He sighed, finally reaching the club, feeling suddenly flat, feeling knackered. He fumbled for his keys. But then something caught his eye. The lights inside were off.
Hell’s tits, what time was it? He checked his watch – the old man’s watch, just about the only thing left of any value from his family’s glory days – and saw that it was already half-past-midnight. Bollocks. He’d told Slim he’d be back by eleven.
He saw something was wrong the second he reached the side entrance for the flat upstairs. It was the cctv camera that gave it away. It was pointing the wrong way. Someone had twisted it round, so that it now faced upwards. Someone strong. The camera wasn’t designed to be pointed that way. Its bracket had been bent out of shape. The door’s lock had been forced as well.
He hurried back down the street to the club’s main door. His heartbeat spiked the second he tried it. It wasn’t locked. But why not? Fuck. Slim always locked it, whenever he closed up himself.
He leaned in, took a closer look at the door. But it hadn’t been forced. Meaning maybe that whoever had gone in through the side entrance might have come out through here and already left?
But who the hell would be doing that? Certainly not Slim.
Should he call someone? The cops? No. Sod that. He didn’t want them back here. Didn’t want to be on their radar any more than he already was. Especially if whoever had broken in was now gone.
Easy does it. He edged the door open and stepped inside. Didn’t reach for the light switch just there to the right. Not yet. Just listened. He knew this place better than the back of his hand. He could hear the clock ticking above the bar, the distant hissing sound of the leaking toilet cistern. But nothing else. Nothing wrong.
His eyes began to adjust to the dim light filtering in from outside. He heard no one, saw no one. A car drove past outside, its headlights sweeping across the room through the cracked windows, casting long shadows across the tables, but not picking out anyone lurking inside.
The middle of the bar where the till was. His eyes locked on it as he moved slowly forwards, letting the door hiss shut behind him. Had Slim remembered to put the takings in the safe? Yes, of course he would have. A few steps more and he’d see.
But then – fuck, he stumbled, nearly tripped. He thudded into one of the tables. Bollocks. Stupid drunk twat. His rubbed at his eyes. They were watering. The whole room looked blurry. He sniffed. Jesus, he could even smell Jack Daniels on his breath.
He still couldn’t see. He reached for the lighter in his pocket. Didn’t want to risk turning on the lights. Not yet. His thumb found the wheel and started stroking it into life.
Then stopped. Because – oh, shit, oh bollocks, oh fuck – it wasn’t Jack Daniels he could smell. Something much more fucking deadly that that. Petrol. A shiver chased up and down his spine. Jesus, yes, that’s why his eyes were watering. He had to get the fuck out of here. Now.
Softly, slowly, he backed up to the door. Gently, ever so gently, he felt for the handle and turned it. He slowly pushed the door open and took off his jacket and used it to wedge it. He let the cool night air flood in.
He saw it then. In the wide shaft of amber streetlight now stretching across the room. There. On the table in the centre of the room. A five-gallon jerry can. Deep breath. Go. His stomach twisted with nerves, as he walked slowly back towards it. Was it open? Yes. Fuck. Its lid was off. Right there on the table. And something else. What the fuck? A piece of paper. Something on top of it. A solitary match.
A message typed in black ink underneath it read:
One match. That’s all it takes. Back off. While you can.
18
Frankie had no choice but to keep the club shut the next morning. He glanced at his reflection in the old Guinness mirror on the wall by the club’s front door and tried not to retch. Not just because last night’s Jack Daniels seemed determined to put in a reappearance, but because of the stink. Because he couldn’t clean it up. Not until the piggin’ cops arrived.
He’d been sitting here, suited and booted, two aspirins and one bacon sarnie down, waiting for his hangover to clear, for nearly two hours, since eight a.m. He’d reckoned on them being here by now. First thing. He’d called them last night and reported what had gone down. He’d expected them round right away, but they’d fobbed him off.
