The Break

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  ‘You any idea what Tommy wants?’ Frankie watched Grew closely, trying to gauge whether Tommy might somehow have got wind of anything.

  ‘Nah.’ Grew smiled, nicely enough. But that didn’t mean shit. Frankie could still remember the last time he’d seen him, back on that beach in Ibiza, grinning and holding a pistol to that bastard Duke’s head, not giving two shits about his begging . . . or his burned hair and charred skin.

  ‘Here, I’m serious about the phone,’ Grew said. ‘Check this puppy out.’ He tossed his phone to Frankie, who caught it clean. ‘A Nokia. It’s got a calculator and a calendar and a clock on it and everything. Even Snake. Remember Snake? That game off of the old Atari back in the eighties?’

  ‘Yeah, I remember.’ Back in the old arcades too. Though Double Dragon, that two-player street-fighting game where you got to batter the hell out of all sorts of gangsters with knives and baseball bats, that had always been more Frankie and Jack’s thing.

  ‘I’ve got a mate who’s just set up a shop over on Tottenham Court Road,’ Grew went on. ‘Says they’re flying out the door. But I can get him to stick one aside for you, if you want?’

  Frankie handed it back. ‘I already get enough sodding phone calls as it is.’ For all the bloody good most of them had done him of late.

  ‘You sure? It’s even got a pager function on it . . .’

  ‘Positive.’ And, anyhow, Frankie had always hated those wankers with pagers clipped to their belts. Star Trek wannabes, the lot of them. Always looking like they were waiting to be beamed up.

  ‘And of course what with it being portable, it’s brilliant for scoring gear too.’ Grew raised a teasing eyebrow. ‘Though I heard you were back on the straight and narrow, after your little lapse in Ibiza. Or should I say large?’

  ‘So where are you taking me?’ Frankie said, ignoring the dig. He still felt bad about it, how wasted he’d got, how it had then taken him months to sort himself back out again.

  ‘Ah,’ said Grew, turning on a Small Faces compilation and turning ‘Itchycoo Park’ up, ‘well, wouldn’t you know it, just like the fucking country, we’re going to the fucking dogs.’

  *

  Even though Walthamstow Stadium wasn’t open to the public today until six, Frankie still couldn’t help feeling there was something in the air, something electric, something exciting, something raw, as he followed Grew down the side of the track towards the kennels.

  Frankie coming here with the Old Man when he was a little kid probably had something to do with it. The Old Man and Frankie’s granddad, whose shoulders had been so wide they’d always had to open the gate round the side of the turnstiles to let him through. Well, that’s what Granddad had always told Frankie anyway, but looking back at the way the crowd had always seemed to step back magically to give them all space whenever they came here on race day, Frankie now reckoned it probably had more to do with his granddad having been one of the Richardson gang’s chief enforcers back in the day.

  Yeah, and he’d have felt right at home here today, an’ all. Frankie spotted a bunch of wide boys in suits over at the trackside bar. Of course, that shouldn’t have been open yet either, but from the volume these jackals were talking at, they’d already had a few. A couple of them were even lying back in the grass working on their tans, with their chilled amber lagers glinting in the sun, but the dark-brown tan of the one whose eyes locked with Frankie’s first didn’t need any work on it at all. Jesús. The third musketeer from Frankie’s Balearic adventure. On loan to Tommy from the gang he was now affiliated to out there.

  ‘Amigo, it ees dammit fukeen good to see you.’

  ‘And ’o-bloody-la to you too, Jesús,’ Frankie said, as Jesús came over and first hugged him, then kissed him on both cheeks, before shaking him firmly by the hand.

  ‘So how ees life?’ Jesús asked him, smoothing down the lapels of his perfectly pressed pastel-blue suit. ‘Todo bien?’

  ‘Yeah, todo, mate, todo,’ Frankie said, even though in truth todo might actually already be pretty fucked up, as far as his relationship with Tommy was concerned.

  The rest of Tommy’s lads had clocked Frankie by now. A couple of the more friendly ones shot him a nod or a smile. Others didn’t. Like the concrete-browed Tam Jackson, who shot him an evil black I wanna kill ya look instead. Followed by a fuck you, dickhead stare, topped off with a you’re dead meat sneer. But not much point in reading too much into any of that, eh? The two of them had never exactly seen eye to eye, with Frankie never having kowtowed to the grisly, shaven-headed thug like practically everyone else who ever came into contact with him always did.

