‘Sumwuh juh muh.’
‘Jumma?’
‘Juhmmp muh.’
Ah. Frankie got it. ‘Someone jumped you? Who?’
‘Ah gu nu.’ I don’t know.
Frankie stared into his eyes, or the one good one that wasn’t puffed up anyway. But Jack just stared right back. Didn’t flinch. Was sure of what he was saying then.
‘Did you get a good look at them at all?’ A name. That’s all Frankie needed. Give him a name and he’d make whatever bastard had done this pay.
‘Nuh.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Nuh.’
Bollocks. Whoever had jumped him had jumped him good.
‘Are you in pain?’
‘Puills . . .’
Good. They’d already dosed him up.
Someone started screaming at the end of the corridor. A female medic in blue scrubs hurried into the cubicle.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said. ‘We’re going to need to stitch him up.’
Jack didn’t let go of Frankie’s hand.
‘Fine, but I’m staying right here,’ Frankie said. ‘Don’t worry, kid,’ he told him, moving his chair back to give the doc some room. ‘We’ll get you through this. Just you wait and see.’
‘Very well,’ said the doc. ‘And you are family?’
‘Frankie, his brother.’
She scribbled it down on her notes. ‘I’m Indra from maxillofacial, I’m here to help clear him up.’
She peered down at the plastic label on Jack’s wrist. ‘Can you confirm your name and date of birth?’ she asked him.
‘Jah jahm,’ Jack said.
‘April second, seventy-six,’ Frankie said.
Indra glanced at him, annoyed, but not big time, more like he’d just cheated at Monopoly or something at Christmas, but he guessed that’s how it was here. Everything became normalized, the blood, bones, everything apart from the rules.
‘Very well, then, Jack,’ she said, focusing back on him. ‘Now I understand from your notes that you’ve already been examined by my colleagues, and that you’re scheduled to have a CT scan to check for any internal injuries and, in particular, your shoulder.’
‘Ig gign.’
‘It’s fine,’ Frankie translated.
‘Yes, well, we’ll still need to take a good look at it just to be sure. And, regardless of the results, we’re going to be keeping you in overnight as we’re obliged to with any concussion.’
‘Ignot canthus.’
‘He says he’s not –’ Frankie started to say.
‘That might be how he feels now,’ she said, ‘but the paramedics say he was semi-conscious when they reached him and very disorientated.’
‘Does it say where they found him?’
‘The Grarfter.’
The Grafton Arms. Warren Street. One of Jack’s favourite drinking haunts. And the fact he could remember going there was probably good news too, at least as far as his head was concerned.
‘I’m sure everything will be fine,’ the doc said. ‘And I don’t know if my colleagues mentioned it? But there’s going to be a delay before the scan, as London is keeping us even busier than usual tonight. Two helicopters already.’
Helicopters meant one thing, serious injuries. Hopefully the doctor didn’t think Jack’s injuries fell into that category yet, despite how mashed up he looked.
‘Which means I’ve got time now to clean up your face and put some stitches in,’ she went on. ‘I hope that’s OK? Do you understand?’
Jack nodded, as more screaming could be heard from down the corridor. Jack’s functioning eye widened in alarm and the doc must have seen it too, because she gave him a reassuring smile.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be as gentle as I can,’ she said. ‘It says here on the notes from the ambulance and the police report that you were hit with . . . a baseball bat?’
A what? Frankie felt sick. She peeled back the sheet from Jack’s torso. His white T-shirt was spattered with blood, his right shoulder horribly bruised and his arm already in a sling. Must have been done by paramedics on the way over. Jack reckoned it wasn’t broken. What, then? Sprained? And how? Defending himself? That’s what it looked like to Frankie. He pictured the bat swinging at him through the air.
The doc prepped a needle. Shit a brick. It was as long as a finger.
‘Now this is a local anaesthetic,’ she explained, ‘and you will feel a little prick.’
‘It won’t be the first time, eh, bruv?’ Frankie muttered.
