“Funny.” The flyer perked up my mood a bit. It wasn’t much of a clue. Probably wasn’t much of anything at all, but it didn’t fit with what Miranda knew of her brother and that made it worth checking out. Plus it gave me an excuse to go to that kind of a club with a virtually unlimited credit card in my wallet. The case was suddenly looking up in ways that I hadn’t anticipated.
I moved into the bathroom, which shone with the kind of cleanliness that the TV advertisers would have killed to capture on camera. You could have sold any kind of cleaning cream with that image. The sparkling surfaces almost hurt the eyes under the harsh eco-friendly lights. It was very quickly clear that there was nothing of interest here unless you were interested in bathroom hygiene. The medicine cabinet contained one box of paracetamol tablets that wasn’t even opened and a jar of salt tablets.
The tiny kitchen was equally clean. You could have safely eaten off any surface you chose in there including the inside of the bin. Every utensil gleamed the way they usually only do whilst in the packaging and was placed exactly where it ought to be for maximum ease of use by the cook. I thought of the mismatched piles of virtually unused pans and dishes that were stacked in my cupboards at home. Since the invention of the microwave they had become virtually unemployed.
Eventually I had to give it up. Just like the Water Board Headquarters, there wasn’t anything here that could help us. I could have gone through his financial records (all neatly filed away in a folder with a sticker on the front saying ‘financial records’), but I already had the ever-useful Enquiry Desk doing that electronically for me back at Agency HQ. I could have brought in forensics and have them study the place in the kind of detail that would put a whole club of scale modellers to shame, but the huge amount of information that they would come up with about the place and its occupant wouldn’t tell me anything of material importance.
“Do you notice anything else out of place?” I asked Miranda, but she shook her head and shrugged her shoulders helplessly. If Arnie had come up with a way to communicate a secret message to his sister then she hadn’t been able to read it.
“What happens now?” she asked instead.
“Now, we wait until dusk,” I told her, waving the advertising flyer. “I have a party to go to.”
“You mean ‘we’ of course,” she amended.
“No, I mean ‘I’,” I amended her amendment. “This sort of place is the kind of place that is no place for a lady.”
Except for those performing there, of course.
“It’s just as well that there aren’t any ladies present then,” she countered, setting her jaw firmly. It wasn’t quite a child’s pout, but that’s only because she wasn’t a child any more. “If you don’t take me then I’ll just go on my own.”
One thing that only experience can teach you is to know when you’re beaten.
The Peppermint Hippo Club
The Peppermint Hippo Exotic Dancing Club provided a dash of glitz, glamour and blatant nudity to an otherwise bleak industrial area sandwiched in the virtually invisible gap between the outskirts of Slough and the outskirts of London. Once an industrial unit itself, the outside had been prettied up with fake windows and doors and decorations that in the daytime were obvious for what they were, a failed attempt to hide the true nature of the building behind the sequins of show (everything) business. After dark, though, was another matter. With the night hiding the worst of the unit’s angularity and the neon glows of the various welcome signs casting the rest into inviting shadow, the place took on the patina of a lively entertainment venue, albeit a venue for the kind of lively entertainment that took place without the need for large, or even quite normal, amounts of clothing. The fake embellishments would have made the club look plush and inviting and almost elegant had it not been for the sign.
Over the front of the building someone had thought that it would be a great idea to emblazon the name of the club in eye-searing blue and pink neon letters. That wasn’t the worst, though. Below the name was a huge animated logo also crafted in bright neon. The hippo on the sign, though she also sported a tutu as her only obvious clothing, had very little in common with the Disney Fantasia models. For one thing, the curves went in all sorts of entirely different, and altogether more interesting, directions. The anthropomorphised, and then sexualised, river horse in glowing pink and blue tubing was somehow disturbing even before parts of her started to move (and that’s from someone for whom ‘disturbing’ is all part of a normal day at the office).
“Are you sure that you want to go in there?” I asked for absolutely the last time as the car swept into the surprisingly well-maintained car park. There were still spaces to be had, but the available number was dwindling rapidly. Business was clearly flourishing in the flesh-flashing industry, but then overheads were low and any cutting of the costume budget just meant that the show was over a little bit sooner. The small group of people queuing over by the door were generally well-dressed and a bit more upmarket that the sleaze brigade that hang out at the all-night film shows in the centre of London. The huge bouncer on the door might have had something to do with that.
“Absolutely,” Miranda said with a slightly annoyed sigh. There were only so many ways that she could insist on coming without getting a bit worked up about my consistent attempts to put her off. “Really, do you think that this is my first time in a place like this?”
“Isn’t it?” I said, trying to answer the question without actually answering the question.
“Well, yes it is actually, but that’s not the point. I’m a big girl and I think that I can handle myself … even in a place like this.”
