The Break Read online

  RONNIE

  O’SULLIVAN

  THE BREAK

  MACMILLAN

  Contents

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  18

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  20

  21

  FRAMED

  DOUBLE KISS

  1

  August 1997

  To Frankie James,

  By the time you read this, I will be dead. And shortly after, you might wellwish you were an all.. Haha.

  We had ourslves a little agreement now didnt we? That you would keep zipped about certain things you know or think you do about me and mine. And me in return I would not hand into the police the weapan used to murder that witnes – which as you know full vbloody well is all covered in your sticky little fingerprints.

  Well you will be glad to hear that even here in death I intend to honor my part of our bargain . . . . I have not handed over the pistol to the filth. No that is because i Have intead handed it over in a nice little platsic bag to my son Dougie.

  Now you might think that the ifnormation you had on me means that you and Dougie are even and that he cant hand that pistol in to the cops and get you done fro murder without you then telling the cops what you know about me.

  BUt I am doead DEAD now see? So you can tell them what you want and it wont make no diffrence to me. bUt you are still royally screwed with that gun.

  I have told DOugie too that you are full of shit and he shouldn’t lisen to any bollocks you try telling him to wriggle out of him having one over on you like this . . .. But i have told him an all that you are resorsful & might prove useful to him or maybe he will just decide to give the cops that pistol anyway ? ?! And if he does then when they bang you up make sure you remember my face wherever you are cos i will be grinning at you frm ear to fcking ear.

  Yours sinceerely laughing at you from my grave,

  Terence Hamilton

  cc Douglas Hamilton, my son & heir

  1

  ‘I’ll tell you what I want . . .’

  For the Spice Girls, the answer to this little philosophical conundrum bopping out through the boozer’s tinny sound system couldn’t have been any easier.

  But for Frankie James, sitting here at the bar with his heartbeat drumming like Keith Moon on amphetamines, things were a bit more complex. Because what Frankie really, really, really wanted was to be anywhere but here . . . in this part of London . . . today . . . for the reason that he was.

  The pub he’d taken refuge in from the thunderstorm pelting down outside was called The Paradise by Way of Kensal Green. A quote from some G. K. Chesterton poem about a jolly old Victorian piss-up, according to a bar girl Frankie had once chatted up in here on his way to his first ever Notting Hill Carnival a few years back when he’d just turned eighteen.

  Nothing much jolly or heavenly about it in here today, mind. Even the whopping great stone angel’s head leering down at him from the wall looked like it was up for a ruck. Not the only one either.

  Frankie pulled his black trilby down even lower over his brow and risked another glance up past his stubbled reflection in the chintzy bar mirror. Early doors it might have been, and Sunday to boot, but it was already well busy in here.

  Two distinct tribes. First lot were a bunch of Jarvis Cocker and Elastica wannabes. Most of them mid-twenties like him, but Christ they made him feel old, him here in his suit and tie, and them all heroin chic eyes, sloganed T-shirts, too-tight jeans and Aviator shades, like extras from one of those Christmas Diesel ads. Probably locals, or whatever passed for locals round here these days anyway, since West London had got itself so hip.

  But it was tribe two that had Frankie’s ticker clacking like the maracas. Gangsters. Not the semi-friendly sort either. Not Tommy Riley’s boys, who’d at least warn Frankie before maiming him if he ever pissed them off. Nah, this lot were way worse. The Hamiltons. Riley’s rivals for the grisly Soho Crime Family of the Year Award. A bunch of knee-cappers, face slashers and vertebrae stampers, all of who would happily give Frankie a proper bleedin’ beating on sight, given half a chance.

  They even looked like old-school gangsters today. Black-suited and booted. Clean shaven. Freshly barbered too, judging by the spanked arse red tan lines showing at the backs of their fat-muscled necks. They could have been extras from The Godfather, the lot of them. Except their Marlon Brando was nowhere to be seen.

  But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? Why they were here. Why Frankie was here. Why he was so totally and utterly screwed. All because the Hamiltons’ boss man was dead.

