The Break

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  A Corvette Stingray and a Ferrari Dino. And last, but not least, an Aston Martin DB5. The exact same one as from that James Bond film, Goldfinger, if he wasn’t mistaken. Hell’s tits. The nearest Frankie had ever got to getting close to something like this was the toy one he’d had as a kid.

  He couldn’t help himself. He walked over and trailed his fingers along its sleek, shiny flank. Then jumped back almost a foot.

  ‘Boo!’ a super-deep voice boomed out, followed by a horrible, strangulated whine of static.

  ‘What the hell –?’ Frankie clamped his hands to his ears and looked around. But he couldn’t see a sodding soul.

  ‘Whoah! Too loud, right?’ the voice screeched. Another whine. More crackling. ‘Better?’

  ‘Er, yeah,’ Frankie called out. ‘A bit.’

  ‘Coo-li-o.’

  Coolio? As in that American rapper who’d had a hit a couple of years back? ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’, or something like that? Yeah, maybe this being his pad made a bit more sense than Dracula, eh?

  ‘OK, so you’ll find the elevator over there to your left.’

  Frankie turned to look.

  ‘No, your other left, dude.’

  What, so whoever this was could see him? Frankie clocked it then. A CCTV camera bolted to one of the ceiling beams. He spotted the lift doors too, set into the far wall, and set off towards them.

  ‘Tah-dah! Or bingo, or yahtzee, or whatever the fuck you Britishers say.’

  Britishers? This guy’s accent . . . what was he? A Southern Yank? Alabama, or some such shit, it sounded like.

  ‘So yep, yep, come on down . . .’

  Come on down? What the hell?

  ‘I mean, that Bruce Forsyth, he’s hilarious, yeah?’ the voice continued. ‘I mean, I totally love that shit. The Price is Right? And The Generation Game too? The man’s a genius. Totally insane.’

  ‘Er, right,’ Frankie said. Now this was just getting surreal.

  ‘No, seriously, I am a massive fan of those shows. We receive them all back in Amsterdam where we’ve been hanging . . . and what’s that catchphrase of his again? Nice to see you, to see you . . .’

  ‘Nice,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Damn. That’s right. Didn’t he do well?’

  ‘Er, who is this talking, by the way?’

  ‘Levi. Like the jeans. But you can call me Rivet. Everyone else does.’ Frankie glanced across to see the camera still tracking him.

  ‘Well, OK. And, um, in case you’re wondering why I’m here, I’ve just been dropped off here by The Saint,’ Frankie said, the sentence suddenly sounding utterly ridiculous beside these cars.

  ‘Yep, and I’m totally looking forward to seeing you and working with you too, Frankie boy. Now hit that button, and let’s make this face to face.’

  The lift was old school, like it had been hauled right off a movie set. Frankie pressed its flickering, illuminated button and its gears hummed into life. Peering in through the zigzag of its metal concertina doors, he looked up, wondering how high its shaft went, but it ceilinged out just a few feet above his head here at ground level. Weird. Meaning whoever it was he’d just spoken to, they had to have been talking to him from down . . . there. Wherever the hell that was.

  He rode the lift down and stepped out into what looked like a living room. A well posh one at that. A sleek white dining table ran down the middle of a black tiled floor, long enough to seat maybe as many as thirty guests. A pear-shaped crystal chandelier hung centre stage from a high vaulted ceiling. But it wasn’t all pretty-pretty. Plenty of industrial touches too. Exposed brickwork. Cast-iron girders. Whoever owned this place wasn’t trying to hide it from its past.

  Frankie could smell fresh coffee. Good coffee too, and God only knew he could never get enough of that. He followed his nose on past the dining table and into a kitchen.

  Finally, people. A man and a woman were sat around a square metal table. Her, slim and athletic-looking, with gothy black hair, and enough studs and jewellery hanging off her face to start a shop. Him, skinny and wrinkly and looking 110, with long grey hair. Neither looked up, both focused on what was laid out on the table before them. A bunch of what looked like architectural drawings. Photos too. Loads of them. A kind of mosaic. And, yeah, Frankie recognized some of them too. Like the Digley piece. That funny little dog. Dougie Hamilton’s contemporary art shopping list, no less.