I chose not to point out that the dress she was wearing certainly accentuated the fact that she was a big girl and that handling herself in a place like this was likely to lead to a job offer. The fact was that she looked fantastic. A million dollars just wasn’t going to cut it in the market of how good she looked. She had chosen a dress of elegant blue, but the slit up the side and the plunging neckline edged ‘elegant’ towards ‘slinky’, which wasn’t necessarily the wrong direction to be going in, but stopped short of ‘slutty’. When I picked her up from the room that I had booked for her in the hotel where we would be staying the night, the sight of her had all but taken my breath away. My near-speechlessness had pleased her and she finished off the ensemble with a diaphanous wrap that certainly couldn’t have provided any protection against the cold of the night and a matching clutch bag.
“You said that I should pick something appropriate,” she had said, doing a little twirl to show off the dress in all its glory, though the fact was that the glory was pretty much all hers and all the dress was doing was putting the right parts of it on view. A jewel shines brightly no matter what setting it is placed into. I had sent her to the hotel shop to get whatever she needed for the evening since neither of us had brought toothbrushes let alone evening wear. Grayson’s credit card was already registered against the room and so money wasn’t an issue. Between paying for the rooms, room service (since we both needed to eat), her dress and my new suit the plastic had already taken a bit of a beating. “Don’t you think it’s appropriate?”
“I think that it’s bloody wonderful,” was the best that I could manage in reply, eliciting a delighted smile from her. Whatever effect she had been aiming for, ‘bloody wonderful’ seemed to cover it.
The heels on her shoes were a bit higher than she was used to so she wobbled a bit as we crossed the car park heading for the door, but only a little and a light touch on my arm was enough to stabilise her again. By the time that we reached the door, and its large doorman, she was confidently into her stride. She walked straight past him and in through the open door. He, however, pulled the velvet rope across behind her, blocking me with his considerable bulk. There was no way that he was blocking me because there was some sort of problem with the way that I was dressed. I rarely looked this good. Honestly, I never looked this good. I couldn’t afford clothes like this wit
hout the aid of a company card. He had probably already marked me out as a law enforcement professional (his term would no doubt be somewhat shorter and a good deal less respectful) and was using his ‘discretion’ to keep me out. If he could identify me that quickly then he had to be some kind of career criminal himself, probably low level.
“You’re kidding me right?” I had to look upwards to fix his eyes with mine, but there was an impassive wall behind them that I was fairly sure wasn’t going to respond to reasoned debate. To be fair he probably couldn’t spell ‘reasoned debate’. He must have heard every plausible, and a good few implausible, arguments, there were for being let in a dozen times every night. “I’m with her.” I pointed after Miranda, who apparently hadn’t noticed that I was no longer with her.
“Her?” the doorman said with just enough of a sneer to be plausibly deniable should he be asked by his employers about it at a conduct hearing. “I find that hard to believe.”
“She is a thing of beauty, though, isn’t she,” I grinned, trying to foster a sense of bonhomie between us, but his faced remained impassive, even the sneer gone now. Giving up on keeping any sense of a low profile, I pulled my ID out from the inside pocket of my very expensive, but paid for on somebody else’s credit card, suit and showed it to him.
He actually took the time to look at it. It was possible that some of the longer words were giving him trouble. “So?” he said finally, with a shrug of shoulders that were wide enough to carry any burden short of a small hill. “If you need a warrant to go with that thing then there’s a couple of judges inside I could ask to come out here and sign one up for you.”
That wasn’t so unexpected either. My earlier thoughts about why I was being targeted were merely confirmed. He couldn’t have come up with a verbal riposte like that on his own so quickly, so he must have been thinking about it since he first saw me coming across the car park. I could have told him that instead of a warrant I could have a fully-armed response team here in twenty minutes that would have me through the smoking remnants of what used to be the door before he could say ‘Ow that hurts’, but this was supposed to be a low key investigation.
There was one more tactic I could try. I took the company card out and swiped it through the electronic tips machine. The number I entered made his eyes bug out a little and when the machine beeped acceptance he developed a little instant respect and opened the rope again. With a small nod of acknowledgement, I went inside.
The interior of the club had been modelled after the art deco decadence of Berlin in the 30s by someone who clearly had no idea what Berlin was like in the 30s, but had seen a few photographs. For one thing, the large stage that dominated one end of the public space would have been home to a crooner and his musical accompaniment rather than the chrome pole and amplifier set up that was currently pounding out one of the latest dance grooves to accompany the rather lithe lady who was supporting herself from the aforementioned pole by parts of her anatomy that were not normally accustomed to heavy lifting. The stage was the only part of the room to be properly illuminated. The deco wall panellings were lit subtly with an orange glow that suggested an intimate quality. Quality intimacy was no doubt on offer for the right price. The tables were covered in crisp white tablecloths and each possessed a central lamp whose illumination barely reached the table’s edge. The ornate chandeliers hanging from the ceiling certainly looked great, but barely lit the area around them let alone the floor area below. The chairs were upholstered in a red material that mimicked velvet in everything except what it cost and the way that it frayed. One whole side of the room was a long, shining bar backed with large mirrors so that ordering a drink didn’t mean missing out of the agile movements of the woman on the stage. Banks of bottles offered just about every form of spirit known to the connoisseur and there were no doubt a few behind the counter that were available to the even more widely-informed drinker and which didn’t appear on the bar menus.
