The Break

by Ronnie O'Sullivan

  Unless Tommy somehow got to him first. And Frankie prayed with every atom of his fucking being that he would.

  ‘You really shouldn’t have done all that, you know,’ said The Saint, gazing at Frankie in the dressing-table mirror. ‘Messing up his plans like that.’

  Maybe not, and certainly not now it had turned out like this. But it wasn’t exactly like Frankie had had any other choice, was it? It all came partly back to what Listerman had said, about people working for more than one master generally ending up getting ripped apart. Because he’d been right, hadn’t he? Right from the get-go. No matter what Frankie had done, or how he’d tried wriggling or playing the two of them off, from the second Dougie Hamilton had set himself up against Tommy Riley, Frankie would have had to betray one of them eventually. The only real question had ever been who?

  But it hadn’t just been what Listerman had said that had made up his mind, but what the Old Man had told him that last time he’d visited him in Brixton too . . . if you do have to choose between them, then you choose based on who you think you can trust the most, and who can get you the furthest . . .

  Frankie had hated Tommy for his decision to wreck the Soho Open, but at least he’d done it to Frankie’s face, not behind his back. Whereas Frankie had never believed for a second that Dougie would ever let him have that pistol back. Nah, that stone-faced weasel had been lying to him right from the start.

  Frankie had finally cracked in the basement of Tommy’s new Chelsea pad on Sunday. Before that, when it had just been the robbery he’d been working on for Tommy’s rival, he’d been able to square it with himself. But after he’d found out about Dougie taking Tommy down too, he’d had no choice. And there’s nothing else I need to know? Well, yeah, there had been. And he’d told Tommy all about Riley’s plans, all the hows and whys of the heist, and about Dougie then planning on planting one of the nicked art pieces in Tommy’s office for the cops to find.

  Frankie could pretty much guess how certain matters had proceeded from there. Getting the dog out of Tommy’s office before the cops took a dekko would have been easy. Christ, Tommy had even made it easy enough for them to plant it there in the first place, by leaving the downstairs alarm off. Getting the other pieces out of the Ambassador would have been simple too, because Frankie had given Tommy the spare keys.

  But as for the rest of what had happened . . . well, some of that Frankie was less sure of. First up, he’d expected Tommy to just nick the art from the basement and keep it for himself. But, OK, he kind of got why he hadn’t. Because that gear would have been hard to shift and he’d not invested in other works by the same artists like Dougie and his partners had. And, yeah, he also got why Tommy might have wanted it to look like the whole heist had never happened. Because otherwise, after that tip-off about him having been involved, the cops would have been watching both him and his business interests too closely. Something Tommy would have wanted to avoid at all costs.

  But what Frankie really didn’t get was how the hell Tommy had managed to get all those pieces back inside the Royal Academy before the cops had got there? Sure, he’d bought himself the time to do it, by slashing those tyres on The Saint’s black cab. And a nice touch too, adding that gang tag. But how had he actually done it? As in broken back in?

  ‘I always wonder what people like you think about?’ said The Saint, finally turning round.

  ‘What people?’

  ‘Soon to be dead people. People what is fucked.’

  ‘Oh, those people . . .’ Frankie felt sick, but he still tried to smile. Maybe there was still some way of talking The Saint out of this? After all, the two of them had almost been co-workers, right, this last couple of weeks.

  ‘You know, about whether you made bad choices along the way,’ said The Saint, ‘or whether, if you could go back now, what you might do different.’ He shook his big fat head. ‘. . . because, really, the second you double-crossed Dougie by grassing him up to Tommy like what you done, surely you knew this couldn’t end well?’

  But, no, Frankie hadn’t known that. He’d thought he’d got it covered. That was the point. He’d been banking either on getting that gun and getting away from here before the news of the ‘non-robbery’ got through, or on Tommy ‘sending in the cavalry’, as he’d put it, to pluck Frankie from Dougie’s grasp. Only problem with the latter being that Frankie had told Tommy he’d reckoned that he’d be meeting up with Dougie tonight over at that old warehouse on Narrow Street. Where the bloody cavalry might well be arriving right now. Not that it would do Frankie any good. Tommy probably didn’t even know this flat he was in now existed.

