‘So, that’s it from me,’ he said, ‘but do hang around, the night is yet young and the Ambassador has always been a home from home’ – he grinned across at Ash and Sea Breeze as he said it, and was pleased to see even a little smile coming back his way from them both – ‘so please do make it just that, your home, for tonight.’
Xandra and Maxine whooped good and loud, setting off another round of applause. Then everyone started getting up, heading for familiar faces or just the bar. Frankie suddenly felt the weight of it falling from him.
Had he said everything he needed to? His heart was still thumping in his ears. Part of him just wanted to sink right back down into his seat. Or duck upstairs to the flat and lock the bloody door.
But this was part of it too, being front of house. Being the man.
‘Good work,’ Andy said, coming over and giving him a firm slap on the back, ‘that hit just the right note.’
Grinning a broad, pearly smile, he smoothed down his barbered, slicked-back blonde Aussie surfer hair. Flawless, he was. Like some fresh from the packet Ken doll. And only a few years older than Frankie too.
He was wearing a smart, fitted suit, so new it practically still had the labels on it. But that was The Topster all over. Sharp as you like and professional with it. Every single person he’d introduced Frankie to his evening, Andy had remembered not just their names, but their partners’ and kids’ names too to make them all feel like they weren’t just here for business, but because they were friends.
‘It wouldn’t be happening without you, mate,’ Frankie said, and it was true.
Another Mighty White smile. ‘Good on you for saying it. But now let’s keep working this room. Still plenty of people left for you to meet.’
*
It wasn’t until half an hour, and a couple of dozen expertly steered conversations, later that Frankie had time to pause for breath. Not that he was complaining. The stacks of promotional leaflets Xandra had left around the room were already nicely low. As well as working the bar with Slim, she and Maxine been doing a great job of making sure that everyone walking out of here had one stuffed in their pocket.
Even more importantly, everyone seemed to have taken the end of his speech at face value and was having a whale of a time. Christ knew what the bar bill was going to be – he’d deal with that in the morning. But for now he just wanted a quick word with someone else who’d made all this possible – and to apologize to him an’ all.
He found Kind Regards down the far end of the bar, nursing a Cuba Libre and halfway through a smoke. He was as dapper and neatly suited as ever. Frankie often wondered if he even wore a cravat to the beach.
‘I just wanted to thank you,’ he said.
‘For what?’ He scratched warily at his greying temple. They’d not spoken since Frankie had slammed the phone down on him.
‘The advice you gave me a couple of weeks back.’
‘Which bit?’
Frankie smiled. Because when wasn’t Kind Regards giving him advice? ‘About owning it, standing up and being counted. About being seen here tonight.’
‘You did well.’
‘Thanks and I just wanted to say sorry as well,’ he said. ‘For shouting at you. About Dad.’
‘It’s all right. I probably deserved it.’ But, even so, he looked relieved.
‘No, you’ve only ever tried to look out for me. I know that. But all that stuff with Snaresby, with Dad, it’s just . . . I don’t know, just something that’s going to always make me see red, until I’ve sorted it out . . .’
‘And you still think you might be able to?’
‘I don’t know. We’ll see.’
Snaresby. Frankie cringed at the thought of him about with his poor wife tonight. He was still reeling from his run-in with him this morning. All that shit he’d said. And what he’d told Frankie too, about there only being one other copper left alive who might be able to tell him the truth about the Old Man’s conviction.
‘How’s Jack?’ Kind Regards asked. Frankie had left a message for him earlier, telling him what had happened. ‘I’m going to pop by and see him tomorrow.’
‘All right. No permanent damage as they say. Better than all right, actually.’ Frankie smiled, couldn’t help himself. ‘He’s being waited on hand and foot.’
‘By who?’
‘His friendly neighbourhood waitress, actually. This girl called Tiffany. Seems she took a bit of a shine to him after watching him nearly get run over Tuesday and then seeing me drop him off back home this evening in a sling. Told him she’d bring him round a tray of food, after she’d finished her shift.’
