Hamilton continued to stare until Frankie realised his last question wasn’t rhetorical.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t.’
Hamilton sighed. His skin was pale as ivory. Heavy black shadows circled his eyes.
‘I did try putting him off the whole idea, you understand,’ he said, ‘but he never was a good listener.’
Did he mean Wilson? Wilson had wanted to kill Susan Tilley and Terence Hamilton had just let him?
‘But Dougie’s stubborn, see?’ Hamilton said. ‘Gets it off his mother.’ His lips peeled back over his teeth. ‘That was a joke,’ he said. ‘Laugh.’
Frankie couldn’t. He just gawped. Couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘He told you to fucking laugh,’ Shank Wilson barked, stepping in quickly and punching Frankie in the side of the head.
Bastard. Frankie heard his tooth crack. Pain ripped through his mouth. The wanker. He spat bits of tooth mixed with blood onto his lap.
‘All right, all right,’ Hamilton said, waving Wilson away, ‘give him some air, Shank. Get back over there and have yourself a smoke.’
Wilson sniffed, rolling his shoulders like a boxer between rounds. Not done with Frankie yet. Not by a long fucking stretch. But he was a good attack dog. Did what he was told.
‘You’ve not got kids, have you, son?’ Hamilton said. ‘And I don’t suppose you ever will now. But I’ll tell you something: becoming a father, especially to a boy, it changes everything. You start thinking, not just about yourself, but other people. And not just about the here and now, but the future too. And it can be nice all that planning. But do you know what the worst bit is?’
‘What?’
‘Someone threatening to take it all away.’
Who? Here right now, Frankie couldn’t think of anyone either brave or bleeding stupid enough to ever want to do that.
‘Of course, she didn’t mean to, I suppose,’ Hamilton said.
She?
‘But then they got this plan into their little heads, didn’t they? About moving away. To America. To be near her family. Her aunts and uncles. And to be pro bono this and pro bono that, and to la-de-dah change the world for the better and to change him too, my boy, into something he was never meant to be, some sort of crusading lawyer . . . To leave all this . . .’ Hamilton gestured round the freezing basement, like it was Shangri-bloody-La. ‘. . . every fucking single thing I’ve ever worked for . . . to leave all this . . . and me . . . behind . . .’
Frankie just stared. This fucking lunatic. He wasn’t kidding. He’d done all this . . . had her killed . . . to stop his son leaving? He’d murdered his own son’s fiancée for that?
‘I mean, if they’d just wanted to go out for a bit,’ Hamilton said, ‘then OK, fine, that would have been all well and dandy. Because I’m a patient man, see? I could have waited a few years. And worked on him. On his common sense. And his true loyalties. Until he’d come back. With or without her. To take what was rightfully his. To be who he rightfully is. But that’s just it. I ain’t got a couple of years. Not any more. I needed him back in the fold – and fast.’
The way he said it. This last bit. Yeah. That and the colour of his fucking skin. Frankie suddenly got it. What this was really all about.
‘That’s right,’ Hamilton said, reading his mind. ‘I’m dying. Fucking cancer. Would you believe it? I’ve been stabbed twice, shot once and beaten within an inch of my life, and nothing could stop me. But this will. It’ll fucking kill me. Doc says I’ll be lucky if I see another Christmas.’
Oh, yeah, Frankie got it all right. Hamilton was just doing what any businessman would: appointing a successor. Only Terence Hamilton was a fucking psycho. If getting the right man for the job meant murdering people who got in the way, then so be it. That was just business too.
‘What’s the best way to make someone an enforcer?’ Hamilton asked. ‘Fill him with hate. Her getting murdered, stripped, defiled . . . in what oh-so-transparently appeared to be a revenge attack by Riley for the murder of one of his boys . . . that was more than enough to make Dougie the man he now is . . . a torturer . . . a killer . . . someone capable of beating another man to death and then dumping his body by the side of the road . . .’
He meant the pimp the cops had found murdered by that bin, the one with the knickers rammed down his throat. Dougie Hamilton had done that? Terence stared at Frankie, his eyes blazing. With what? Fucking hell. With pride.
