by Zoe Sharp
Even so, I couldn't help but wish he was further behind me.
I observed the gents' washroom Sam had indicated for a few minutes, mentally counting people in and out. When I reckoned it was about empty, I pushed myself upright away from the rail, and covered the distance to the door.
It was instinct to glance furtively round me before I went in, but I forced myself not to do it, not to look as if I was doing anything out of the ordinary. If you've got enough front, you can get away with anything.
Inside, the gents' was larger than the ladies' washroom on the same floor. The walls were completely covered with dark blue tiles, lit by low voltage spots sunk into the ceiling. I walked quietly past a row of uninhabited urinals to my left, with sinks beyond. Two big square pillars spaced along the centre line of the room helped support the roof. I checked carefully that there was no one lurking behind them.
There were no cupboards under the sinks, and no obvious breaks in the grouting round the tiles to suggest a hiding place. I thought of the ceiling, but when I looked up all I saw was solid textured plaster. No lift-out panels. Besides, there was no overall lock on the door to the gents', and I didn't think Len would want to be so exposed if anyone came in unexpectedly.
To my right was a row of numbered cubicles. They looked much more promising. I made my way along them, pushing the doors open carefully as I went. The cisterns were all enclosed in the tiled wall behind each toilet bowl. Just above, though, was an access hatch about eighteen inches square. I was sure I was getting warmer, but I could tell by the layers of undisturbed paint that this one probably hadn't been removed since the club was refurbished.
I tried the next, but that was the same. I was halfway along the row when the cubicle door nearest to me opened and a man walked out. I had to bite down hard on the startled shriek that nearly burst from my lips. To be fair, he looked as surprised as I did.
“Are you in the wrong place, or am I?” he asked.
I tried a casual smile. “Just a security check,” I told him as cheerfully as I could. “Wouldn't want you walking out of here with anything unsecured, now would we?”
He left quickly with a worried expression and I swore under my breath. If he went and complained to Len or any of the staff about them sending a woman in to check the gents' I was going to be in deep trouble.
I quickened my step. It wasn't until the last cubicle that I saw what I was looking for. I dodged into it quickly, shooting the bolt across behind me. The bolt was a flimsy-looking affair. A hefty shoulder to it would have popped the mounting screws from their chipboard holes like a fat man's shirt buttons, but it was better than nothing.
This time, in contrast to the bolt on the door, the panel on the back wall was held in place by a heavy duty lock. It didn't strike me as the type that could be picked easily, even if I was equipped or qualified to try. Without the right key I was going to be knackered before I began.
The smell from the toilet was making me feel vaguely sick, but maybe I would have felt that way in any case. I knew Marc had the cleaners round regularly, and wondered what it was about the male diet that could reek so badly at the other end. Perhaps, in prehistoric times, they'd used it to mark their territory, like tomcats.
I pulled my Swiss Army knife out of my pocket and pondered over which of its attachments would be best suited to the job of breaking and entering. Unfortunately, that was one purpose for which the Swiss Army didn't seem to have designed a specific tool.
There was a short, narrow blade on the back of the knife that I think is for cleaning mud out of the tracks of your hiking boots. It looked sharp and pointed enough for me to be able to use it to make an initial hole in the door just above one of the hinges. I hesitated a moment before digging it in, tapping the panel lightly with my knuckle. If it was made out of metal I wasn't going to be able to do more than scratch the surface. All that would do would be to alert Len that someone had cottoned on to his stash.
Oh, to hell with it! With a deep breath I carefully lined the blade up with the hinge and leaned my weight into it. It actually sank in much easier than I was expecting. Despite the valuable nature of the contents, the door was only made from bog standard eighth-inch plywood.
I quickly replaced the tread scraper with the shorter of the two knife blades, cursing the fact I hadn't bothered sharpening either of them for months. In the end, the slightly serrated edge of the nail file proved to be the most effective.
Even so, it was slow work. Every time someone came in to the washroom I had to stop, tensing myself into silence and praying that no-one would get inquisitive enough to peer over the top of the partition from the next stall. I wished I'd had the forethought to scribble “Out of Order' on a sheet of paper and stick it to the outside of the cubicle door.
The earpiece of my radio crackled a few times, but fortunately it was other instructions for other members of the security brigade. Nobody, it seemed, needed my services for anything in particular. Good. As long as no one knew I was missing, they wouldn't be looking for me.
I worked on frantically, scuffing and scraping my hands on the rough edging I was opening up. My finger ends, still sore from my Spiderman impersonation down the wall of my flat, soon started to bleed. I mopped them up with loo roll from the dispenser and kept going.
I had made a hole nearly two inches long running down next to one hinge, but the panel was being surprisingly stubborn about giving way completely. It wasn't big enough to get my shoulder to, and the cubicle was too small and too awkward a space to kick at it with any degree of success.
I knew if I punched it, I was just going to break my knuckles. I couldn't afford to risk an injury. At the back of my mind was the knowledge that, if Len discovered me here, doing this, I was going to need to be very much intact to stand any chance of holding him off.
