Nightmare City

by Nick Oldham

Toni went towards the toilets, straight past Rider without noticing him.

  He put his glass down, slid off the bar stool and pushed his painful way through everyone to the Gents.

  The toilets were apparently empty.

  They were grim and unsanitary. The urinals were cracked and germ-laden. The cubicles looked ready to collapse like a house of cards. The stench hit Rider’s nostrils. His face curled up in disgust.

  Only one of the cubicles had the door closed.

  Rider crept softly along the tiled floor, stopping outside the cubicle. He could hear rustling inside and some softly spoken whispers.

  Two voices. Toni was not alone.

  Rider laid a hand on the door and tested it gently. Locked.

  For a moment he hesitated and thought about his actions. Something he would not have done ten years earlier.

  He knew the soft approach would be useless. The only time for questions would be when Toni’s head was being forced down the U-bend of the toilet and she was almost drowning in shit. Violence was the only method these people knew how to respond to. The quiet word, the exchange of pleasantries, was alien to them. Seen as spineless. But to have your head rammed down a bog, boy, they really understood and responded to that.

  Rider nearly turned away and went home to his poxy little bedsits and his dreams of a big-time strip club. That’s where he knew he should be, where he felt comfortable. This world wasn’t his any more. He’d grown out of it.

  Then he steeled himself and tried to forget the pain his body was still experiencing.

  He was going to do it.

  Shuffling back a few paces, he kicked the cubicle door open. It flew back with hardly any resistance and revealed the sordid tableau beyond.

  Toni was kneeling in front of a man who was sitting on the toilet, his trousers down around his ankles. It was a different guy to the one on the dance floor. His hard cock was three-quarters out of sight in Toni’s mouth. Very quick work. Must have been a pre-arranged tryst.

  Toni kept the prick firmly where it was, as though interruptions like this were commonplace. With her mouthful she turned and looked sideways up at Rider. She recognised him immediately. The organ popped out of her mouth and swayed unsteadily in her hand.

  Rider waded in.

  He reached across Tom, grabbed the shirt-front of the man on the toilet, and with no great effort - because the man was small and slightly built - lifted him bodily off the pan. He dragged him out of the cubicle and propelled him towards the Gents door, trousers around his ankles, penis having deflated instantly, now a shadow of its former self. He fell to his knees.

  ‘Fuck off out of it,’ Rider’s voice said in a tone not much louder than a whisper. ‘Now, if you know what’s good for you.’

  The man didn’t argue. He jacked up his trousers and bolted.

  Rider knew he had only a short time.

  He stepped menacingly into the cubicle where Toni was hanging onto the toilet bowl as if she’d been violently sick in it. Her big blue eyes looked fearfully up at Rider; ten years ago she had lived in absolute terror of him and now he’d come back to haunt her. He had been very cruel to her in those days. Treated her badly, verbally, and once physically abused her. He had made it clear he despised people like her. And Munrow had laughed and failed to protect her. All he was interested in were her numeracy skills, otherwise she could be treated badly by anyone. He hadn’t cared a fuck. She’d hated Munrow, but stuck it because the money and hours suited her lifestyle.

  Quickly Rider snarled, ‘You have a choice, Toni. Answer my question now, or I smash your beautiful face to fucking pieces ... then you answer.’ As he spoke, Rider knew he’d gone soft. In the few seconds since making the decision to act with violence and then going into action, he’d already backed off. Ten years ago her head would have been down the toilet already.

  ‘Where is Munrow?’ he asked, eyes blazing at her.

  ‘John, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since he came out,’ she cried. Her voice was deep, gravelly and could arguably have been described as sexy. Tears appeared in her eyes. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’

  ‘You had the choice.’ Rider grabbed her hair with the intention of pulling her head back before driving it into the porcelain. He’d forgotten she wore a wig and all that happened was his hand came away with a finger-load of blonde silky hair. ‘Fuck!’ he hissed and threw it over the partition into the next cubicle where it landed with a splash in an unflushed toilet.

