The Break

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  His sources? Meaning who? That scumbag DI Snaresby had headed up the murder investigation. So what did this mean? That he’d been on not just Tommy Riley’s payroll back then, as Frankie had suspected, but on Terence Hamilton’s as well? And what the hell was all this about the cops having been pursuing Frankie as a suspect too? On what grounds? What did they think they knew? Really enough to maybe fit Frankie up for something even without the prints on that gun?

  ‘Now I still don’t know exactly what involvement your nasty little brother had in my fiancée’s death,’ Dougie said. ‘The way I’ve heard it, he’s a coward and an incompetent, and so it’s probably likely that he didn’t actually kill her himself. But was he part of it? Was he there? I don’t know.’ He glanced up at Barry like he was about to give him another order, but then his eyes flicked back down to Frankie’s instead. ‘But one day,’ he said, adjusting his silk tie knot against his spotless white shirt, ‘and you can take this as fact, I will have myself a little chat with young Jack . . . no, not now, not with him being so closely under Tommy Riley’s protection, and no, not now, not when the police still know how much I want to talk to him . . . but, one day, I will get to the truth –’

  A sharp knock at the door. Frankie turned to look.

  ‘Ah-ah.’ Dougie clicked his fingers at him. ‘Eyes front. There’s a good boy.’

  The shadow around Frankie rippled. He did as he was told.

  A click of the door opening. The shadow pulled back. Footsteps. Someone coming in? Someone going out?

  ‘Your mother’s asking for you.’ A woman’s voice – hers – Viollet’s. Had she come in to see what was happening? To join in? To play? It took all Frankie’s will not to turn.

  Dougie checked his watch and sighed. ‘Yes, of course. Please tell her I’ll be there in a minute. And tell the manager to make sure she’s given Tanqueray No. Ten and not Gordon’s. Neat, with a slice of lime.’

  More footsteps. The door clicked shut. The shadow returned and Dougie’s eyes settled back on Frankie.

  ‘Did you know I trained as a lawyer?’ he said.

  Frankie nodded.

  ‘And worked as one too?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Right here in London,’ Dougie said. ‘Property law. That was going to be my thing. My speciality. My métier. And I was getting very good at it too. So good that I’d been headhunted by an American firm. You see, I didn’t plan to live my life out in places like this . . . in the shadows, with grubby little people like you . . . I was moving to New York to start a new life. A better life. Away from my family. With my new wife. Can you imagine how excited I was? How excited we were? And how it then felt for that all to be snatched away?’ Dougie leant forward in his chair, his eyes boring into Frankie’s. ‘Can you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No. No, you can’t.’ That same faraway look was back in Dougie’s eyes. ‘But you soon will.’

  Frankie’s heartbeat spiked, but Dougie only slowly wagged his finger at him, as though reading his mind. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘I don’t mean soon, as in now soon. Not today soon. Maybe not tomorrow either. Or the day, or the week, or the month after that. But soon enough, Frankie. Because that’s just it, isn’t it, my little doggy? I’ve got you on a lead now, haven’t I? A choke chain, if you will. And you’re going to do exactly what I tell you for as long as I tell you. You’re mine now. I own you. Understand?’

  Frankie said nothing. Because what could he say? Because Dougie was right.

  ‘There now.’ Dougie smiled flat and wide. ‘I’m glad it’s sinking in, who’s in charge . . . Because that’s the main reason I brought you here today, so you could learn . . . who’s boss, who your new owner is . . . me.’

  Frankie gritted his teeth.

  ‘Of course, you might think you already have an owner,’ Dougie said. ‘A Mr Tommy Riley. And you’re right, you do. But do you know what one of the most important aspects of property law is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Due diligence.’

  Due what?