This was the main area. Discrimination laws meant that the Peppermint Hippo Club could no longer call itself a ‘Gentleman’s Club’, though not on the obvious grounds that there were never any gentlemen in it. Women could no longer be excluded and there was even a smaller room off the main one that was denoted as the ‘Ladies’ Lounge’, though men couldn’t be kept out of that one either. The only real difference was the gender of the performers. I had already checked with the ever-useful Enquiries Section back at the Agency and this venue wasn’t licensed for non-human acts, though the staff could probably have discreetly directed you to a place that was if that was the sort of thing that you were into. It was also hot inside, the heating cranked up for the benefit of the working staff pretty much all of whom could be placed into the ‘underdressed’ category.
“There you are,” Miranda appeared and took my arm. The dim lighting did nothing to hide her attractiveness and in some ways actually enhanced it, though I had hardly thought that was possible. “I was beginning to think that you had abandoned me.”
“I was unavoidably detained,” I told her by way of explanation, leading her to a conveniently vacant booth. It was still early so there were some seats available all around the room, but like the car park the place was filling up. The booth had a good view of both the stage (of course) and, less obviously but more importantly for me, the main doors. As soon as we sat down, a waitress wandered over. She was wearing a cocktail dress that was at least one size too small and into which parts of her had probably only been accommodated through the vigorous use of a shoe horn. One flash of the credit card and a bottle of champagne was on its way. “Not the house stuff,” I advised her, knowingly. “The good stuff.” She nodded and smiled, leaving with the knowledge that there was a big spender in tonight. We would be getting good service at the table at least.
“It’s not at all like I expected,” Miranda declared, looking with open curiosity around the place. Most of the clientele had their attentions fixed firmly on the dancer, the drinks menu or anywhere that wasn’t the other customers. “Much cleaner and far less sleazy.”
I knew of some of the kind of dens of debauchery that she must have been imagining prior to actually entering the club, but they weren’t the kind of places that hand out advertising of any kind let alone glossy flyers.
“Everyone is so kind. I had three men offer to buy me a drink whilst I was waiting for you,” she babbled on. I raised my eyebrows significantly and she paused to run the last phrase through her head once again. “I’m sure that they were just being kind … I mean, you don’t think … no … they couldn’t think that I actually worked here could they?” Then her consternation turned to amusement, “Well at least it’s nice to know that I have some options open to me if my job ever falls through.”
Her job, according to the thin file that Grayson had supplied me with, was working for a local authority sourcing the books for the children’s sections of the council’s remaining libraries. It was hardly the grounding for a sudden switch into terpsichorean arts of the unclothed kind.
The champagne arrived already uncorked and turned out to be not only French and from the Champagne region, but also of a pretty good quality. I’m no real judge of the stuff myself, but I’ve drunk enough of it on various Agency jobs to be able to tell quality from battery acid. It’s surprising how many would-be big shot bad guys think that being seen drinking champagne is a sure fire way to suggest heightened status. The lord lieutenants of evil don’t sup Newcastle Pale Ale.
“Ooh, that’s nice,” Miranda said, tasting the wine. I braced myself for her to say that the bubbles tickled her nose, but she thankfully refrained from doing so. “A bit dryer than I was expecting.”
The show on the stage switched to a performer dressed as a member of the emergency services who was clearly using the phrase ‘fireman’s hose’ as a metaphor. Now that we were here, I wasn’t sure what I ought to be looking for. The most obvious thing would have been a science geek being openly dragged against his will out of a side door, but ther
e was nothing like that going on. Those people who think that detective work is glamorous have never been on an extended stakeout that has no real outcome in mind beyond seeing what might happen. Then again this was the first time that I had ever been on a stakeout in a strip club, so I was willing to sit back and let things take a little while.
Unfortunately, that was not to be. What I was looking for came to me. Or rather, what I was looking for sent someone to fetch me.
The doorman was so large that he managed to cast a shadow over the table even in the muted lighting of the club. His arrival showed very inconsiderate timing since the champagne bottle was still half-full. He was on his own, so he hadn’t come to throw me out. Not that he couldn’t have managed it on his own without ease, but even a single person could cause enough of a scene to give the other customers pause for thought about coming back and ejections were better handled with enough numbers to intimidate people out onto the street instead of physically picking them up and carrying them (though that was clearly a second option).
“Boss would like to speak with you,” the big man said. He was clearly a man for whom the beating of bushes was not a consideration.
I looked up at him coolly, “Ah, but the main question is whether I would like to speak to your boss.” It was a pure bluff, of course, and I’m not too big to admit that it was partly motivated by the fact that I was sat across the table from an incredibly attractive woman that I wanted very badly to impress. I’m also not too big to admit that it was also partly motivated from my own bloody-mindedness, which was going to make use of any opportunity, however petty, to get back at the man for not letting me inside in the first place. “What do you think?”
“I think that the boss wants to speak to you,” he replied doggedly, not moving and masking my view of both the stage and the door, which was pretty hard for one man to do on his own.
The Man From U.N.D.E.A.D. - the Curious Case of the Kidnapped Chemist Page 7