that whole heist go ahead . . . was to see if he could actually get a fake one in there and then somehow get the original out? No, there was no way. There was no way at all, right?

  Right?

  Experience book one in the Soho Nights series

  If you enjoyed THE BREAK

  then you’ll love listening to FRAMED

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  Experience book two in the Soho Nights series

  If you enjoyed THE BREAK, then you’ll love DOUBLE KISS

  The race is on.

  The stakes are high.

  Frankie James thought his troubles were behind him. He’s busy running his Soho Club, and his brother’s finally out of prison. But when a postcard arrives from Mallorca, he’s stopped in his tracks . . . Is it from his mother – the woman who’s been missing for eight years?

  When the goddaughter of Lond
on’s fiercest gangster, Tommy Riley, goes missing in Ibiza, Tommy knows there’s one man for the job – Frankie James. Just when Frankie was on the straight and narrow, he’s now faced with an impossible choice. If he agrees to help find Tanya, he’ll be thrown into a world of danger. If he doesn’t, Tommy could destroy him.

  For Frankie James, old habits die hard. One thing’s for sure, playing with this gang is no game. But with everything at stake, how can Frankie say no?

  Read on for an extract . . .

  1

  ‘It’s coming home . . . It’s coming home . . . It’s coming . . . Football’s coming home . . .’

  The Ambassador Club was packed tighter than a tube carriage during rush hour. The owner, Frankie James, reckoned there had to be 150 punters in here. Maybe more. Pumping their fists in the air, with their England flags draped down their backs, looking like a bunch of pissed-up, wannabe superheroes all trying and failing to take off.

  The hulking, great silhouette of Spartak Sidarov stood wedged in the open doorway, bright sunlight pouring in through the tiny gaps that his massive shoulders hadn’t quite blocked out. Frankie’s old mate was more used to bossing Oxford Street night club queues, but it was good to have him here today, seeing as how many people had turned up this afternoon to watch the match and how hammered most of them already were.

  A good job too that Frankie and Xandra had put the hardboard covers on the club’s twelve snooker tables that morning, while Dave the Shock had been installing the two big wall TV projectors he’d picked up from the Rumbelows clearance sale. Because none of this crowd were here to play. The whole room stank of smoke and spilt booze. There wasn’t a ball or a cue in sight.

  The tabletops were littered instead with overflowing ashtrays and pint glasses, and a young woman called Shazza was now curled up on table six and snoring like a drain – Frankie kept half an eye on her.

  Everyone else’s eyes were glued to the screens. England one, Switzerland nil, with just ten minutes to go. It was the first match of Euro 96 and the action was taking place right here in London, just up the road at Wembley. With the whole world watching. Or at least that’s how it felt.

  ‘Come on, boys. Keep the bastards out,’ Frankie muttered under his breath, swilling dirty pint glasses one after the other through the glass-washing machine behind the bar, his shoulders tightening up as the Swiss surged forward again.

  He’d put a hundred quid down at Ladbrokes on England to win. But not just this match, the whole tournament, three weeks from now, at odds of 7-1. A win would mean Frankie could escape Soho for a nice little holiday.

  He hadn’t had a day off since Christmas, not once in the last six months.

  He glanced back at the photo montage his mum had stuck up here on the wall between the optics. Back when her and the Old Man had still been together, and they’d all used to head off down the Costa del Sol along with a bunch of other families from round here. His mum was right there in the middle, her beautiful smile suspended in time, as she hugged her two precious boys – Jack and Frankie. Frankie couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

  Frankie was rudely brought back to the here and now by loud cheers and shouts of encouragement. Up on the screen, the clock ticked over to the eighty-three-minute mark. The crowd started belting out the Lightning Seeds’ anthem again, even louder this time.

  ‘Three Lions on a shirt . . . neeeeeever stopped me dreaming . . .’

  Frankie joined in. It was hard not to. This sodding tune was that damned catchy and the stakes were that bloody high. He grinned across at Doc Slim and Xandra. Both working the bar beside him. Doc doffed his worn leather cowboy hat, looking more and more like Colonel Sanders by the day now that he’d upgraded his grisly grey moustache to a full-blown beard.

  Xandra was sporting her new, that-girl-from-the-Cranberries, cropped barnet, along with the panther tattoo on her bulging right bicep that Frankie had sprung for on her nineteenth birthday last month.

  Bloody kids. She was only five years younger than him, but he still felt like her dad. He’d even insisted on meeting the tattooist and checking he was properly licensed before he’d let him set to work. But then Frankie had always been older than his years. He remembered his mum always saying that about him, even when he was a nipper.

  ‘Don’t give up the day job,’ Xandra laughed, mock grimacing and sticking her fingers in her heavily studded ears. She’d already told him she’d heard cows in labour singing better than him on the County Antrim farm where she’d grown up. The bloody cheek.

  Then boooooooo. The crowd’s choral antics switched to jeers. Frankie’s ice-blue eyes locked back on the screen. Bollocks, double bollocks, Stuart Pearce! He’d only just been bloody penalized, hadn’t he? For handball. In the box. Shit-a-brick. This was all Frankie needed. England starting off their campaign with a draw.

