Double Kiss

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  ‘You all right if I go?’ he asked Frankie. ‘We can catch up later on, or tomorrow?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Tomorrow. Come round and watch the match. He is still allowed to watch footie, right?’ Frankie asked Tiffany with a grin.

  ‘Only if he doesn’t keep asking me to explain the offside rule,’ she smiled back.

  ‘Fair enough. Right. I’ll see you both then.’

  Frankie gave Jack another hug and off they jogged. Yeah, tomorrow would be fine. He could fill him in on all things Mum then.

  Frankie shot the breeze with JoJo for five minutes, before pushing off, promising him he’d be back for a sparring session next week. And why not? His little brother only ran the bloody place now, eh?

  Just as he was leaving, a movement snagged his eye and, looking up, he saw Listerman the lawyer in that glass-fronted office, gazing back down. He raised an arm in greeting, but it wasn’t an invitation. Turning his back on Frankie, he returned to his desk.

  Frankie glanced over at the door where he’d seen those big geezers with the black briefcases walking out the last time he was here. What was it Tam Jackson had said? Nothing you need to concern yourself with. Got a separate entrance. Meaning it’s a separate business, OK? No, still not OK. And wouldn’t be either. Not until Frankie knew that whatever was going on in there wasn’t going to affect his little brother’s life.

  39

  Frankie had always liked Kew Gardens, it was predictable, relaxing, safe. His mum had dreamed of moving here one day, and Kind Regards the same. It had always been a running joke between them all, back when Frankie had been a kid. With only the Old Man objecting. Twee Gardens, he’d called it. Fucking Surrey, not even proper London at all.

  Parking his Capri in the little horseshoe-shaped road by the station, Frankie couldn’t help thinking how his own luck would fare today.

  He found the block of flats soon enough, though. On a cute little tree-lined road off Kew Green, with the church spire rising in the distance. Nice thing about posh places like Kew. You could just ask people and they helped, instead of looking like you were planning on mugging them, which was how most people acted back in his ’hood.

  Another kind old duck even let him in through the front door of the Reverend James Nicholls’s building. She told him the Reverend lived up on the second floor. Frankie just about managed a smile as he thanked her, but already he was adrenalizing. Was reminding himself how he was going to play this. Hard and fast. There’d be no actual violence, but he’d just get right up into this guy’s grill and tell him who he was and what he wanted.

  He’d had second thoughts about putting the proper frighteners on him. Nicholls was an ex-copper, after all. And if he’d been pals with Snaresby, he would have once been a right bastard too and wouldn’t be easy to intimidate. And probably would have had no problem tracking Frankie down and getting him done for assault if he overstepped the mark.

  Better to play a few mind games with him and tell him he knew that what had happened with the Old Man’s case wasn’t right. And tell him that the case was being looked into again, official, like. Even though this wasn’t strictly true.

  He hurried up the stairs and found the right flat. Gave the front door a good hard knock and open it swung – never a good sign. Frankie steeled himself and went in fists up, already clenched, expecting the bloody worst.

  And he got it too. A body. A dead one. Or at least that’s certainly how it looked, hanging up there from the living room light fitting.

  Shitting arse bollocks. Frankie just stood there and gawped for a second. The Reverend James Nicholls’s eyes were wide open. What looked like dried spit caked his chin. A tipped-over chair lay forever out of reach beneath his feet.

  And it was definitely him, right? Had to be. He was in full churchy regalia. One of them long black frocks, or whatever they called them. And his face, all monged and gurny as it was, matched the same frocked fellah in a photo above the mantelpiece.

  Another photo that caught his eye showed Nicholls in a bar, a little younger, and dressed in a suit, looking well smashed too, with lots of uniforms around him. Maybe it was his retirement bash from the force? Frankie’s stomach lurched, because guess who was grinning right there beside him? None other than DI Snaresby. Another three blokes as well. Right at the centre of the crowd. Arms around each other’s necks. A group within a group. And all of them smiling up at whoever was taking the photo, like they were somehow in on it too.