  *

  Word had first reached Frankie on Sunday night two weeks ago, back down Soho in the Ambassador Club, when Jack had come bursting in, nearly sprawling headfirst over the snooker table nearest the door. It had just gone half ten, with the last couple of punters finishing up on table four, and Frankie had been on the point of shutting up shop and calling it a night.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘You’re training to be a samurai?’

  ‘You what?’

  Frankie nodded at the poxy little ponytail his kid brother had tied his hair back into, black hair like Frankie’s, Sicilian, like their mum’s.

  ‘Piss off.’ Jack grinned back at him. From the colour of his face, he looked like he must have sprinted the whole way here from the James Boys Gym the other side of Oxford Street. ‘You haven’t heard, have you? I knew you couldn’t have, or you’d have rung.’

  ‘Heard what?’

  Jack was already behind the bar, pouring himself a Guinness, and one for Frankie too, even though he knew damn well he’d quit. ‘Terence Hamilton,’ he said.

  ‘What about him?’ Even the name sent a shiver down Frankie’s spine.

  Jack slowly pulled his forefinger across his throat.

  ‘What, killed? Bloody hell! By who?’ Christ, if Riley’s mob had got anything to do with it, it would be like Sarajevo round here before the night was done.

  ‘Not who. What.’ Jack took a long, greedy slug of his Guinness, without even waiting for it to settle. ‘Cancer,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.’

  Cancer . . . Flash. Frankie remembered Terence Hamilton’s face. Two years ago now in that filthy basement only a few short streets away. Terence telling Frankie he was dying. Skin like ivory. Black shadows circling his eyes. So he’d been telling the truth, had he? All that hadn’t been just another of his sick bloody games?

  ‘Cause for celebration then, eh?’ Jack said with a wink, nudging Frankie’s pint towards him.

  And, yeah, Frankie was tempted. He’d already got himself a gobful of saliva just looking at it. And nearly enough cause too, right? Because Hamilton was a bastard, cubed, no doubt about that. Someone whose death deserved a bloody good toast.

  Flash. Frankie pictured him again leering down at him in that basement. Flash. Those ropes cutting into Frankie’s wrists. Flash. Frankie’s bloodied, broken teeth. Flash. That blood-soaked corpse at his side. Flash. The blade of Hamilton’s Stanley knife glinting. Flash . . . flash . . . flashflashflashflashflashflashflash . . .

  Frankie had been lucky to get out of there alive. But not just lucky, smart, right? Because he’d tricked Hamilton, hadn’t he? Into thinking that Frankie had something on him. A tape recording connecting Hamilton to a whole bunch of bad shit he never wanted coming to light. Enough to get Hamilton not to kill him. Enough to get him to help clear Jack’s name too after he’d been set up for the murder of Susan Tilley, that poor girl w
ho’d been due to marry Terence Hamilton’s only son.

  ‘I mean, just thank fuck he’s gone,’ Jack said. ‘Because I don’t reckon he ever really did believe I was innocent, you know. I reckon he kept on blaming me . . . wanting me dead.’

  ‘Yeah . . .’ But Frankie still pushed the pint away. Because, dead as Terence was, his son, Dougie, was still very much alive. And, judging by the beating Frankie reckoned Dougie had secretly ordered on Jack last year, still hated Jack and blamed him for whatever part he thought he’d played in his fiancée’s death every bit as much as his dad ever had.

  Meaning Frankie and Jack’s real trouble with the Hamilton gang might have only just begun.

  *

  ‘The thing is, I felt I knew her.’

  It was the barmaid in the Paradise talking. Jet-black eyebrows. Bleached, cropped hair. A treble clef tattoo stamped on her neck. All very Gwen Stefani.

  ‘Yeah, well, we all did, didn’t we, dearie?’ This from a stick-thin, squiffy older bird sitting hunched down next to Frankie with a fag in her hand. ‘Cos she felt like one of us . . . like a friend . . . you know? That’s why everyone’s so upset . . . because we all know we could’ve helped her . . . when she went through her dark times, like . . . if only our paths had crossed . . .’

  Rolling news of Princess Di’s death was playing on the muted TV screen above the cigarette machine. Flowers piled up outside Kensington Palace. The people’s princess wearing baby blue on the steps of Buck House the day she’d got engaged – ‘like a fawn in the headlights’, some commentator had just said. Her with her kids. Her in minefields. Her with Elton John.