He was now half-wishing he hadn’t called them at all. Because they were obviously just enjoying messing with him and keeping him waiting. Maybe he should call them back? Tell them to forget it? To sod off? So he could clean this shit up instead? Or not. He stared at the jerry can on the table, still wanting to punch something . . . someone. But part of him wanted the cops to nail these bastards.
He groaned softly. This was another reason why he hated drinking, why he hated him drinking, not just because he made bad decisions while he was drunk, but because it affected his decision-making so badly the next day too.
Slim, who was sitting next to him on the worn leather sofa, said he hardly ever got hangovers. One of the benefits of being a fully fledged alcoholic, he claimed, though Frankie reckoned it was probably more to do with the fact that most weeks Slim never really sobered up fully at all.
The windows looking out onto the street were wide open on their hinges. Bright sunlight glared in, bringing with it a whiff of drains and hot tarmac from where council workers down the street were filling in potholes. But none of it was strong enough to totally drown out the stink of petrol inside.
‘If I ever find out who did this . . .’ Frankie said.
‘Then you’ll leave it well alone,’ said Slim, sipping on his coffee and brandy, or carajillo, as he called it, something he said every adult in Spain had with their Weetabix or whatever they ate every morning, like it was something cultural, instead of just another early morning fix.
‘No, I won’t. I’ll bloody well . . .’ Drag them down the petrol station and jam a pump nozzle down their throats and fill them up like balloons. That’s what he wanted to do. Just another in a seemingly unlimited variation of vigilante revenge fantasies his brain had been cooking up since he’d gone to bed last night, some involving snooker cues and places to insert them, others, more lurid, involving emptying whatever petrol was left inside that jerry can over whoever had brought it here, before holding up a lighted match to their faces just for the joy of watching them squeal.
But fuck it. What was the point? The reality was he had no way of tracking these pricks down. On top of killing the side-door camera, they’d swiped the cctv tapes from behind the bar. They were pros. But still, he had to hope. Maybe the cops might find something, eh? Prints on the jerry can. Or the match. Or the note. If the lazy toe-rags ever got here, that was.
‘Fuck it. I’m gonna call them again,’ he said, getting up. He couldn’t sit here any more.
‘Don’t waste your time,’ said Slim.
He had a point. Frankie had called the cops six times already. Each time the answer had been the same: they’d be here as fast as they could.
‘If this was some posh mansion in Chelsea . . .’
‘But it’s not. It’s here . . . and . . .’
Slim didn’t need to say it: And it’s you.
Meaning not Frankie James, the citizen who had the same rights as any other citizen, but that Frankie James, the son of Bernie James and the brother of Jack, just another set of bad genes from a family used to living on the wrong side of the law.
‘I’m half tempted to march down the station.’
‘Stay put. They’ll come. When they’re good and ready,’ Slim added. ‘When they know they’ve left you to sweat long enough and get you properly pissed off. Then they’ll turn up, just to see the look on your face.’
He was right, of course.
‘You know what gets me most?’ Frankie said, walking over to the table. He glared down at the jerry can, still there on the table where he’d left it for fear of contaminating it with his own prints.
‘What?’
‘Whoever did th
is, right? They’d have done it because they were told to . . . because they were following orders . . .’ From whatever gangster scumbag they worked for. Terence Hamilton, was Frankie’s guess. ‘To send out a warning, yeah?’ To warn him off playing detective. To stop him trying to prove Jack wasn’t behind any of this shit. ‘But this isn’t just a warning, is it? This is actual damage. Deliberate, that they must have known was gonna cost.’
The drenched baize around the base of the can was ruined. The sodden, petrol-soaked cushions would now need reupholstering. Whatever bastard was responsible had clearly walked round the whole table, pouring as they did, pissing all over his property like a fucking dog.
But what really stuck in his gullet was what they’d left right there in the centre of the table. He hadn’t seen it last night, but couldn’t stop looking at it now. The framed photo of his mum and dad which they’d taken from the wall, the last one he had of them before they’d separated, before she’d vanished, and before the old man had been put away. It had been spattered with petrol. Parts of it had already faded away.