  A third person was already walking towards him from the other side of the room, a wiry little bloke in a white T-shirt and jeans with trendy little reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, with a broad white-capped smile and a massive mop of white blonde hair that would have put Billy Idol to shame.

  ‘Guys, this is Frankie James,’ mini-Billy said.

  So his was the deep voice Frankie had heard upstairs.

  ‘Great to meet you, Frankie, an honour.’ His thin-wristed grip was as strong as a vice. ‘And Frankie, these are the guys.’

  ‘Er, hi,’ Frankie said.

  ‘On the left we have Luuk.’

  ‘Luke,’ Frankie said.

  ‘No, Luuk.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I just said.’

  ‘Nuh-uh, it’s not.’

  The grey-haired Luuk, now with one of those jeweller’s loupes clamped to one wrinkly eye socket, again didn’t look up. While the goth girl just shook her head at Rivet, like he was making matters much more complex than they needed to be.

  ‘And sitting next to him,’ Rivet continued, ‘rolling her eyes at me like I’ve developed a mild retardation, is Lola. As in the Kinks song, only she really is all woman. No hidden dicks inside her pants.’

  Lola just flipped him the finger, her bright-brown eyes twinkling. Turning to Frankie, she said, ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey, indeed.’ Rivet steered Frankie on towards another doorway. ‘There’ll be plenty of time for idle chitchat later, but for now, Frankie old bean, you’d better head through there, because the others are waiting.’

  The others? Meaning Dougie? And who the hell else? Frankie felt that nasty little shiver running down his spine again. What was that phrase? Into the lion’s den? And no one even knew he was here.

  Just get on with it. He still needs you. Right? He walked on through the doorway, and around another corner, then sucked in his breath and squinted as the bright light hit him. Instead of another room of whatever basement complex he’d assumed he was in, dead ahead of him now was what looked like a giant greenhouse, or conservatory, or arborium? Was that even the right word for something as crazily grand as this?

  It stretched up high, way high, as in whole storeys high. There were whole bloody trees inside it. Palms, creepers, all kinds of tropical-looking shit. Bees buzzed. Butterflies flitted. The air smelt of honeysuckle, eucalyptus, lavender, rose.

  He walked on, weaving his way in between the sculptures that were dotted all around. Even a sodding fountain. And, yeah, now he got it, what this place was – one of those old warehouses alongside the Thames, only its back half had been knocked down to make room for this gorgeous green slice of paradise.

  He stepped out into the garden beyond and there, past the garden wall, a whole fifty feet away, he could see the oily river itself stretching all the way across to the Oxo building, and the Tate, and the spire of Southwark Cathedral . . . the whole South Bank of the Thames lined up like cardboard cut-outs.

  He turned and looked up at the building he’d just walked out of. Six storeys, he counted, including these three demolished ones where the garden now was down here below street level. Yeah, beautiful, it was. Wicked. Like a Bond villain’s hideaway.

  Now all he needed to do was find bloody Blofeld himself.

  Then, right on cue, he heard voices. Over there.

  9

  Three figures sat beneath a pagoda beside the red-brick wall that formed the garden’s riverside perimeter. Dougie and Viollet were two. The third person had their barn door of a back to Frankie and a no-fuss crew cut. Ano
ther two men stood ten yards further back, both of them suited, idly watching.

  ‘Ah, and, finally, our guest has arrived,’ Dougie said.

  He smiled flatly at Frankie. In spite of the sun, he was again wearing tweed, an open-neck white shirt and red cravat. He didn’t get up to shake Frankie’s hand or anything as friendly or even businesslike as that. Kept both hands on his lap, his golden signet ring glinting in the sun almost like an invitation, like a part of him was expecting Frankie to kneel and kiss it. Only then Frankie saw it wasn’t a signet ring at all. Just a simple gold band on his wedding finger. But why? For his dead fiancée? How bloody crazy was that? The two of them had never even got hitched.

