Double Kiss

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

‘Yeah, but now the Russians are involved.’ Grew dug into a black Gola gym bag at his feet. ‘And that means it all might kick off big time. And I don’t want Gaz Landy’s girl anywhere near it when it does.’

  He took out a pistol. Frankie had only ever held one before, the one his Old Man had kept stashed behind the boiler. But this thing looked way more modern and powerful than that.

  ‘You ever used one of these before?’

  ‘No,’ Frankie said, ‘and I don’t want to either.’

  ‘Want don’t come into it. Safety off, safety on, point, kersplat,’ Grew demonstrated, mimicking shooting the oblivious driver in the back of the head.

  ‘I said no,’ Frankie said.

  ‘And I said yes.’

  Grew shoved the gun into Frankie’s hands. The way he looked at him . . . no way was Frankie going to be allowed not to take it. But no way was he going to use it either.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, sticking it inside his jacket pocket.

  ‘What about me?’ said Jesús. ‘Why does he get a gun and not me?’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry, love,’ said Grew. ‘You’ve not been forgotten.’ He pulled another pistol out of his bag and handed it over.

  Jesús grinned. ‘Look,’ he said, turning to Frankie, ‘mine is bigger than yours.’

  It was an’ all, horrible-looking too.

  ‘Remember,’ Grew warned Frankie. ‘Just the girl. Duke, the Russians . . . you leave them to us and the rest of the boys.’

  ‘What boys?’

  ‘Them.’

  Frankie watched them, then, getting out of the two cars in front. Eight in total, and lookee, lookee, no surprise here. They were the same outfit who’d been bossing Jeremy’s club, Kooks, the other night. The ones who’d cleared the Russians out, snagging their number plate in the process. But the way they were kitted out now, it didn’t look like they were going to be so polite this time. All of them were armed. Their boss man too. The Scouser Frankie had had sense enough not to tangle with. Jimmy. From the way the other lads fanned out at a signal from his hand, Frankie was guessing they might be ex-Forces too.

  Frankie followed Grew and Jesús out of the car and headed left, whereas Jimmy and his boys had gone right. It was hot already, the harsh morning sun beating down on the rough earth of the olive groves either side of the road.

  ‘We had someone speccing it out here last night,’ Grew said. ‘Little T and a couple of women stayed over in that little guest house at the bottom of that field. While the Russians, Duke and some other fuckers they brought in kept to the main house.’

  The three of them clambered over a gate and set off warily down the field, moving in single file now, with Jesús out front. Frankie had lost sight of Jimmy’s boys – they must be halfway to the big house by now. Not that he could see much of it any more. Just a couple of chimneys and some red roof tiles along the valley over there to the right.

  They reached the house less than two minutes later. Jesús raised a finger to his lips. What? Frankie looked around. He couldn’t see anything, but his heart was banging in his chest. Then he saw it. Cages. For dogs? Bloody hell. Not again. He could still picture those bastards that had belonged to Uncle Carlo. He could still hear them too, snapping at his heels as he’d run for his life. Who knew? Maybe he would need this pistol after all?

  Jesús edged forward, his own pistol now drawn. Then looked back and grinned and made an ‘AOK’ circle with his forefinger and thumb, before nodding at the cages. They were empty, thank God. Jesús hurried past the cages and through a gap in the tall hedgerow beyond. Frankie and Grew did the same.

  The little guest house stood in a ring of palm trees on the other side. They edged round to the front. No one in sight. Just the steady thrum of cicadas in the air. They reached the terrace at the side of the house. Swimming costumes drying on sunbeds. A bright orange dragonfly darted across a deep-blue pool. A half-full bottle of rosé glinted on a cast-iron table with four glasses, also half full, next to four wicker armchairs and a pack of fags next to an ashtray on the floor. Winstons, the same brand Little T had been smoking at Kooks the other night.

  ‘Quiet as the Mary bleedin’ Celeste,’ Grew muttered, glancing up at the windows, none of which had their shutters closed or their curtains drawn. ‘I have a horrible feeling, our little love birds might have flown.’

  ‘Wait here,’ Frankie said, ‘let me go inside and check.’

