‘Not our business. Next stop for them is that club of yours, but where they’re going after that, I neither know nor care.’
Frankie looked from Rivet to Lola and Bram, then back again. Looked like they all felt the same way about that. Meaning Dougie probably hadn’t told them the stolen pieces were to be stored at his long term then. Looked like him and Viollet clearly hadn’t trusted their hired art thieves enough for that.
‘But hey, don’t look so sad,’ Rivet said, shaking him warmly by the hand. ‘They’re not expecting you to carry them all by yourself. They said there’ll be somebody along to help you right away.’
As Rivet stepped back to help Lola up from her chair, Bram stepped in. He shot Frankie that wide, cracked smile and gave him a hug. He signed something in the flickering torchlight.
‘What did he say?’
Lola grinned and patted Frankie on the shoulder as Rivet helped her past him towards the door.
‘That if you ever get tired of working for Dougie Hamilton, you should consider coming and working for us.’
I don’t work for Dougie Hamilton. But the words never made it out of Frankie’s mouth. Because what was the point? Here he was, in the company of three career criminals, wearing a balaclava, and being left to stand guard over a pile of stolen art that he’d just helped steal from the RA. At just what point did he consider himself not a criminal these days? Who cared whether he’d been blackmailed into this or not. He was still owned.
He watched them go. Bram shut the door behind him, leaving Frankie alone. An engine started outside. A diesel. The van they’d driven here in? Frankie kept his gloves on because he was still paranoid about the cops maybe working out their real route, even if the guard he’d had his scuffle with wasn’t a problem any more. He kept his balaclava rolled up on the top of his head too, right down to his eyebrows, his paranoia about the possibility of CCTV in the street outside still high too.
His eyes kept flicking from the door leading back down into the sewers to the door leading back outside. He pulled up a chair by the sewer door, close enough so he could listen for anyone coming up. Hear anything and he’d have to run, taking as many of those artworks as he could.
But the first noise he heard was from the other door. Another engine pulling up outside. Then voices. The click of the lock. Then the door swung open. A pair of wide shoulders squeezed in. A glimpse of the screwed-up eyes of the owner.
‘Turn that fucking torch off,’ said The Saint.
19
‘A-chooo!’
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to get you some bog roll?’ Only, like, the fifth time that Frankie had asked.
‘No, I’m fine.’ The Saint wiped his great big red strawberry of a nose on the sleeve of his suit jacket, leaving horrible wet streaks on its black shiny material. ‘It’s just my farting hay fever,’ he complained. ‘You sure you not got any flowers in here?’
‘Certain. Anyhow, this place is meant to be pretty much bloody hermetically sealed, isn’t it?’ Frankie said, looking round the basement of the Ambassador, where they’d just finished stacking the last of the stolen works of art.
‘Her-what?’ The Saint scratched at the thin ginger stubble on his head.
‘-metically. Look, it doesn’t matter,’ Frankie said. ‘Are we done here now? Can we just –’
The Saint’s phone rang. ‘Shut it, scrote,’ he warned Frankie, answering it. ‘What? Eh? No, I can’t hear . . . The reception . . . it’s . . . What? Bloody thing. No. Listen. Wait.’
The Saint trudged upstairs, still muttering into his mobile phone. Christ, Frankie was glad Xandra and Maxine were safe in their hotel. Imagine bumping into this great Lurch in the middle of the night here? You’d think you’d woken up in an episode of The Addams Family.
Frankie stared around him, under the cool white lighting. He was exhausted. Not just physically either. Though, Christ, he was that. Those tunnels had taken their toll on him, all right. But, mentally, yeah, that was even worse. He was done in. Could sleep for a week. That phrase about drooping eyelids? He’d always thought it was a cliché. But he really did need a couple of matchsticks to prop his up now. Either that or a stiff drink to kick-start the old circulation. Yeah, sod it. He set off upstairs. Time for a quick visit to the bar. Not like he’d be falling off the wagon, really, either, was it? Not seeing as he’d not actually been on it all bleedin’ weekend.
‘Ah, good, you’re here. Now open those sodding doors.’ The Saint was standing by the bar, in its little pool of yellow light, with his phone still clamped to his ear. ‘Yeah, boss, he’s coming now.’