‘Yes, thank you, Mr James,’ said the doc. ‘Though if you are going to make jokes to cheer your brother up, perhaps you could make them a little more original?’
‘Fair enough,’ Frankie said. A twinkle in Jack’s eye. Might even have been him smiling. Hard to tell. ‘Right, you ready, bruv?’ he said. Jack nodded. ‘Then let’s do this,’ he told the doc.
She smiled grimly at him. But kindly too. They were a team now, the two of them. Frankie hated needles, but he didn’t look away, not once during the next seven squirming injections she gave Jack in the head, before getting stuck in and clearing up his cut. And not once either during the fourteen stitches she put in after that.
*
Frankie ended up waiting there with Jack in A&E for another three hours, most of which, thankfully, Jack slept through thanks to whatever opiate painkiller they’d got him on. And, bless him, the sweet little bastard even had a smile on his face for most of it. Was probably having the time of his life.
Then he was off for the CT scan, before finally getting transferred onto a ward around 8 a.m. The ward sister told Frankie they’d be getting the scan back by ten. Not much point in Frankie going home then – though, God knew, he had enough to do. Tonight was launch night. Everything he’d been working towards all year.
He found a pay phone and called Xandra and The Topster and left messages to tell them what was happening and to ask them to hold the fort until he got back to the club. Which would be just as soon as he could. Once he knew Jack was OK.
He headed off into the depths of the hospital in search of a coffee and some grub, but the caffs weren’t open yet and so he had to settle for a cup of instant from a machine instead, then found himself a bench in a concrete courtyard outside and sat down in the morning sun.
A baseball bat. Those two words. He couldn’t get them out of his head. Them and a face. Douglas sodding Hamilton. Had that really been him in the back of the car that had dragged Frankie? And, if it had, was this down to him as well?
Dougie’s fiancée had been killed with a baseball bat. Was that what this was all about? Could he still be refusing to believe that Jack had had nothing to do with it, was he still thirsting for revenge?
Frankie slowly shook his head. The second he’d read that note on the car he should have acted. Because that could have been another warning about this. He should have done anything he could to get Jack off the street.
But he hadn’t. He’d been weak. He’d driven back telling himself he’d got no proof of anything. That he couldn’t go asking Riley for help either, for the same reason.
Meaning all he’d actually done was call Jack up when he’d got home and told him to keep safe. He’d done nothing, in other words, except hope. That whoever had dragged Jack outside his flat had already had their penny’s worth for whatever reason it had been. That that would be the end of it.
Well, he’d been bloody wrong. Because this didn’t feel like the end of anything. It felt like the start.
And, just as bad, maybe all this was something he’d brought about himself. Because maybe it really was nothing to do with Dougie at all. Maybe what had happened to Jack had been because of what Frankie had done. Because he’d ripped that note up. Had tossed it into the air. And whoever had written it had decided to teach him a lesson. To stop him from looking into whatever it was they didn’t want him to find.
Frankie remembered the look that had flashed across the Old Man’s face when he’d grabbed Frankie
’s wrist and had told him to pipe down. And he wondered again who exactly he was afraid of. Dolf or Lomax? Or someone they knew? Or someone else entirely? Someone Frankie should be afraid of too?
‘Good morning, Frankie, am I to assume that it just got lost in the post?’
Frankie recognized the voice and turned, his lip already curling. Snaresby. Blocking out his sun, looming over him like a bleedin’ gravestone. Dressed in his regulation suit and tie, even at this hour, like he’d slept in it, which the bastard probably had.
‘That what did?’
‘My invite.’
‘To what?’
‘Why, your little party, of course. For your one day perhaps not so little tournament. I mean, it is still taking place tonight, isn’t it? In spite of this little diversion you’re currently caught up in? Or maybe you hadn’t sent me an invite at all?’ Snaresby smiled, waiting for an answer, but Frankie just shook his head. ‘Ah, well, not to worry,’ the Chief Inspector went on. ‘It just so happens I’m busy this evening anyway.’ He rolled his tongue slowly across his lips. ‘It’s Mrs Snaresby’s birthday and she’s on a promise, wouldn’t you know, the lucky mare? Still, maybe next time, eh?’