  ‘So what’s it going to be, then?’ The Saint dug into his leather travel bag and pulled out a claw hammer and held it up alongside the glistening Bowie knife. ‘Hammers or knives?’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a feather duster in there too, have you?’ The joke didn’t even sound funny to him. He remembered the bloke in the basement of that warehouse. More meat than person. And that was it, wasn’t it? That was going to be him. He felt his stomach clench and his balls try and climb up into his stomach. Oh, God, help me. Someone help me, please.

  The Saint leant down and peered inside his bag, before coming up grinning. ‘No, scrote. I’m afraid you’re all out of luck.’

  ‘I don’t suppose either that there’s any point in reminding you again about how you were once mates with my dad?’

  ‘Well, you say mates . . . the truth is, I never really did like him . . . always felt a bit jealous.’

  ‘Jealous?’

  ‘Yeah, because of your mum. I always thought he was punching well above his weight where she was concerned.’

  ‘You knew her?’ Even now, even here, the information made Frankie’s heart thunder even faster than it already was.

  ‘Oh, yeah . . . but there’s no time to get into any of that now, we’ve got a job to do here, and it’s getting late.’

  ‘What about money?’ Frankie said. ‘I’ve got money . . . I can –’

  The Saint shook his head, looking disappointed. ‘It always comes down to money, don’t it? That and –’

  ‘Just please,’ Frankie said, because, yeah, he already felt like he was back there, down in that other basement two years ago with Terence Hamilton, with that Stanley knife flashing in his hand . . . and no way was he going to get lucky enough to get away from something like this twice. ‘Just please . . .’

  ‘That and begging,’ said The Saint, tearing off a strip of duct tape and smoothing it down across Frankie’s mouth. ‘There. Much better. Now no more of that silliness, eh? Because we’re all professionals here.’

  No! I’m not! Frankie tried screaming through the gag. I’m not a professional. I run a fucking snooker club. But even as he was gnawing at the tape, desperately trying to mumble it, he knew what The Saint would say: That means you are a professional. You were the second you took that on. Just like your Old Man before you. Just like anyone who comes anywhere near Riley or the Hamiltons, or tries to grab a sweet piece of that Soho pie.

  ‘But, even so, I am genuinely sorry it’s all come to this,’ said The Saint. ‘Times are you’ve kept me almost amused as we’ve been doing our little drives here and there . . . but then again I do understand why the boss doesn’t want to do it himself. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he doesn’t like getting his hands dirty – because if push came to shove then he would, like through there just now with you, and he enjoyed giving your brother a right battering down that pub alleyway last year as well . . . got a right sweat up, I can tell you.’

  So it had been Dougie behind that assault that had put Jack into hospital. Frankie hauled at his restraints, but the tape was still too tightly bound.

  ‘ . . . but he has got such pretty hands, see,’ The Saint went on, ‘I mean, you’ve seen them, right, all manicured, like . . . you could almost say they were intelligent hands, couldn’t you? And not the sort to be sullying themselves with this sort of grunt work,
not when there’s old lags like me with rusty old chisels like these . . .’ He pulled a number of other blood-stained implements up out of his bag and clanked them down on the dresser. ‘. . . that are more than capable of getting the job done.’

  As he weighed the knife and the hammer again in his hands, Frankie tried twisting, turning in the chair. Tried to rock it, tip it over. Nothing worked.

  ‘Anyway, don’t say I didn’t warn you . . . to get out.’

  Frankie didn’t need the tape off of his mouth for The Saint to read his expression as he leant in.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he said, ‘out there in the sticks, when I said you should piss off on holiday and soon, I meant it, I really was giving you the nod . . . a chance, you know, because of all the times we’d spent together . . . and you clearly liking Barbra Streisand so much, an’ all.’

  The Saint put the knife down, his decision made, and gave the hammer a little practice swing. Bile sluiced up into Frankie’s mouth – he only just managed to swallow it down. But what was even the friggin’ point? Choking to death on his own spew would probably be a hundred times better than what The Saint had in mind.