Boss. Meaning Dougie was here? Right outside the club? The club where the art was being stashed? On the same sodding night it had been nicked? Well, this just got better and better, didn’t it? Maybe Frankie should just speed up the inevitable and stick a flashing neon sign up outside telling the cops exactly what they’d just done? Could that make it any easier for them to nail them than it already was?
Frankie walked past the bar, only just managing to resist ducking behind it to pour himself a quick shot of Jameson’s, and into the gloom of the club beyond, where he’d kept the lights off. Weaving his way in between the banks of seating, he opened the front door and stepped aside to let Dougie in. But it was Viollet who came though first. All dressed in black, as per usual. No smile, but her eyes flashed with amusement as she looked him up and down.
‘Nice look,’ she said.
He only remembered then, he was still wearing the bright-yellow waders he’d put back on for the return journey through the sewers. Her nose wrinkled up, as she took a couple of steps further back.
‘Nice smell, too,’ she said. ‘Not.’
Well, that, at least, made Frankie smile. Her joke, not her revulsion. ‘I’d never had you down for a Wayne’s World fan,’ he said.
A bob of those dark eyebrows. The nearest he’d maybe ever get to any actual intimacy with her again? More than likely. What was it she’d called him and her? Past tense? Yeah. A shame, though. Because all Frankie could think about now was tomorrow. And where he might be by then. And with who. Again he pictured his passport, up there in the flat. Because sticking round here wasn’t going to be getting any easier, was it? He was a potential target for everyone from Hamilton, to Riley, to the cops now.
‘Who’s Wayne?’ a man’s voice asked.
Dougie. He’d at least had the common sense to wear a hat like he’d done at the Royal Academy that day. Suited and booted too, in spite of the late hour. Looked like he’d just got back from a day’s grouse shooting. He looked Frankie’s shit-spattered fishing waders up and down.
‘Catch anything, did you?’ That nasty little smile of his twitched at the edge of his thin lips.
‘Everything you could have hoped for.’
Dougie glanced from Frankie to Viollet and back. ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ he said.
‘This way.’ Viollet strode past Frankie and led Dougie down into the basement.
Frankie stayed put. Or, rather, he didn’t. He marched straight behind the bar, the siren call of that whiskey way too strong for him now. He plugged a tumbler up under the optic and pushed it once, twice, three times.
‘You want one?’ he asked The Saint, who was watching him, dead-eyed, from where he was standing sentry just along the corridor at the top of the basement steps.
‘Nah, I’m driving,’ he said.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Frankie said. ‘I forgot what an upstanding member of the community you were.’
Frankie poured himself another whiskey, and gazed back into the twilight of the club. The banks of seating, dividers and competition tables were all due to be taken down and out tomorrow, and things put back as they were. He smiled, thinking about being out there on table one, up against Adam Adamson. He remembered the clapping crowds. It had been all right, hadn’t it? And not just that, not just his little dance in the limelight, but all of it, the whole sodding thing.
But then his smile faltered. Because that w
as then, wasn’t it? And this was now. And it didn’t matter how well all that might have gone, because here he was back where he always seemed to find himself. Right in the shit.
Outside he caught a couple of notes of ‘Candle in the Wind’ playing from a passing car. And, yeah, suddenly it kind of made sense to him, why so many people seemed to like it. Because it was about this, wasn’t it? About life. About the nasty nitty-gritty at its core. About how no matter what you tried to build, it was only ever a matter of time before first it, and then you, got snuffed out.
‘Well, it seems like congratulations are in order,’ Dougie said, walking over to the bar, with Viollet hanging back behind him, her face half hidden in the shadows.
‘A toast, I think, is in order,’ he said. ‘Bar keep, would you mind doing the honours?’
Bar keep, the cheeky little prick. For a second, Frankie remembered how it had felt, besting Dougie two years ago, when he’d come here and crashed his car. Even with The Saint and Viollet here, and with all that would come his way if he did, wouldn’t it maybe, just maybe be worth it, rushing Dougie now and wiping that snide little smile off his pasty little face?