‘How did you find me?’ Frankie said.
‘That nice little sister running your brother’s ward. You know, the one with the lovely, firm . . .’ He cupped his hands over his chest, his little fingertips pointing out.
Frankie fought the urge to retch. ‘No, I mean who told you about Jack? That he was even in here at all?’
‘Oh, come come now, sunshine. Surely you must know by now that a good detective never reveals his sources.’
‘What about a shit one?’ Frankie smirked.
‘Oh, very droll.’ Snaresby pulled out his Zippo and sparked up a smoke.
‘I’m serious. How did you know?’
‘Oh, hadn’t you heard, Frankie? The whole world’s gone bloody computer crazy. Anything you want at the touch of a button.’
‘What, and you really expect me to believe that? That of all the sodding assaults committed in this shitty city last night, his just happened to turn up on your desk?’
Snaresby smiled sourly. ‘Nothing much gets past you, does it, sunshine? Fair enough. We like to keep a track of certain names down the nick. All you’ve got to do is programme them in.’
‘And my brother’s one of them?’
‘Oh, not just your brother . . .’
Meaning Frankie was as well.
‘Talk about fucking Big Brother.’
‘Oh yes. Quite literally in this case.’
‘That’s police harassment.’
‘Or police protection, depending on your point of view. Because, you’ve got to understand, the last thing I want is all that nastiness from last summer between Riley and Hamilton’s mobs bubbling up again.’
‘Who says it is?’ Sure, Frankie reckoned Dougie might be behind all this, but he’d got no proof and he doubted the cops did either. Jack certainly couldn’t have told them anything last night.
‘Just a bit of a coincidence otherwise, wouldn’t you say? Him getting attacked with a bat like that. The same as
Dougie Hamilton’s fiancée was. Not to mention Danny Kale last summer as part of the little turf war too.’
So he’d made some of the same connections as him. Frankie said nothing. Snaresby trailed his long fingers over his buzz-cut, balding head.
‘Trying to remember how it felt to still have hair?’
Snaresby ignored him. ‘Do you know where we found him? Your little brother? Down an alley round the back of a pub. Honestly, I don’t know why you bother with him. The only reason he’d probably gone down there at all was to get his little knob sucked or to score.’
‘Why don’t you just watch your bloody mouth?’ Frankie said. No one here but them two, meaning he didn’t have to watch his own. ‘You’re doing it again. Treating him like a villain, when he’s the victim in all this. You think he’s got himself neck deep in trouble again. Well, he hasn’t. And this is harassment, you’ve got no right – my brother was proven innocent.’
‘Well, proof’s stretching it a bit, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Someone else confessed to the murder. What more bloody proof do you need?’
‘Ah, but a confession’s hardly rock solid, is it? Particularly from a dead guy.’
‘It was enough to help you put my father away.’ A local gang leader, Manny Thompson, had confessed to the Mayfair robbery shortly before he’d hanged himself in prison. After fingering the Old Man as his accomplice and telling the cops where the cases with the stolen wedge and jewels from the looted safety boxes were stashed, all covered in his and the Old Man’s prints.
‘Ah, so you’ve finally worked out I was on your father’s case, have you? I was wondering how long it would take.’
‘So my father wasn’t good enough for you, was he? You had to come after my brother as well.’
‘Just doing my job. The same as I keep telling you.’
‘The same as Craig Fenwick and James Nicholls were?’
‘Ooh, someone has been doing their homework.’ Snaresby flashed him a half-moon smile. But what shocked Frankie was his lack of surprise. ‘Yes, sunshine, just the same as them.’
‘He’s innocent.’
‘I think you’ve already made that point.’
‘I don’t just mean Jack.’
Snaresby smiled. Wide, now. Like a wolf. ‘Oh, ho-ho. Your father may be many things, Frankie James, but an innocent he is not.’