  ‘Now, Dougie was very explicit, I’m afraid,’ The Saint said, leering, ‘well, when I say that, what I actually mean is that you should be afraid, heah, heah, heah . . . he said that I should really go to town on you . . . or not even town, really, think of it more like several small villages first on the way into town . . .’ His dark eyes glistened at how clever he’d just been. ‘. . . yeah, Dougie wants this to take as long as possible . . . and look . . . he even wants me to keep a record.’

  He pointed at a clipboard with a lined piece of A4 on it, and next to it, another little digital camera like Viollet’s. Viollet. Where was she? Did she know this was going on? Probably. No, more like definitely. The bitch.

  Frankie jerked his head back, looking up. A banging noise had just come from next door. Loud enough to hear through that soundproofed door. Pretty fucking loud, in other words.

  ‘Well, well, well . . . what’s all this then?’ said The Saint. ‘A last-minute reprieve? A stay of execution? I wouldn’t count on it with that one. Nah, he’s sure what he’s about. Never changes his mind. More like, he’s just lost his temper again. Smashed that fucking piano up into firewood with that bat, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  More banging. This time a frown settled on The Saint’s face.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he grinned down at Frankie. ‘I’ll be back in just two ticks.’

  Pop.

  Frankie heard the noise the second The Saint opened the door. Then pop-pop. Two more. The Saint just stood, still grinning, for a second. Then his eyes rolled back into the top of his head and he fell backwards, crashing onto the floor.

  ‘Hola, Señor Frankie,’ Jesús said, flashing him a perfect white smile as he stepped into the room and over The Saint’s dead body, all in one lithe, fluid motion. He’d got a pistol with a silencer in his right hand and he slowly scanned the room. ‘All queer,’ he yelled.

  ‘Clear . . . clear . . . for the hundredth time of telling you, the ruddy word is clear!’

  Mackenzie Grew rolled his eyes at Frankie as he strode in, his white suit spattered with blood, and leant down and checked The Saint’s pulse. ‘Yep, nice shooting, Jesús. Right between the fucking eyes. Dear Mr Jimmy Flanagan is officially a goner. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.’

  ‘Well, fuck me, if it isn’t General Custer,’ Frankie finally managed to say, as Grew pulled the tape off his mouth.

  ‘Custard?’ said Jesús. ‘Like in cakes?’

  ‘No, Custer,’ said Grew, rolling his eyes again, ‘you know, as in the bloody cavalry?’

  Jesús’s turn to roll his eyes at Frankie now. He tapped his forefinger at the side of his head. ‘This Grew, he ees loco, sí?’

  ‘Sí,’ said Frankie. ‘Bloody sí.’

  Grew started to untie him. ‘Christ, what’s that smell?’ he said.

  ‘Me,’ Frankie admitted. ‘I pissed myself.’

  Grew glanced across at the various torture instruments The Saint had got lined up. ‘Can’t say I blame you, son. Can’t say I blame you at all.’

  ‘And Dougie?’ Frankie asked. Had he still been next door when the boys had come through just now?

  ‘Oh, you needn’t worry your pretty little head about him no more,’ Grew said. ‘I just used his head to turn that lovely white piano of his a most alarming shade of red.’

  ‘And I shot that other asshole,’ Jesús grinned. ‘Right through hees knees, before I feeneesh heem with hees bat.’

  So the Sasquatch had got squashed.

  As Frankie stood up shakily, Grew pulled a clean white towel out of The Saint’s bag and started dabbing at the blood on his lapels. ‘What?’ he told Frankie. ‘Quit your gawping. This is Paul Smith. New season. The longer you leave it, the worse a stain gets.’

  ‘How?’ Frankie said.

  ‘Well, I’ve always said that lemon juice and white wine’s the best for getting blood out.’

  ‘No. You. Him. Here. Now. How?’ Frankie said.

  ‘How. Did. We. Know. You. Were. Here?’ Grew grinned back.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The sex bum,’ said Jesús, popping a yellow Gummi Bear into his mouth.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He means sex bomb.’

  Frankie just stared.

  ‘The Saffa, son,’ Grew said. ‘That girl everyone’s frightened of, or in love with. Or everyone except me.’

  He couldn’t mean . . . ‘Viollet?’

  ‘Ah, she said she’d met you.’ Grew shot him a sly glance. ‘Maybe more than just met, though, eh, looking at you now?’

