Framed Read online

  He meant the rent on the club.

  ‘You’ll help me then?’

  He smiled. ‘However I can. Backup if you need it. And anything else I hear, you’ll be the first to know.’

  Riley was using him. Frankie knew it. But there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. If he wanted to get Jack out of this shit, he was going to need all the help he could get.

  Riley’s pager beeped. He took it out of his pocket, shielding it from Frankie as a red neon message scrolled across its screen.

  ‘Technology, eh? Ain’t it clever?’ he said with a grin. ‘I got a phone call I need to make. Come on, I’ll show you out.’

  He led Frankie back through to his office and on past his desk to the door.

  One of his heavies was waiting outside. A big fucker who looked like he tortured kittens for fun.

  ‘Take him downstairs, Arthur,’ Riley said. ‘And anything he fancies while he’s down there, you let him have it on the house.’

  He meant whiskey, women, the works.

  Riley held out his hand for Frankie to shake. Frankie hesitated, but then took it. He still didn’t trust him, not as far as he could spit. Didn’t even trust him not to have had anything to do with the girl’s killing yet. There might be some part of this game Riley was playing that Frankie didn’t even yet understand.

  15

  Frankie meant to go straight home after his meeting with Tommy Riley. He failed. Too stressed. He ducked into De Hems off Chinatown. Drank two pints of Oranjeboom. Boom, boom. Just like that, letting the booze wash over him until his heart stopped hammering so hard.

  It was Riley. He’d got right up under his skin. Frankie thought he’d held his own, had been treated as an equal, while he’d been in there with him. But now? He wasn’t so sure.

  Yet . . .

  He couldn’t get the way Riley had said the word out of his head. He’d gone there asking Riley for help, but Riley had somehow turned that around. Twisted it. Was that what had just happened? Was Frankie now working for him? Was that what he’d just agreed?

  He lit a smoke and stared at his reflection in the chintzy mirror behind the bar. Once this business was over, he’d cut off all ties with that bastard for good. He’d seen what had happened to Jack, how quickly he’d been sucked in. And not just by the seedy glamour of it all, the drugs and the birds. No, what had kept him hooked had been that once you were in, bastards like Riley did everything in their power to stop you getting out.

  Frankie ordered another pint. Crisps too. Wotsits. Carbs. He kept an eye on the door as he munched his way through them. It was risky being here. Out in Soho. On his own. One of Hamilton’s boys might spot him. Or some low-life dealer or snitch. It would take just one phone call and the whole Hamilton crew would be round here to finish off what Dougie had started in the street outside the club.

  Well, let them try. Frankie cracked his knuckles. He was in the mood to hit someone. To take control. And yeah, fuck it, be what Tommy Riley wanted him to be. A fixer. A solver. It was time to sort this fucking mess out.

  He tore the back off his cigarette pack and took a Ladbrokes pen out of his jacket pocket and wrote down ‘Mo’. There. That was one decision he’d already made. To go see Mo and find out what he knew. But it was a long shot. That he might have some dodgy gear that drove people nuts and even made them black out and forget. That Kind Regards might – only might, mind – then be able to use this to help Jack cop an insanity plea and get his sentence reduced.

  Frankie glared at his reflection in the mirror. Come on . . . think. You can do better than that. What else do you know? What else can you find out? What else can you do? He stared down at his pen, picturing Jack outside the club. All that blood. His terrified voice on the answerphone.

  If Jack hadn’t done what they said he had, then what the hell had gone down during those missing hours between him saying goodbye to Mickey Flynn and waking up in his bloodbath of a bed?

  Frankie added ‘The Girl’ to the list. But who the hell was she? How the hell was he meant to track her down?

  ‘Flat’. Frankie wrote that down too. The cops had already had a good snoop round, but it was high time he did the same.

