Framed Read online

  ‘Pack it in,’ Frankie yelled, ditching the cue and running between the tables, as – thump – Jack charged the door again.

  Jesus. What the fuck was he on? Frankie hadn’t seen him for weeks. Apart from the call last night, hadn’t heard from him either. Jack had been working nights the last six months, running club nights with a bunch of DJ mates. Was it the Chinese? Was that why he was here? Or something worse? What the fuck kind of bother had he got himself into now?

  Frankie jerked the metal crossbar up and flipped the deadlock round. The door burst open, smashing hard into Frankie’s head, sending him staggering back. Jack lurched in, slamming and locking the door behind him. He slumped down panting on the floor.

  Frankie stared down at him, rubbing his head. Shit-a-brick. He was covered in fucking blood. Apart from his jacket . . . under his jacket . . . everywhere . . . His neck, hands, jaw and wrists were caked with the stuff. But not fresh. Dried.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  Jack stared up, shuddering. He was unshaven and baggy-eyed, like he’d been up for days. He looked like Frankie had used to. Before he’d got his shit together. Or at least before he’d got his shit together more than this.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ Jack said.

  The way he said it. The fucking guilt. ‘Oh, Jesus. What have you done?’

  ‘Nothing. I swear it, Frankie. I swear it had nothing to do with me.’

  ‘What didn’t?’

  ‘It . . . this . . .’ He was rubbing his hands together, spitting on them, trying to get them clean.

  ‘If it’s not yours,’ Frankie said, ‘then whose? Whose fucking blood is it?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘How can you not know?’

  ‘It was just there. All over my bed when I woke up. Smeared . . . all stuck to me . . . all over my duvet and sheets . . .’

  ‘But how? How did it get there?’

  Tears filled Jack’s eyes. ‘I don’t know. All I remember is I was down the Albion, drinking with Mickey . . .’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Afternoon . . .’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Nothing. I don’t remember anything.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘What?’ Jack was shaking, snot bubbling from his nostrils.

  ‘What else were you fucking on? Apart from drink. Were you wasted? Is that why you can’t remember?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  Jack started sobbing. Actually crying. Like a little kid.

  But Jesus, even if he’d been totally off his head last night, how the hell could he have forgotten? Getting covered head to foot in someone else’s blood? How the hell could he just not know?

  ‘What about at your flat? When you woke up?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Was there anything . . . I don’t know . . . anything that can fucking explain this?’

  ‘No. Nothing. It was just everywhere. All around me.’

  ‘And you don’t even remember getting home? Getting into bed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you even remember if you were on your own?’

  ‘No. I don’t know.’

  ‘You sure?’ He didn’t sound it.

  ‘There was something . . . this morning . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A jonny.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A fucking condom.’ Jack clawed his hands back through his hair. ‘I trod on it next to the bed as I was running for the door. I got it stuck on my fucking foot . . .’

  Frankie almost laughed. Apart from the blood. And how fucking much there was. Enough to maybe mean that someone somewhere was dead?

  ‘And you really don’t remember a thing?’

  ‘I swear, Frankie. The whole fucking night, it’s a blank.’

  The condom . . . that meant someone must have gone back with him, right? Didn’t it? But who? And was this their blood? Had Jack somehow ended up getting in a fight with them? With a woman? No. He was no fucking woman-beater. No matter how wasted he got.

  Jack pulled out a pack of fags and jerkily tried sparking one up. But his lighter just sputtered. Didn’t have enough gas. He crushed the cigarette in his fist and threw it away, gripping his head in his hands.

  ‘You said you were running,’ Frankie said. ‘When you put your foot in it, you said you were running for the door.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of the call.’

  ‘What call?’

  ‘Someone rang.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A man.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘I don’t fucking know. I didn’t recognise his voice.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He told me, you know . . . to get the fuck out . . .’

  ‘Of the flat?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What did he actually say? What were his actual words?’

  ‘That the cops were coming . . . That I had to get out of there. Now.’