  ‘Viollet, of course, you know already,’ Dougie said.

  She was another study in kick-arse black today. Black shoes. Black skirt. Black shirt. Black shades. The only concession was her lips – bright red – which slowly curled now into a smile.

  ‘Well, hello again,’ she said.

  ‘And last but not least . . .’ Dougie swivelled in his wicker chair to face the third figure. ‘Allow me to introduce you to Bram.’

  Bram? What kind of a bloody name was that meant to be? Even weirder than Luuk. The only Bram Frankie had ever heard of was the one in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, that Gary Oldman film that had come out a few years back. What was that line him and Jack had used to say to each other all the time when they got pissed? Oh yeah. Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make! Hey, maybe he should try it now. This massive bastard looked like he could do with a laugh.

  Bram stood, and kept standing up, extending like a friggin’ fireman’s ladder, before finally turning to look down on Frankie. Christ, Frankie stepped back. Didn’t seem smart to stay any closer than he had to to this. This guy made even The Saint look like Danny DeVito. So who the hell was he? Jaws to Dougie’s Blofeld?

  He waited for the guy to speak, but he didn’t. A hard face, with what was either a burn or a stork mark on his forehead, leaving him looking like Gorbachev on steroids. Frankie had always thought of old Gorby as one of the nicer Russian dictators, but this lad, ten years Frankie’s senior, had clearly not got the message on that. Scowling, though. Oh, yeah. He was a world bloody expert at that, if the way he was looking at Frankie now was anything to go by.

  ‘Frankie,’ Frankie said. ‘Frankie James.’ Hey, hey. When in James Bond land . . .

  Nothing.

  ‘Bram’s dumb,’ Dougie said.

  ‘You what?’ Bloody hell. Talk about rude. Brave too, mind, with the size of this fucker.

  ‘I mean he can’t speak.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Frankie turned back to Bram and smiled awkwardly, before giving him an even more awkward thumbs up. Like a dick. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know.’

  Big boy didn’t look like he gave a shit either.

  ‘You’re going to be working with Bram from here on in,’ Dougie said.

  Here on into what? ‘Yeah?’ Oh, great. And what jolly pals they’d surely one day be.

  ‘Or more for him, really,’ Dougie said. ‘Now sit.’

  Another nasty touch of the Barbara Woodhouses, then. Frankie was getting well sick of this. But what other choice did he have? He walked round the cast-iron table they were sitting at and perched himself on the last available chair. A silver coffee pot on the table. Antique china cups and sugar bowl. All very Lovejoy. Or at least it would be, if only somebody would smile.

  ‘Coffee?’ Dougie said.

  ‘Sure. Thanks.’ Well, it was better than being offered Pedigree Chum. Frankie helped himself and took a genteel sip. Good stuff too. Freshly ground. The best thing that had happened to him all day.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he said.

  ‘It used to belong to David Lean,’ Dougie said. ‘The director of Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago and A Passage to India.’

  ‘And Bridge on the River Kwai,’ Frankie said. Because, oh yeah, he could be a dab hand at Trivial Pursuit too. And arts and lit was his special subject. Bring on the fucking brown cheese.

  ‘He designed it all,’ said Dougie, ‘the garden, the bedrooms, the home cinema, the lot. He hardly ever left the place the last few years of his life. Just held court here, visited by the likes of Steven Spielberg, as well as just about every “A” list actor under the sun. You climb over that wall and there’s even a private beach.’

  Frankie wasn’t sure if this was an invitation. Or, if the tide was rising, a threat. Either way, he didn’t move.

  ‘Lord Owen’s a neighbour,’ Dougie continued. ‘And did you know right there was where Sir Walter Raleigh set sail for the New World?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah.’ But about what? How nice it would be to be on that ship with old Walty boy right now. Probably not what Dougie had in mind.

  ‘I feel a close affinity with people like that,’ Dougie said. ‘Explorers. Adventurers. People who really leave their mark on the world.’

  Delusions of grandeur? Nothing psychopathic about that.