  Pearce’s nickname – ‘Psycho, psycho, psycho!’ – rumbled through the crowd. The Swiss striker, Türkyilmaz – ‘Wanker, wanker, wanker!’ – stepped up for the kick. Seaman stared him down from the English goal, his dodgy ’tache and slick-back glistening in the blazing hot sun, making him look more like he was planning on selling his opponent some double glazing than blocking an actual shot.

  Frankie couldn’t watch. It was the same as whenever he watched Tim frigging Henman on the box, tightening up on his second serve at set point. Frankie sometimes felt that maybe he was capable of jinxing it all personally, just by wanting it so much.

  He looked the opposite way down the bar instead, at Ash Crowther and Sea Breeze Strinati, who were both hunkered down on their usual stools, with their bent backs squarely to the room, totally wrapped up in the same game of chess they’d been playing since last Tuesday. Or was it the Tuesday before?

  Then the whole crowd groaned, ‘Noooooooo!’ And Frankie forced himself to look back at the telly. Arse flaps. The Swiss players were celebrating all over the pitch. Practically cartwheeling, the cuckoo clock-fiddling bastards. Gritting his teeth, he watched the replay. Türkyilmaz went left. Seaman right. Leaving it one all now, with less than four minutes to go.

  ‘Bloody England,’ he groaned.

  ‘Aye,’ Slim grumbled, bumping his hat on the ceiling light as he reached up to fill a tumbler from the optics. ‘It’s at parlous times like this that one almost wishes one had been born a Kraut.’

  ‘Oi, mate, two pints of Guinness,’ some bumfluff-chinned, pumped-up teenage lump in a white Umbro tracksuit yelled across at Frankie. ‘Er, please?’ he quickly added, clocking Frankie’s glare, along with his black suit and tie, and no doubt wisely hazarding a guess that he was the boss man round here.

  Dress smart. That’s what Frankie’s Old Man had always told him. Look like the man and most people will treat you like him too.

  He’d not been wrong. Frankie served the lad, who was all smiles and friendliness now. Even gave Frankie a tip, which he bunged in the communal Heinz baked beans can by the till, safely out of reach of any tea-leafing bastards in here. Today’s event had transformed the whole of Soho into a pickpockets’ paradise, bursting with pissed-up punters, all flashing their cash.

  He risked another glance at the screen. Two minutes left, before injury time. With England nowhere bleeding near the Swiss bloody goal. He obviously wasn’t the only one getting that sinking, Tim Henman feeling. The cheering and chanting had all but tailed off, an uneasy, muttering half-silence taking its place.

  The drinks queue had finally dried up, with the whole crowd now transfixed by the screens. Maybe that was no bad thing either: the Ambassador Club had been non-stop for the last two hours and Frankie was knackered and Xandra and Slim’s eyes looked like they were being held open with matchsticks. But, on the upside, at least the till was overflowing for a change. The takings were even better than Frankie had hoped for and he allowed himself a little smile. But, Christ, would he sleep heavy tonight.

  ‘Another drink, boys?’ he asked Ash and Sea Breeze.

  Ash looked up and scowled. Sea Breeze j
ust scowled.

  ‘Fine, suit yourselves.’ Frankie walked back over to Xandra. ‘Miserable old gits,’ he said.

  ‘Still not talking to you then?’

  ‘No.’

  She shot him an awkward half-smile.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ he grumbled. ‘In fact, it’s downright bloody rude. I’ve known them both since I was a kid.’

  ‘And that, old chap, is precisely their point,’ said Slim, fixing himself his usual whiskey and soda. ‘They’ve been coming here longer than you. It’s like a second home to them.’

  ‘More like the opposite of home,’ Frankie said. ‘Half the time the only reason they’re here at all is to get away from their bloody wives.’

  ‘And for my erudite and loquacious company,’ Slim said.

  ‘Yeah, I do actually know what those words mean,’ Frankie said. Which was at least half true.

  ‘They just feel like they should have been consulted, that’s all,’ said Slim.

  He was talking about the TVs. The Sky Sports signs outside. The new customers.

  ‘This is a business,’ Frankie said, ‘and a business –’

  ‘Needs to make a profit,’ Xandra and Slim parroted, both of them rolling their eyes.

  Frankie felt himself flush. Christ, had he really been saying it that much? A half-cheer went up from the crowd, then died down. Tony Adams. But the shot went nowhere. Then more muttering and shuffling started up. It felt like no one else in here really reckoned that England were going to score again either. The whole atmosphere was winding right down.

  ‘You two taking the piss doesn’t make it any less true,’ he told Xandra and Slim. ‘We’ve got to move with the times –’ If we don’t want to get left behind . . . He nearly said that too, but stopped himself just in time. Could already see them starting to roll their eyes again. ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘it’s not like we’re doing anything else that every other bar in town hasn’t already done.’

 

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