  The cops? Oh, Jesus. They were already on to this? Frankie felt sick.

  ‘I asked him what the fuck he was talking about,’ said Jack, ‘and that’s when I put on the light and looked round and saw all that blood . . .’

  He started sobbing again.

  ‘And then you ran?’

  ‘If I hadn’t done, they would have got me,’ Jack said. ‘The second I reached the end of the street, there they were: fucking cop cars everywhere, a riot van too, lights flashing, sirens screaming . . . screeching right up outside the building . . .’

  Jack was making out that whoever had made the call had done him a favour, but that was bollocks. Why would anyone call him anonymously like that? And how the hell would they know the cops were coming and he had reason to run?

  Running had made him look guilty as hell.

  ‘Did anyone see you?’ Frankie said. ‘Leaving your building, I mean?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You call anyone?’

  ‘Just you. From the phone box down the tube station. Then I came over. As fast as I could.’

  Frankie was already doing the maths. Anyone could have seen him on the way over here. Hard fucking not to with him looking like an extra out of Halloween. Anyone could have called the cops.

  ‘We’ve got to get you out of here,’ Frankie said. ‘They’ll come looking.’

  Even if no one had seen Jack coming this way, it wouldn’t take the cops long to work out where he’d gone. Both him and Frankie were well known. Because of the old man. The same went for the club. Once they realised Jack had split . . . once they’d seen all that blood at his flat . . . their next port of call would be here.

  ‘Get up,’ Frankie said.

  He grabbed Jack by his collar and dragged him to his feet. Jack’s flat was over on Warren Street. Only two stops away. Less than five minutes in a fast car or van.

  ‘But can’t you just hide me?’ Jack pleaded. ‘Tell them I’m not here?’

  ‘They’ll tear this fucking place apart.’

  Jack looked down at his hands again, appalled. ‘But I’ve got to get this off me . . . I’ve got to get myself clean.’

  ‘We’re getting you out of here. Now.’

  Cleaning him up would help, but it wouldn’t solve anything. Not with that same blood all over his flat. First things first. Frankie had to get him somewhere safe before the cops showed up. Had to buy them both time to figure out what the fuck was going on.

  ‘Move.’

  He dragged Jack quickly back through the club, checking the cctv monitor as he ducked behind the bar. The front of the club was still clear.

  ‘How much money you got?’ he asked, snatching the Small Faces LP down off the wall and quickly opening the safe behind.

  ‘Nothing,’ Jack said. ‘My wallet. It was gone. I swear it was in my jacket last night, but it’s not there now.’

  First the condom and
now this. Who the hell had Jack been with last night? And where the hell were they now?

  Frankie took last night’s takings out and shoved them into Jack’s jacket pocket. He grabbed a cloth from the sink.

  ‘Wipe your fucking face.’

  Jack did as he was told, then reached out to hand it back.

  ‘No,’ Frankie said. ‘In your pocket as well. If the pigs turn up here, I can’t have them finding anything. Or whatever the fuck this is, I’ll be in it right alongside you up to my neck.’

  He marched Jack through to the back of the club and ducked into the storeroom and grabbed a set of overalls. He threw them at Jack to put on. A cop siren whooped outside the front of the club.

  ‘No time. Quick.’

  Frankie unlocked the club’s back door and jerked it open. He checked up and down the service alley which ran along the back of the buildings. Just bins, graffiti and litter. No cops. Not yet. Didn’t mean they wouldn’t start funnelling down the alley any second.

  ‘Which way?’ Jack said.

  ‘Up.’

  Jack stared uncomprehendingly at Frankie, but then a smile crossed his face as he realised what Frankie meant.

  The roof. A cast iron fire escape zigzagged up the red brick wall leading up to it. Reach the top and you could crawl along right to the end of the street.

  It was a game Frankie and Jack had used to play together as kids, pretending they were in The Great Escape, each of them squabbling over who’d get to be Paul Newman every time.

