by Kepler, Lars
‘Did she remember him wearing them in real life?’
‘No, that was in the dream, but the hair and blood match what the other witnesses said.’
Saga thanks him for calling, then goes back to Randy. She settles down on his arm and feels his other hand make its way between her legs.
32
Saga stops a short distance away from the entrance to the club. It’s got colder again. Crisp, tiny snowflakes are drifting in the glow of the bare light-bulb that illuminates the unassuming door to the club.
A tall bouncer in a protective vest and with his blond hair pulled back in a ponytail is watching some black-clad young men who are smoking behind the rubbish bins. The bouncer’s bare neck is blue-grey with tattoos.
Large nylon sacks of builders’ rubble have been piled up along the edge of the pavement.
It’s half past four in the morning, but music is still thudding out onto the street from the basement.
Saga fell asleep after having sex with Randy a second time, and didn’t wake up until quarter to four. Before she set out she locked her pistol and police ID in his gun-cabinet. She knows she’d never get permission from her boss to visit an illegal club in her capacity as a Security Police agent. There was more than enough fuss about her trip to Chicago in pursuit of the Rabbit Hunter.
Saga approaches the entrance as an unlicensed cab pulls up in front of her. Three youths in long black coats get out and exchange a few words with the bouncer on the door before going inside and vanishing down some steps.
The bouncer steps aside so he’s not blocking the light as Saga walks up to him.
‘Are you sure you haven’t come to the wrong place, princess?’ he asks, his face breaking into a network of wrinkles as he smiles.
‘Yes.’
‘Your decision,’ he says, and opens the door. The music instantly gets louder.
‘Do you have security cameras?’ she asks.
‘No, why do you …?’
‘Nowhere inside?’
‘We don’t have a licence for that.’
Saga can’t help smiling at the fact that an illegal club is worried about licences. She goes down a steep flight of concrete steps as the bouncer closes the door behind her.
She can hear some sort of roaring over the thud of the bass.
At the foot of the stairs is a security check before you get inside the actual club. Ahead of Saga, the three youths sign their names on a membership list, then pay a fee and walk through a metal detector.
The music is making the walls shake, and the framed pictures of famous visitors rattle against the concrete.
The security guard is a large woman with a double chin, a shaved head, round glasses and black leather trousers.
The boys laugh as she pats them down.
As she signs herself in and pays, Saga looks at the list, which consists solely of first names and email addresses. She walks through the detector, wondering if the list only exists in case there’s a raid – so that they can use the loophole in the law about alcohol and private gatherings – then gets thrown away after the club closes.
A T-shirt with the text Tribe 8 is stretched across the security guard’s chest. Her thick, pale arms are covered with beautiful garland tattoos.
The three boys in the long coats are yelling at each other over the music, and one of them pushes his way towards the toilets.
Saga walks over and stands with her arms outstretched, and is quickly patted down by the guard.
‘I signed the list, but …’
‘What?’ the guard says.
‘I signed the list,’ Saga says, louder. ‘But I don’t know if I’m on the membership database.’
The guard shrugs her shoulder and gestures to her to move. More people are on their way down the stairs.
‘Keep moving.’
‘Is there a membership database that …?’
The guard’s face is shiny with sweat, her eyes beady behind her round glasses.
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ she asks.
Saga looks away and moves on into the cloakroom. She looks around. The door to the women’s toilet opens and a young woman with dark lipstick emerges.
Saga catches a glimpse of the crowd in front of the mirrors before the door closes again. She steps over the legs of a man who’s sitting on the floor with a phone pressed to his ear, and makes her way into the main part of the club.
She passes through two heavy doors with thick rubber fringes along the bottom, and has to stop for a moment in the sudden darkness.
The level of noise is extraordinary.
A band is playing on stage, and the rapid thud of the bass vibrates through her body. The crowd is pressing forward, jumping and holding their hands in the air.
The room is packed.
It’s all but impossible to move in any direction.
A wave passing through the throng forces her sideways and she’s pushed up against the wall, then another wave leaves her stumbling back into the sudden void.
The audience is pushing and shoving, dancing, singing along.
There are banks of speakers and other equipment mounted on the ceiling. Smoke streams through rotating beams of light.
There’s no way any sort of conversation is possible here. Until she manages to find one of the organisers, there’s nothing for her to do except look for a thickset man in his fifties.
If he is here, it shouldn’t be hard to spot him, because most of the clientele are young men with long hair and black clothes.
Saga apologises and tries to make her way along the inner wall, as far away from the chaos on stage as possible.
The bass and double-pedal bass-drum are keeping up a frenetic pace, and the guitar is playing rapid, repetitive power chords.
The singer is wearing black jeans and a T-shirt with the name Entombed emblazoned on it in ornate lettering.
A roar is coming from the speakers, followed by guttural growling, a sort of deep, moaning throat-song.
The audience moves backwards, pressing Saga against the wall again. She struggles to hold them off, pushing the bodies away with both arms.