  ‘Personal?’. He added that to the list. What if someone had killed Susan Tilley for some reason that had nothing to do with the war being fought between Riley and Hamilton? What if it was some ex-boyfriend of hers? Or colleague? Some stalker or other nut? Were the cops even bothering to look into all that? Maybe. Or maybe not. Meaning maybe he should. Or shouldn’t, because how likely was it really that someone like that would actually be able to frame Jack? How would they steal his car? And stitch him up like that in his flat? Wasn’t it more likely that if someone really had framed Jack, they were connected. With know-how. A pro.

  ‘Why Jack?’ he wrote down. Because if Jack hadn’t done it, then whoever had framed him had chosen him specifically.

  But who?

  And why?

  Frankie just couldn’t see it.

  Not yet.

  Frankie folded the piece of card into his back pocket and headed home, not calling in at the club on the way. He couldn’t stop thinking about Jack’s flat, about getting inside.

  He got changed out of his suit in the bedroom. Fuck knows what state the cops would have left the flat in. Jesus, it might still be covered in blood. He pulled on his hoodie, jeans, baseball cap and trainers and checked himself out in the mirror. He looked anonymous, a nobody, perfect for slipping in and out.

  Should he wait? Was it just the booze making him this impatient? No. Getting in there was the right move. Doing something, anything, everything he could.

  He got himself a cold lager from the fridge and necked it. He’d handle all of this better after a couple more drinks. Take the edge off, right? Keep him calm. He thought about the pistol in his mattress. Maybe he should take that too? Just in case. No, he hadn’t even worked out how to load it yet. Leave it here for now.

  He fished out Jack’s spare key from his cufflink box, but left his car keys behind. He was just about the right level of pissed-ness for breaking and entering, but too far gone to drive.

  He flagged down a black cab outside the club and told the driver to take him to Warren Street tube station. He walked the rest of the way to the mansion block Jack’s flat was in, pulling his cap down low before he got to the building, not knowing if the cops might still be working around, not wanting them to catch him out trying to snoop.

  He let himself in through the main entrance downstairs. Didn’t have to worry about any further security or being challenged by a concierge. This place was decrepit, run-down, with sticky, stained floor tiles and patches of damp on the walls.

  Frankie reached Jack’s door at the end of a dingy corridor on the third floor. It was covered with police tape, warning people not to enter. Bollocks to that. If they’d taped it up, then it meant there were none of them inside now, right? Anyway, it wasn’t like he was really breaking and entering. He was family, for fuck’s sake.

  Pulling the tape aside, he slid Jack’s key into the lock. The door opened with a creak. Hinges needed oiling. The lights were off inside, but it wasn’t pitch black, just gloomy. The orange glow of streetlamps spilt in through a gap in the living-room curtains.

  He stepped quickly inside and closed the door behind him. Jesus. He covered his mouth and nose. Something stank in here. Something stank bad.

  He stayed put for a few seconds, letting his eyes get used to the gloom and listening. He heard nothing. Nobody here but him. He went through into the living room. Took a quick look out through a gap in the curtains. A couple of hoodies trudged past on the street below. Something else caught his eye. A flicker of light in a dark car parked opposite. There for just a second, and then gone.

  Was someone watching the flat? Was someone in there lighting a smoke? Someone who had something to do with this mess? Some crim? Or a cop? Or was he just being paranoid? Too much booze. He kept watching. Didn’t see that flicker
again. Probably just a reflection of something else. Cool your jets. Stand down.

  Drawing the curtains tight shut, he fumbled around the living-room sideboard for the lamp he knew was there. Found it. Flicked it on. A nice low wattage. Enough to see by, but hopefully not enough to let the whole of NW1 know he was here.

  He shivered. The place was a tip, even worse than the last time he’d been round. The cops had clearly given it a thorough dusting and going over. Open drawers. Piles of papers on the carpet. God only knew what kind of contraband they’d found. A damp circle on the table beside the TV was all that was left of Jack’s marijuana plant. Must have been seized as evidence. He wondered what else they’d found. Coke? Some of that speed?

  And what should he be looking for? Coming here had felt like the right thing to do, but now he was actually here, he didn’t have a clue where to start. He gazed round at Jack’s scant possessions: the VCR, a broken guitar and his prized signed and framed Arsenal poster on the wall.

