Framed Read online

  FRAMED

  Ronnie O’Sullivan

  Contents

  Title Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  Also by Ronnie O’Sullivan

  Copyright

  1

  Frankie James watched the mystery blonde getting dressed at the end of his bed. Nice figure. Nice smile. A good sense of humour too, from what he could remember from last night.

  He’d met her in the 100 Club on Oxford Street. Some new Mancunian band touted as the next big thing in Brit Pop had been in town. His best mate Spartak had been running the door and had let him in for free.

  Frankie had spotted her halfway through the gig. Six foot in heels. Nearly as tall as him. She’d caught him checking her out. Hadn’t even blinked. Just stared back. A challenge. He’d never been able to resist one of them.

  He wracked his brains. Bollocks. What was her name? Michelle? Or Mary? Or even May? Christ. His head was throbbing. How much had he drunk? Bloody hell. He was slipping back into the bad old ways. Had been trying to cut down. Had screwed up again.

  He glanced over at the crumpled up AA leaflet in the corner of his bedroom. He didn’t even remember where he’d got it from. It had been there for weeks . . . months . . . He didn’t believe in that group therapy shit. More willpower. That’s how he’d kicked the coke, wasn’t it? Just by saying no. But something still kept stopping him from binning that leaflet anyhow.

  He buckled his belt over his pressed black suit trousers and took a dry-cleaned white shirt from his wardrobe and pulled it on. He stared at the girl.

  ‘Stop gawping,’ she warned him with a grin.

  Hard not to. She was standing in just her black satin knickers and bra, with her hands on her hips.

  ‘You seen the rest of my clothes?’ she asked.

  ‘In the lounge,’ he said. ‘At least, I think . . .’

  That was where they’d started, wasn’t it? He watched her sashay out through the door and down the short corridor. Blimey. She was a looker, all right. Fit. Maybe even a keeper, as his mum might have said. A couple of years back, Frankie would have made more of an effort. Cooked her a bacon sarnie. Asked her out for dinner. Got to know her properly. But he had way too much crapola on his plate for that now.

  Narrowing his ice-blue eyes against the sun, he pulled up the blind and gazed down from the flat’s second-floor window. It was just gone eight and hardly any of the shops, bars, delis or clubs in Poland Street were open. Didn’t mean Soho was quiet though. Shopkeepers were busy moving the homeless from outside their doors. Junkies and wasted clubbers stumbled past. Commuters trudged miserably into work. In the distance, a siren wailed.

  ‘Our kingdom.’ That’s what Frankie’s dad had always told him. ‘And don’t let any other bastard ever tell you different.’

  Frankie took his dad’s watch from the bedside table and slipped it on. A Rolex, a real one, with the old man’s name engraved on the back. Frankie loved how heavy it felt.

  ‘Think of it like an insurance policy,’ his dad had once said. ‘Even if everything else in your life turns tits-up, right here you’ve still got something you can cash in to start over.’

  Frankie clenched his fist – a boxer’s fist, just like his dad’s. Just like the rest of his family, going right back.

  Frankie’s granddad and great uncle had both been pros. ‘The Bloodthirsty James Boys’, people had called them, though never to their faces. No one had ever had the bollocks for that.

  Neither brother had ever made the big time. Not through lack of talent, mind, more a lack of the right promoter. Rumour had it they’d both ended up working as enforcers for the Richardson Gang back in the ’50s.

  Frankie’s was a family some people round here were still wary of, not just because of who his granddads were, but because of what they said his father had done.

  Frankie turned to see the blonde standing in the bedroom doorway, wearing the same little black dress and heels he’d relieved her of last night.

  ‘I’ve written down my number,’ she said, pulling on a thigh-length, fake fur coat.

  She swiped a bright pink lipstick across her mouth and blew him a small kiss. Her accent was expensive, educated. He tried to remember if he’d asked her where she was from, but nothing concrete sprang to mind. Probably somewhere posh like Berkshire or Surrey. The kind of place where girls like her rode ponies while their mums and dads hunted foxes. Somewhere far from here.

  He said, ‘Thanks.’

  She gave him that stare again. That challenge. What was she after? His number? He let the silence hang.

  ‘I’ll walk you out,’ he said, fishing out a pair of silver dice cufflinks from the old wooden box on the windowsill, another leftover from when his dad had been living here.

  ‘A bit formal for you, aren’t they?’ she said, amused, watching him thread them into his shirt cuffs.

  He’d been wearing a designer T-shirt and jeans last night. Both fake. But work was different. If you wanted respect around here, you had to at least look the part. Especially when you’d just turned twenty-three and were half the age of every other club boss in town.

  He pulled on his suit jacket and checked himself out in the mirror, combing his fingers back through his black hair. Italian ancestors, his mum had always claimed. All of them as crazy as the Emperor bleedin’ Nero. So said his dad.

  ‘You scrub up pretty well,’ said the blonde.

  Frankie turned to face her. Was she being sarcastic? No, she was smiling. A warm smile too. Not the flirty one she’d used last night to hook him in. This was something softer, more personal.