‘I mean of that robbery. What he’s in prison for.’ Even if the Old Man hadn’t exactly always lived a squeaky-clean life, he’d never consider anything like armed robbery. He’d sworn to Jack and that was good enough for him. ‘He was stitched up.’
‘By me? Well, go on, you might as well say it. It’s fairly clear from the look on your face right now that you’d like to rip my guts out.’
‘Either by you, or by Fenwick and Nicholls. Maybe it was someone else on your team?’
‘That case, Mr James, is watertight. It’s history. The same as your father until he gets out and there’s nothing you can do that’ll change that.’
‘Yeah? Well, maybe I’ll go talk to Fenwick and Nicholls and see what they’ve got to say.’
But Snaresby’s grin just widened. ‘Good for you and good luck with that. Because one of them’s moved to Australia. And the other one’s dead.’
12
The round of applause started on its own, with whooping and whistling as the black was potted by the winner of the two pro players who’d been laying on a demonstration for the crowd. Frankie’s guests were having a cracking night out so far.
Festive Al had installed four blocks of tiered seating around the single snooker table in the centre of the room. A boxing ring formation, he’d called it, enough for five rows of seats per block. Two hundred in total. Each seat full.
Right, speech time. Frankie took a slug of water as he waited for the clapping to die down. His mouth felt like the bleeding Sahara. Christ, he could do with a proper drink to help calm his nerves.
Xandra had her arm around Maxine and beamed a huge grin across to him, nodding him on in encouragement. She was right, he could do this. And do it sober. And it’d be all the better for it but, Christ, he’d been gasping for a drink all night.
He’d already chatted to well over half the industry faces he’d invited here. Potential sponsors, promoters, managers, players and sports journos. Even the health and safety bloke from the council. But there was still plenty more jawing to do.
He stood up and cleared his throat. Jesus, even that seemed to echo round the room. Xandra nodded at him again, her eyes blazing. She’d made him practise this twenty times or more earlier this evening after he’d got back from dropping Jack home from the hospital.
Just don’t rush it, she’d said. Look them all in the eye and smile, and only then do you start to talk. He could do this. Yep, come on. Time to give it his very best sh
ot.
‘First up, I want to say a big thanks to the players,’ he said, nodding to the two lads, who’d both just given this audience a half-hour master class in long-potting and trick shots, ‘who we’ll no doubt be seeing a lot more of on our TV screens over the coming years and hopefully here in the Ambassador Club too.’
A smattering of applause broke out as the two lads bowed. Dickie Bird’s camera flashed away, recording the moment for posterity. He was luckily wearing more than just a pair of pants tonight, even if the date that he’d brought with him – who’d insisted on helping out with the scoring – was wearing a black rubber dress that left very little to the imagination, and even less doubt about what she did for her day job.
‘And next up to all of you lot,’ Frankie said, ‘old friends . . .’ He nodded at Kind Regards and Slim, over at the bar. ‘. . . and new.’ He held his glass out to Andy Topper, who was sat between a couple of managers from one of the London bookie chains in the front row opposite. ‘And, of course, most important of all, all the industry people here who’ve kindly given up some of their precious time to check out what we’re planning on doing here. Me and Andy are looking forward to talking to you all more as the evening goes on.’
More applause, a couple of cheers and catcalls and a nod from Andy. He didn’t look flustered at all. After all, he lived and breathed this shit. He’d offered to do the speech, but Frankie had said no. No matter how queasy this made him, he knew he needed to do it. ‘You’ve got to own it. Make it yours’ was how Kind Regards had put it a few weeks back. ‘Or one day someone else will take it away.’ And he was right. No point in being a bit part in his own sodding opera, was there? Nah, he needed to be Pavarotti tonight.
‘And, last of all, a toast,’ Frankie said. ‘To the tournament we’re going to be launching properly next year – the Soho Open. We’re determined to make it a permanent fixture on the snooker calendar, by bringing the best players and the best fans in the world together, right here, to the best city in the world.’
A big roar of approval met his speech and Frankie raised his glass of sparkling water up high and waited as silence descended.
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