As the wave changes direction she feels a hand between her legs. She turns, but can’t work out who grabbed her, it’s too dark and everyone is already tumbling forward again.
A man with a beard and a shiny head is dancing and kicking the air. He loses his balance, falls to the floor, and rolls several metres.
Saga tries to make her way to the bar. She shoves forward along the wall.
The audience is jumping about and pressing against the edge of the stage, yelling with cracked voices and waving their hands in the air.
The music is hammering against Saga’s chest and neck.
A woman in a short back vinyl skirt spills beer as she tries to drink from a plastic cup. A man with greasy hair is standing behind her, squeezing her breasts. She makes a feeble attempt to resist, but goes on drinking.
Saga pushes forward, shoving someone who’s blocking her path out of the way, and ignores the shove in the shoulder she gets in return as she pushes through the men.
She reaches a raised mixing desk with scratched plexiglass screens and cables taped to the floor.
The air is hot, laden with the smell of sweat, beer, and dry-ice.
The lights from the stage sweep across the crowd.
Over by the bar Saga catches a glimpse of the silhouette of a man who’s almost thirty centimetres taller than everyone around him.
She’s almost certain his head is shaved.
Saga tries to weave round the mixing desk but gets pushed back by the crowd.
The music slows down and seems to hang in the air. The bass drum has fallen silent and the cymbals tinkle gently.
The singer pulls his T-shirt down over his stomach, stands right on the edge of the stage, raises his right arm, and then makes a slow chopping motion in front of him.
The audience parts on either side of the line, moving out of the way to
free up a path down the middle.
There’s some rubbish, empty plastic cups, and a denim jacket on the floor.
The two halves of the audience stand facing each other, panting, expectant.
Suddenly the music gets ridiculously fast again and the men on both sides of the empty space rush towards each other, screaming as they collide and fall. One blond boy crashes to the floor and several other men stumble over him. Another staggers away with his hand over his mouth and blood streaming between his fingers.
The music is thudding in her ears as stroboscopic light sweeps the stage.
Saga pushes past the booth and gets elbowed in the cheek by a man trying to climb onto his friend’s shoulders.
Sweat is running down her back when she finally reaches the throng around the bar. She scans the crowd for the thickset man. People are leaning over the bar, passing large plastic cups of beer behind them.
One young man with long, wavy hair hanging down his cheeks looks Saga in the eye and says something inaudible with a crooked smile.
The singer divides the crowd again.
Saga makes her way towards a man with a tattooed head who’s standing between the bar and the sea of people. She forces her way through to him and asks if he’s seen an older man with a shaved head. She has to shout into his ear for him to hear her. He looks at her drunkenly, says something, then staggers away.
Only then does she realise that he asked her if he looked like the sort of person who likes the police.
The music is rumbling slowly as a crash of thunder approaches.
Hazy lights sweep across the crowd and Saga catches sight of the tall man with the shaved head. He’s standing in an alcove next to the door to the staff area. The light flickers past and then everything goes dark again.
The music explodes and the screams from the stage drown out everything else as the two halves of the audience rush towards each other again.
They collide and fall.
One girl is dragged across the floor.
Two boys start kicking and fighting until they’re pulled apart.
Saga manages to push her way along the bar to the alcove. The tall man can’t be any older than twenty. He’s leaning against the wall with his thin, tattooed arms hanging by his sides.
She keeps going and checks the next alcove, looking at all the faces in the dim light.
The crowd is jumping about and shoving.
The guitars are playing rapid chromatic chord sequences. The singer is clutching the microphone with both hands and growling.
On a silver-painted podium to one side of the stage a young woman is dancing in her underwear beside a vertical metal pole, circling it, hooking one leg around it and spinning round as she slides down it.
Saga sees the man with the tattooed head pushing his way through the crowd towards the entrance.
She sets off after him, but someone shoves her in the back and she stumbles into a man who helps her regain her balance.
33
Saga tries not to let the man with the tattooed head out of her sight.
The crowd pushes backwards and she’s swept up in the movement, and almost falls as beer splashes her face. She collides with the mixing booth, hitting her head against the plexiglass.
She presses on along the back wall, treading on a stray trainer and fending off a man who’s flailing wildly about him before she finally reaches the door and emerges into the cloakroom.
Cooler air is streaming in from the entrance, and although the music is thudding through the walls, it’s still much quieter there.
People are coming back down the stairs after going outside to smoke. They show their stamps to the guard.
There’s a pile of matchbooks with skeletons in a cigarette machine.
The man with the tattooed head disappears into the men’s toilet with his phone pressed to his ear.
Saga follows him, and is hit by an intense stench of urine and toilet-cleaner. The entire floor is awash, and covered with wet paper towels, plastic cups and discarded chewing tobacco.
She sees drunken young men lined up at the urinals. One of them is leaning against the wall with one hand as he aims his penis with the other. His urine swirls around the small portions of chewing tobacco in the urinal, hits the edge and splashes onto the wall and floor.
