Framed Read online

  ‘Oi, that’s private,’ Frankie said, following him.

  ‘And empty. Someone made a recent withdrawal?’

  Snaresby picked up the Small Faces LP from where Frankie had left it on top of the glass-washing machine. He turned it over in his hands as he stubbed his cigarette out in the sink.

  ‘I hate music,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A waste of time. Fucking boring.’

  Frankie didn’t know what to say. What kind of a person said that?

  ‘Oops,’ Snaresby watched the record slip from its sleeve and land with a crack on the tiled floor.

  Wanker. Frankie bit the word back. Snaresby was just trying to rattle him, to get him to lose his cool, and maybe give something away. Just ignore the bastard.

  ‘I do hope it didn’t have any sentimental value?’ Snaresby said, looking down at the broken record. ‘Didn’t belong to anyone special, did it? You know, like your dad?’

  Frankie’s cheeks prickled. So he knew the old man? So what? What copper round here didn’t? Didn’t mean he knew anything else.

  Tweedle-Dum reappeared at the top of the cellar steps, red-faced, panting and shaking his head.

  Snaresby clicked his fingers at Frankie.

  ‘Keys,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘For the upstairs flat.’

  ‘You’ll need a warrant for that too,’ Frankie said. ‘A separate one.’ It was a guess, but from the sour look on Snaresby’s face, he’d guessed right.

  Snaresby took a step towards him, so close that Frankie caught a whiff of his aftershave, something nasty from another decade. Aramis, Old Spice or Brut.

  ‘Funny you haven’t even asked me why I’m here,’ Snaresby said.

  Frankie swallowed, knowing he’d been caught out. He forced a grin.

  ‘Why the fuck are you here?’ he said.

  ‘Because your nasty little brother’s been running round my shiny nice town all covered in blood.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Hard not to have blood on him, the way I see it. That bedroom of his was like an abattoir. Disgusting. Just as well your mum isn’t around any more, eh? She’d have been ashamed.’

  Frankie’s hands curled into fists.

  ‘Don’t talk about my mother.’

  Snaresby flashed him a smile, then slowly nodded, clicking his tongue. ‘Fine. Let’s talk about Susan Tilley instead.’

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘No? Well, she’s someone you’re going to be very familiar with before too long.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘Because she’s the woman your brother’s just killed.’

  Sweet Jesus. They wanted Jack for murder?

  ‘He’s not killed anyone. There’s no fucking way he’d—’

  But Snaresby was already walking away. ‘We’ll see,’ he said.

  He stopped in front of the back door and stared at it, with his back to Frankie, before reaching up and taking the key from the top of the frame. Shit. Shit cubed. He must have noticed it glinting up there in the gloom.

  ‘You really should find a better hiding place for this,’ he said. ‘Who knows who might find it?’

  Unlocking the door, he opened it wide.

  A uniformed cop was already standing outside.

  ‘Anyone try and make a run for it up the alley?’ Snaresby said.

  ‘No, guv.’

  ‘Good.’ Snaresby stepped out and peered up at the cloudless blue sky. ‘When I was round at your brother’s shithole of a flat earlier,’ he told Frankie, ‘I couldn’t help noticing that he also happens to be a smoker, much like myself, and that his poison of choice are Marlboro reds, much like that screwed up cigarette back there on the floor.’

  ‘He’s not been here.’

  That smile flickered into life on Snaresby’s face. ‘Shall I tell you something else I find interesting? Just now, during the course of our little conversation, I couldn’t help but notice you glance up at the ceiling three times.’

  Frankie felt a jolt of alarm. Had he looked up? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t be sure. ‘So what?’

  ‘So, as tempting as it is to mark you down as every bit as stupid as every other male in your family,’ Snaresby said, ‘I think you might be the smart one. In which case, I imagine that the second your naughty little brother turned up here begging you for help, you rightly guessed that me and my colleagues wouldn’t be far behind.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do,’ Snaresby said. ‘I think you probably also guessed that we’d leave no stone unturned in our quest to locate said brother, either in the club or the flat above. Meaning that, instead of hiding him here, you’d have rightly concluded that your best bet under the circumstances would be to get him clear of the property altogether.’ Snaresby’s smile was steadily widening, yellow as a crescent moon. ‘And you wouldn’t have slipped him out front, would you? Because that would have been too risky. And you wouldn’t have sent him off up this alley either. Because you’d have been worried that we might have already been closing in. Which means there’s only one way you could have sent him, really, isn’t there?’