Funny, wasn’t it, how things worked out? Frankie didn’t think that Jack had clocked it yet, just quite how sweet this Tiffany was on him. Must be all the fresh stitches and dried blood. Maybe stopped him looking so cute.
Kind Regards smiled too. ‘He could do with someone decent in his life.’ His expression hardened. ‘You told Bernie yet?’
Bernie . . . the Old Man. ‘No,’ Frankie said.
Kind Regards looked shocked, the kind of shocked that meant that if Frankie didn’t tell him soon, then he’d have to instead.
‘There’s someone else I’ve got to speak to first,’ Frankie said. ‘Someone who might sort things out.’ Frankie spotted him, Tommy Riley, holding court down the other end of the bar with his entourage. Excellent, Tommy was top of his ‘To Do’ list tonight.
‘If you say . . .’ Kind Regards didn’t look convinced, small surprise there. The Old Man hated being kept out of the loop where his kids were concerned.
‘A quick question, though, while I’ve got you to myself.’
‘What?’
‘Those files you gave me . . . is it possible that anyone else apart from you could have found out we’re looking at them again?’
‘I can’t see how. Other than the copies of the trial transcripts I requested from the court itself, there’ll be a record there of them being sent out to me . . .’
Meaning if someone was keeping an eye on things there, then they’d know there was new interest in the case. Anything you want at the touch of a button. Wasn’t that what Snaresby had said? No wonder he’d not shown so much as a flicker of surprise when Frankie had mentioned his two ex-colleagues’ names.
Frankie noticed one of Riley’s minders was staring daggers at him. A tall, slim, athletic-looking geezer. Dressed in a powder-blue suit. With cropped blonde hair and a nose so hooked you could hang him up on it. Tanned like he’d been left under the grill too long. Did Frankie know him? Nah. Someone with that kind of chippy attitude, he’d have remembered.
‘Get yourself another drink,’ he told Kind Regards, ‘and I’ll see you back here in a mo.’
13
Proper villains like Tommy Riley didn’t need VIP areas as anyone important enough ended up next to them anyway. Everyone else, well, they could just sod off.
Four of Tommy’s boys were standing round him now, muscle harder than any wall. Tam Jackson was the gateway and he didn’t waste any time letting Frankie know. He stepped right into his path as he tried to walk past.
‘Do you fucking mind, son? This might be your club, but if you want to get to Tommy, you’ve still got to go through me.’
Son. The cheeky sod. What, like Frankie was just some stupid kid? Frankie squared up to him, the pair were the same height, same build. So how little did he think he was now?
‘All right, easy, Rover,’ Tommy Riley called out, waving Tam aside and beckoning Frankie through.
Rover. Frankie liked that. He failed to keep the smile off his face, something that wasn’t lost on Tam.
‘Find something funny, do you?’ he asked, moving aside slower than a fucking glacier.
Tommy Riley had the arms and torso of a professional wrestler. In fact, he’d always been like that, according to Frankie’s dad, even back when they’d been kids. His glistening brown eyes, almost as dark as his thick, slicked-back hair, were fixed steadfastly on Frankie.
The guy had the assured confidence that he was still the top dog round here. He shook Frankie’s hand firmly with a fist the size of a house brick. The geezer had bite.
‘Frankie James, meet Ritz Aziz,’ he said, nodding at the man he was with, a smart-looking business type in a posh-as-fuck white suit. ‘A personal friend of mine.’
‘Good to meet you, Mr Aziz,’ Frankie said, shaking his hand. ‘And thanks for coming along.’ He already knew the name. An ‘investor’, of whatever multiple of sins that might entail.
‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ said Aziz, his accent broad Leeds. ‘And I like the idea. How ambitious you are for this tournament. How you see it going London-wide within a couple of years. And TV rights after that. Tommy’s been telling me all about it.’
Has he now? Other than Frankie clearing the idea of him running it here with Listerman last year, he’d not gone into any details at all. Meaning Tommy had been asking around and someone had been talking. Frankie felt a knot of dread inside him. Tommy sniffing a profit would certainly explain why he was here. But having Tommy involved was the last thing Frankie wanted. This was his baby. His chance to make it big. To get away from people like Tommy for good.