The man with the tattooed head emerges from one of the cubicles. The toilet seat is lying on the wet floor beside the toilet.
‘I didn’t hear what you said in answer to my question,’ Saga says, standing in front of him.
‘What?’ he mutters, looking her in the eye.
‘I’m looking for a man in his fifties who—’
‘She just wants a fuck,’ another man says.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the man with the tattooed head says.
‘I think you do.’
‘Leave me the fuck alone,’ he says, and shoves her in the chest.
She follows him out into the cloakroom, to the sound of applause and wolf-whistles behind her.
This is hopeless, she thinks, standing still. The matchbook didn’t necessarily belong to the murderer, and even if it did, that doesn’t have to mean he comes here regularly.
But at the same time, it’s all they’ve got to go on for the time being.
A possible connection between the murderer and a hard rock club.
Hoping to catch a glimpse of him in the crowd is pointless.
But the club is about to close, so it will be easier to figure out who works here.
Someone must know something.
Saga returns to the main room. The audience is leaping about, fists raised in front of the stage where the guitarist is playing fast with both hands on the neck of his instrument.
The music switches to a fanfare-like rhythm, the chord changes become heavier, slower.
The performance climaxes with a single howl.
It’s six in the morning.
The band leave the stage and roadies immediately move in to dismantle their kit.
The lights go up as the music is still ringing in everyone’s ears.
Saga tries to see everyone’s faces as they stream out. Security staff go round waking men who have fallen asleep by the walls, helping the drunkest of them to walk.
The floor empties, revealing a few discarded items of clothing among the plastic cups and other rubbish.
The stage, its black paint peeling off, is already deserted.
A few drunken youths are laughing and jeering as they make their way up the steps towards the street.
A red cabinet containing fire-extinguishers has come away from the wall and is standing on the floor.
Saga moves through the thinning stream of people and approaches the staff who are still standing behind the bar. The pole-dancer is now wearing a dressing-gown, and the sound engineer with grey stubble is talking to the female security guard with round glasses.
The bartender is pouring them beer and Coke.
Saga goes up to them and sits down on one of the fixed barstools, then turns to the man behind the bar.
‘I’d like to be put on the mailing list,’ she says.
‘We haven’t got one,’ he says abruptly as he wipes the bar.
‘How do you get information to your members … through Facebook, or—’
‘No, not like that,’ he interrupts, looking at her.
‘Why do you ask so many fucking questions?’ the security guard asks.
‘I’m trying to find someone who comes here,’ Saga says, loudly enough for them all to hear.
‘And who are you?’ the bartender says, scratching his ear.
‘A friend.’
‘Whose friend?’ he asks, tapping the bar.
‘We’re closing now,’ the security guard says.
‘I’m looking for a man in his fifties, he’s been here,’ Saga goes on. ‘He’s thickset, has a thick neck, cropped hair.’
‘A hell of a lot of different people come here,’ the bartende
r replies.
‘People who aren’t young guys in black clothes?’ Saga asks.
‘He was trying to help,’ the security guard said sharply.
‘I mean that the person I’m trying to find ought to stand out,’ Saga explains.
‘Fifty years old, shaved head, thick neck,’ the bartender says, and points to a photograph behind him.
It’s a picture of the singer, Udo Dirkschneider, when he was visiting the club. A plump man with cropped blond hair, a leather jacket and a plastic glass of beer in one hand.
‘The man I’m looking for sometimes gets extremely angry and breaks things,’ Saga says.
The bartender shrugs his shoulders and the security guard looks at the time on her phone. A roadie who’s been gathering cables from the stage comes over to the bar to get a glass of water.
‘What’s going on?’ he asks, looking at Saga.
‘How often is there trouble here?’ she asks.
‘You mean the audience … that’s not trouble, that’s just the mosh-pit. I swear, it’s one hell of a buzz,’ he says, empties his glass and starts walking towards the door.
‘We never have trouble here,’ the security guard says.
‘There’s a possibility that he wears pearl earrings,’ Saga says, and from the corner of her eye sees the dancer turn away.
‘You’ll have to look for Daddy somewhere else,’ the bartender says, dragging a beer-barrel out of the way.
The guard laughs and repeats what he said about Daddy. Saga watches as the dancer sets off towards the staffroom.
There was something about her face as she turned away.
As if she’d been caught out.
Saga starts to follow her, and notices that the woman speeds up before she reaches the door and presses the handle.
‘Wait a moment,’ Saga says sternly.
The dancer disappears into the staffroom. Saga runs the last steps and catches the door before it closes.
‘You can’t go in there,’ the guard calls after her.
‘I know,’ Saga says almost silently as she goes in.
The staffroom is a windowless space with a row of metal lockers, a battered sofa and armchairs around a badly scratched table, and a small kitchen corner.
The dancer hurries into the toilet and locks the door. The security guard comes into the staffroom as Saga knocks on the toilet door.