Although I was waiting for it, when the call came over the radio, it made me jump.
“It's the police! We're being fucking raided!” Angelo's voice, crackling with sheer rage. “Len, go to seven, mate! Go to se—!” His transmission was abruptly chopped off. I could just imagine the reason for it.
I fumbled with the bolt on the door. The last thing I wanted now was to be trapped in an area too small to defend myself. The bolt stuck and as I tugged at it I was rocked by a moment of sheer panic.
I stopped, took a breath. Calm down, Fox! I couldn't let my fear incapacitate me. I let go of my anger, my fright, breathing out fully. If I wasn't calm and focused, I was nothing. I tried again. The bolt slid straight back without resistance.
As I stepped out of the cubicle into the empty washroom, I passed the number on the door almost at eye level. Number seven. I did a double-take.
Seven!
“Go to seven, mate!” Angelo had said. I'd always thought it was a preset channel on the walkie-talkies, but I was wrong. It was just Angelo's way of telling Len that someone wanted to buy drugs from him.
In this case, I didn't think MacMillan's men were interested in a purchase, but Len would know he had to get rid of the stuff. Quickly. Oh shit.
I'd just time for the realisation to hit. Not enough to form a plan of attack, to decide a strategy. I'd just time to whirl round to face the outer washroom door as it burst open.
It flew back so hard on its hinges there was a sharp crack as the wood twanged against the frame and gave way. Len stood in the doorway, chest heaving from the exertion of getting here so fast. There was a sheen of sweat on his face, and his gaze when he caught sight of me was savage.
He advanced into the room, past me, slammed open the door to cubicle number seven. Saw, in an instant, the damage to the panel. Knew, just as rapidly, that it was down to me. He whipped back to face me. Fury and hatred began emanating from him in tangible waves, furring the air like a jet exhaust.
I knew we had a couple of minutes at the outside before MacMillan's boys reached the upper floor. No doubt that was why Len choose this particular place of concealment for his stash. Unless the drug squad
had taken to helicopter assaults from the roof tops, any entry at ground level gave him more than enough time to flush the lot.
You don't have to take him out, I told myself as I dropped instinctively into a combat stance, you just have to slow him down until the cavalry gets here.
It wasn't much of a comfort.
It was crystal clear from the outset that there was going to be no chance for negotiation here. Len wasn't interested in any verbal attempt I might make to calm him down. He was too busy winding himself up to explode.
He started to swear. Spitting words bitter as poison, spilling over his teeth in a gush like blood from an arterial wound. If he could have struck me down just with the vitriolic force of them, I would have been dead already.
I wanted to recoil on a reflex, to cringe away from him, but to do that would have been disastrous. I stood my ground, faced him off, watched the chain reaction of his temper form until it was toxic in its intensity.
The stand-off didn't last long, a few seconds maybe. Then he snapped.
Len charged at me with a primeval roar. Two hundred and twenty-five pounds of solid muscle, shaped from years of cracking skulls, backed by a whole supermarket full of dirty tricks, fuelled by a vicious wrath.
I knew I couldn't retreat, knew I had to go forwards to meet his attack, but I daren't lose my control, or I'd lose even the sliver of a chance of winning.
The lessons I'd learned with the Scouser and the smoker in my flat still clung painfully. If I got the opportunity, this time I wouldn't hesitate.
I blocked his first punch as it sliced towards my face, jarring my forearm hard enough to feel the bruises forming instantly. Ignoring the discomfort I kept going forwards, moving in close and grabbing for his neck. Control the head and you control the point of balance. Where the point of balance goes, the body will follow.
The muscles in Len's neck were thick as a Pit Bull's, leading into massive shoulders, but I gouged a knuckle deep into the side of his chin and their resistance simply crumbled. I twisted his head round as though I wanted to rip it apart from his body and slammed him into the nearest pillar hard enough to burst the tiles.
The man's constitution must have been phenomenal. He rocked once, then straightened up, shook his head to clear it, and stormed me again. The blood dripping from the ceramic splinters in his forehead was a minor annoyance to him.
This time when I blocked Len's first swinging right, he didn't make the same mistake twice. He followed it up with a fast left to my ribs that ripped the air from my lungs in an explosive gust. I tried desperately to stay on my feet, allowing myself to reel backwards, absorb some of the impact.
Len sensed first blood. He came in like a dervish then, fists flying. I went down under the onslaught. I had no choice. I crashed backwards into the door frame, bumped past it, and went sprawling onto the floor of the club outside the washroom.
For the moment any attempt to re-group was impossible. I just rolled with the pounding, and tried not to let him hit me anywhere that was going to do me serious damage. The pain was coming from so many different directions it seemed to totally surround and immerse me.
As I fell back, Len pursued, lips drawn away from his teeth in a deadly grimace. His eyes had turned feral. His control was gone, shattered into fragments.
That was what defeated him.
He wasn't bothering to defend himself properly now, didn't feel the need to keep his guard up. As he leant over me, I lashed out for his throat. It was a lucky contact, and lighter than I'd hoped, but it halted his next assault. I twisted onto my side and swept his legs out from under him.