  Her being killed in a car crash in a tunnel in Paris last night was all anyone had been talking about all day.

  ‘D’you know what I heard?’ the stick-thin bird went on, swilling the last of her gin and bitter lemon round her glass.

  ‘And what’s that, Doris?’ asked the barmaid.

  ‘MFI did it,’ Doris said in a whisper.

  Silence. Then a snigger. This from the barmaid, but Frankie couldn’t help smiling too.

  ‘What, the furniture store?’ asked the barmaid, giving Frankie a little conspiratorial glance – not the first one she’d slipped him either, he’d noticed, this last half-hour since he’d walked through the door. Had even asked him if he was Italian when he’d come in. Had said he had something of the young Bob De Niro about him.

  ‘No, the bloody spies,’ snapped Doris. ‘And it’s not funny either, it’s true. It’s because she was going to marry him . . . that Dodo she was with . . . because he’s the son of that Arab what runs Harrods, see . . . and the Royals, well, they could never have stood for that . . . and so that’s why they sent in the MFI.’

  ‘I think you mean MI5, love,’ said Frankie. ‘Or MI6, they’re the spies.’

  ‘You’ve got a nerve, showing your face in here,’ another voice – male, all bleedin’ testosterone – growled.

  ‘What?’ The old girl looked round, confused.

  ‘Not you, you,’ the wheezing voice said.

  A chisel-hard finger thudded into Frankie’s back, in case there was any doubt left over who was being addressed. Frankie looked up past the barmaid into the mirror. A brick wall with a balding head spattered with ginger stubble was standing right behind him, glaring back through bloodshot eyes. A Soho face. Jimmy Flanagan, AKA ‘The Saint’. So called not because of any passing resemblance he had to Ian Ogilvy. But on account of how many people he’d put into A&E in Paddington’s St Mary’s hospital over the last few decades he’d been professionally kicking arse.

  George Michael’s ‘Older’ had just started playing through the speakers. Yeah, well, Frankie needed to be wiser too. He stayed sitting. No point rising to the challenge. He might be six foot two himself, with a couple of teen kickboxing medals in a box under his bed, but The Saint was nearer seven and chewed people like Frankie up for laughs. He was one of the Hamilton gang’s top enforcers, meaning any lip from Frankie here today, and all he’d have to do was click his Bowyers sausage-sized fingers and the rest of Hamilton’s crew would pile in sharpish and bury Frankie like an avalanche.

  ‘All right, Jimmy,’ Frankie said, opting for a friendly tone instead. He turned round to face him, nice and slow.

  ‘Don’t you fucking Jimmy me, you little scrote,’ said The Saint, wiping his bulbous, blood-vesselled conk on his suit jacket sleeve. ‘The only reason I haven’t kicked your head halfway up your bumhole already is because I still remember your old man from school.’

  The Old Man, Frankie’s dad . . . along with Terence Hamilton, Tommy Riley, Jimmy Flanagan and half the rest of the senior hoods in London, they’d all gone to the same East End shithole of a School for Scoundrels back in the sixties. Had split into warring factions since, mind. Wolves scrapping over the same rotting London carcass. But some of them at least still trod a tad softly around each other’s families, just for old times’ sake.

  Paddington, that’s what Frankie’s dad had always used to call The Saint. Not because of the St Mary’s connection, mind, but because of those ginger patches of hair he’d had since he’d started going bald back in his twenties. Made him look like he’d just pulled a marmalade sandwich out from under his hat, the Old Man had always said. Though probably best not to mention that now.

  ‘You’d better have a bloody good reason for being here,’ said The Saint.

  ‘Burgers.’

  ‘You what?’

  Frankie nodded from the chalkboard on the wall to his empty plate. If you were going to have a last meal, this was as good a place as any was what he’d reckoned on his way past here from the tube station to the cemetery just now. Had got itself a nice new rep as one of the leading gastro pubs that were springing up around this part of West London. According to the Time Out review Frankie had spotted in the window, at least.