  Toni cowered. She huddled in the corner with both hands covering the embarrassment of the short cropped hair underneath. She started to cry with short, jerky whimpers.

  Rider stood back. ‘Tell me where he is and I’ll leave you alone. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will, Toni.’

  Through her tears, she informed him.

  ‘Sensible fella,’ Rider said. He couldn’t resist patting her head patronisingly. ‘By the way, get a better razor. I can still see your five o’clock shadow, even under all that make-up.’

  Seconds later Rider was pushing his way towards the club exit. Racing in the opposite direction were the two bouncers, on their way to break up the reported fight in the toilets.

  Once outside, Rider breathed deep. He was relieved to be out of that atmosphere and the clientele in particular. Call it prejudice, he thought, but I hate transvestites.

  The pub was situated in the Little Harwood area of Blackburn, about two miles from the centre of town. Twelve men had assembled in the back room. One of them stood at the door in order to prevent any unsuspecting member of the public from bursting in. The remainder sat facing the large TV screen, watching the live transmission of a Blackburn Rovers match on Sky. The Rovers were one down.

  A serving hatch connected the room to the bar, but all the necessary drinks had been bought and the shutter had been drawn and bolted down. This business had to be conducted privately.

  Charles Munrow pushed himself out of his seat and walked across to the TV. He switched it off. Silence descended on the room.

  The other men watched him nervously. They were all tough, uncompromising individuals, but Munrow left them standing in terms of sheer brutality and animal violence.

  He was nothing special to look at.

  He wasn’t six foot six with a scar across his cheeks, tattoos on his arms and built like a brick shit-house. He was very average-looking. Five-ten. Firmly, but slimly built, with a pinched, unfriendly face with very closely cropped grey hair. Nothing stood out, except that aura which warned without speaking.

  In the days of the triumvirate of Munrow, Rider and Conroy, Munrow had been the most violent out of the three. Conroy would rather have had someone else to do his dirty work; Rider needed the right set of circumstances to light his blue touch paper, otherwise he was a pussy cat.

  During armed robberies it was always Munrow who would shoot some poor bastard Group 4 guard’s foot off. Just for the hell of it. Always him, when arguing, who would pull a triple-edged Stanley Knife blade and swish it across somebody’s cheek. Cuts like those were impossible to stitch.

  He had been brought up to be violent and loved it.

  In the end he was the only one of the three who went to prison. It would have been him eventually anyway.

  Eleven years in Strangeways had done nothing to soften his approach to life. He came out with a vengeance and the idea that he’d pick up the pieces where he’d left them. Assume his rightful position in gangland - at the top.

  Things had changed dramatically.

  The gangland he knew no longer existed. With the glaring exceptions of Moss Side and Salford, it was all much more subtle and organised. Now the buzzwords were ‘compromise’ or ‘negotiation’ or ‘strategies’. Words Munrow did not understand.

  When he approached Conroy expecting to be let back in, he found the door wedged shut. He quickly saw the reality that he was not wanted any more.

  All he had left was a rundown off-licence and two poxy launderettes which were throwbacks to the 1970
s. Most people had their own washing machines now. Who on earth wanted to use a scruffy launderette?

  He was virtually broke and needed to get back into the mainstream.

  Which he decided to do by violence.

  Munrow cast his eyes around the room. Some of the men were contacts from another era who had been left behind, like him; some were young bucks who wanted a chance to prove themselves. All were capable of murder. What’s more, all were willing...

  They were to be the nucleus of his new business team.

  Munrow opened his mouth. Prison life had put an even harder edge on his tobacco-stained vocal cords. Behind every word he spoke there was the hint of a cough ready to break. He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and spoke whilst the smoke was in his lungs.

  ‘We control the doors,’ he said gruffly. ‘We control the drugs in and out. Simple, innit?’ Smoke drifted lazily out through his nostrils and mouth. ‘And tonight we’re gonna make inroads into this problem of the doors. I don’t want nothin’ fancy. Just hard and fucking violent. We do three clubs tonight. Two at the same time - midnight - and the third, all of us together, at quarter to two. Dennis, are the cars ready?’