  Frankie looked round, his heart pounding. Think. What should he do? Search the place? But look for what? Files? Folders? Computers. Anything to do with the case. Shit, it was worth a go. He hurried over to the desk. A couple of the drawers were already open. Like someone had gone through them? No computer.

  Shit. He pulled his jacket sleeves down over his hands and opened the other drawers. It was just stationery and stuff. He quickly checked the other rooms too, but nothing caught his eye.

  His heart was pounding like it was going to burst now, he needed to get out of here fast. He still remembered waking up last year in another flat with another dead body in it and the sound of cop sirens closing in all around. Was that what this was? Another set-up? Or just something way sadder than that?

  He looked around. A half-finished meal on the table over there in front of the TV. Which was still on, but with the sound turned down. A trailer for the bleedin’ X-Files, of all things. Bloody hell, if only Mulder and Scully were here.

  He grabbed the photo – the one of Snaresby and the others – on the way out. He wasn’t even quite sure why but there was just something about them. They looked like they ruled the bleedin’ world. And there, on the corner of the frame, something else snagged his attention, something that could have been the smudge of a lipstick mark.

  He walked as fast as he could away from the block of flats. Holy crapola, would that old lady who’d let him in downstairs remember him? No, he’d had his cap on, right? And what about CCTV? No, he didn’t think he’d seen any cameras. But even if he had been spotted, would it matter anyway? He didn’t know how long Nicholls had been dead. Long enough for Frankie not to be considered a suspect even if someone had seen him go in? Hours? Longer? Days?

  But it wasn’t just this his brain wouldn’t let go of, it was the fact Nicholls was dead at all. A coincidence? Yeah, sure, that was possible. Maybe he’d got depression or God knows what. Maybe he’d been thinking about this for weeks. Or maybe it wasn’t a coincidence at all, Frankie going looking for him . . . and finding him dead. Perhaps the one thing had led to the other.

  What if someone had told him Frankie was coming? Did this bloke really have something to hide?

  What if instead someone had just made it look like he’d topped himself? Because, yeah, that was another thing Frankie had learned last year, sometimes deaths weren’t what they seemed.

  Frankie reached his car and headed out sharpish across Kew Bridge and onto the Westway and back into town. Think harder! Who’d known he was going there today? He’d not told anyone, had he? No. It was just something he’d decided to crack on and do after getting the club ready for tonight’s match.

  But that didn’t mean no one had known he might be coming here some time. Because Grew . . . yeah, Grew had known about Frankie having Nicholls’s address . . . and that he’d been interested in him because of the Old Man’s case. And what about the people who’d helped him find it? The never you mind whos? Would Grew have told them why as well? And what about Riley? Would Grew have told him too? Had he got Frankie this information under his own auspices? Or because Riley had said he could?

  Then there was Snaresby. Because, shit, yeah, Frankie had told him he knew Nicholls’s and Fenwick’s names back at the hospital, hadn’t he? And Snaresby knew he’d got hold of those case files too and that he was planning on doing something about them.

  Last of all, there was Lomax and Dolf too. They’d overheard Frankie talking to the Old Man in the clink and telling him he was going to try and find a way to
prove his innocence again. ‘Fear Lies in the Past’. Frankie pictured that bloody note again, the one he’d found on the Capri. Had whoever had written it been warning him off this?

  Would Nicholls still be alive if he’d not tracked him down?

  *

  ‘It’s coming home . . . It’s coming home . . . It’s coming . . . Football’s coming home . . .’

  Frankie heard the chant coming from the Ambassador from halfway down Poland Street, as he hurried towards it after parking the car. Spartak waved at him from where he was stationed on a chair by the door.

  ‘Sounds busy,’ Frankie said as he reached him.

  The big man wrapped him up in a bear-sized hug.

  ‘Because it is busy,’ he said.

  Frankie reached up and touched the tip of his red mohawk with a grin.

  ‘What’s that for?’ asked the giant Russian.

  ‘Luck. So as England wins. I’ve got a lot riding on this one, mate. And,’ Frankie added, ‘because the last Russian I ran into tried to kill me and I’m just making sure you’re the friendly kind.’

