by Zoe Sharp
He jogged up the stairs and spotted me, grinning as he came over. He leaned on the balcony next to me. Sweat was dripping off him, his tight-fitting T-shirt streaked with dark stains.
“Well, Charlie, what did you think of the set?” he asked, although clearly he was already well aware of his own brilliance. He wiped a hand across his face, but he was sweating too much to make a difference.
“It seemed to go down very well,” I said cautiously.
“Very well?” he repeated, his voice almost scathing. “They love me out there. That's real power, that is. And there's nothing like it.” He looked down at himself. “I gotta go change before I go on again,” he said, straightening up.
He saw my sceptical look and fixed me with an intense gaze. “Believe me, Charlie, out there, knowing I've got this whole place in the palm of my hand – well, it's the best feeling I've ever had!”
He swung away. Victoria's scornful words came back to me. “Yeah, Dave,” I muttered under my breath, “for you, I bet it is.”
I was just about to go and make another dutiful tour of the toilets when my earpiece crackled again.
“Charlie? Front door,” came Angelo's distorted voice. “I need you for a search.”
I obligingly made my way to the entrance. Angelo and one of the other doormen were involved in a stand-off with a group of three blokes and their dates. They all looked pretty useful, and the body language when I arrived made it clear a confrontation was almost inevitable, if not already in progress.
“Listen, dickhead,” Angelo was growling at one of them, nose to nose. “The last time you tried to come in here, you had some stuff on you. Either you all get searched, or you all piss off. Now, which is it to be?”
“You lay one finger on my girlfriend and I'll fucking take you apart,” snarled the other bloke.
“I'm not going to lay a finger on her,” Angelo said, managing to imply that the girl was somehow unclean. He smiled his crocodile smile and gestured to me. “She is.”
The bloke looked like he was going to make a fuss, then realised he'd been backed into a corner. His girlfriend came forwards with a dare-you look on her face, her arms spread. I could have told Angelo I was wasting my time before I began by the gleeful look on her face, but I kept my mouth shut.
The last time anyone did a search on me it was a bored-looking policewoman on the way into one of the big indoor bike shows. I think they'd had a bomb scare. She seemed very keen to feel carefully along my arms. I remember wondering at the time if people really carried plastic explosive stuffed up their sleeves.
I racked my brains to recall the procedure and gave the girl what I hoped was a pro-looking pat-down search. I checked her pockets, then ran my hands along her arms and legs, waistband and back. I stepped back and shook my head at Angelo. He just smiled and held his hand out to her.
“Handbag,” he demanded, beckoning.
I saw the alarm flash across her face then. “You've no right to go through my things!” she blustered. Angelo beckoned again, making it clear his patience was wearing pretty thin.
I don't know what the girl had in her bag, but as she handed it over her boyfriend took advantage of Angelo's distracted hands to throw a fairly hefty punch at him.
He was obviously an amateur fighter, hoping to end it quickly with a heavy right. He wasn't prepared for Angelo's snake-like reactions. Wasn't ready for a swift and merciless counter-attack.
The fight that ensued should have been a one-sided affair. Three blokes and three women against two and one. It should have been, but it wasn't. The other doorman waded in to one of the men with a cheerful brutality. Word games were not his forte, but when it came to violence he was a poet.
Angelo was something one step removed. When I'd first seen him with Len, I'd thought he was the milder of the two, but I was wrong.
Now I had a chance to watch him in action as he head-butted the first bloke, then punched low into another's stomach, using more than enough force to put him down. When one of the girls jumped onto his back and tried to claw at his face, he dealt her a savage back-hand blow that knocked her sideways, without hesitation.
He spun round in a half-crouch, hands clenched, just waiting for the next chance to strike. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a soundless snarl. The blood vessels under the shaven skin of his head were pronounced and pulsing.
I recognised the blood lust in him, saw it in the wide, exultant eyes. Where Dave got his high from mixing music and controlling the crowd, Angelo's kick came from sinking his fists into another's face. No drink or drug could equal the buzz.
The girl's friends joined the battle with a shriek at that point. Angelo shrugged them off like he was batting away flies.
The man he'd head-butted was back fighting by then, blinking away the blood from a cut across his eyebrow. He took advantage of the girls' attack to launch a counter-offensive on Angelo's blind side. I reluctantly supposed it was time to put my two-penny-worth in.
I stepped round his flying fists without much difficulty, getting a good grip on his shirt front. I twisted my body into him and he flew straight over my hip, landing heavily. Before he had time to catch his breath I punted him over onto his face, yanking his arm up behind him and angling a pretty effective lock onto it. It was enough to keep him where he was and out of the action until it was all done.
Angelo and the other doorman looked disappointed that the clash was over so quickly. The opposition retreated, apart from the one I'd still got on the floor. I was about to ask what to do with him when Angelo ambled up.
