Double Kiss

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  RONNIE

  O’SULLIVAN

  DOUBLE

  KISS

  MACMILLAN

  To Steve Peters and Keno Fu

  – you both know why you mean so much to me.

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  FRAMED

  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 just 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.’

  ‘I think that’s rather their point,’ said Slim, lighting up a B&H. ‘This is an oasis of culture and tradition. Or rather’ – he glanced distastefully up the screens – ‘it was . . .’

  Frankie had had enough. ‘Yeah? Well, bad luck. This isn’t a charity or a museum. The TVs ain’t going anywhere. At least until the final. Especially if England get through.’

  ‘Ah, so there is a chance this’ll turn back to a proper club after that, then?’ Slim said. ‘You should have just said. I’ll let the boys know.’

  A proper club? By which he meant a snooker club, which is exactly what the Ambassador Club had been since 1964. And, yeah, a big part of Frankie wanted that too, to keep the tradition alive, but for that he needed money and the plain fact of the matter was that all his usual punters like Ash and Sea Breeze just didn’t bring in enough cash.

  ‘It all depends on how the tournament goes,’ he said. He meant his tournament, not this one. Snooker, not footy – the Soho Open. The tournament he’d spent every second of his free time these last six months trying to set up. ‘If that starts to make money, then fine. We’ll go back to how it was. But until it does, the TVs stay and this lovely lot’ – he pointed at the crowd – ‘they stay too. Because it’s their wonga that’s currently keeping this place alive. And, anyhow, I don’t see what your problem is with any of them, they all seem perfectly bloody nice people to me –’

  A sudden burst of shouting. A goal? Nah, nothing doing on the screens. Frankie’s eyes flicked right. More yelling. Shit. Trouble. A surge of bodies over there in the corner. The sound of breaking glass.

  Bollocks! Here we go again. Frankie gritted his teeth in anticipation of more trouble coming his way, just when he didn’t need it. The story of his fucking life.

  2

  Frankie reached for ‘Old Faithful’, the heavy, lead-lined cue he kept under the bar, but decided against it. No, not yet. He knew half the bastards in here, so best not to panic. After all, things still might not get out of hand.

  But then more shouting flared up and the crowd of punters surged. Hell’s tits. It was time to get a shift on, so he barged his way out from behind the bar and started forcing his way through the crowd.

  Yeah, plenty of people in here he knew. Soho faces. Regulars. Berwick Street market traders like the tattooed twins, Tate and Lyle, whose dad was a stand-up comic who worked the pubs round here. Low-level gangsters like Mickey Flynn, who’d taken a beating off Terence Hamilton’s boys last year and now only had one eye. Most of them were smart enough to get out of Frankie’s way. Some of them might even back him up if push came to shove.

  But plenty of others too. Hoolies. Hoodies. Caners. Casuals. Half of them total strangers, looking like they belonged more in some dingy, after-hours club than here in the daylight.

  ‘Spartak!’ he shouted.

  But the man mountain from Russia had already bundled through from his sentry point at the door. His red Mohawk cut through the crowd like a fin.

  Frankie hauled his way through the knot of writhing bodies, squeezing past the jukebox and the filthy old cigarette machine.

  Right, what the hell’s going on, then? He looked for someone to grab, then stopped, because, typical – who else would it bloody be, but his sodding little brother, Jack? Right here in the middle of it all, squaring up to some rotten little scrote.

  People said Frankie and his brother looked alike – what with their Sicilian black hair, square jaws and boxer’s fists – but all Frankie ever saw when he looked at Jack these days was hassle.

  Jack had come here today all dressed up like he was expecting a call from Terry Venables himself. Only now his England shirt was ripped and covered with Guinness. And its collar was being pinned to the wall by some wiry, pockmarked headcase who clearly had designs on knocking his teeth into the middle of next week.

  ‘Let him go,’ Frankie snapped, stepping right into the ferrety little bastard’s line of sight. ‘Right. Bloody. Now.’

  All eyes on him, waiting to see what would happen next. The final whistle blew up there on the screens, but no one even looked up.

  ‘You, get lost, or you’re next,’ said the scrote, twisting his grip on Jack’s collar even tighter, bringing the blood right up into his cheeks.

  Frankie’s fingers curled into fists. He’d shifted automatically into a fighting stance. ‘I’m not going to tell you again. Let go of him now.’

  The kid flashed Frankie another filthy glare, then looked round sharply, trying to suss out what he was up against. Frankie did likewise, because there was no way this little wanker would be acting out like this if he was on his own.

  And there they were, over the kid’s right shoulder. His three mates, all kitted out in shiny white trainers and new tracksuits – like they’d just lifted them all from the same sodding shop. Pints in their fists like they were planning on ramming them into someone’s, anyone’s, face – but most likely of all, of course, his.

  The scrote’s wolfish grin stretched wider. Reckoned he had this nailed. Had the odds on his side. Hadn’t spotted Spartak edging stealthily in behind his pals – or as stealthily as it was possible for an eighteen-stone ex-special forces soldier with a twelve-inch Mohawk to move.

  ‘And who the hell are you? Eh?’ The scrote gave J
ack’s collar another violent twist, just to let them all know who was in charge.

  The way he said it. Not a local. A Scouser. Frankie normally got on with them just fine, but this one didn’t look like he wanted to be friends.

  Over the kid’s other shoulder, Frankie clocked Tam Jackson, box-jawed and concrete-browed, cracking a broken smile. The only bloke apart from Frankie in here in a suit. One big enough to fit a fridge.

  Tam was the biggest face in here. He worked for Tommy Riley himself, the local gangster numero uno. He’d arrived with Jack and five or six of Riley’s other boys, most of them just street soldiers, dealers, enforcers – all half Tam’s age. But that’s how Tam rolled, wasn’t it? Shelling out for drinks from his croc skin wallet, being the big man. Only he didn’t much look like he was planning on flexing his muscles to help Frankie today. More like this was just another piece of sport he was planning to watch.

  ‘Me?’ Frankie switched his attention back to the Scouser. ‘I’m the bloke whose face you’re going to be thinking about in hospital for the next six months, if you don’t get the hell off of him and get the hell out of my club.’

  Frankie’s eyes locked on him. Come on, then, bring it. Because here, in the thick of it, with his blood now well up, Frankie didn’t care. This was his place and no one was in charge here but him. Fists up, he was ready. No way was he going to back down.

  The kid’s eyes flickered. The cogs behind them whirred as a sense of doubt crept in. As he took in Frankie’s frame and all the time he’d spent in the kickboxing gym the last six months.

  The scrote’s other three little tracksuit bastard mates started crowding in then, all well coked up. Maybe they fancied their chances too. Well, fine. So be it. Frankie braced himself. Had already decided which one he was going to hit first. His eyes caught Spartak’s. The big man was right there behind them in position now too, licking his lips.

  ‘I believe that you boys should be using your ears and listening good to this man,’ his voice then boomed out, causing two out of the three of these peasants to look round – and then up. ‘Yes, that is right. And you know why? Because I have not even been fed today and I particularly enjoy eating little weasels like you for my tea.’