  ‘My dear departed dad,’ said Dougie, ‘he always believed in living modestly, so as not to draw attention to himself, particularly where the police were concerned. Which is why he set my mother up with the nice but far from spectacular house she lives in in Dagenham. But I’ve adopted a rather more modern outlook and see property as more of an investment . . .’ He waved his hand expansively. ‘. . . and it’s my firm belief that this lovely little part of London here is about to take off like a space shuttle. David Lean spent six million doing this place up, but I just got it for three. And you know what?’

  ‘What?’ Frankie said.

  ‘Five years’ time and you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be selling it for nine.’

  Or hopefully catching a horrible cold, like Frankie’s dad had done back in the late eighties, after he’d invested his money in a couple of flats just before the whole market had gone tits up.

  ‘Do you remember our little chat the other day?’ Dougie said. ‘About the contemporary art scene?’

  So, finally, they were cutting to the chase. Frankie noticed Bram watching closely now. He noticed too the lanyard round his neck, with a thin pen in a loop attached. Probably for talking to people like Frankie who didn’t know how to sign.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  ‘And about how prices get set based on how an artist’s reputation is endorsed by various collectors, dealers, galleries and museums where their works appear, so that even pieces made out of elephant dung – I mean literally shit – can become worth a fortune.’

  ‘You mean the Chris Ofili?’ – a piece called The Holy Virgin Mary, made partly out of elephant dung. Frankie had read about it in the exhibition notes he’d picked up yesterday from the RA while out on a run.

  ‘Quite so.’ Dougie took a custard cream from the plate on the table and prised the top half off, before scraping the creamy middle off with his teeth and frisbeeing the rest over the wall. ‘Well, there’s an even better way to help bolster an artist’s reputation in tandem with all that.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Notoriety . . . infamy . . . that’s the best kind of publicity there is, the fastest way of all to grow a reputation . . . I’m assured by my contacts in the business.’ The way he said it – contacts – he made them sound like something much more collaborative than that. ‘. . . and a perfect match too for the kind of art that will be appearing in the Sensation exhibition, wouldn’t you say? Shocking publicity to match the shocking art?’

  ‘Like the Myra Hindley piece.’ Was that what he was talking about? The controversy Sharon had said it was pretty much guaranteed?

  ‘A bit like that, but better.’

  Frankie didn’t understand what any of this had to do with him. ‘I would’ve thought this show already had the perfect man to stir something like that up.’

  ‘You mean Saatchi? Well, yes, but I’m talking about something even bi
gger, even more shocking than even someone like him could cook up. I’m talking about something so outrageous that it will really put this exhibition on the map. Globally. And permanently. So the prices for all the artists involved will shoot up and keep on shooting up, making a fortune for everyone involved.’

  And, yeah, suddenly Frankie could see it, how all that might work. What was it Sharon had said? No such thing as bad publicity?

  ‘And so, you see,’ said Dougie, ‘it’s not just important that the robbery takes place, but how it takes place.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It needs to be as shocking and headline-grabbing as possible. We want it to be a mystery for the press to ponder over, for years, almost a work of art in itself, leaving everybody wondering how on earth we got all those pieces out of there without being seen. I’ve even got a headline for it to feed a friendly journalist pal of mine after the event, to get things started. “The Houdini Heist”. What do you think?’

  Frankie thought he was fucking nuts. Because, surely, pulling off a bloody art heist was going to be hard enough in itself, without having to make it eye-catching and clever and wacky as well? He glanced across at Viollet. Was she hearing this? Did she agree? But, shit, she wasn’t even listening, was she? Just staring out across the Thames.

  ‘And that’s where Bram here comes in,’ Dougie said. ‘And why I brought you here to meet him and his associates today. Because he’s something of an expert in this field, not only in robbery, but in creating the time and space within a robbery to accomplish what you need, as you’ll come to learn.’

  Bram’s face remained blank. Meaning what the fuck, he was a member of the magic circle, sworn to give nothing away? If this was meant to be the Houdini behind the heist, then Frankie was far from convinced. For God’s sake, he didn’t even have a cape.