  He half-smiled back, but it was more of a reflex. He needed her gone, needed his head space back so he could work out how the hell he was going to convince his landlord to give him more time to come up with the rent he owed on the club. Then there was the problem of how to deal with his kid brother. Bloody Jack. He’d called last night. Had got himself in hock at poker to the Chinese. A-bloody-gain.

  ‘I’ll just get my shoes,’ he told her, walking past, knowing she was watching him every step of the way.

  He scoured the debris in the lounge: a stacked ashtray, the remains of a bottle of red, two glasses, one with her lipstick tattooed onto its rim. A half-empty bottle of whisky too. He didn’t even remember opening that.

  He’d hit the gym later. Soon feel less guilty. That, and an early night tonight.

  He found his shoes by the sofa. Loafers. Italian leather. An indulgence from a few months back when he’d been feeling more flush.

  The blonde was waiting by the flat’s reinforced front door. Didn’t look in a hurry. He wondered what she did for a job. The way she looked and acted, she could have been anything from a fitness instructor to an ad exec. Whichever, it was too late to ask her now.

  He pulled back the door’s tw
o deadlocks and its stainless steel bolt.

  ‘Looks like you’re expecting an army,’ she said.

  ‘Used to be my dad’s place,’ he told her. ‘He was very . . . security-conscious . . .’ Frankie didn’t know how else to explain. ‘Watch the steps,’ he warned. ‘They’re stupid steep.’

  He followed her downstairs, careful himself. He remembered how one of the old man’s business associates had once taken a tumble here. Broke both his legs. Frankie had got back from Leicester Square Odeon with Jack to find the old man busy scrubbing bloodstains off the wall.

  Two doors led off the small hallway at the bottom of the stairs. One into the club. The other onto the street. Frankie had to squeeze past the blonde to open the street door’s triple lock. It was the first time they’d touched properly since last night. The contact made her giggle.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be.’ She threw him a knowing look. ‘I think we’ve been a lot more intimate than that.’

  He smiled. Couldn’t help himself. Something contagious about the twinkle in her eyes.

  They stepped out onto the street. The air was heavy with the stink of disinfectant, kebab wrappers and chips.

  ‘Cigarette?’ she said, sparking one up.

  ‘No. Thanks.’

  She raised an eyebrow. They must have chugged through a whole two packs between them last night. He could feel it in the shortness of his breath. Something else he was meant to be cutting right down on. Shit.

  ‘So . . .’ she said.

  ‘So . . .’

  A rock steady beat drifted down from a window up above. She was staring at him again, unblinking. Her expression said it all: your move.

  ‘It’s been . . .’

  ‘Memorable?’ she suggested.

  ‘Yeah, memorable.’

  ‘And fun?’

  He smiled. ‘Yeah, that too.’

  ‘Memorably fun.’ She said it like she was trying it on for size. ‘I guess I can settle for that. But, you know, do feel free to call me as well . . .’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I will.’

  She kissed him then. Quickly. On the cheek. Then walked away. He watched her as far as the end of the street, until she faded into the crowd.

  ‘Goodbye Martha, Megan, or Molly,’ he said under his breath, wondering if he’d ever see her again, and almost stepping into the street after her – before walking back inside, sick at the thought that if he didn’t play his cards right today, he was going to end up losing the club.

  2

  Frankie hadn’t so much inherited the Ambassador Club, as had it thrown at him like a ticking bomb from a speeding car. At least that’s what his dad’s cousin, Kind Regards, had told him five years ago – and that’s how it still felt today.

  Hitting the light switch in the club’s main hall, Frankie breathed in the stale smell of smoke, chalk and beer, as he listened to the tink-tink of the strip lights flickering into life above the twelve tables.

  He sighed. The hall’s worn carpet was scuffed and stained and its walls and ceiling were patchy with damp. Two of the frosted plate glass windows overlooking the street had been cracked by some passing pissheads a few weeks ago and he still hadn’t got round to fixing them.

  Drumming his fingers along the edges of the tables as he walked to the bar, he was almost glad his dad wasn’t here to see it. After his dad had been banged up and Frankie had first taken over managing the club, he’d hoped to turn its fortunes round. Easier said than done.

  He’d hit the same old chicken and egg problem the old man had. The only way to make enough money to tart the place up was to bring in more punters. But the only way to bring in more punters was to tart the fucking place up.

  Frankie’s dad, Bernie, had taken out a thirty-year lease on the club over ten years ago, back in ’84, after winning big on the horses. His plan had been to put it on the map. Make it a hub for the game here in the West End. But he’d always come up short.

  End result was that Frankie and his brother Jack had hung out here pretty much full time in their teens when they weren’t in school, being babysat by staff, while their mum and dad had gone out doing other jobs to make ends meet: managing brewery pubs, or running van-loads of tax-free cigarettes and booze back on the ferries from France.

  Not that Frankie had minded. None of the rented houses they’d lived in at the time had ever felt as much like home as here. Frankie loved it. Soho. The club. The people. The free lemonades and crisps. And of course the snooker. He’d got the bug for it the instant he’d picked up a cue. Hadn’t been a day gone by since when he hadn’t fitted in a few frames.