Before I could react, he'd kicked the man viciously in the kidneys.
I couldn't keep the shock out of my face. My feet took me forwards on a knee-jerk reaction, not to assist Angelo this time, but to obstruct him. I seriously contemplated taking him down.
Angelo looked all set to go after the guy again, but he caught my intention and stiffened, neck banded with gorged muscle, hands clenched. We stood each other off, my eyes meeting his steadily. I don't know what Angelo thought he saw there, but for some reason he changed his mind about the pursuit.
He exchanged a nasty grin with his colleague. “You gotta deal with trouble hard and fast, Charlie,” he said when his victim had crawled to his feet and staggered away, helped by his mates. “You show any sign of weakness, and they'll rip you to pieces.”
He gave me the once-over, as if making up his mind about something. “You'll probably do,” he decided, his patronising tone putting my back up. “Your reflexes aren't bad. You just don't have the killer instinct.”
He turned away then, clapping the other doorman on the shoulder. They straightened their jackets, looking pleased with themselves. Angelo inspected his knuckles, which were slightly skinned. I could see the fresh wounds alongside the scabs from some previous engagement with the enemy.
He was trying to act calm, but he was still wired, jittery, couldn't keep his hands still.
Len arrived at this point. “You!” he said, glaring at me. “Get back to the lower floor.”
“Suit yourself,” I said as I moved past him. “Angelo called me up here.”
“Trouble?” Len asked him.
Angelo gave him a big smile. He flickered a glance over to me before replying.
“Nothing I couldn't handle,” he said.
When I got back to the lower dance floor things looked pretty quiet down there, if quiet's the word to use for music belted out of a massive sound system at full whack. Still, at least Marc seemed to have fitted decent equipment, and had it set up to perfection. Distortion is very wearing to listen to. At the New Adelphi, there wasn't any.
I made another round of the loos, still without finding anything startling to report. I noticed Len coming out of the gents' again on one of the upper floors. Either the guy was paranoid about the punters getting up to mischief in there, or he needed a good dose of Imodium.
I worked my way back down through the different levels again. If nothing else, climbing all
these stairs was going to get me fit.
The club was starting to really fill up now. Getting from floor to floor was more of a push and struggle. My eyes were beginning to ache from constantly scanning the crowd in the smoky gloom. From trying to spot the furtive movement, the sly gesture. The first hint that something was wrong.
In the end I didn't see the trouble going down.
I heard it.
Nine
I was on the stairs down to the lower dance floor when I first heard the screaming. I took a moment to focus on the direction, then started sprinting.
I took the last three stair treads in one stride and tunnelled through the press of bodies on the floor itself. Once I got closer I didn't need to ask exactly where the problem was. The way everyone was scrambling out of the way told me the answer to that one. The more hurriedly they were moving, the closer I was getting to the epicentre.
Finally, I broke through the edge of the dispersing crowd and found the tableau.
There were three players. The girl was doing the screaming, the action revealing her pierced tongue. She was dark-haired and rather plump, in a skirt too short and a lycra top cut too low.
On the face of it, she was an unlikely inspiration for a jealous rage, but from the look of the battle going on around her, she was certainly the prize. She didn't look like an athlete, either, but there was nothing wrong with her lung capacity.
The lad I immediately pegged as the prospective boyfriend was on his hands and knees at her feet, dripping blood from his lacerated cheek onto Marc's polished flooring. The other – clearly the rejected suitor – was still standing, a few feet away.
He was rigid with fury, breathing fast through his nostrils like a hard-run racehorse. He still had the neck of the broken bottle clenched in his hand.
I thumbed the transmit on my walkie-talkie. “Len, it's Charlie,” I said. “Lower dance floor. There's a nasty one going on down here. I need some help. Now!”
The girl carried on screaming, at that high, intensely irritating frequency of small babies and hotel fire alarms. The boy with the bottle was momentarily distracted. As though he couldn't decide if his best next move was to continue the fight with the prospect, or hit the girl just to shut her up. He shook his head suddenly, as if to clear it.
While he was diverted, I took a deep breath, tried to centre myself, and stepped into the fray. At least with the noise she'd been making, Len and the rest shouldn't have any trouble finding us.
It was immediately clear that neither of the two lads really wanted any outside interference. The reject was desperate for the total humiliation of his rival. The prospect wanted the opportunity for revenge, served hot. It was like breaking up two fighting Pit Bulls. I was more likely to find them both turning on me than I was of stopping them ripping each other to shreds.
“Come on now son, put that down and let's finish this the easy way,” I said.
He twisted towards me, mad-eyed so the whites of them showed all round the irises. “I'm not your fucking son,” he hissed. He brought the bottle up towards me, warning. The gleaming blood of his last victim still decorated its wicked edges. “Stay out of it, bitch, or you'll get some, too.”