  ‘Where is this son of a whore?’ Spartak said, looking round. ‘I will teach him some manners, if you like?’

  ‘I’ll tell you all about him later, mate. But, right now, we’ve got us a game to watch.’

  ‘Three Lions on a shirt . . . Juuuuules Rimet still gleaming . . . thiiiiirrrty years of hurt . . . neeeeeever stopped me dreaming . . .’

  Frankie forced himself through the crowd towards the bar. The place was jammed, buzzing. It was kick-off in less than thirty seconds’ time. Someone shouted out his name and he looked around, but couldn’t work out who. So many people in here he knew. Slim, Xandra, Maxine, Dickie Bird, TFI Jonny, Jack, Tiffany, Festive Al, even Tam bloody Jackson and his crew.

  But it was other faces he was thinking of too as the whistle blew and a roar went up and he turned round to face the big screen. Faces from the last few days. Isabella, Sky, Jeremy, Jesús, Grew, Sergei, Uncle Carlo, Duke, Little T, Balearic Bob, the Old Man and his mum too.

  But most of all it was the faces of those other three cops in the framed photo he still held in his hand, squeezing it so hard now that he felt the glass crack.

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  FRAMED

  Frankie hadn’t so much inherited the Ambassador Club, as had it thrown at him like a ticking bomb from a speeding car. At least that’s what his dad’s cousin, Kind Regards, had told him five years ago – and that’s how it still felt today.

  Hitting the light switch in the club’s main hall, Frankie breathed in the stale smell of smoke, chalk and beer, as he listened to the tink-tink of the strip lights flickering into life above the twelve tables.

  He sighed. The hall’s worn carpet was scuffed and stained and its walls and ceiling were patchy with damp. Two of the frosted plate glass windows overlooking the street had been cracked by some passing pissheads a few weeks ago and he still hadn’t got round to fixing them.

  Drumming his fingers along the edges of the tables as he walked to the bar, he was almost glad his dad wasn’t here to see it. After his dad had been banged up and Frankie had first taken over managing the club, he’d hoped to turn its fortunes round. Easier said than done.

  He’d hit the same old chicken and egg problem the old man had. The only way to make enough money to tart the place up was to bring in more punters. But the only way to bring in more punters was to tart the fucking place up.

  Frankie’s dad, Bernie, had taken out a thirty-year lease on the club over ten years ago, back in ’84, after winning big on the horses. His plan had been to put it on the map. Make it a hub for the game here in the West End. But he’d always come up short.

  End result was that Frankie and his brother Jack had hung out here pretty much full time in their teens when they weren’t in school, being babysat by staff, while their mum and dad had gone out doing other jobs to make ends meet: managing brewery pubs, or running van-loads of tax-free cigarettes and booze back on the ferries from France.

  Not that Frankie had minded. None of the rented houses they’d lived in at the time had ever felt as much like home as here. Frankie loved it. Soho. The club. The people. The free lemonades and crisps. And of course the snooker. He’d got the bug for it the instant he’d picked up a cue. Hadn’t been a day gone by since when he hadn’t fitted in a few frames.

  He checked his watch. Still too early to go cap in hand to Daniel Listerman about the rent. Listerman was Tommy Riley’s lawyer and Riley was the big-time gangster bastard who owned the freehold on this building along with the rest of the street.

  Listerman the Lawyer was an early riser. Some said he never slept at all. But turning up this early at his swanky Beak Street office would only make Frankie look even more desperate – and skint – than he was.

  Might as well make himself useful here first. He changed out of his suit in the storeroom, coming back out in tatty blue overalls and black rubber boots, with earphones in, a Sony Discman clipped to his belt, and a bucket of warm soapy water and a mop in his fists.

  He’d had to let the club’s regular cleaner go a month back, not having enough money to pay her. It didn’t bother him that much, to tell the truth. Apart from the khazis. Especially the gents. What the hell was wrong with blokes anyway? Why couldn’t a single bloody one of them manage to piss in a straight line?