  He didn’t give a shit about Duke. But Little T, yeah, he’d rather it was him than these two who got to her first and at least tried to talk her out. Because whatever this Duke had done, it had pissed a lot of people off. Frankie reckoned they’d use her to get to him, if that’s what it took. And if Frankie still knew one thing in this whole screwed-up mess that his life had become, it was that doing good by an eighteen-year-old girl he’d once known as a kid and keeping her safe was the one right thing he could do.

  Grew nodded and Frankie tried the heavy wooden door set into the finca’s stone archway. It wasn’t even closed and squeaked wide open with just a gentle push. He waited a second, listening, conscious of Jesús hovering at his back, that bloody pistol of his no doubt still out.

  Hearing nothing, Frankie headed inside and looked around the sitting room and kitchen area. Someone had left travel bags, clothes, Rizlas and a baggie of grass on a black marble breakfast bar. The lights were still on but there was no one here.

  ‘Tanya?’ he called out. ‘Tanya, it’s Frankie. Frankie James. I know you probably don’t want to see me right now, but I really need to see you.’

  No reply. He called out again on the way up the steep flight of stone stairs leading to the first floor and went down a single gloomy, cool corridor. There were four rooms leading off it and he hit them one at a time. Not a thing in the first three, but there was something in the last – a bag. He looked inside and found women’s clothes, a washbag, a wallet and – bingo – a passport.

  He knew whose face he was going to see, even before he opened it, and he wasn’t wrong. Little T. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen when this picture had been taken, but this was definitely her. Looking round her room at the rest of her abandoned belongings, Frankie suddenly got a very bad feeling about her indeed.

  *

  All three of them were sat back in the Merc, driving away from the guest house. Grew hadn’t spoken since he’d returned from hiking down to the big house. He’d been purple in the face when he’d got back. Frankie couldn’t work out if it was heat exhaustion or fury. Even Jesús hadn’t had the bollocks to ask him what the hell had happened in there.

  Frankie glanced out the back window and noticed the other two Mercs still stood in the layby, but Jimmy and his lads were nowhere to be seen. Grew pulled out his fags and his Luger lighter and sparked one up. Buzzing down the window, he blew a fat lungful of smoke outside.

  ‘OK . . .’ he finally said. More of a sigh.

  ‘It’s OK?’ Jesús looked surprised.

  ‘No, it’s fucking not,’ snapped Grew. ‘It’s as far from fucking OK as it’s possible to fucking be.’

  In a series of snarls, sweary tirades and even the occasional bark, he told them what had gone down. Or, rather, what hadn’t. The raid on the Russians’ pad had been a failure. Because there’d been no one bloody there. No Russians, no Little T, no Duke. No nothing – apart from a note.

  ‘What kind of note?’ Frankie said.

  ‘You really want to know?’

  Yeah, he did. Riley had given him a job, to get that girl back, that girl who still wasn’t here. ‘Will you have to kill me if you tell me?’ he said.

  ‘Only if you ever tell anyone else.’

  ‘I was joking.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’ Grew stubbed his fag out on his Gola bag. ‘Tommy gave Duke some money,’ he said. ‘A lot of money to go to Amsterdam and buy some merch. A lot of merch. Pills . . . coke . . . To send out here.’

  ‘To us,’ said Jesús. ‘My people, my brother.’

  OK, right. Fran
kie got it now. All that shit had been destined for Tommy’s chosen distribution partners, whose network was supposed to have been dealing it on. ‘Only let me guess,’ Frankie said. ‘Duke never delivered.’

  Jesús nodded. ‘Correct.’

  ‘Our guess is the prick did a deal with these Russians instead, who clearly fancy getting a foothold out here,’ Grew said.

  ‘But who won’t,’ Jesús said. Not a comment, just a statement of fact.

  ‘He obviously planned to keep the money for himself,’ Grew went on, ‘and then vanish off the face of the earth. With Little T right by his side as collateral, like. A human shield. Because he probably thought her dad and godfather might not then come after him and risk her getting hurt.’