  Frankie knew it then. This bastard had worked him out.

  ‘And that,’ Snaresby said, ‘is up.’

  5

  ‘Search the roofs,’ Snaresby ordered the uniform. ‘And keep the ends of the alley covered. I’m not having this little weasel giving me the slip twice in one day.’

  The uniform barked Snaresby’s instructions into his radio, then repeated them to the three burly, uniformed male coppers standing to his right.

  Frankie watched them scrambling, clanking up the fire escape. He felt like he’d just walked into a nightmare, like everything had turned fluid and was somehow slipping away.

  Was Jack still up there? Fuckety-fuck. Frankie bit down the urge to shout out a warning. Or maybe Jack had already shinned down one of the drainpipes at the end of the alley and got away? Please, God. Yes.

  He noticed Snaresby gazing at him through those glittering, grey shark’s eyes, loving every fucking second.

  ‘How did you know?’ Frankie said, his voice trembling.

  Snaresby raised and lowered his eyebrows. ‘Like I told you: your body language gave you away.’

  ‘No, I mean about Jack and his flat and all that blood you say you found. What made you go there looking for him today in the first place?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He drove his own car to the crime scene last night.’

  ‘What crime scene?’

  ‘Susan Tilley’s grandmother’s house. A lovely place. Out in Royal Berkshire, no less. That’s where the gardener found Susan Tilley lying in a pool of her own blood. So much blood. It looked like a video nasty, I can tell you. It’s where they found her grandmother too.’

  Her grandmother? Jesus. Frankie felt his stomach twist. They were after Jack for two murders? But how the hell did Jack know either of them? Or did he? Frankie wracked his brains. Jack had never mentioned them. He was fucking sure of it.

  ‘We’ve got cctv of his car. Ran the plates as soon as we saw it,’ Snaresby said. ‘We’ve got him going in through the property gates at eight twenty-two pm and then out again at eight forty-one, right after he’d bludgeoned them.’

  Bludgeoned?

  ‘Jack didn’t hurt anyone,’ Frankie said. ‘He wouldn’t.’

  ‘So why’s he running?’

  ‘Who said he is?’

  ‘All right then, hiding . . .’

  ‘You don’t know that either.’

  ‘We soon will,’ said Snaresby, gazing unblinkingly up at the cops’ progression over the final few rungs of the fire escape and onto the rooftops above. ‘If your little brother is up there, I think even you’ll have to admit that it looks somewhat suspicious. Or maybe you’ll just tell me he’s up there fixing the tiles?’

  Shiel
ding his eyes against the sun’s glare, Frankie watched the cops split up, two of them edging left and two of them right along the rooftops, visible now only from their shoulders up.

  He remembered the layout of the roofs from when he’d used to play up there with Jack. Each building was bordered by a waist-high, ornate Victorian façade, behind which was a flat gutter half a foot wide you could walk along. The roof tiles slanted up from there into peaks, some of them with skylights, through which him and Jack had used to spy while they’d practised smoking cigarettes.

  But there weren’t any places to hide . . . apart from crouching down out of sight behind the chimney stacks which rose up between the roofs of each building. The cops would have to be half-blind to miss anyone.

  ‘Of course, all that blood’s not exactly going to do him any favours either,’ Snaresby said. ‘My colleagues from forensics are camped out at your brother’s flat this very minute and it’s my firm belief that they’ll very shortly be able to match what’s there with samples taken from Susan Tilley and her gran. Furthermore, I’m guessing that once we do apprehend your brother, any blood discovered about his person will also prove a match.’