  Keep out of sight and Jack could hide up there and bide his time, and wait for his chance to climb back down one of the other building’s fire escapes and slip away into the crowd. It was either that or run down the alley now and risk running right into the arms of any cops already closing in.

  A flash of determination glinted in Jack’s dark eyes. Frankie gritted his teeth. Good. At least the little bastard still had some fight in him. He was going to need it.

  ‘Once you get away, you’re gonna have to lay low for a couple of days,’ he told him. ‘Then call Slim and tell him how we can get hold of you.’

  Frankie’s dad had inherited Slim with the club. He’d been running the bar here for over twenty years and had known both boys since they were kids. Frankie trusted him with him life.

  Jack wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. ‘Thanks, bruv. I won’t forget this.’

  ‘You’re damn fucking right. Now get the fuck out of here and don’t you dare look back.’

  4

  Frankie stepped back inside and locked the door, quickly sticking the key on top of the doorframe out of sight.

  Crack.

  Sounded like a battering ram. Looked like one too. Frankie spotted two cops on the bar’s cctv monitor taking another massive swing as he ran past.

  Crack.

  A whole squad of them out there. Them. The enemy. Rozzers, Five-oh, Babylon, flatfoots, Dibble, fuzz, plod, filth, pigs, the Old Bill . . . Didn’t matter what you called them. They’d always spelt one thing for Frankie’s family: fucking trouble.

  ‘Those bastards aren’t here to protect you,’ was what his dad had always said. ‘More like hurt you. Tell you what to do. Hassle you, rob you, trick you, cheat you. Try any way they can to break you and bend you till you snap.’

  And worse than that too. Frankie grimaced. They could catch you. Catch you and arrest you and lock you up and try you. Like they did to the old man. They’d nicked him for armed robbery five years ago. He’d sworn to Frankie he was innocent and Frankie believed him. But a jury had found him guilty and they’d banged him up for life.

  Frankie didn’t have a fucking clue yet what was going on with Jack, or who’d put the cops on to him, or why he was covered in blood, or even whose blood it was, but he knew this: he wasn’t going to lose him. Not if he’d done nothing wrong.

  He opened the cctv recorder cupboard and flipped the eject button on the machine. Pulling out the tape, he tore at it, unspooling its guts, before shoving it deep down into the bottom of the bin under all the slops and fag butts.

  Deep breath. He watched the front door shudder as the cops charged again. Right, let’s fucking do this. He ran to the front of the building and flicked the locks off the door, setting his face to neutral, the same way his old man had used to make him and Jack practise whenever they’d played cards for matchsticks as kids.

  He pulled the door open and stepped smartly back, as the two uniformed plod with the battering ram gripped between them came hurtling through and landed in a heap of twisted limbs on the floor.

  Next in was a plainclothes. A wrinkly old bastard. Half a foot taller than Frankie. A thin black moustache and balding grey hair shaved down to a grade one buzz cut. Something spider-like about his long limbs. Nasty. Marched past Frankie like he owned the bloody joint.

  ‘Get up, you pair of pricks,’ he told the two uniforms groaning on the floor.

  As they scrabbled up, two more plainclothes, ten years younger than the spider, made a beeline for Frankie, looking like they wanted to punch him in the face.

  Frankie stood his ground. Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Fucking-Dee. Red-faced and tubby, they looked like a couple of Toby jugs brought horribly to life.

  ‘Wrong brother. Leave him,’ the tall man snapped, a length of spit at the corner of his mouth stretching and shrinking as he spoke.

  Wrong brother? Frankie’s eyes narrowed. Who the hell was this? He tried placing him. There was something familiar about him, but he couldn’t quite work out what.

  ‘And who the fuck are you?’ Frankie said. Might as well get on with winding him up. The longer he could keep them distracted here, the better chance Jack would have of giving the bastards the slip.

  The tall man smiled, his teeth the colour of cheddar. ‘Big words for a young lad.’