  Dennis nodded. He was one of the balaclava twins who had dealt with Rider.

  ‘Is everybody tooled up?’

  Heads nodded. They were eager to go and get some action.

  ‘Good. This should be fucking easy. They’re all tarts on the doors these days. They won’t be expecting us and we do ‘em good and proper. In and out. Don’t waste time, Make your point, then leave before the cops, or anyone else, has time to get there. And don’t use shooters unless absolutely necessary ... we’ll leave that for later when we all get together.’

  The bedroom upstairs at the back of the pub smelled of beer. From the plug-hole in the cracked sink emanated the unmistakable whiff of blocked drains. The walls were damp, paper peeled off, adding to the aroma.

  There was another stronger smell in the room: that of decaying human flesh.

  The room was an unhealthy environment for anyone to be in, let alone someone who’d been shot in the leg and had received no medical treatment for the wound.

  Such as in the case of Jonno, the young man who had been shot by John Rider a few days before at Blackpool Zoo.

  He was lying in a flimsy metal-framed camp bed. He had drifted into unconsciousness again, a blissful state for his body which could no longer tolerate the excruciating pain from the badly infected wound.

  Sat next to him on a stool, leafing through an old Woman s Own was the man Rider had quickly christened as ‘Curly’.

  Munrow came into the room.

  The stench hit him, clawed its way up his nose. Gangrene. He gagged and covered his nostrils with his hand. ‘How’s he doin’?

  ‘Not good. Needs a doctor.’

  Munrow eased the blood-stained sheet off Jonno’s body and exposed the leg. The true aroma of the wound whooshed up towards him like an invisible swarm of flies.

  The leg was in very bad condition.

  The bullet had lodged in the outer part of Jonno’s right thigh and the wound had quickly putrefied even though it had been repeatedly washed and cleaned. Now it was turning green and mouldy-looking, like Gorgonzola, and this was spreading rapidly through the muscles and into his groin. At the very least Jonno had lost his leg.

  Munrow had been very reluctant to send Jonno to hospital or get a doctor to see him. That meant questions. Questions meant answers. Answers meant cops.

  In the old days he would have brought in a friendly, paid-for GP. Now Munrow didn’t have the contacts.

  Jonno moaned and smacked his lips, which were dry and flaking. His almost-transparent eyelids flickered open a fraction. He mumbled something that made no sense. Sweat rolled off his forehead. He was burning up inside. His eyes closed wearily. He turned his head to the wall.

  ‘What we gonna do?’ Curly asked.

  Munrow’s cold eyes looked sideways at Curly. ‘Dump him.’

  Just after midnight Conroy was watching a pornographic video which had a weak and predictable storyline centring on the punishment of young schoolboys and occasionally their masters.

  He was at his house in Osbaldeston.

  Two bodyguards and their girlfriends were lounging about downstairs, probably snorting cocaine. Two more security guards and their Alsatians roamed the grounds outside.

  Conroy was in the master bedroom, lying splayed out naked on the bed. His long hair had been freed from its pony tail. The huge TV monitor in the centre of the room was showing the video. He masturbated himself slowly throughout the feature presentation. Having watched the film a dozen times beforehand, it was his intention to hold himself back from shooting his load until the climax of the film, during a mass rape scene at the end.

  It was one hell of a good film, calling for full audience participation.

  And it was nearing the end.

  Six trouserless boys were led uncomplaining into the headmaster’s study and told to bend over and touch their toes.

  The headmaster picked up his cane and flexed it. The camera pulled back to reveal that he wore no trousers himself and was sporting a huge erection. Conroy quickened his pace. In a moment the police would swoop and the real fun would begin.

  The phone next to his bed rang shrilly.

  With a snarl of annoyance he picked it up, thankful he had not reached the point of no return.

  ‘Yes? What the fuck do you want?’ he barked.

  ‘Boss...’ It was one of his guards. ‘We got trouble in town. Two of the clubs have been hit.’