Personal. They’d made this fucking personal. Whoever had done this had loved every second of it. And for that he wanted to ruin their fucking lives.
He read the note again. How it was phrased. Whoever had typed it knew he was snooping around. Had Mickey Flynn been shooting his mouth off again? Had word reached Terence Hamilton’s mob the same way it had reached Riley? Or had there really been someone sitting in that car last night watching Jack’s flat? Someone who’d now fingered Frankie for what he’d been doing? Was that what was behind this? And if it was, then what else had they seen? Him and Sharon leaving together? Sweet fucking Jesus. What the hell might they have made of that? At least she was plainclothes. They might not even have known she was a cop.
A knock at the door. Frankie went over to open it. It was ten o’clock. Opening time. Most likely a punter, rather than a pig. He’d already decided what he’d tell them. That they’d had a leak in the upstairs flat and had the plumbers coming round. Didn’t want them knowing the truth. Plenty of other places they could play instead of here.
But when he opened the door, it was bloody Snaresby he saw standing there. King Pig. With his dirty yellow fucking smile.
‘I understand you’ve suffered some kind of a threat?’ He said it cheerily, like in his mind this might somehow actually be good news. The prick.
‘What’s that got to do with you? They told me at the station that an Officer Klein would be coming round.’
‘Yes, but I was in the neighbourhood, so I thought I’d save him the trip.’ Snaresby walked past Frankie without asking. ‘I noticed your cctv unit was mangled outside. I take it you didn’t get any footage of the people who did it?’
‘Nothing. They took the tapes.’
Again, that smile. ‘Oh, you do keep tapes in there sometimes, do you? It’s just I wondered after the other day when I came round.’
A warning. Frankie had to be careful. Snaresby was no mug. Frankie remembered him checking the machine when he’d come round looking for Jack. He must have guessed that Jack had been there right from the start and that Frankie had ditched the tape.
He walked over to the table and stared down at the piece of A4.
‘Now what could that mean?’ he said. ‘Back off? Back off from what?’ He poked his tongue into the corner of his mouth, like he had a piece of food stuck there he was trying to dislodge. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been putting your nose somewhere it doesn’t belong?’
‘I don’t know what it fucking means,’ Frankie said. ‘But I want to know who fucking done it and I want them nicked.’
‘Ah . . . so us poor coppers can be useful sometimes, can we?’ He sniffed loudly. ‘Computer printout,’ he said, looking back down at the piece of A4.
‘They teach you that at detective school, do they? To point out the obvious? Glad to see my tax money’s being well spent.’
‘I’m surprised you’re paying any taxes at all, son,’ Snaresby said, looking around at the empty tables. ‘What with it being so, well, deathly quiet in here. You might even have a case to apply for charitable status,’ he added, before nodding down at the piece of paper. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you see, the point I’m trying to make here is that anyone could have printed this out. Even you.’
‘What,’ Frankie scoffed, ‘I’d threaten to torch my own place?’
Snaresby picked at his teeth again, then examined his fingertip with a smile, before wiping it on his trouser leg. ‘Well you may laugh,’ he said, ‘but a note like this might make a nice little cover story if you were planning on torching the place yourself . . . You know the thing . . . making out you’d been threatened in order to put yourself out of the picture – foreshadowing, I believe writers call it – before burning it all to the ground a couple of weeks from now and claiming the insurance.’
‘So now you’re accusing me of arson?’
‘And fraud,’ Snaresby pointed out in a horribly helpful tone, as if Frankie might have missed the point. ‘But only theoretically, of course. Not in reality. At least, I don’t think?’ Again that smile. ‘No, son, you see I’m merely pointing out that you would not be the first owner of an obviously failing business to try and pull off this kind of a stunt.’
Enough of this fucking around. ‘Are you gonna get someone down here to check for prints, or not?’ Frankie said.
Snaresby ignored him. He walked to the far end of the table and gazed down at the photograph of Frankie’s parents.