‘Sure, no problem,’ Frankie said, ‘so what’ll you be having?’ Yeah, the sensible option. Just keep the bastard sweet, then see if you can get what you want, and then get him out of here as fast as you can.
‘Oh, I think champagne’s in order. You do serve champagne, I take it?’
Frankie ignored the slight and cracked open a bottle. Moët. Two glasses. One for Dougie, which he pushed towards him across the bar top now. One for Viollet, which he slid her way.
‘And yourself?’ Dougie asked.
Funny, but even though he’d felt only two minutes ago like he could have done with another five, ten, twenty shots, the thought of it now just brought bile rising up to the back his throat. He took a bottle of iced water from the fridge instead.
‘The boss just told you to drink,’ said The Saint. ‘So fucking well drink a proper fucking drink.’
‘I don’t,’ said Frankie, pushing his whiskey tumbler back out of sight.
‘Yeah, but you just –’ The Saint started.
‘No, that’s all right,’ Dougie cut him off, handing Viollet her glass. ‘Far be it from me to interfere with a man’s moral code.’ He raised his glass first to Viollet, then Frankie, then The Saint. ‘To a great night’s work.’
‘A great night’s work,’ said The Saint, before glaring at Frankie. ‘Fucking say it,’ he snapped.
‘A great night’s work,’ Frankie said. He walked round the bar and handed Dougie his set of keys for the basement door. ‘I was wondering if now might be a good time to ask you when I might get that pistol back.’
‘I bet you were.’
‘And?’
‘Well, before we can even think about discussing when and how and if that might happen, first there’s something else we need to do . . . with this . . .’ He nodded at Viollet, who only now stepped forward into the light. She was carrying something. The Digley piece. The little dog.
‘What?’ Frankie said. He already didn’t like the sound of whatever this something else was, or the glint in Dougie’s eye.
‘We need to take it on a little walk . . .’
‘Do what?’
‘Well, I say we, but I really only mean you,’ Dougie said. ‘Oh, and The Saint here too, obviously. Just to make sure it’s done right.’
And, oh yeah, OK, now Frankie saw what this was all about. The rest of tonight’s work. Framing Tommy. And that’s what they were going to do it with, was it? This sodding little stuffed dog that The Saint now had gripped by the scruff of its neck? Because that’s what Dougie was sending him and Frankie off to do now – plant it in Tommy’s office.
‘Stitched up by a piece of taxidermy,’ grinned Dougie, taking another deep glug of Moët. ‘Oh, I do hope Tommy sees the funny side of this, I truly do.’
*
Frankie and The Saint drove in silence in The Saint’s black cab. Or at least with them not speaking. More bloody Streisand playing, mind. Her warbling this time in bloody French.
Frankie shifted uncomfortably on the plastic Tesco bag The Saint had made him sit on. Frankie had already got changed out of his waders and into jeans, trainers, a hoodie and a baseball cap, but he still hadn’t had time yet to shower.
He stared at the stupid wrapped dog on his lap, with the stupid words on its stupid sign still visible through the stupid bubble wrap. ‘R.I.P.’ Yeah, Frankie knew the feeling. Or at least he might do by tomorrow, depending on how tonight went. Because this really was it, wasn’t it? Him stuck between two gangsters going tête-à-tête, as the good Lady Babs might have sung it herself.
Tommy’s office up above his lap-dancing club, Whistling Gussets, was so close to the Ambassador that they could have walked there in ten. The Saint got them there in six and parked up in the taxi bay outside.
‘See?’ he grunted. ‘Told you this mode of transportation had its perks.’
‘Yeah, aren’t we lucky?’ Frankie said.
‘Oi, you can park that,’ The Saint growled.
‘Oh, I thought we just had?’
‘And that. This is a sarcasm-free zone from here on in. Get your serious face on. We’re not here to muck about.’
Easy for The Saint to say. He’d clearly been born with his serious face on. Getting out the cab, though, Frankie was finding keeping a straight face harder and harder. Maybe it was the alcohol. Or nerves. Or maybe it was even that ruddy little dog making everything feel surreal. Not just its stupid little sign, but its stupid little paw now, sticking out of the bubble wrap so that Frankie had to tuck it into his jacket to stop passers-by seeing it. Not that there were many of them about. Or many sober ones, anyhow. Thank God it was the middle of the night.