‘And I tell you this, son: once you start down that path, it’s hard to turn back. And even harder to turn your back on your family ever again. And that’s what’s happened to him, to my boy. He’s part of it now. Part of this. He’s committed. To who we are. To what our family is and will continue to be . . . long after I’ve gone.’
‘Why Jack?’ Frankie said.
‘Why do you fucking think? Because I needed someone framed for the murder. And framed good, so there’d be no doubt in Dougie’s mind that her murderer had been caught.’ His dark eyes glittered. ‘Otherwise he’d never stop looking, would he? And if he’d looked long enough and hard enough, he might even have ended up looking at me.’
‘But why my brother? It could have been anyone.’
‘Because he was a perfect fucking fit. And not exactly the sharpest tool in the box. Stupid enough to get caught for that ruck in the Atlantic with my boys, which meant the cops knew he was working for Riley. But not just that. Everything. I swear, after Shank here had battered Danny Kale to get the whole ball rolling, then me and him sat down to work out who to frame, and your brother stood out a mile.’
So Danny Kale, the first of Riley’s boys who’d been murdered over a month ago, had been nothing but a ruse, to make Susan Tilley’s murder look like a proper revenge killing to both Dougie Hamilton and the cops.
‘He ticked all our boxes, didn’t he, Shank? He’s a known druggie with a thing for hookers. Which made it dead easy for us. For that slag to pick him up and fuck him and get him wasted on a nice little cocktail of coke and GHB . . . enough so as he wouldn’t remember a fucking thing . . . Easy for her to keep him there all curled up in his flat like a little baby and then call Shank and let him in when he called round . . .’
Frankie saw it. He saw it all. Wilson would have taken Jack’s car keys and, with Dougie Hamilton already safely under his father’s watchful gaze in a Soho restaurant on his stag night, he’d have driven out to Susan Tilley’s grandmother’s place to batter her and murder her grand-daughter. Then later back to Jack’s to smear more blood from his bagged-up clothes over everything there including Jack. With a few bottles of bleach and a bucket thrown in to make it look like Jack had tried cleaning up.
‘So you set him up and then you told the cops where to find him,’ Frankie said.
‘That’s right. He called the cops from right outside your brother’s building. Then I called your brother from right outside the cop shop, the second I saw them come streaming out. It was just like down the dog track, us sending off our little hare before a pack of running dogs.’
Leaving Jack looking guilty as sin.
Hamilton smiled. The cunt was enjoying this, letting Frankie know exactly how well they’d stitched Jack up.
‘And what about Star?’ Frankie said. Just keep him talking. Keep him talking and hope to fuck that someone really is on the way to help.
‘Ah, yes. Little Tara Stevens,’ Hamilton said. ‘I fucked her once, you know. Right up the arse. You should have seen how wet it got her pussy. And a good girl she was for us on this too. All Shank here had to do was get Stav to put in a call to your brother, to tell him he had some nice new girl on his books. And then your brother, he came running, didn’t he? Just like the naughty little perv that he is.’ Hamilton shot a glance into the shadows. ‘That said, as clever as we thought we were being, we nearly did fuck up, didn’t we? Or rather, Shank did, didn’t you, Shank?’
A grunt from the shadows.
‘You see,’ Hamilton said, ‘he should have fucki
ng topped her too that same night. Somewhere else. But he said he didn’t need to, because he’d already paid her off and had told her he’d kill her kid back in Liverpool if she ever shot her mouth off. But he was wrong. Weren’t you, Shank?’
No answer. Hamilton pursed his lips, staring at Frankie.
‘You can never trust a whore, son,’ he said. ‘Which is what I told him. She was a loose end that needed tying up.’
‘It was you,’ Frankie said, twisting his head and peering into the gloom. ‘At her flat that night. You killed her.’
‘That’s right,’ said Hamilton. ‘I sent Shank round to deliver her some flowers.’
‘He tried to kill me too,’ Frankie said.
Wilson barked out a laugh. ‘If I’d wanted you fucking dead, you already would be.’
‘What then? Were you planning on framing me for Star’s murder?’
Frankie remembered Star’s twisted body.