  ‘Yes, I can see from your expression that this means nothing to you. So listen, little doggy. Allow me to explain. In layman’s terms. So you can understand. Essentially due diligence means finding out everything you can about the other side before entering a negotiation and going to deal. In the case of a property deal, this might mean finding out if the person or persons you are buying a property from actually own it in law and whether the property itself is in the condition as advertised. Are you following me so far?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good boy. Now in the case of a dog-owning deal such as this, I made it my business to discover exactly what your connections are with your current owner, Mr Tommy Riley.’

  Here we go . . .

  ‘There’s the Ambassador Club, for one. Insofar as he owns it and you just lease it off him – unless I’ve been misinformed?’

  ‘You haven’t.’

  ‘I never am. Then there’s your little snooker tournament, the Soho Open. Taking place in less than two weeks, over the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth of September. And it’s my understanding that Riley’s got a twenty per cent stake in that too.’

  Correct again. Even though that was meant to be confidential. Someone had been talking. Someone in Riley’s organization. Who?

  ‘In other words, Mr Tommy Riley must feel like he has you on a nice tight leash too . . . am I right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ Another thin smile. ‘And I want to keep it that way. Because even though you are very much my doggy now, for reasons I’ve explained, I don’t want your other owner to be aware yet . . . of your . . . disloyalty . . . at least not until I want him to be.’

  Frankie just stared.

  ‘That’s right, Frankie. You get it,’ Dougie said. ‘You keep on working with Tommy Riley for now. But in reality, you’re mine. And you’ll jolly well come to heel when I call.’ He cocked his head to one side. The muffled sound of bass was thudding up now from downstairs. Sounded like Elvis’s ‘Burning Love’. Surely better suited to a cremation than a burial? Way more suitable for a party than a funeral too. He got up and stretched out his arms, smoothing down his suit jacket, before walking past Frankie and patting him gently on the head. ‘Take him back out through the staff entrance,’ he told the Sasquatch. ‘This meeting’s over. I’ve got a wake to attend.’

  3

  Monday morning and Frankie was up with the larks. Or less larks. More like tarts, drunks, junkies, gamblers and whatever other lost souls were still left reeling home from whatever dirty little frolics they’d been up to in Soho last night.

  He gazed out at them blurry-eyed, stumbling in ones and twos down Poland Street, from the bedroom window of his flat above the Ambassador Club. Sirens wailed in the distance. A bin lorry clattered past. Its cabbagy reek mixed in with the sweet smell of freshly baked baguettes and croissants rising up from the French deli over the road bringing him close to retching even as his stomach growled and his shoulder and kidneys throbbed.

  He normally loved it up here, just watching the world go by. His big fat mess of a city. His perfect view of it, with all its happiness, sadness, ugliness and beauty rolled into one. Christ, how many hours had him and Jack spent perched outside here on the windowsill as kids, smoking nicked rollups and catcalling the punters ducking in and out of the peep shows, cafés and bars below, while the Old Man had been working downstairs?

  Happy bloody days. But, Christ, it all suddenly felt so long ago. The urge to smoke a cigarette was almost overpowering. Just to somehow . . . get back, feel young again, free of responsibility . . . like yesterday at the Cobden Club had never happened, like his whole life hadn’t just been turned to shit.

  He sighed, letting the window blind drop back down with a rattle. But now that he’d got the idea of a cigarette into his head, he couldn’t get it out. And not just that, but worse. Just as well he’d cleared out his drawers of all the half-smoked packs of Marlboros and half-drun
k bottles of Jack Daniels. Because he could have quite happily got stuck into both right now. Just hole up in here and get hammered. The first time he’d felt that way in months.

  But routine . . . yeah, he had to stick to that instead, right? The only way to keep his head straight and keep the old demons at bay. But forget his usual fifty press-ups and sit-ups. No way would his shoulder handle that. He made his double bed, and put his dirty clothes in the laundry basket. But then he spotted the half-empty blister pack of diazepam on the bedside table and picked it up.

  He’d forgotten he’d even taken any last night, but, yeah, now he remembered. He’d cadged them off Spartak, who’d popped round for a couple of frames after he’d finished his shift on the door at the 100 Club. Not that Frankie had been able to play, with his shoulder being so wrecked. He’d had to tell Spartak he’d had a fall while out running, or else his old Russian mucker would have started baying for the blood of whoever had done it. And not even Spartak was hard enough to take on the Hamilton gang alone.