  And, suddenly, Frankie saw it. Why she hadn’t been here when him and The Saint had come back. Why she’d slipped away. Because Frankie wasn’t the only one who’d been playing both sides, was he? Viollet Coetzee must have been too. And it was her who’d told Tommy where to find him, here in the Maida Vale flat, instead of the Narrow Street warehouse.

  Yeah, without Viollet Coetzee, he’d be dead.

  21

  ‘Oh, I do wish I could have been there, to see little Dougie’s face when he got that call from whoever his tame pig is, to tell him that there’d been no heist,’ Tommy Riley said. ‘Was it a picture? Would it have made me laugh, Frankie? I bet it bloody would.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Frankie said, remembering what The Saint had told Dougie, ‘you’d have laughed till you shat.’

  ‘Easy on the language, son,’ said Tommy, wagging his finger disapprovingly. ‘Ladies present, an’ all that.’

  ‘Sorry, eh?’ Frankie said, nodding across at Viollet and Chenguang, who were swimming in parallel up and down the pool.

  Frankie was sitting with Tommy, Tam Jackson and Tommy’s nephew, Darren, at the breakfast table in the basement of Tommy’s new Chelsea pad. And, boy, what a change a week made. The building work had all been finished in here. Concrete foundations in. Water on top. Light rippled across the white ceiling and the Corinthian columns and alcoves on the walls. Opera played gently through the sound system. Maria Callas instead of Babs. Yeah, things couldn’t have been more different if they’d tried.

  Then there was Frankie himself. The bruises on his face had died down. His nose had been reset. The only sign left that he’d been in any real bother at all was the splint on his right hand still keeping his fingers there straight.

  Other scars, mind, they wouldn’t be so easy to heal. Frankie could still picture him, The Saint, standing over him with that claw hammer swinging down. And Dougie too, or rather what was left of him and the twat with the bat . . . that whole blood-spattered, bone-splintered mess of a living room . . . Grew might have got a clean-up squad in there to wipe the whole place down like none of them had ever been there, but Frankie was still waking up sweating every night, like he’d never even made it out.

  ‘Do you want to know what’s really funny, though?’ Tommy said, stroking Whitney, who was lying by his bare feet, che
wing on his robe’s purple cord.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Show him, Tam.’

  Tam shoved the morning’s papers across the table to Frankie, nudging the silver tray of peach brioches Darren’s way, who quickly snaffled two up.

  ‘Turns out that exhibition of his didn’t need any extra publicity at all,’ Tommy said.

  Frankie scanned the front page he was pointing at. A picture of that Myra Hindley piece Sharon had told him about. The article below talked about the protest and the outrage it had provoked. But the publicity it had generated had clearly worked its magic. The exhibition itself had got itself record attendance figures. Oh yeah, all those artists on show in there, it looked like they’d already gone global after all. Frankie wondered who Dougie Hamilton’s silent partners had been. Because they’d all be making out like bandits by now.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to say thanks, by the way,’ said Frankie.

  ‘Oh, yeah? For what? Saving your life?’ Tommy lit a cigar.

  ‘Yeah, of course that. But for the tournament too. For calling off the fix. Before it was too late. Before everyone involved smelt a rat and its reputation got shot to bits.’

  ‘Ah . . . that . . . well, that was just a little reward . . . for you tipping me off about what Dougie had planned.’

  Frankie nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, but, you see, I’ve been thinking about that too.’ He stared into Riley’s eyes. ‘Because you must have known already, mustn’t you? About what Dougie was planning? And about him having recruited me? And about him planning to frame you? You must have already known all that, before I told you, on account of the fact you already had Viollet working for you.’

  Tommy sucked smoke deep into his lungs. ‘Ah yes, but only just. She switched sides quite late in the day, see. After Grew had made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, to stop working for that prick and to come work for me.’

  Frankie glanced across at Viollet, who was now drying herself off on a lounger at the far side of the pool. Was it money she’d switched for? Or did Riley have something on her? Just like Dougie had got on Frankie? Either way, it was funny, though, wasn’t it? Especially after what Dougie had said about chess. Because all that time he’d been fixating on toppling the king, he should have been watching his queen instead.