Whistling Gussets had shut hours ago. Its neon sign, showing a pair of kicking, stripy can-can legs, was switched off. The same went for the lights in all its windows facing the street.
‘This way,’ Frankie said.
‘Eh?’ The Saint had been heading for the main entrance.
‘The tradesman’s . . .’
‘Huh-huh.’ The Saint grinned.
Brilliant. So sarcasm was off tonight’s humour menu, but vintage gags were in? Frankie stopped by a dark doorway halfway down the alley.
‘Surprising,’ said The Saint, examining the door.
‘What is?’
‘I’d have thought Tommy would have had better security than this.’
‘They look pretty state-of-the-art locks to me.’
‘Shows all you know.’ The Saint rammed in a crowbar he pulled out from under his jacket. A cracking noise. The whole door frame split. ‘Don’t matter how good a lock if you’re not even trying to pick the bloody thing.’
The Saint fumbled for a piece of paper in his pocket.
‘Quick, read that, would you? I haven’t got me glasses.’
‘What is it?’
‘The alarm code. One of Tommy’s cleaners was kind enough to furnish us with it. Either that, or Dougie was going to have her son’s bollocks fed to him in front of her. But so it goes.’
Frankie read out the numbers.
‘The alarm’s behind the bar,’ said The Saint, setting off.
Another empty, twilit club. Floor-to-ceiling poles glistened in the glow of the emergency exit signs. A smell of disinfectant and spilt beer. They found the alarm box behind the bar just next to the fridge. The Saint shoved him roughly aside and knelt down, rummaging again for something in his pockets. He took his phone out and put it down on the bar top, then dug again, this time pulling a pen torch out and shining it onto the alarm’s keyboard.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Whatever muppet shut up shop didn’t even remember to switch the piggin’ thing on.’ He scrunched up his piece of paper in disgust and stuffed it back into his pocket.
‘Okee-cokee, then . . .’ He got up, looking around. ‘You’ve been here before, I take it?’
/> ‘Yeah.’
‘Nice birds, are they?’ He was staring at the dance floor. ‘Is it just tits they show, or gash as well?’
‘I don’t know about any of that,’ Frankie said. ‘Last time I was here, I was up meeting Tommy in his office. Top floor.’
‘Then be a good chap, would you? And get me up there, tout suite.’
Frankie led him back across the dance floor and on down the corridor to the side entrance they’d come in through. A steep staircase led up . . . and up . . . and up . . . Christ, Frankie’s legs ached – tonight’s drama had already gone on way too bloody long. But, come on, you’re nearly there. Just one more Task of Hercules to go, right?
The last time Frankie had come here to see Tommy, these stairs had been crawling with punters shuffling back and forth between the main bar downstairs and the private lap-dancing rooms up here on the higher floors. Frankie could still remember how nervous he’d felt about coming up here to talk. Well, more like beg really. To ask Tommy for his help in clearing Jack’s name. But not just nervous. He could see that now. Young. Wet behind the ears. Hopefully he’d got sharper since. Hopefully that still might get him out of even this fix.
Either that or he was screwed.
‘Nice smell,’ said The Saint.
‘You what?’ Frankie thought he’d misheard.
‘Of the birds,’ The Saint said. ‘You know, their perfume.’ He sniffed loudly. ‘You can really smell it in the air. That and, you know . . . their fanny,’ he added. ‘You can really get a whiff of that too.’
‘You’re not married, are you?’ Frankie said.
‘Nah. Never met the right girl.’
‘Funny that . . .’
‘Oh, right, I get it,’ said The Saint as they reached the top of the stairs. ‘More jokes, is it? I’m not gonna tell you again.’
‘Just trying to lighten the atmosphere,’ Frankie said.
‘Well, don’t.’
They finally reached the top floor. Two doors. The one on the left had a fluffy pink star on it.
‘What’s that, then?’ asked The Saint.
‘The girls’ dressing room.’
The Break Page 21