  Frankie stared at the pills, half scrunching one out into his hand. Because wouldn’t it be nice, yeah? Just to switch off the stress already building up in his chest, and evict that little Lord Snooty wanker Dougie Hamilton and everything he’d said from his head?

  But ah-ah. Naughty, naughty. One pill led to two, led to booze and on to gear, and no way was he letting an arsewipe like Hamilton derail him like that. He hit the bathroom instead. Shit, shower, shave, deodorant, teeth, gargle, spit. He stared into the mirror. Christ, his shoulder looked like something that should be hanging in a butcher’s window. His face didn’t look much better either. Haggard as hell. Not exactly fair, considering that these days he had the liver and lungs of a monk.

  He got dressed into one of his four black suits and listened to Mark and Lard on Radio 1, as he ate his Crunchy Nut cornflakes in the kitchen. He normally liked all their bollocks banter, but this morning even they seemed a bit low. The music they were playing didn’t help much either. Lots of cheery little numbers like ‘Karma Police’ by Radiohead and ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ by Verve. And then, of course, there was more stuff about Princess Di, with the French cops now saying her driver had been drunk. Misery upon misery. The perfect soundtrack for his mood.

  More routine. He cleared up the crumpled remnants of last night’s Chinese takeaway that he’d snaffled in the lounge while watching Mission: Impossible on DVD. He felt bad about it now. Not just the film, which he’d been way too blurry on those pills to follow. Or the bloody theme tune, which he’d got stuck in his head on a loop. But the food. Because it hardly exactly matched his new healthy lifestyle, did it? And there’d been plenty of fresh salad in the fridge he could have nibbled on instead.

  But then special fried rice and sweet and sour pork balls had always been his go-to comfort food, hadn’t it? It was what the Old Man had always used to order in when Frankie and Jack had first started living here full time in ’88. And, anyway, it wasn’t all bad, was it? At least while he’d been slumped in here in his diazepam MSG-induced coma, watching Tom Cruise prancing around on screen, he’d felt happy as the proverbial pig in shit, and hadn’t thought about Dougie Hamilton once.

  He carted his dirty plate and tins through to the kitchen and opened the window. It was a bit of a tip in here from yesterday and so he gave it a quick spruce and got stuck into the washing-up. Oh, yeah. Keeping it clean. All part of his Goody Two Shoes routine.

  He banged on the Rolling Stones’ Forty Licks CD from the Old Man’s collection on the rack on the wall for good measure, and clicked through the tracks to ‘19th Nervous Breakdown’. Always cheered him up and got his feet tapping. He even started whistling while he worked. Yeah, come on. He could do this. Not let that scumbag, Dougie, get him down. Keep positive. Keep his head straight and he’d think of a way round it, right? Just the same as always, yeah?

  Ten minutes later in the flat’s little hallway, with his notes for today’s Soho Open meetings already tucked up in his jacket pocket, he touched his fingers to his lips and pressed them to the face of the woman in the framed photo hanging on the wall. His mum, with him and Jack as kids in ’85, taken a year before her and the Old Man had broken up, and three years before she’d vanished from all of their lives altogether. He’d found it under the Old Man’s bed, hidden. She looked beautiful, she did. No wonder he hadn’t wanted it up. It would have reminded him of how much he’d lost.

  ‘I love you, Mum,’ Frankie said, the same as he did every day he went out.

  He was still sure in his heart he was going to see her again one day. Especially after tracking her as far as Mallorca last summer. Especially now he knew she’d made it out of London alive.

  *

  The James Boys Gym on Hanway Street was already bustling by the time Frankie got there just after lunch. It had been totally fixed up since he’d first brought Jack here a year ago to discuss him taking over as manager, after the previous manager had taken an unexpected – well, for him, anyway – nosedive through an upstairs window.