  Only they already had. At least Tommy had. Clearly caring a lot less about her well-being than he did about his missing merch. Or his and Gaz’s merch, leastways, seeing as how they were partnered up. Jackals. Wasn’t that what Little T had called them? Even if she didn’t know anything about what her boyfriend was up to – which was still a possibility – in that way at least, she’d been right.

  ‘Only we turned up then, didn’t we?’ Grew said. ‘Right while Duke was waiting for the merchandise to arrive from Amsterdam so he could complete his deal. Which we reckon it did last night, judging by the ripped-up baggies and testing kit Jimmy and his lads just found back there in the main house.’ Grew smiled grimly. ‘But, you see, I’m guessing these Russians were a little smarter than Duke had reckoned on. They kept him close, see? In sight? To see if they could trust him proper, like. And that’s where I’m guessing things started to go wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Very wrong, for Duke, that is. Because no matter what bullshit he might have spun this Russian gang, probably about him being the big man and this being his gear to sell, I reckon us turning up here and tracking them down probably made them begin to suspect that this gear they’d just given him all that money for, it belonged to somebody else. Somebody well connected out here.’ Grew slowly shook his head. ‘Which is probably when he decided to do one.’

  ‘A runner?’ Frankie said.

  ‘Exactly, and fast. It must have been some time last night he scarpered with their money, leaving poor Little T behind, so they wouldn’t guess he was gone until it was too late. Leaving them with all our merchandise, which they’ve now correctly guessed we want back . . .’ Grew reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper ‘And which it seems they’re now prepared to give us, so long as they get back the cash they paid Duke for it . . .’

  ‘So that’s what that note is about? They want to do an exchange?’

  ‘Duke and their cash, in return for Little T and our gear. Thereby leaving them and us even . . . and off each other’s backs. And Duke . . . well, Christ knows what they’re planning on doing to him. But I’m guessing it’s not shaking hands.’

  Frankie stared at the note and pictured Little T, not only ditched by that bastard, but kidnapped by those Russians as well. Nothing but a bargaining chip and something that would be worth sweet FA to them if the deal that they wanted went sour.

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘Well, that, Frankie, is the million-dollar question. Quite bloody literally, in this case. Because we don’t yet know where this bugger Duke is. Trust me, I want to get my hands on him even more than they do because his recklessness has been causing us all sorts of trouble, even beyond all this. Isn’t that right, Jesús?’

  Jesús nodded.

  ‘Not least the burgeoning shortage of gear on this beautiful white island,’ Grew said. ‘The shortage our gear should have been filling right now. One that the Russians started filling themselves, before realizing there were bigger boys than them already here. Forcing our good friends out here to do all kinds of running around to fill the gap, like poor Sky, having to run a shipment over from Mallorca.’

  ‘Sky?’

  ‘Well, you didn’t think it was really pata negra, did you, down there in that hold? Any more than I believed you when you told me you’d been off with some bird called Cielo all day.’

  Christ, Frankie felt a double idiot. He’d known about that too.

  ‘I’ve no idea what you were doing over there on Mallorca, mind,’ Grew said. ‘Whatever that postcard was you was flashing about . . . Any more than I know why you went back there yesterday afternoon and got your face rearranged again.’ He stared at Frankie evenly. ‘But I do know you’re not a double-crossing prick like Duke. I even quite like you, kid, or I’d have already put you in the fucking ground.’

  And Frankie wasn’t about to tell him what the postcard was about either. ‘So what now?’ he said.

  ‘Same old, same old. We still need to find Duke.’

  ‘Where do you think he’s gone?’

  ‘Well, Jeremy’s already had some of his uniformed pals keeping a little eye on the airport and ferry port. One of the big attractions of a small island like this, you see. So easy for friends with the right connections to keep tabs.’

  ‘But still no sign of him?’

  ‘No, making me think he might have already done a flit on some private boat, or gone to ground. Which is a nuisance, of course. Because he’s got a big bloody bag of cash. Meaning he might be able to stay hidden for months. But I’m still feeling sanguine, on account of how he doesn’t know this island that well, so might not know anywhere nicely off the beaten track to hide up.’

  Frankie thought about this, as the outskirts of Ibiza Old Town came into view in the distance.

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t need to,’ he then said.

  ‘Need to what?’ Grew asked.

