by Zoe Sharp
“So, how long have you been in this game, Len?” I asked when we reached a bit of a lull. He'd stopped pacing and we were leaning on a balcony overlooking one of the dance floors. His eyes never stopped moving over the growing crowd below us.
“Ten years, on and off,” he said shortly.
I waited, but he wasn't going to elaborate without further encouragement. “You must have seen quite a bit of trouble,” I ventured.
He glanced at me sharply, then nodded. “Goes with the territory.” I'd seen people give up teeth with less reluctance, but I thought I detected the faintest loosening.
“How does the New Adelphi compare?”
He shrugged. “No better, no worse,” he said. Just when I thought that was going to be the end of it, he decided to expand on the theme, turning towards me. “You'll always get the Friday night heroes when you open a new place. Want to prove how big a man they are by having a go at the doormen, right? Happens everywhere. That's why Mr Quinn brings his own people in, like me.”
He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “Me and Angelo, we've been working for him in Manchester for years. He knows we'll stamp out the trouble before it starts. We've had to crack a few heads up here to begin with, but it doesn't take long before your reputation is enough to keep ’em out. You take on local guys and you don't know who they've pissed off and who they've given in to. You just run the risk of long-running feuds being brought into the club.”
It was the longest speech I'd heard him make. I opened my mouth to ask more, but my earpiece crackled. “Len, it's Angelo. Go to seven, mate.”
Len straightened up. “Keep checking for trouble in the loos, then stay round this area,” he ordered, striding away fiddling with the settings on his walkie-talkie and muttering into the mic.
I did much as I was told for the next hour. Nothing untoward appeared to be going on under my nose on the dance floor. I was quite surprised who I saw at the club, though.
I recognised one face, but took a few moments to put the right name to it. Joy, the brave one from my last class at the Lodge. She looked different away from her baggy track suit and serious expression.
Tonight she was thrashing around on the dance floor with a group of other girls, laughing and joking, with her arms draped round their shoulders. She didn't see me and I was suddenly wary about calling too much attention to myself.
At regular intervals I patrolled the ladies' on each floor. I nodded to Gary who was busy serving drinks in one of the upper bars. He flashed me a quick grin, harassed and sweating.
The loos didn't yield anything much to report. I wandered in, but nobody was actually shooting up over the washbasins. The most I found to complain about was the ladylike way some of the girls stubbed out their dog ends on lipstick-coated bits of sodden tissue in the sinks.
I discovered one couple in a passionate clinch in one of the cubicles and was about to throw one of them out for being in the wrong toilets when I realised they were both female. I made a mental note to ask the club policy on lesbian behaviour and left them to it.
I hardly saw Len again for quite some time. When I did he seemed to spend most of his time checking out the gents'. It was an interesting way to make a living, I supposed.
When I got back to the lower dance floor, Dave was well into his second set of the evening, lording it over his decks. He was biting his bottom lip in concentration, body jerking to the pulse beat of the music.
He had headphones, worn half on so they only covered one ear. More form than function. He looked up and caught sight of me, pulling his mic down to his lips with a wolfish grin. “Hey, it's the Foxy lady!”
I rolled my eyes, ignoring the smirking glances thrown in my direction. “Up yours,” I mouthed, heading for the stairs. I went back up to the next level, and resorted to watching the goings on from the balcony again.
“Don't worry about Dave, he tries to wind everyone up,” said a voice next to me. I turned to see one of the girls from the bar, carrying two fistfuls of empty glasses. She was tiny, not much over five foot, with dramatically spiked white blonde hair. The plastic badge pinned to her boyish chest told me her name was Victoria.
“I can handle him,” I said.
“Oh I don't think you'll have any problems,” she said. She broke into a big grin, the action dimpling her cheeks. She had a silver ring circling into one side of her nose, and two diamond-studded pegs through her eyebrow. “He's like a dog chasing cars, if you know what I mean – wouldn't know what to do with one if he got hold of it. And I should know.”
“He's tried it on with you, has he?” I asked.
She laughed. “Tried being the operative word. Trust me, the only place Dave can keep anything up is on a dance floor! Now Angelo on the other hand . . .” She winked at me, and darted away, somehow managing to pick up another glass as she weaved a careful path through the crush.
I turned back to the floor. Dave was just coming to the end of his shift. He handed over to another DJ and jumped down off the stage. It took him a while to get across the dance floor. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to stop him and give him a thumbs up, or pat him on the back. Anyone would think he'd just picked up a medal.
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.