  The cops spreading out across the rooftops reached the end of the Ambassador building and threaded their way between the chimney stacks onto the roofs of the buildings next door. Frankie stared along the alley to the left. The cops stationed there hadn’t moved.

  Again he saw Snaresby was watching him – again too late.

  ‘Let’s head this way, shall we?’ Snaresby said, clasping his hands behind his back as he set off slowly down the alley to the left, keeping level with the cops searching the roofs above. ‘There’s a Shakespeare quote I’ve always been fond of,’ he said. ‘Who’d have thought he’d have so much blood in him?’

  ‘Macbeth,’ said Frankie.

  Another smile from Snaresby. ‘Didn’t I say you were the smart one? Quite right,’ he said. ‘It’s what Lady Macbeth says to her husband after he’s killed the Scottish king.’

  ‘Duncan,’ said Frankie. That was the king’s name. Frankie had been studying English, History and Art for A-level before he’d had to drop out of school and take over running the club because of what had happened to his dad.

  ‘Most people don’t know just how much blood’s inside your average human body,’ Snaresby said. ‘Or realise what a hideous bloody mess it can make, excuse the pun. Not until they cut someone open. Or bludgeon them repeatedly with a blunt instrument until dead. As happened to poor Susan Tilley last night.’ Snaresby shot Frankie a distasteful, almost squeamish look. ‘Her face was caved in completely,’ he said. ‘Tenderised like steak.’

  The wanker. Frankie hated Snaresby for enjoying this as much as he was.

  ‘I don’t blame you for looking shocked, sunshine,’ Snaresby said, not breaking his stride. ‘But wait till you hear this. It already seems possible the poor girl was sexually molested too. Her underwear had been literally torn off her. Bits of it – like the gusset, I believe – entirely gone. Taken like some sick souvenir.’

  Frankie shivered in the sunlight, trying to force the image of the poor woman’s battered corpse from his mind. What kind of a monster could do what Snaresby had just described? Jack? No fucking way. Frankie couldn’t see it. Not in a million years.

  ‘But that’s not the worst of it,’ Snaresby said. ‘At least for someone like you, a local lad who’s grown up round here the way that you have . . .’

  Frankie knew he wasn’t going to like what was coming next.

  ‘Susan Tilley was meant to be getting married today,’ said Snaresby. ‘She was planning on taking her new husband’s name. And can you guess what that name is?’

  Snaresby stopped and stared deep into Frankie’s eyes, clearly not wanting to miss a beat.

  ‘Hamilton,’ he said.

  Hamilton? Snaresby couldn’t possibly mean—

  ‘That’s right. Good lad. You get it,’ Snaresby said. ‘She was meant to be marrying Douglas Hamilton, Terence Hamilton’s boy. Today. Her body was found barely fifty yards from the marquee they’d got set up on the old lady’s front lawn.’

  Only then did Snaresby blink, like a camera taking a snapshot to enjoy over and over again.

  Frankie just gawped. Dougie Hamilton. As in The Hamiltons. A family every bit as fucking scary as Frankie’s uncles had ever been, or Tommy Riley’s mob were now. Terence was the boss, Dougie his only son. Frankie had only ever seen Dougie once. Jack had pointed him out in a bar. He’d been with his old man and a bunch of his thugs, but somehow quiet and not a part of it at all. Frankie only remembered him at all, because Jack had told him he was a lawyer. A gangster’s son who’d trained to be a lawyer. Jack had thought that was one big fucking joke.

  ‘The way I hear it,’ Snaresby said, ‘young Dougie’s devastated. And who can blame him? One minute, he’s living with his pretty little fiancée in their posh city apartment, with their whole future ahead of them. Then last night out he goes on his stag night with his old man and some pals. To that new place. Quaglino’s. You been there? I hear the steak’s off the clock . . .’

  Frankie’s mouth was so dry he could hardly move his tongue.

  ‘And then this morning, he hears the bad news.’ Snaresby tutted. ‘Of course, Hamilton Senior’s not taking any of this too well either. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that he’s every bit as keen to get hold of your little brother as me.’

  Frankie felt numb. Snaresby reached out and gripped his shoulder.