As soon as he was on the floor, I brought my heel down brutally into his exposed groin. Most men would have been out of the fight right there and then. Not Len. He howled like a scrapyard dog, starting to push himself off the ground with one hand, grasping for me.
I kicked his arm out from under him, aiming for the elbow joint, connecting with a dull crack. He folded. It sent a fierce and bitter spike of triumph lancing through me. I knew the feeling was wrong, knew I should feel nothing but a calm consideration of my leading options and next moves. But I couldn't help it.
I reverse scuttled out of range on my backside and was up on my feet in a flash. Len's jaw presented itself, just perfectly aligned and I pulled back my fist to strike, to finish this. It was a punch I knew would knock him cold.
I never got to land it.
With a shocking suddenness, my arms were banded to my sides by hands like mechanical steel clamps and I was hauled away from Len. I could hear someone baying in protest, a primitive shriek of sheer anger and frustration, the pack hunter with the fallen prey, denied the kill. At first I didn't recognise the source. Finally, it registered that it was me.
The policemen who had hold of me didn't so much put me down as throw me onto the floor. I quickly found myself face down without the opportunity to resist, my arms wrenched behind me. I felt cold circles of metal as the bracelets of the handcuffs were ratched tight onto my wrists.
If it took two of MacMillan's men to restrain me, it took four to control Len. They jumped on him with ruthless efficiency, not careful where they put their boots and fists to bring him down. He didn't go without a fight and, in the end, they were forced to settle for cuffing his hands in front of him, just to get him secured.
I let my eyes close briefly, weak with defeat. I was bone tired, my whole body felt pulpy from the beating I'd only been partly successful in dodging. One eye was swollen, my back was giving me hell where I'd hit the door frame and my left knee was on fire. I didn't even remember getting that thumped. Thank God it wasn't the right one or I'd never be able to kick-start the bike.
“Well, well Miss Fox,” said a man's voice from somewhere way above my head. “When I asked you to call me if you had any more contact with him, I was talking about threatening phone calls,” he went on, annoyance making his voice more clipped than usual. “This wasn't quite what I had in mind.”
I opened the eye that wasn't throbbing, leaving the other one to rest. All I could see at my level was a pair of good conservative black leather shoes. I watched them approach another couple of steps with mild interest, following the neatly creased trousers upwards past the suit jacket to the tilted head at the top. It seemed a long way away and much too small for the rest of his body, especially his feet.
“Hi Superintendent,” I mumbled, my throat raw. “It's nice to see you, too.”
MacMillan jerked his head to someone out of my range of vision. The handcuffs were released and my arms, suddenly unsupported, flopped back to my sides. It seemed to take a long time before they'd obey the usual commands to lever my torso into an upright position.
One of the policemen who'd jumped me at least had the grace to offer me a hand up. It took my brain a moment or two to recognise him as Tommy, looking pale with excitement. I wondered briefly if he'd ever been on a drugs raid before.
“What the hell did you think you were doing, young lady?” MacMillan demanded quietly. When I looked at him fully, I could see the anger pinching his nostrils, flattening his mouth into a narrow, almost lipless line. He treated me to withering scrutiny.
“Finding you some proof,” I tossed back at him, trying not to sway on my feet.
“Did it not occur to you that we might have been in the middle of a highly sensitive investigation of our own,” he grated out carefully, as though speaking to someone of limited intelligence. “That your interference could have put it in jeopardy, if not ruined it altogether.”
I'd had enough. I hadn't expected a commendation for stopping Len destroying the evidence of his own drug dealing, but I hadn't expected a damned lecture either.
“Up yours, MacMillan!” I snarled. “While you were meandering along in your own sweet way, people were threatening to kill me. Excuse me if I didn't sit around twiddling my thumbs while I waited for it to happen.” I waved a hand towards the gents' washroom. “You look in cubicle seven in there and you'll find a locked p
anel – Len should have the keys on him – behind which you'll find enough drugs to start a bloody dispensary, if you're interested!”
MacMillan paused, considered, then signalled two of his men to go and check. We all watched them go, and missed the fact that Len had also been listening to the conversation.
Now he seized the chance presented by the drop in numbers to swing his handcuffed hands, club-like, into the gut of the policeman next to him. The man didn't so much fall as plummet. He ended up on the ground, curled foetal and gasping.
Len nimbly hurdled his prostrate form and headed straight for my throat, hands clawed and reaching.
I elbowed the Superintendent out of the way and jumped forwards to take the offensive stand. This time I was going to make sure Len went down hard and fast. And that he stayed there!
Then MacMillan shouted, “Gas him!” and my brilliant plan went all to shit.
In a practised instant Tommy brought his hand up easily from his belt, aiming a small aerosol. It was the smell of the propellant that was over-powering and horribly familiar. Reflex made me stop breathing, spinning my head away, squeezing my eyes tight shut. Len's fingers just brushed my throat as I tumbled past him. As for me, I missed my intended target completely, but at least I managed to avoid the spray.