  Frankie saw Whitney before he did Tommy. Tommy’s ten-stone Doberman was howling like a banshee and looked like she’d just done a massive, T-Rex-sized crap on Tommy’s nephew Darren’s shoe, much to everyone else’s amusement.

  ‘Will someone shut her up?’ a voice snapped. No mistaking its or else dulcet tones.

  ‘Shut it, bitch,’ Darren yelled at his charge, jerking Whitney hard by the lead.

  But if he’d been expecting a pat on his back from Tommy for his efforts, he was mistaken. The crowd of lads quickly parted, as Tommy came barging through, dressed in brand-new bright-white Nike trainers and a purple Nike tracksuit instead of his usual bespoke black suit, and marched over and punched Darren hard on the arm.

  ‘Not like that, you moronic tub of lard,’ Tommy snapped, smoothing down his close-cropped, thinning hair. ‘Look what you’ve bloody done now.’ He glared down at the dog who was whimpering on the ground. ‘You’ve really hurt her feelings. I meant you to shut her up with love.’

  ‘With love?’ Darren said, wobbling nervously now like a blow-up Michelin man in his two-sizes-too-small suit.

  He might have been twice Tommy’s weight and half his age, but even just looking at the two of them here side by side, you’d only ever have backed one of them in a ruck. Tommy still had it, all right. The muscle, the tone, the command.

  ‘Of course, with love. Like this. There, there, who’s Daddy’s lovely little girl, then?’ he soothed, crouching down next to Whitney and gently tickling her behind the ear. ‘And don’t fake it either,’ he warned Darren, getting back up. ‘Dogs can tell if you’re being insincere. It’s hard-wired into their genes. Just like women.’

  ‘There there, now, who’s a pretty –’ Darren tried.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ Tommy snarled.

  ‘But you said to –’

  ‘She’s not a bleedin’ parrot. Just talk to her in a normal sort of voice. Keep it real. Like you would with a girlfriend.’

  Half-smiles crossed the faces of Grew and the other lads. Only half, mind. They’d all seen this game play out before. You didn’t want to catch Tommy’s eye when he was in the middle of losing his rag, or before you knew what was going on, it would be you being laughed at by the others, as Tommy bawled you out.

  Only Jesús actually had the bollocks to say anything. ‘I do not lick doggies,’ he told Frankie. ‘I do not lick their sheets.’

  Frankie sniggered. Couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Something funny?’ Tommy asked, looking up sharply.

  ‘Er, no,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Good.’ Tommy sniffed, still annoyed, his dark eyes quickly scanning the faces of the others, in case anyone else felt like taking the piss.

  No one did.

  A whirring sound. Over on the track the gates snapped open and a white greyhound shot out in pursuit of the mechanical hare already racing ahead of it round the track.

  ‘Well, make some fucking noise then,’ Tommy yelled. ‘Make like a fucking crowd.’

  The boys did as they were told, running over and shouting and hooting and waving their arms in the air like a pack of baboons as the dog hurtled past.

  ‘See, the whole point of us being here,’ Tommy told Frankie, ‘is to give that little beauty there, my lovely little Lucky Nine, all the practice he needs to win. Hence the beers. And the shouts. Just like a real meet, eh?�
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  Well, whatever it was, it looked like it was working. Lucky Nine was already streaking round the bend like greased lightning out of sight. Tommy stared after him with a look of genuine pride on his face.

  ‘Ah, sí. OK, so ahora comprendo.’ Jesús was grinning. ‘Pensado . . . I had thought that leetle men would be on it too.’

  Frankie stared at him open-mouthed. Was he saying what he thought he was? ‘What, you mean, like jockeys?’

  ‘Que?’

  Frankie mimicked holding a horse’s reins, bobbing his shoulders like he was just coming into the home straight at the National.

  ‘Sí. A . . . hockey . . .’ Jesús didn’t quite manage to say the word.

  ‘Hockey? You what?’ Tommy had turned back to face them. ‘No, Jesús. Christ alive. Hockey is something you do with sticks . . . understand? Like football, but with sticks.’

  Jesús looked even more confused than before, but before this delightful and educational conversation could continue any further, Whitney set up barking again and Tommy growled and stomped off, muttering under his breath.