  ‘What?’ he screamed. ‘Who by?’

  ‘The Thunderpoint and the Electric. All the doormen have been trounced.’

  So it wasn’t the cops.

  Conroy abruptly lost his appetite for self-fulfilment and young boys on film. He picked up the remote and pointed it at the TV, blacking out the favourite part of his favourite movie.

  ‘Get a car sorted. I’ll be down in five. Get tooled up just in case.’

  Conroy and his men were in Blackburn less than twenty minutes later. They went straight to the Electric which was within spitting distance of the railway station and was formerly a cinema.

  He did not actually own the club outright, but held a fifty-one per cent stake in it, the remaining forty-nine per cent divided between Morton and McNamara through a complex series of financial manoeuvrings which kept their ownership as secret as possible. Conroy covered the door with his own men and this ensured that only his dealers had access to the clientele and therefore he had a stranglehold on the drug trade inside. The Electric was not a big club, holding a capacity of two hundred. Nevertheless he cleared about £1500 per week through it in drugs money alone.

  It was very rare for him to put in a personal appearance at such a low level. He tried to keep his distance from the streets these days.

  Dundaven usually dealt with things here and Conroy was a tad uncomfortable as he sat in the manager’s office and glowered at the head doorman who sat on the couch, a towel pressed into a nasty gash on his cranium. He had escaped lightly. The two other doormen had been whacked into oblivion and taken to hospital by ambulance.

  The cops had been and gone, fobbed off by the manager, by the time Conroy arrived.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We didn’t stand a chance,’ the doorman whined. ‘They pulled up outside, two cars, three in each, balaclavas on. They were into us before we could do fuck-all.’

  Conroy sighed. Men in balaclavas. Right up Munrow’s street.

  ‘And ..?’ he urged the man on impatiently.

  ‘And they beat the living crap out of us with baseball bats or pick-axe handles - I don’t know which. You don’t really care when you’re being clonked. They both fucking well hurt.’

  ‘Why weren’t you ready? I thought protection was your job. It’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it?’

  The doorman looked sourly up at him. ‘Ready? Give us a break,’ he said. Al
though he knew he was talking to the boss, the pain in his head made him angry. ‘Why should we be ready for that?’

  ‘Because I fucking pay you to be ready, you fucking wanker! Where were your bats?’

  ‘Behind the cash counter. If we had them on us all the time the cops’d pull us. We keep’ em out of sight and only grab’ em when we need’ em.’

  ‘You mean you didn’t need them tonight?’

  ‘We was attacked - out of the blue. It weren’t like trouble was brewing.’

  ‘Did they say anything?’

  ‘No.’

  Conroy sat back and crossed his legs. He was annoyed and worried at the same time. Fucking Munrow! This had to be down to him. It was times like this that Conroy needed Dundaven. He would have arranged to sort Munrow out in the most appropriate way. But with Hughie locked away, a vital link in his set-up had been severed.

  Shit. How to get Munrow out of his hair? Then he remembered Tony Morton’s suggestion which, reading between the lines, went something like: Get John Rider to do your dirty work for you.

  But how could he get Rider sufficiently riled with Munrow to take him out?

  Conroy rolled his neck. It cracked obscenely.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the Thunderpoint. See if it’s the same pathetic story,’ he said to his bodyguards.

  It was.

  But at least he had had an idea about Rider and Munrow. A double whammy. One which would sort both of them out.

  They were ready for the piece de resistance.

  Possibly the biggest club operating in Lancashire, that midweek night was the Salsa, near Fulwood, just off the M55. Out of town, plush, up-to-date with state-of-the-art sound and lighting, it was frequented by footballers, Manchester pop stars and other minor celebs. The Salsa was a good, well-managed, profitable club with a capacity of almost fifteen hundred with it usually reached on Friday and Saturday nights.

  The Salsa was the jewel in Conroy’s crown. He owned one hundred per cent of it. A poor week netted him five grand in drug money alone. In entrance fees, which went through the books and were properly audited, the club grossed over £50,000 each week. Easily.