‘Here’s my card,’ Aziz said. ‘You give me a call if you need any advice. I’ve organized a few things like this up in my neck of the woods.’ He gave him a wink. ‘I can tell you all the pitfalls to avoid.’
‘Er, thanks,’ said Frankie. ‘I’ll do that.’
Aziz turned to Tommy. ‘Right, well, I’d best be going,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘Pleasure calls.’
Tommy smiled. ‘Have a nice dinner. Oh, and my associate here . . .’ He nodded towards the tanned guy who’d been eyeballing Frankie and was at it again. ‘. . . he’ll wait for you while you eat at Quo Vadis and then bring you round to St James’s.’
His brothel, he meant, not that he’d have put it quite like that. A ‘Gentlemen’s Club’ was the phrase he preferred. The tanned guy nodded and waded firmly out into the crowd, cutting a path for Aziz to follow, leaving Frankie alone with Riley at the centre of the space his minders had carved out for him at the bar.
‘Yes, this is turning into a very interesting evening indeed,’ Riley said, lighting himself a cigar. ‘A glimpse of a bold and exciting new future, eh?’
He held up his empty whisky tumbler to Slim. Crystal. Monogrammed. Riley must have had one of his goons bring it here for him. Frankie wondered what else they might have about their person. Personalized hand grenades? Or samurai swords? Embossed with a family crest – a skull and crossbones, no doubt.
‘I remember them days,’ Riley said, nodding at the photo montage behind the bar as Slim poured him a quadruple Dalwhinnie. ‘I know all them faces. Every single one. Fuck me, we were all so bloody close back then.’ His expression seemed to darken. ‘And look at all you kids. You’ve all changed so much over the years.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I forgot you all knew each other too.’
Which kids? Which photo did he mean? One in particular? Frankie couldn’t tell. The holiday-snaps montage had plenty of group shots. Half of them faces he couldn’t even remember.
‘You never came out there with us, did you?’
‘No, kid. Always too busy. But enough of the past, eh? Here’s to the future.’ Knocking his drink back, he smiled. ‘So, you’re quite the speech maker, these days, I see.’ Was he taking the piss? Frankie couldn’t tell. ‘Not like your dad. He was always far more of a back-room boy, eh? Much like myself.’
If Frankie was meant to say something, he didn’t know what. The Old Man and Riley’s friendship – if that was even the right word – was a weird one these days and something the Old Man never spoke about. All Frankie knew was that while Riley might have offered him the hand of protection inside, he didn’t think he’d visited him once.
‘You must be pleased with how tonight’s going.’
‘Yeah, thanks. It’s been a good turnout,’ Frankie said.
‘And, more important, the right sort of people.’
He was looking at Pat O’Hanagan when he said it. The owner of a Northern Ireland bookie chain, who Andy had introduced Frankie to earlier. Managed a couple of topflight players as well and, judging by the two lumps in suits who were walking him to the door now after Aziz, was involved in a lot heavier shit than that too. Hardly someone Frankie fancied ending up in business with and he’d already crumpled his card up in his fist.
‘You should pop along after as well,’ Tommy said. ‘With them lot. Down to St James’s. Or do you still just not? With them?’
Tommy had a good memory. I just don’t. With them. That was the exact same phrase Frankie had used when he’d turned down Riley’s offer of some free entertainment round there.
‘I hear you’re off the booze as well,’ he said.
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘A good thing in a manager too.’ There he was again – letting Frankie know exactly whose place this really was. ‘And something your brother could have done with less of last night. How is the little rascal, by the way?’
So Tommy had already heard what had happened. No surprise there. ‘He’ll be fine.’
‘Good. Who do you think done it?’
‘I don’t know.’
Riley cocked his head to one side. ‘Really? No ideas? A smart lad like you?’
‘He didn’t see. No one did.’ And no way was Frankie stirring things up on his own hunches. Not without any proof.
‘The way I hear it, that young Dougie Hamilton . . . he’s becoming quite the chip off the old block, and stepping up a rung or two, and making a right nuisance of himself all over the place.’