  ‘Organic Hereford beef patty with Monterey Jack cheese, lamb’s leaf lettuce and heritage tomatoes in a lightly toasted brioche bun,’ Frankie explained.

  ‘Toasted brioche what? Speak English, you prick,’ said The Saint.

  ‘All right, fair enough,’ said Frankie. ‘The truth is I was hungry and I didn’t think you lot would be in here. Thought it was too far from the cemetery for well-off gentlemen like yourselves to walk. Thought it was more likely you’d be gathering down the William the Fourth. Or else I’d have steered clear. And especially if I’d known you were all setting out from here an’ all.’ He nodded through the rain-spattered window at the blurry outline of the horse-drawn hearse that had pulled up ten minutes ago, the same time a bunch of other cars had pulled up and the Hamilton crew had piled out and into here.

  ‘Yeah, well, it might not be the nearest pub to the cemetery, but it’s the nearest one that does a decent pint,’ said The Saint.

  A fair point and one that Frankie would probably have picked up on quicker if Dr Pepper hadn’t been the strongest thing to pass his lips these last six months.

  The Saint let out a horrible, wet sneeze. ‘Hay fever,’ he muttered, wiping his nose on the back of his paddle-sized hand, looking Frankie up and down, taking in the black bespoke suit, black tie and white shirt that Frankie was wearing under his old-school beige Hanbury raincoat.

  ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re out this way because you’ve come to pay your respects?’

  ‘In a way . . .’

  ‘Yeah?’ The Saint smiled – something he could have done with more practice at, because his crooked teeth looked like they were about to take a bite out of Frankie’s head. ‘Because the way I heard it,’ he said, ‘there was no love lost between you and Terence. Even though, for whatever reason, we were told not to tread on your twinkly little toes these last two years.’

  For whatever reason . . . The Saint was fishing, wanted to know exactly what deal it was that Frankie had struck with Terence Hamilton. But Frankie knew better than to be drawn into that.

  ‘Not that it matters any more anyhow,’ said The Saint. ‘N
ot now there’s a new boss in town. Because all bets are off, or hadn’t you heard? We’re on the up, son. The Hamiltons are back.’

  The new boss. He meant Dougie. All kinds of rumours had done the rounds this last couple of weeks since Terence had carked it. That the Hamiltons were over. That Terence’s wife had seized the throne. That the Albanians, then the Triads, then the Poles had moved in. But it was Dougie who’d come out on top eventually. Exactly like Terence had planned. The king of Soho East was dead. Long live the bleedin’ king.

  ‘So it seems,’ Frankie said, looking past The Saint at the thirty or so thugs gathered in the bar behind him. There was a cockiness to them, all right. An air of expectancy, like all they were waiting for now was their orders on what – or more specifically who – to do next.

  Frankie couldn’t help wondering what Tommy Riley would make of all this. How was he going to react? The same as everyone else, Tommy had clearly seen the Hamiltons on the wane and him on the wax. He’d been steadily nibbling into their territories these last two years, no doubt thinking the whole of Soho would soon be his, and no way would he be giving an inch of it back now without a fight.

  ‘But all you really need to know right now, son,’ warned The Saint, ‘is that the new boss hates you and your weasel brother like a rash.’ The Saint chuckled at this, a horrible, phlegmy sound. ‘And whatever protection Riley’s giving you down town, that don’t count for shit here. Especially today.’ The Saint stared at him, unblinking, through emotionless grey eyes. ‘So if I were you, I’d get the hell out of Dodge before Dougie finds out that you’re here.’

  A woman’s voice interrupted. Like butter through concrete.

  ‘It’s all right, Jimmy. Relax. It was Dougie who asked him.’

  Her . . . Frankie looked right, sharpish. Because, oh yeah, he remembered this voice, all right. Her . . . Last year in that top-of-the-range Merc with the bass thumping out. Her . . . with the same short, bobbed black hair and heavy kohl make-up she was sporting now. Her . . . like some modern-day Cleopatra, leaning out of that Merc as it had cruised by Jack’s new flat to tell him she had a message for him. Her . . . strong enough to keep a grip of Jack’s collar as the car had pulled away and dragged him down the street.