  ‘Just as well we’ve got you out in this lovely morning sunshine now, isn’t it?’ Snaresby said. ‘What with you suddenly looking so deathly pale.’

  A shout rang out. Heart pounding, Frankie jerked back from Snaresby and shielded his eyes as the cops heading left on the rooftops surged out of sight. A scream went up. Then another.

  Fuck. They’d got him. They’d caught Jack.

  ‘But look on the bright side, eh?’ Snaresby said, ‘at least we got our hands on the little bastard first.’

  6

  ‘When can I see him? How do we get him out?’

  Kind Regards stared back at Frankie through half-moon glasses, drumming his fingers on his green leather desktop. Pushing back his chair, he walked to his office window and looked out over Shepherd Market, running his hand over his lank brown hair.

  Birdlike, that’s how Frankie’s mum had always described him. Always flitting around, never sitting still.

  It was Frankie’s dad who’d given him his nickname, on account of how formal he always was, right down to the way he signed off his Christmas cards. His real name was Alan Grant. He was Frankie’s dad’s cousin as well as his lawyer. They’d been good mates as kids and the two of them had lived together in their early twenties after Alan had left uni in Bristol and moved to London. More recently he’d worked on Frankie’s dad’s case and was now organising his latest appeal.

  ‘Those are two very different questions,’ he said.

  ‘The first then.’

  ‘When can you see him? That depends on when – if,’ he quickly corrected himself, ‘the police charge him. Until they do, I’m the only one allowed in.’

  Six grim hours had gone by since Jack had been arrested. Kind Regards had been Frankie’s first call. He’d taken the news calmly, professionally, before heading over to the West End Central cop shop on Savile Row where Jack was being held. Frankie was lucky he hadn’t ended up there himself. Snaresby had warned him not to skip town. If he’d been able to prove Frankie had helped Jack hide it would have been worse.

  ‘The police have the right to keep him in custody for up to ninety-six hours.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘They either charge him . . . or let him go.’

  ‘But it’s going to be the former?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but yes.’

  How could it fucking not be? If all that stuff Snaresby was saying about the blood was true. ‘Take me through how you reckon it’s going to play out,’ Frankie sa
id.

  Sparking up a cigarette, Kind Regards perched on the edge of his desk and explained. He’d sat in on the cops’ first interview with Jack and already, in their view, the evidence against him was overwhelming. Barring a miracle, they were going to charge him with the murder of Susan Tilley, along with the attempted murder of her grandmother. That was one thing at least. The old lady wasn’t dead. Not yet. She wasn’t much alive either, mind. On top of the horrendous injuries she’d sustained, she’d suffered a stroke and was now in intensive care. No one knew if she’d even make it through till tonight.

  Bail was out of the question, because of the seriousness of the charges. And on account of the fact he’d run. Meaning Jack would be kept banged up on remand until his court hearing. He’d then be put back on remand until his trial began. Again with no chance of bail.

  ‘The only good thing to come out of the interview,’ said Kind Regards, ‘other than him saying he’d not seen you earlier today . . .’ Kind Regards peered at Frankie over his specs knowingly before going on ‘. . . is that at least Jack’s been consistent with what he’s said. He’s denied everything. Being there. Doing it. The lot. He said someone must have nicked his car and that’s why it was on the cctv. He told them he didn’t even know who Susan Tilley or her gran were, let alone where they might live. He said he had no idea where the blood had come from or how it had got on him and all over his flat. He emphatically denied any wrongdoing at all.’

  ‘What happened when they told him that this Tilley girl was engaged to Dougie Hamilton?’

  ‘He looked genuinely shocked.’

  ‘As in genuinely shocked like you believed him?’

  Kind Regards ducked the question, lighting another cigarette. Frankie grimaced. What did it mean? That he didn’t believe Jack? Or he didn’t know whether he was lying or not?

  ‘And the cops?’ Frankie asked.

  ‘It’s their view that whether Jack actually knew her or not is immaterial. The fact that she was about to get married to Dougie Hamilton provides enough of a motive for Jack having killed her.’