Was he saying that Dougie Hamilton was behind last night’s attack on Jack? That he knew this for sure?
‘Hardly surprising,’ he went on. ‘What with everything that’s happened to his poor old dad.’
Again, meaning what? That Terence Hamilton was losing control of his own firm to his son because of what had happened last year? Or that word had finally got out about the cancer Terence had told Frankie was slowly eating him up?
Frankie waited for Riley to say more. But he just stared passively into Frankie’s eyes. No point in asking him either. Information was power to this man. He’d not give a syllable of it away for free.
Time to cut to the chase, then. And see if Riley could really help him out.
‘There’s something I need to ask you,’ Frankie said.
‘Let me guess. A favour?’ Riley smiled thinly. ‘If I had a quid for every time someone asked me for one of them . . . and, come to think of it, don’t you owe me one already? And a pretty bloody big one at that?’
He meant for the lead he’d given Frankie last summer, the one that led to him tracking down Susan Tilley’s real killer.
‘Yeah,’ said Frankie.
‘And yet here you are asking for another. Well, I’ll tell you what,’ he said, chiming his gold signet ring against the rim of his glass, ‘seeing as I’m in such a mellow mood, I’ll even hear you out.’
‘I want him off the street.’
‘Who? Dougie Hamilton?’ Riley looked surprised. He made a gun out of his fingers and thumb and pulled the trigger. ‘Bang fucking bang?’
‘No, Jack. Off the street and out of the firing line.’
‘Ah, I see. And how do you think I should go about achieving that? By firing him, perhaps?’ Another pull of that imaginary trigger. Riley smiled, clearly enjoying this particular little verbal link. ‘Only, you see, he’s quite a useful asset, your brother. Maybe not so useful as someone like Tam here . . .’ He hooked his thumb over his shoulder to where Tam was gawping at Dickie Bird’s date’s cleavage. ‘But everyone’s got to start somewhere. And if he listens hard and learns to do what’s he’s told, who knows where he might end up in a few years’ time.’
In an early grave was the only bloody answer to that. The same as Danny Kale and Christ knew how many other kids Jack’s age who’d provided cannon fodder for Ri
ley over the years.
‘Actually, I’m not here to ask you to fire him at all,’ Frankie said. Another look of surprise from Riley. But careful now. For Frankie’s plan to keep Jack safe to work, he needed to pitch it right. ‘There’s no point, he’s way too loyal. To you.’
Riley smiled, approvingly. Loyalty, he valued it above all else.
‘Then what do you want?’ he said.
‘For you to move him into something legit.’
That was the word Jack had used. Legit. A legit job. The kind his lack of qualifications and normal work experience stopped him getting. Something out of danger and off the street. Because as well as having his grubby fat fingers in plenty of well dodgy pies, Riley owned plenty of kosher businesses too – like the Ambassador Club itself.
‘Something where what you’re talking about, his potential, can shine through? Especially if he sees it as something, I don’t know . . . positive? You know, like a promotion, I suppose.’ Nothing to do with his big brother interfering, in other words.
Riley said nothing, just stared at Frankie for a second, two. ‘And what if it doesn’t . . . shine through? What if he screws up?’
‘Then . . . you know where I live, don’t you?’
‘Meaning what? You’re offering yourself up as some kind of collateral?’
‘Just offering to sort him out if he strays. And keep an eye on him. Make sure he keeps his priorities right.’ Until I can figure out a way of getting him out from under you altogether.
Another long, hard look from Riley. Letting him know this was for real, that he’d be held accountable. Then, finally, a nod.
‘You’ve been hanging out with your dad’s cousin too often,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ Frankie glanced over at Kind Regards, still there at the end of the bar. Was Riley talking about the Old Man’s case files? Had someone told him Frankie was looking back into them? But who? Maybe Snaresby? Or Lomax, or Dolf?
But no, he wasn’t talking about the files at all.
‘You make a good case,’ he said. ‘A tight one. Legal, like. And, yeah, I can see where you’re coming from. And maybe our Jack would be better suited to a different kind of role.’
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