  Past the snazzy new reception, the gym’s vast and echoing mildew-à-la-mode walls and double-height ceiling had been painted over with pristine white. Its once sagging, frankly bloody terrifying, viewing balcony looking down onto the two boxing rings below had been widened and reinforced to allow for tiered seating.

  The rings themselves had been refurbed to competition standard and all the equipment had been replaced or modernized, from the free weights, kettle bells, jump ropes, punch bags and speed bags currently being battered by a platoon of focused fighters in the training area, to the multigyms in the side rooms out back.

  But some things never changed. The smell of sweat and Ralgex still hung heavy in the air. Along with every swear word under the sun. Capital Radio was still blasting out bass-thumping anthems, with Daft Punk’s ‘Around the World’ being the current club classic that was assaulting Frankie’s delicate ears. And, of course, GoGo JoJo was still right here at the centre of it all, conducting the show, and taking matters not one iota less seriously than he had done when he’d been Muhammad Ali’s blood man back during his visit to Great Britain in ’63.

  ‘Morning, kiddo,’ he said, somehow catching sight of Frankie out of his peripheral vision, while keeping his gaze fixed on the two lithe boxers currently circling one another in the ring nearest the door.

  Oh yeah, and that was another big change since last year. The women. Frankie’s idea, that one, presented via Jack in his first week as official manager here. Of course, Tommy Riley, who owned the place, had been resistant at first. Women were good for two things, according to him, or two places anyway, being the kitchen and the bedroom. But even Tommy had come round to the idea, once he’d seen how many of the women going to the exercise classes in the done-up studios upstairs had then signed up for boxing and kickboxing down here too.

  Yeah, the ghost of the old Rope-a-Dope club had been well and truly exorcised. Viva la James Boys Gym.

  ‘Morning, JoJo. How’s tricks?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘All good, kiddo.’ JoJo was still concentrating on the ring, dragging a comb back through his thinning grey hair. He looked Frankie’s black suit and matching Chelsea boots and briefcase over, but clocked the gym bag on his shoulder too. ‘You here to talk with your jaw or your paws, then?’ he said.

  ‘A bit of both. But jaw first.’

  Frankie wanted to have a quick catch-up with Jack before he got changed and hit the bags. He’d been trying to get hold of him since the funeral the day before yesterday but without any luck. What with all this shit going down with Dougie, he needed to check that the Hamilton boys hadn’t been sniffing round Jack as well.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said JoJo, ‘but try and get back here for two. We’ve got ourselves a couple new prospects coming in. One just seventeen. An Irish lad. And his little brother too. Thirteen. The same age you were when you first showed your skinny arse round here.’

  Thirteen. Christ, it seemed like a lifetime ago. Frankie�
��s Old Man had sent him here to train with JoJo after he’d got mugged over in Islington one time. Had told JoJo to toughen him up. Have him beaten up, more like. At least that’s how it had felt to Frankie those first few weeks until he’d found his feet. He’d come here nearly every day for three years after that, mind. Had loved it. And, by God, he was loving being back here again now since Jack had taken over.

  ‘You should maybe even have a spar with the elder lad if you’re feeling up to it?’ JoJo said. ‘Word is he’s lightning fast.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ said Frankie. ‘Soon see what he’s made of, eh?’

  ‘Or he will you.’ JoJo grinned.

  ‘Aye, or that.’ Frankie was way too savvy these days to think he could take someone just because he was bigger or older. Experience went a long way in a sport like this, but talent went further. First things first, though. ‘You seen Jack around?’ he said.

  ‘He’s not back from Brighton till the day after tomorrow.’

  Brighton . . . Ah, yeah, that was it, why Frankie hadn’t been able to get a hold of him on the blower. Jack had gone down the south coast on some residential management course. Basic small-business stuff. Not that Frankie could imagine him sticking any of that sort of bollocks for more than five minutes, no matter how much good it might do him and his prospects of turning his current job here into a genuine career.