  Just look. For something, anything unusual. Something that might make sense of Jack’s story about waking up here and not knowing how the fuck he’d got home or who’d been with him when he had.

  But nothing in the living room caught his eye. Everything looked familiar, looked normal. But should that really come as any surprise? Anything out of the ordinary, the cops would have already most likely taken. Was he wasting his fucking time?

  He looked back to the door leading out into the entrance hall. The bedroom door stared back at him from the other side. In there. That’s where the real mess was, according to Snaresby. Frankie couldn’t face it yet. He went through to the kitchen instead.

  The stink was ten times worse in here. The fridge-freezer door was wide open, gently humming, its light glowing eerily. Its drawers were sticking out. The cops had been through them. Looking for what? A murder weapon? Drugs? Something else?

  A tub of melted vanilla Häagen-Dazs stood in the centre of the counter to the right of the fridge. Little bruv’s favourite. Still had a teaspoon sticking up out of the melted goo from when Jack had probably returned it to the freezer mid-spliff. A half pack of shop-brand fish fingers and an emptied bag of frozen peas sat in the sink. Defrosted burgers. Over on the side of the counter was the remains of a takeaway curry. Bluebottles too gorged to even bother flying away walked in drunken, retching circles around it.

  Frankie opened the window above the sink and sucked in fresh air. Sodding cops. Messy bastards. He picked up a half-empty bottle of vodka from beside the grease-stained microwave and took a deep swig. Then he set to, blurrily tidying up, grabbing a bin bag from an open drawer and scooping out the rotting food from the sink with his hands, clearing the surfaces, wiping them down.

  He finally turned and looked back across the hallway at the bedroom door. He took another slug of booze. Just do it. Fucking get in there. You can’t come here and then not.

  Another stench hit him as soon as he stepped inside. Vomit. He covered his nose, pinching his nostrils. Saliva flooded his mouth. He flicked on the light switch and grimaced. Blood. It was everywhere.

  Why the hell hadn’t the cops cleared it up? Not their problem, but still . . . It was streaked across the bedroom furniture and doors. It would have been hard to make more of a mess with a bucket of paint. What the fuck had happened here? It looked like someone had slaughtered a cow. How was it Snaresby had put it: it looked like an abattoir in there . . .

  There was blood smeared and daubed on the white walls in patches. Even on the wardrobe mirror. A thought hit him. Whoever had put it there would have had to look at their reflection as they did. Sick fucker. There was more on the bed. Something else too. Yellow and lumpy. Sick? It was smeared across the sheets. In a puddle on the floor.

  Frankie tried to picture Jack standing here, mad-eyed and blood-drenched, the way the cops saw him. Jack the monster.

  He could picture something else, though. What Jack had told him, panic-eyed and shaking in the Ambassador just before he’d been arrested. Someone had rung him on his home phone. Someone had tipped him off that the cops were coming and told him to run.

  Frankie reached for the answerphone on the bedside table and pressed the playback button. ‘No messages,’ an electronic voice said. Probably already listened to and wiped off by the cops. He picked up the receiver and dialled 1471. A long shot, because whoever had called would surely have blocked their number.

  Only they hadn’t. The automatic operator dictated the phone number of the last caller to have rung Jack. It said what time the call had been made too. Frankie did the maths. Minutes before Jack ran.

  This was it then. The number of whoever had called. Too drunk to remember it, Frankie rifled through the bedside drawers. A chewed biro, but nothing to write on. Bloody typical. Bloody Jack. He hit 1471 again and scrawled the number on the inside of his wrist instead.

  He punched the number into the phone and felt his heartbeat rise as a phone the other end started to ring. But it just kept on ringing. No answerphone. Nothing. Who the fuck didn’t have an answerphone these days? It made no sense.

  He remembered something else then and checked the floor. No sign of the condom. Must have already been bagged up by the cops.

  He spent another couple of minutes looking round, under the bed, inside Jack’s wardrobe. But nothing stood out. Still, at least he’d got the number. He’d been right to come here after all.