He was dangerously hyped up for it to be drink, or simple jealousy. It was in his voice, his eyes. The way he held his body, jerkily stiff, uncoordinated. There was a sheen of sweat pearling on his face, but he was shivering. Great! Where was bloody Len when I needed him?
The prospective boyfriend had used the break in the reject's attention to climb warily to his feet. I risked a glance at him. The bottle had been applied by someone who'd had practice. The thrust-and-screw technique had opened up the whole of the left-hand side of his face. The skin hung in ragged peels from the top corner of his lip to just below his eye. It was going to take a micro-surgeon with a special interest in jig-saw puzzles to piece him back together again so he looked anything like the picture on the box.
I flicked my eyes towards the girl. She'd stopped screaming by now, shoving both hands over her own mouth and gagging as though about to be sick. I turned back to the boy with the ruined face. I hoped whatever she'd been offering him had been worth it.
I didn't like the look in his eyes. He didn't need to touch a hand to his face to know what had been done to him. The evidence was splashing down the front of his shirt in a scarlet river.
He started to swear then. Softly at first, but growing in profanity and volume as he launched himself at his attacker, oblivious to the dangers of the slashing bottle.
I couldn't let them come together again. I knew that. I took the prospect first, sweeping his legs out from under him to send him crashing. I only just managed to jump back out of reach of the reject as he sliced the bottle at me, aiming for my stomach.
I caught him a fast blow to the face as I dodged away, bloodied his nose. There was no real weight to it, but a remarkable amount of nerve-endings meet in the nose. It should have been enough to put him down, should have slowed him down at any rate, but he was feeling no pain. He shook it off like a light tap and kept coming, weapon lifted now, like a dagger.
Christ! Now would be a good time, Len . . .
I swallowed hard. I was going to have to hurt him to stop him. My mind shied away from it, but the facts didn't change. I dithered and nearly lost it altogether.
I hadn't heard the prospective boyfriend get back on his feet until he grabbed me round the neck from behind. The rejected one was still coming, but now I was almost immobile and a much easier target.
I switched off my conscious mind and put a muzzle on my conscience. I needed fast, clinical action. The outlines of all the techniques I'd ever learned unrolled behind my eyes like computer graphics, clear and precise. There was no room for hesitation here. No time for compassion either.
I shifted my hips sideways and used a clenched backfist to hit the boy holding me hard in the groin. I didn't need to deal with the arm round my throat then. It simply melted away.
I shrugged him off as he crumpled backwards away from me, and moved forward to meet the charge of the crazy boy with the broken bottle held overhead. With deadly accuracy, he stabbed the glass down at my left eye. So directly that when I looked up I could see straight into the taper of the neck.
I blocked him high with my forearm, grunting at the jarring impact. I weaved my right arm quickly up through his to meet it, clasping my hands together round his wrist.
The movements were automatic, fluid, but I didn't want to do this! Oh I knew the moves, had nearly carried them to completion a hundred times, but I'd never had to take that final step. It was crossing the line. It was too far.
I looked up to see the stump of the bottle again, inches from my face. It was quivering from the sheer effort he was putting into trying to drive it downwards towards me. Into me. Oh shit . . .
Leverage is everything. They reckon it takes just eight pounds of pressure to break almost any bone in the human body. I must have applied quite a bit more than that now. I shut out the last lingering doubts and heaved, sideways and down.
The boy's shoulder dislocated with an ease that was mildly surprising. It made a soggy popping sound, like a spoon being pulled out of a bowl of set jelly.
I put my shoulder out once, falling off a horse when I was a kid. The pain is indescribable. You can't escape from it, can't move anywhere to make it hurt any less. It focuses you utterly and you'll do anything to make it stop.
The boy dropped slowly to his knees, the wild light in his eyes dulling as the biting pain of his injury finally took the edge off whatever was floating him. He let the bottle fall to the floor. I kicked it away.
There was the thump of heavy footsteps and I turned to see Len and Angelo had, at long last, deigned to put in an appearance. They skidded to a halt and took in the scene. One boy writhing on the floor, a trail of slimy vomit now mixing with the blood from his face.
The other was still on his knees, whimpering, his torso deformed into an unnatural shrug. Len stared
between them, open-mouthed. Angelo just regarded me with those calculating eyes.
“What fucking kept you?” I demanded, stalking past them. I ignored Len's shouted order that I stay put. He was in charge, wasn't he? Well let him sort the mess out, then!
Behind me, the dark-haired girl had started screaming again.
***
I left Angelo and Len to deal with the aftermath. I went upstairs to one of the quieter bars and ordered coffee as an excuse to take in some sugar.
When it arrived, I found my hands were shaking too much to lift the cup.
I thought of Angelo's earlier treatment of the three couples outside the club. If you dealt with it every day, you became hardened to violence. If that was so, I didn't want to deal with it every day. Maybe Sam was right and this move was a mistake. Maybe I shouldn't have taken the job on.