  Jesús reached into his pocket and offered up a little plastic bag. ‘Gummi Bear?’ he asked.

  ‘No thanks, hombre,’ said Grew, heavy on the ‘h’. He lit a smoke instead.

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ said Frankie.

  ‘But not the –’

  ‘Yellow ones,’ Frankie said, smiling. ‘Because, yeah, I remember, they’re yours.’ He took a black one instead.

  Jesús smiled back, genuinely pleased by Frankie having remembered, and took a yellow one out for himself and popped it into his mouth.

  ‘Right,’ Tommy said, joining them again. ‘Let’s take a little walk, shall we, gents?’

  Tam Jackson was with him, still eyeing Frankie like he was really hoping that he’d done something wrong – something that only he, on Tommy’s orders, could make right. And preferably with a bat.

  ‘You too, Darren,’ Tommy barked back at his nephew, who was still whispering sweet nothings into Whitney’s ear, while simultaneously trying to wipe the dog shit off his shoe on the grass. ‘Because Christ knows he could do with the exercise,’ Tommy muttered under his breath.

  Darren hurried after them.

  ‘It’s my doctor, see?’ Tommy said, setting off around the track at a swift old pace. ‘Said I needed to take up regular and vigorous exercise. And cut down on me cholesterol and eat less carbs. He’s diagnosed palpitations, see . . . with an . . . oh, bollocks, what’s the proper name for it?’

  ‘Ectopic beat,’ said Tam.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. Sounds like a nightclub in Chelmsford, though, eh? But it’s not. It’s something that needs monitoring, or it could get out of hand. And I tell you what, Frankie, you can’t be too careful at my age, as I’m sure your own father would tell you, because none of us are getting any younger, and the universe can be a cruel, cruel mistress . . . I mean, just look at that cunt Terence Hamilton.’

  At just the sound of the Hamilton name, even one of an altogether older and deader generation than the one Frankie was currently dealing with, Frankie felt the spit drying up in his mouth, as he forced his Gummi Bear down.

  ‘ . . . carking it from cancer like that . . .’ Tommy continued, ‘but, of course, you’d know that already, wouldn’t you? What with you having been to his funeral . . . at his shitty bastard prick of a son’s personal request.’ He threw Frankie a sideways look that made him feel sick.

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly say it was like that –’ Frankie started to defend himself.

  ‘No, no, I know. Valerie made that perfectly clear.’

  ‘Valerie? Who’s Valerie?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘Valerie Listerman, of course,’ Tommy said. ‘Who’d you bloody think?’

  ‘Er, no one,’ Frankie said.

  Grew was already pulling a warning finger across his throat at Frankie, telling him not to laugh. But he needn’t have bothered. Not even discovering Tommy’s consigliere’s first name could have brought a smile to Frankie’s lips right now. Because, again, that poor bastard in the warehouse basement was flashing into his head, only this time, instead of it being that bare-chested wanker there scoffing that apple beside him, it was Tam. And it wasn’t that faceless screwed bloke manacled up on the wall, it was Frankie.

  ‘But no, no, don’t you worry your head about that,’ Tommy said. ‘We’re here to talk about something else.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  Straight away, he wished he hadn’t asked, because Tommy stopped dead in his tracks and just stared at him. Tam Jackson closed in, a sly little smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Uh-oh. This did not look good. This did not look good at all.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Tommy said, ‘even when you’re training a dog like Lucky Nine there . . .’ He pointed over to where he was now being led back to the kennels. ‘ . . . a dog who you reckon is shit hot and set to win and so therefore well worth banging a few bob on . . . sometimes, even then, you need to take a few precautions just to make sure it is them who’s going to be crossing that finishing line first.’

  Frankie nodded. ‘Training, right? And all that cheering?’ But what had any of this got to do with him?

  ‘Only sometimes, in certain circumstances, it makes more sense to take a few precautions with the opposition too,’ Tommy said.

  Tam’s grin widened. But opposition . . . what did he mean? The Hamiltons?

  ‘Race fixing,’ Tommy said.

  ‘Oh, yeah, right,’ Frankie said, relief washing over him. Shit, was that all they were talking about. Well, thank fuck for that. And it didn’t exactly come as the biggest surprise that Tommy might have a finger in that particular pie. But still Frankie couldn’t see why Tommy was telling him this.