  He cleaned the bogs first to get them out the way, then the bar and the ashtrays, before starting on sweeping and mopping the floor. He worked his way round the tables in the same pattern he did every day. It somehow made it go faster, like doing circuits down the gym.

  He hummed as he worked. A Northern Soul compilation. Everyone was into Blur and Oasis these days, but he reckoned the old tunes were still the best. His dad had been a proper mod back in the day. There was a signed Small Faces LP up above the bar. Used to be an old Bang & Olufsen record player and a stack of Al Wilson and Jimmy Radcliffe singles back there as well. But Jack had pilfered the lot on his nineteenth birthday two years ago and flogged them down Berwick Street market to pay for a night on the razz.

  Frankie still hadn’t forgiven him, the little shit. Him and Jack had used to listen to those records as kids, dancing and larking about. They should have meant more to him than just some quick cash. Frankie remembered coming down here one night late when his mum and dad had still been together and seeing them slow-dancing round the empty club. He couldn’t believe how fucked up his family life had got since then.

  His mum had gone missing in ’88, just after Frankie had turned sixteen. A year after her and his dad had started living apart, her at their rented house and him here in the flat above the club. She’d just vanished when Frankie and Jack had both been at school. No sign of a struggle. Nothing. Just gone.

  Everyone else – Frankie’s father, Jack and the cops – all reckoned that Priscilla James wasn’t just missing, she was dead. Why else wouldn’t she have come back? Or at least contacted them? But Frankie didn’t believe it. He felt it in his guts. He just fucking knew that one day he’d see her again.

  He checked his watch. Ten to ten. Nearly time to open up already. Nearly time to go see Listerman too, just as soon as Slim the barman got here to do his shift. Frankie headed back to the storeroom to get changed. The red light on the answerphone winked at him from the bar. He took his earphones out and hit ‘Play’.

  ‘Frankie?’ It was Jack, sounding well stressed. ‘For fuck’s sake, Frankie, pick up.’ Was he wasted? He was slurring. ‘I’m coming over . . . Fuck. I need you. I need help . . .’ A whisper, a hiss. ‘I’m coming over. Now.’

  Frankie groaned. Hell’s tits, not again. How many fucking times already this year? Jack doing too much gear. Getting himself in a paranoid mess. Jack needing a lift back from some godforsaken club in the middle of
piggin’ Essex. Jack running out of dosh and expecting Frankie to bail him out. Jack making the same stupid bloody mistakes over and over again.

  Frankie’s heart thundered. Just pretend you’re not here. Don’t answer the door. Fuck off back upstairs and turn up the radio and get in the shower.

  But all he saw in his head was his mum. That last morning he’d seen her, as she’d handed him his packed lunch in the shitty little driveway of that rented Shepherd’s Bush house.

  ‘Go catch him up and make up,’ she’d said.

  She’d been talking about Jack. He’d just cycled off in a strop over some football sticker he’d nicked off Frankie the night before and which Frankie had just wrestled back off him.

  ‘He thinks he can take care of himself, but he can’t,’ she’d said. ‘You know that. And promise me, promise me,’ she’d said, squeezing his wrist so hard he’d winced, ‘you’ll always be there for him. No matter what happens. To me or your dad, or to anyone else.’

  Even then, it had sounded off. Had she known? He’d asked himself the same question a million times since. Had she known that by teatime she’d be gone?

  Crack.

  What the fuck?

  He turned to face the club’s front door. Someone had just given it an almighty smack.

  Ronnie O’Sullivan OBE won his first major snooker event at the age of seventeen. He has won twenty-eight titles, including five World Titles, five UK Championships and a record seven Masters Titles. Blessed with the rare gift of being able to play both left- and right-handed, Ronnie made the fastest 147 on record at the 1997 World Championship – in five minutes and twenty seconds.

  Away from snooker, Ronnie loves running, cooking and writing. Double Kiss is the second book in the Soho Nights series, following the hugely successful Framed.

  By Ronnie O’Sullivan

  Fiction

  FRAMED