  ‘Know the island that well. Maybe he just needs to know one really good place to go.’

  37

  The Savage Monkey’s engine growled menacingly as it turned into the secluded, half-moon-shaped cove on this ragged stretch of coastline on the north-east of the island.

  The atmosphere on board was a lot less relaxed than the last time Frankie had been out. This time there was no skinny-dipping Sky, for one thing, and no Valium-hazed lie-in. This crew certainly weren’t offering deck-side frolics, followed by rustic bread and cheese. Instead four geezers with weapons sat next to him, Jesús and Grew among them. Jeremy stood beside some local hard nut at the wheel, scanning the white crescent of beach through a pair of military-grade binoculars for any sign of movement.

  All of them here because of Frankie, there was no getting away from it. Whatever went down today was because of him, and whoever got hurt. Either these lads here on board, or whoever the hell might be there in that shuttered-up clapboard restaurant there on the beach.

  Or chiringuito, to be more precise, just like it said here on the matchbook in Frankie’s jacket pocket that Little T had written her name down on. Restaurante Ca’n Costa, the old-school beach restaurant run by one of Duke’s old mates. It was the perfect place to get away from it all, as Little T had told Frankie, and served the best seafood on the island too – not that Frankie would be sampling it today. For one thing, it was still only 9 a.m. and, apart from their good selves, it didn’t seem like anyone else on the White Island had yet surfaced from whatever bacchanalian shenanigans they’d been up to last night. They’d seen a couple of windsurfers, but that was it on their way over here from Botafoch Marina. The beach ahead looked dead as a dodo as well.

  Maybe he’d guessed wrong and Duke hadn’t bolted here at all? In which case, things were looking bad for Little T, very bad indeed. Jeremy ordered the skipper to cut the engine while they were still 200 yards off shore. They dropped anchor, then it was over the side into the tender they’d been towing. Enough room for just five of them, which was fine, because the skipper was staying on the boat, with a rifle fitted with a telescopic sight fixed on the shore.

  Jeremy and Jesús rowed in silence and perfect synchronicity, like they’d done it a million times before. How the hell could Frankie have ever thought they were anything other than brothers? What a mug
.

  He felt sick and not because of the sea, which was flat as a pancake, but because of the weight of the pistol here in his jacket pocket. He prayed it still had its bloody safety on. Even though he had no intention of ever using it, it was something that was here all the same.

  The two brothers stepped out of the boat on either side as they hit the shallows and dragged the dinghy onto the untouched white sand. Jesús nodded at Frankie to follow him, and Grew padded after the tall figure of Jeremy, who set off fast for the right-hand side of the restaurant.

  Frankie’s mouth felt as dry as the hot sand beneath his bare feet. He and Jesús went round the edge of the restaurant double quick to the left side and skirted round a fire pit. Dozens of flies buzzed lazily over a fish head left in the ashes and a curl of smoke rose up. Someone had been here last night – maybe they still were? And if this place was only open on Fridays and Saturdays, then it was no regular punter. Both he and Jesús froze as they heard muffled voices. Was it a bloke and a bird’s? Someone was talking – or were they? Perhaps it was a radio jingle.

  Jesús pressed the forefinger of his right hand to his lips. His left was already curled around the trigger of his pistol as he edged up to the door and peered in through the greasy pane of glass. He held his forefinger up again. Signalling what? Wait? No, because he was already reaching for the handle. One, then? There was just one person inside?

  Jesús threw himself aside as he heard the shout, just in bloody time. A gunshot roared and the pane of glass exploded. Then the door swung open and a body bundled through. Jesús went flying, taking the full force of the wooden door.

  But whoever had charged through tripped right over the scorched bricks at the edge of the fire pit, landing just by Frankie’s feet. A black gym bag spun ahead of him and smacked to a halt against a palm tree trunk.

  Frankie caught the dark glint of a gun in the pit and whoever was next to it grabbed for it. Shit. Frankie needed to move. He stamped down hard on the tattooed hand reaching out and caught it on the wrist. The guy was already flipping round to face him, but Frankie dropped down onto his knee, shoving his weight hard onto it, using his momentum to pin that wrist even tighter.