  Frankie looked him slowly up and down the same way he did whenever he was thinking about refusing to serve some pisshead a drink late at night. Creased lilac shirt and purple tie. Expensive-looking blue suit. Two sizes too big. Baggy round his shoulders, like he’d recently lost a ton of weight, or had just taken a fancy to someone else’s jacket and had nicked it from a club.

  ‘I said, who are you?’

  The spider took a step closer. ‘Snaresby. DS Snaresby. Name ring a bell?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Funny, that. Most people round here do know me. Particularly families like yours. Check the back,’ he told Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee.

  ‘You’ll need a warrant for that.’

  Frankie blocked their path.

  ‘Will we now?’ Snaresby checked his watch. A Breitling. Expensive. Looked nicked on this bloke, the same as the suit.

  ‘So where is it?’ Frankie said.

  Snaresby’s tongue flickered in the corner of his mouth. ‘Being printed and signed even as we speak.’

  ‘Yeah, well until that’s done, you ain’t allowed in here at all.’

  ‘But we already are in here.’ Snaresby stretched out his arms, his bony wrists sticking out of his jacket, making him look like a scarecrow. ‘Quod erat demonstrandum,’ he said.

  Frankie didn’t budge.

  ‘Unless you want my lawyer to go veni, vidi, vici on your arse, I suggest you get off my property now.’

  Blood rushed to Tweedle-Dum’s face. ‘You want me to nick him, guv?’

  But Snaresby just smiled thinly, his eyes locked on Frankie. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘An educated James boy. Whatever next? A flying pig?’

  ‘Only if you’ve brought a helicopter,’ Frankie said.

  ‘We haven’t.’

  Frankie turned to see a woman in her mid-twenties. He hadn’t even noticed her come in. She was wearing a smart-looking grey business suit and buttoned up white blouse, with a black wedge haircut more suited to a club. Green eyes. Pretty eyes. Something about her he couldn’t quite place either, something from way back in his past.

  ‘Here you go, guv.’ She handed Snaresby a computer printout.

  �
�Perfect timing, love.’

  She winced at the word, but Snaresby didn’t notice. He shoved the piece of paper into Frankie’s hand.

  ‘Read it and weep.’

  Frankie glanced down. A warrant.

  ‘Got the alley at the back sealed off both ends, guv,’ said the female plainclothes.

  Frankie’s heart sank. Was there any way Jack could have snuck out further down the street already and got away? He doubted it. More likely he was still hiding somewhere up top.

  ‘Good work,’ Snaresby told her. ‘Now be a sport and go and see if you can rustle me up a nice cup of tea.’

  Another wince. Maybe she thought her boss was as big a prick as Frankie did. Their eyes met for a second. He’d definitely seen her before. But where?

  She marched back out of the club.

  ‘Nice view,’ said Snaresby, watching her go. ‘Check the toilets,’ he told Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. ‘The cellar too.’

  He lit a cigarette with a well-polished brass Zippo.

  ‘Smoke?’ He offered Frankie the pack.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Then whose is that?’ His slate grey eyes flicked towards the crumpled up cigarette Jack had left on the floor.

  Frankie shrugged.

  ‘I only ask because the rest of the floor looks so clean, see? Like it’s only just been swept.’ Snaresby crouched down, all knees and elbows. ‘And just look at it. It’s not even lit, like whoever was planning on smoking it was in a terrible hurry to leave.’ His gaze returned to Frankie. ‘Oh, and I couldn’t help also noticing you’ve got a nasty little bruise right there on your head. Recent too. Had a run in with someone else already this morning, have you?’

  ‘I walked into a door.’

  ‘Ah, if I had a quid for every time someone’s told me that . . .’ Snaresby shot Frankie a lopsided yellow smile as he stood. ‘Now, are you going to tell me where our secret smoker’s hiding? Or am I going to have to get my boys to really start poking about?’

  Frankie said nothing.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Snaresby said.

  He walked over to the bar and glanced at the open cctv machine cupboard. He opened it up and tutted at the lack of tape inside. He turned his attention to the open safe and peered inside.