  He walked back into the kitchen and looked around. Did the same in the living room. The bathroom too. Something felt wrong. But what? Then it hit him. No blood. But why? Because if, as the cops said, Jack had come back covered in the stuff, then why wasn’t there any blood anywhere else apart from in the bedroom? Unless the cops had already for whatever reason decided to clean just some of it up, then how the hell could there be such a mess of it in the bedroom and yet none of it out here?

  Jesus. He felt like his head was being twisted. None of this made sense. Tiredness washed over him. Time to get the fuck out. Go the fuck home. He grabbed the trash bag from the kitchen, switched out the lights and headed for the front door.

  That’s when he heard it. The soft squeak of the door handle starting to turn. Shit, he hadn’t locked it. He stepped quickly back behind it. Not a second too soon. He shrank back flat against the wall as the door swung open.

  A torch beam reached out into the darkness. But who the fuck was holding it? Frankie couldn’t see. Whoever had been outside smoking in that car? A neighbour? The cops?

  The torch beam probed left and then right, before picking out the bin bag that Frankie had been carrying and locking on it. Whoever was holding that torch knew it wasn’t supposed to be there. Which meant they’d been here recently. Recently enough to have already guessed there was someone else in here too?

  Frankie pushed off fast from the wall, driving his shoulder hard into the door, slamming it against whoever had just opened it. A grunt of pain. A gasp. The torch crashed to the floor.

  Frankie stepped quickly sideways and grabbed at whoever was there. He missed. Shit. He stumbled, sensed movement. Below. Something hit him so hard in the bollocks he felt they’d just exploded out of the top of his head. His legs gave way. He sank to his knees.

  Click. A switch. The hallway light glared down.

  ‘Stay,’ a voice barked.

  He groaned, keeling over onto his side, wrapping his arms round his knees.

  ‘You even think about getting up and whatever you’re feeling now, it’s going to be ten times worse.’

  The voice . . . it was high pitched. What the fuck? A woman? Frankie slowly turned to look. But his eyes were too screwed up in pain. All he caught was a blurry glimpse. But it was definitely a woman, all right. The condom. Jesus. If Jack had been here with a woman that night, this might be her. This might be the girl who’d set him up. Or could prove he’d been here and not at Susan Tilley’s grandmother’s place at all.

  Her face came more into focus. Green eyes. Fuck, they were beautiful. Short black hair .
. . Shit, there was something about her . . . something he’d seen before.

  He saw what she’d hit him with then. A baton, gripped in her left fist. One of them telescopic jobs you could hide in a jacket pocket – or a handbag. She reached into the little black leather number hooked over her shoulder with her free hand. For what? Frankie tried rolling away, but couldn’t. In too much fucking pain.

  He looked up to see her holding a radio. Not a gun. Thank fuck. But not just any radio either. A cop radio. Triple crap. He remembered her now. Green eyes. She’d been there at the Ambassador Club. She’d brought Snaresby the warrant.

  Not taking her eyes off him for a second, she switched on her radio. A crackle of static. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’d been nicked. She was going to call him in.

  ‘Please . . .’ he said, pulling his hands away from his face and knocking his cap off as he did. ‘Wait . . . I’m not a burglar . . . or whatever you think . . . I’m—’

  ‘Jesus,’ she said, her eyes widening. ‘Frankie. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it was you.’

  16

  Frankie limped into the Starlight Café round the corner from Jack’s building and waited while Sharon Granger ordered them both a coffee, his, milk with three sugars, hers as black as her wedge-cut hair.

  Sharon bloody Granger. He shook his head. He’d only half-recognised her when he’d seen her at the Ambassador. Too stressed by everything going down. But he remembered her now, all right. School. The sixth form. Five years ago. Another fucking world.

  ‘We’d better make this brief, all right?’ she said, as they sat down at a quiet corner table not overlooked from the street. ‘I could get in a lot of trouble just talking to you, do you understand?’

  He got it. He was the brother of the prime suspect of a case she was working on. Fraternising with him could put a serious dent in her career. Maybe even write it off entirely.