  He checked his watch. Still too early to go cap in hand to Daniel Listerman about the rent. Listerman was Tommy Riley’s lawyer and Riley was the big-time gangster bastard who owned the freehold on this building along with the rest of the street.

  Listerman the Lawyer was an early riser. Some said he never slept at all. But turning up this early at his swanky Beak Street office would only make Frankie look even more desperate – and skint – than he was.

  Might as well make himself useful here first. He changed out of his suit in the storeroom, coming back out in tatty blue overalls and black rubber boots, with earphones in, a Sony Discman clipped to his belt, and a bucket of warm soapy water and a mop in his fists.

  He’d had to let the club’s regular cleaner go a month back, not having enough money to pay her. It didn’t bother him that much, to tell the truth. Apart from the khazis. Especially the gents. What the hell was wrong with blokes anyway? Why couldn’t a single bloody one of them manage to piss in a straight line?

  He cleaned the bogs first to get them out the way, then the bar and the ashtrays, before starting on sweeping and mopping the floor. He worked his way round the tables in the same pattern he did every day. It somehow made it go faster, like doing circuits down the gym.

  He hummed as he worked. A Northern Soul compilation. Everyone was into Blur and Oasis these days, but he reckoned the old tunes were still the best. His dad had been a proper mod back in the day. There was a signed Small Faces LP up above the bar. Used to be an old Bang & Olufsen record player and a stack of Al Wilson and Jimmy Radcliffe singles back there as well. But Jack had pilfered the lot on his nineteenth birthday two years ago and flogged them down Berwick Street market to pay for a night on the razz.

  Frankie still hadn’t forgiven him, the little shit. Him and Jack had used to listen to those records as kids, dancing and larking about. They should have meant more to him than just some quick cash. Frankie remembered coming down here one night late when his mum and dad had still been together and seeing them slow-dancing round the empty club. He couldn’t believe how fucked up his family life had got since then.

  His mum had gone missing in ’88, just after Frankie had turned sixteen. A year after her and his dad had started living apart, her at their rented house and him here in the flat above the club. She’d just vanished when Frankie and Jack had both been at school. No sign of a struggle. Nothing. Just gone.

  Everyone else – Frankie’s father, Jack and the cops – all reckoned that Priscilla James wasn’t just missing, she was dead. Why else wouldn’t she have come back? Or at least contacted them? But Frankie didn’t believe it. He felt it in his guts. He just fucking knew that one day he’d see her again.

  He checked his watch. Ten to ten. Nearly time to open up already. Nearly time to go see Listerman too, just as soon as Slim the barman got here to do his shift. Frankie headed back to the storeroom to get changed. The red light on the answerphone winked at him from the bar. He took his earphones out and hit ‘Play’.

  ‘Frankie?’ It was Jack, sounding well stressed. ‘For fuck’s sake, Frankie, pick up.’ Was he wasted? He was slurring. ‘I’m coming over . . . Fuck. I need you. I need help . . .’ A whisper, a hiss. ‘I’m coming over. Now.’

  Frankie groaned. Hell’s tits, not again. How many fucking times already this year? Jack doing too much gear. Getting himse
lf in a paranoid mess. Jack needing a lift back from some godforsaken club in the middle of piggin’ Essex. Jack running out of dosh and expecting Frankie to bail him out. Jack making the same stupid bloody mistakes over and over again.

  Frankie’s heart thundered. Just pretend you’re not here. Don’t answer the door. Fuck off back upstairs and turn up the radio and get in the shower.

  But all he saw in his head was his mum. That last morning he’d seen her, as she’d handed him his packed lunch in the shitty little driveway of that rented Shepherd’s Bush house.

  ‘Go catch him up and make up,’ she’d said.

  She’d been talking about Jack. He’d just cycled off in a strop over some football sticker he’d nicked off Frankie the night before and which Frankie had just wrestled back off him.

  ‘He thinks he can take care of himself, but he can’t,’ she’d said. ‘You know that. And promise me, promise me,’ she’d said, squeezing his wrist so hard he’d winced, ‘you’ll always be there for him. No matter what happens. To me or your dad, or to anyone else.’

  Even then, it had sounded off. Had she known? He’d asked himself the same question a million times since. Had she known that by teatime she’d be gone?

  Crack.

  What the fuck?

  He turned to face the club’s front door. Someone had just given it an almighty smack.

  3

  Was it Jack? Already? He’d sounded so wasted on the phone. Could he really have got here that fast? Not like him to give the doors a leathering either. Debt collectors then? Had one of Frankie’s hastily negotiated streams of credit just dried up?

  He reached under the bar for the cue he kept clipped there out of sight. Maybe not as tasty as a lot of other weapons when it came to a fight, but a hell of a lot easier to explain to the cops.

  He flicked on the cctv, watching its squat screen shimmer into life. Relief, of a sort, flooded him. Forget debt collectors. A smeary, black-and-white image of his little brother loomed into view.

  Jack was dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans, with his slicked back hair tied back in a ponytail. Smack. The door shook again as he shoulder-charged it. He glared wide-eyed up into the centre of the camera lens, his mouth flapping open and closed like a fish out of water.