‘I did think about it,’ Wilson said, stepping back into the light. ‘But it would have been too messy, getting you involved as well as your brother. It might have confused what’s already a nice tight shut case for putting him away. And all manner of questions might have been asked if the cops had connected Star to your brother. They might even have worked out that he’d met her round at Stav’s that night, and someone there might have mentioned the kind of gear she’d been carrying, and even found out who it was who’d given it her . . .’
Wilson meant the GHB. He’d supplied it.
‘Of course, I thought about killing you too,’ Wilson said, ‘once I saw who it was I’d knocked out. But then I’d have had to get rid of your body. Couldn’t exactly have left you there, or that would have muddied up the whole case as well.’
‘So why call the cops?’ Frankie asked. ‘Why tip them off to go to Star’s apartment?’
Wilson smiled. ‘I didn’t. I nearly shat it when I read about the filth turning up in the papers and that they’d nearly caught someone too.’
Meaning someone else must have called them. Who? Frankie thought back. That crack in the door of that flat down the corridor. The click of its lock as it had closed. Must have been the neighbour who’d dialled 999. Must have heard something.
‘Of course it did make us wonder what the hell you were doing in her flat in the first place,’ Hamilton said. ‘Or rather it would have, if you hadn’t let slip how you made the connection between your brother and Star in the first place.’
Frankie’s mind reeled backwards. He remembered standing there outside Star’s door . . . he’d called out her name, and Keira, he’d called out hers too . . . he’d said he was her friend.
‘Keira,’ Shank said.
Oh, Jesus. It was his fault. He’d led them right to her.
‘The poor thing drowned,’ Hamilton said.
‘You murdered her. There was GHB in her blood. Ligature marks on her wrists. You—’
‘Now how the fuck would someone like you know something like that?’ Hamilton snapped.
Shit. Frankie kicked himself. He’d said too much. About the autopsy. Only one way he could have found out that.
‘This cunt’s been talking to the filth.’ Hamilton turned on Shank. ‘I told you it was a mistake to use the same drug on her that you used to dope Jack . . .’ He glared at Frankie. ‘But even if you have been talking out of school . . . even if the cops have made that connection . . . the one between your brother and Susan Tilley and all that blood is still so much more compelling than that . . .’
Hamilton still believed Jack would end up convicted then. He spat on the floor right in front of Frankie’s feet.
‘Fucking kill him,’ he told Shank. ‘Use the gun you found in his flat. And don’t fuck around. Just shoot him in the head.’
Wilson marched over to the table and picked up the pistol. He started walking back.
‘Wait,” Frankie said. ‘You do that and—’
‘And what?’ said Hamilton. ‘That tape you left – if you left it, which I doubt – it’ll go to the cops. Yeah, you already said. But you know what? Even if I did believe you that you’ve left instructions for someone to hand it in, I’m still prepared to risk it. With you being dead and no longer around to even back up your conversation with Baotic here, and without him confessing now to shit, which he won’t, that tape won’t stand up either.’
‘It’ll still cost you your witness,’ Frankie said. ‘There’s no way the cops will be able to use him, not after hearing that.’
‘Maybe so,’ said Hamilton. ‘But again, so what? There’s still all that forensics, isn’t there? All pointing at your brother. Enough to put him away.’
Was he bluffing? Was he really prepared to risk it? Frankie couldn’t fucking tell. Shank Wilson was easier to read, though. His dark eyes were sparkling with excitement. No doubt what was about to happen next. Frankie James was about to get shot. He raised the pistol.
‘Who said I’m planning on sending it to the cops anyway?’ Frankie said.
Silence. Wilson was still aiming the gun at Frankie’s head. Unwavering. Like he’d done it before a million times. An exe-fucking-cutioner’s stance.
‘You what?’ Hamilton said.
‘It’s Dougie,’ said Frankie. ‘Dougie’s the one that tape will be going to.’
Hamilton’s pale face flushed. He stepped forward. He grabbed Frankie by the throat.
‘You fucking what?’ he roared.
Smile. Yeah, that’s right, you bastard. Frankie eyeballed the motherfucker. Give it all you’ve fucking got, son. Grin. Let this bastard know it’s you who’s got him by the balls. Not the other fucking way around.