  ‘Understand?’ Tommy asked.

  ‘Er, yeah, sure,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Good.’ Tommy smiled, but there was nothing warm about it, nothing at all. ‘Then you’ll understand an’ all that sometimes you need to take similar precautions in other sporting events too.’

  Frankie’s whole world seemed to slow. Because shit . . . this was a bloody metaphor of sorts, because Tommy wasn’t really talking about fixing dog races at all, was he? It was another sport entirely that he had in mind.

  ‘Please, Tommy. No,’ Frankie said.

  ‘It’s just business, son.’

  ‘No, not this . . . please, I’ve worked so –’

  ‘Hard? Hard? Is that what you were about to say?’ A tightening curl to Tommy’s lip. Tam Jackson leant in over Tommy’s shoulder, watching Frankie, and loving every second.

  ‘Yes, Tommy,’ Frankie said.

  ‘And don’t you think I work hard too?’ Tommy demanded. ‘And that this . . .’ He tapped his Rolex. ‘. . . and that . . .’ He was pointing at his limousine, over there in the car park. ‘. . . and even her . . .’ He was waving now at a dark-haired Chinese woman dressed in flowing purple silk who was smiling at him from her seat just over in the stands. ‘. . . are things that I deserve, rights that I have earned? And that all this . . .’ His arms were up now and stretching wider and wider, encompassing . . . what? Here, the stadium? East 17? London? The whole world? ‘ . . . shouldn’t be mine? Or that you have a right to any of it more than me?’

  ‘No, Tommy, but –’

  ‘But, fucking nothing,’ Tommy snapped. ‘I don’t deal in buts, only dos and don’ts, and you’re going to fucking well do as you’re told, because, trust me, son, you’re not going to like the consequences if you don’t.’

  Frankie gritted his teeth. But it was no good. He had to say something. Wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t even try. ‘But you’re going to make money out of the tournament, anyway, Tommy. I promise you. It’ll be a success. And it’ll grow . . . and you’re a partner . . . and every year it does, you’re going to make more and more money.’

  ‘Didn’t I just say no buts?’ said Tommy. ‘And not only is that a fucking but, it’s a friggin’ if as well. Because
you don’t know if this tournament will bloody well work or not, or if it does, then if it will grow, and if it does grow, then if it will carry on growing and making me money.’ He held out his arms to the stadium. ‘It’s like this place here. It all looks so solid . . . so permanent . . . so . . .’

  ‘Investible,’ Tam said, his nasty little piggy eyes shining with delight, like he’d just spotted a new trough to stick his snout in.

  ‘Yeah, Tam, that’s the word, investible,’ Tommy said, ‘because look at it, it all works on the surface just fine, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?’ He practically snarled these last two words.

  ‘Yeah,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Yes,’ Riley hissed, ‘until it don’t. Because that’s what happens to most businesses, Frankie. Over time. Most of them wither up. Then die. Like Hackney fucking dogs, right? Part of the fucking furniture, wasn’t it? Until it weren’t.’

  Hackney was another track Frankie had used to come to with his grandpa. It had gone bust just a few months ago, back in April. Some swindler with his hands in the till, according to that Cook Report programme Frankie had watched on the box.

  ‘And then, you see, suddenly, they ain’t so fucking investible at all,’ Tommy said. ‘And I should bloody know, because I had money in it, didn’t I, in Hackney, only now it’s all gone.’

  ‘But, please,’ Frankie said again, hating Tommy now, and hating begging even more. He could feel his hands curling into fists, but he could still see Tam Jackson glaring at him. But it wasn’t just Tam, it was Jesús too, and Grew watching him real close, and slowly, ever so slowly, shaking his head, telling him, Don’t be a mug, kid. Or there’ll be nothing I can do.

  ‘I guess what it all boils down to is this, Frankie,’ Riley said. ‘I don’t like being out of pocket, which is why I’m afraid, old son, that while I’m happy to have invested in your little sporting enterprise, not yet knowing whether it will be a success or not, I’ll be buggered if I’m going to not make some decent wedge out of it now while I know I still definitely can.’

  Was this what it really came down to then? Tommy losing that money in Hackney meant he was now going to take it out of Frankie’s tournament instead?