‘I seem to recall that was up on the wall before. Am I right?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘A shame that. The loving couple, all messed up like that. Disrespectful, you know? Not at all nice.’
The way he said it . . . the knowingness . . . Frankie knew he was just trying to rile him. To taunt him with having known them. Like it was some kind of secret. But there was more to it than that. Frankie could sense it. What were they to Snaresby? Why the fuck did he care?
Snaresby waited for him to speak. Frankie said nothing.
‘Right you are,’ Snaresby then said. ‘I’ll put a call in to forensics. Get them to pop over and see what they can find. But between you and me, I’m guessing it’s not going to be much. Whoever did this looks like they did a nice tidy job.’
‘When?’ Frankie said.
‘Ah, well that’s the thing. It’s easier said than done. Particularly at this time of year, with people on holiday and limited resources. Might be as late as this evening. Even tomorrow. Even – dare I say it? – after the weekend.’
‘Forget it,’ Frankie said. ‘I can’t keep the place shut until then.’
‘Ah, but you might have to. Because, you see, officially this is now a crime scene. Now that you’ve called it in. Now that I’m here.’
The tosser. He knew damn well Frankie couldn’t afford to just leave this crap sitting here until then. The longer the club stayed shut, the worse it would look. The last thing he needed was word getting out about this, making punters think the Ambassador was no longer a safe place to play.
‘Or then again,’ said Snaresby, ‘I could of course speed things up. Pull a few strings. Maybe get forensics down here, say, in the next half hour? So that it would have as little impact as possible on your business and you could just get on with the rest of your day?’
A favour, then? But why? For what? Because he felt sorry for him? Because somewhere under that slimy exterior, there was actually a decent human being trying to get out? Fat chance. Why else then? Because maybe Snaresby wanted this kept quiet too? Because he didn’t want rumours of a gang war being stirred up even more than they already were?
‘After all,’ Snaresby continued, a sudden look of warning in his eyes, ‘that really is what you should be doing, isn’t it? Concentrating on your business, not mine.’
Frankie felt his mouth turn dry. So Snaresby wanted the same as whoever had done this. For Frankie to back off from looking into Jack’s case. But how did he even know that Frankie
had been looking? Just because of this note? Or because someone else had been talking? Mickey. Or Riley? Or Hamilton? Or Sharon? Snaresby took out his shiny Zippo and pack of cigarettes, but then thought better of it, sniffing the air. Frankie again remembered that spark of flame last night inside that car. Had that been him? Had he gone to her? Had she told him they’d talked? Could she really have done that?
‘You need to leave this to the professionals,’ Snaresby said. ‘Like the note says. Back off, son, before you get fucking hurt.’
19
Frankie was busy working behind the bar in the Ambassador Club the next day, one eye on the phone, the other on the windows. Sheet lightning flickered. Thunder rumbled. It was hammering down outside, raining cats and fucking dogs.
All good for business, mind. Snooker was the perfect wet weather sport and plenty of punters had ducked in earlier and stayed put now the heavens had opened up. All the tables were full. Except for the one that was missing, of course.
Frankie had got Taffy to pick it up and get it across to his workshop in Kensal Rise first thing this morning to see what could be done about getting it cleaned and reupholstered.
Of course Taffy had wanted to know – as he’d inspected it and loaded it with his boys onto the back of his flatbed – what the fuck had happened. How in God’s holy name could a table have got so badly soaked like that with fuel?
Frankie should have had a story prepared, but he hadn’t and, when pressed, he’d drawn a blank and had ended up telling Taffy some bollocks about having left a petrol can on it himself because his car had broken down.
It hadn’t made an ounce of sense and now he felt like a right twat for having lied and done it so badly too. But it was better than the truth, wasn’t it? Better than telling Taffy he’d been targeted by some psycho. Taffy had a gob like Tom Jones and Frankie wanted all this kept well schtum. Apart from Slim and Snaresby and Co., no one knew a thing about the threat of arson hanging over the club.
Framed Page 10