‘How long do you think it’s going to take a bright boy like Dougie to figure out that a mutt like Wilson here only ever does what he’s been ordered?’ Frankie said. ‘That he only ever does what he’d been told to by his boss?’
‘He’s bluffing,’ Wilson said.
‘Yeah,’ Terence said, but already Frankie could feel his grip slackening. ‘Yeah.’
Hamilton let go. He stepped back.
‘Shall I do him?’ Wilson said.
‘No.’ Hamilton pulled a pair of transparent surgical gloves from his pocket and snapped them on. ‘The amount of trouble this one’s caused me . . . him fucking daring to talk about my boy . . . I’m gonna fucking well do him myself.’
Wilson nodded. He lowered the gun and pressed it into Hamilton’s hand. He waited for him to shoot, but instead Hamilton stepped forward. Without warning, he pistol-whipped Frankie across the side of his head.
Frankie’s head lolled. He saw red. Vomit shot up his throat and spurted from his mouth.
‘But first I’m gonna have myself a bit of fun with him,’ Hamilton said.
Frankie’s ears were ringing. He couldn’t see properly. He felt like someone had stuck a knife right into his brain.
‘Whatever you say, boss,’ Wilson said.
‘Go wait upstairs,’ Hamilton told him, putting the gun in his right pocket and taking out a Stanley knife from his left. ‘I might be some time, and I don’t want to be fucking disturbed.’
49
Hamilton stared. The motherfucker hardly even blinked. Wilson peeled off his blood-stained clothing and boots. Got changed back into his boiler suit. Humming that Kylie song again. I Should Be So Lucky. The sick fucking prick.
Baotic was whimpering. Softly. Like a dog having a dream. Was he unconscious? Having a seizure? Frankie couldn’t bear to look at him. Not just because of the state he was in. Because he now knew how Baotic must have felt last night when Frankie had been terrifying the shit out of him.
Frankie knew it. No one was coming. In a minute the pain would start. He wouldn’t be able to think. He pictured his mum. Dad. Jack. Sharon too. Slim and Kind Regards and Xandra. He’d bloody blown it, hadn’t he? Had screwed up royally. He thought he’d been so clever. But he hadn’t. He’d relaxed. He’d thought this was all over. Thought he’d won. What a prize-winning fucking dick.
He s
tared down at the brickwork between his shoes. It was already spattered with blood. Nothing compared with what Hamilton had planned for him now, mind. He hoped it would be quick. Knew it wouldn’t. Hamilton had just had his only son’s wife-to-be beaten to death. How much worse was he going to make Frankie suffer now?
The light dimmed. Someone stood in front of him. Two black boots together side-by-side.
‘Shame we didn’t get a camera set up.’ Wilson. ‘I get the feeling it’s gonna be one hell of a show.’ He reached out and cupped Frankie’s chin. Forced him to look up. ‘It’s been a pleasure getting to know you,’ he said. His dark eyebrows bobbed. ‘And that foxy female detective you’ve been seeing? The one you’ve probably been talking to an’ all . . . Don’t you worry about her. I’ll make sure to pay her a little visit in a few months’ time to give her one from you.’
‘You cunt.’
Frankie jerked his head back, shaking himself free. How did Wilson know about Sharon? Fuck. Jack’s flat. If Wilson had been there watching, he’d have seen them leaving together too.
‘You bastard. Leave her alone, or—’
‘Or what?’ Wilson laughed. ‘Or fucking nothing. It’s over, kid. You’re dead.’
He turned and walked up the steps. His footsteps faded and then they were gone.
Silence. A terrible pressure started building up in Frankie’s skull. Like any second now it might crack. Hamilton hadn’t moved. The Stanley knife’s tooth glinted in his hand.
Frankie stared back down at his shoes. He started to shake. Couldn’t help it. Be brave. Remember who you are. Don’t beg. Don’t make this any more fun for this bastard than it already is. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.
‘Say, for example,’ Hamilton said, ‘you are telling the truth, and this recording of yours is set to be delivered to my son . . . what would it take for you not to send it?’
What? Frankie nearly puked again. Had he just heard right? Don’t look up. Don’t let him see how fucking desperate you are. Don’t let him know you’d already given up. He might not be joking. He might mean it. He might really still want that recording. This might not be over. Not yet.
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