The Rave: A gritty crime drama you won't want to put down (Valley Park Series Book 2)

by Nicky Black

  TOMMY

  The second slow dance was crawling to its final, painful crescendo, Jed finally in the throes of snogging a girl who resembled the woman with the cheekbones from the warehouse storeroom, only shorter, stouter, and considerably more pissed.

  Tommy sat opposite Frankie, arms crossed, tapping his fingers on non-existent biceps as he looked around the emptying club. It was small but popular, and Tommy knew the lease was up for sale. His own nightclub; it was a dream he’d harboured for years, the thought of a nine-to-five job in a shop or an office filling him with horror. Not that he’d get one even if he wanted to. He’d tried and failed on many occasions, the boredom and the bitching driving him to near insanity. The bosses would send him packing for the smallest mistake or the first time he was five minutes late. They’d taken a chance on him, they’d say. Not often they would take on someone from “that end of town.” He’d let them down; he’d let his community down.

  All he had now was the fiddle job cleaning the Metrocentre a couple of mornings a week which kept his head above water. Just.

  A hand on his shoulder made him start. Jed, his elbow hooked around the girl’s neck, was retrieving his jacket from the stool, asking him if he fancied a house party. Tommy shook his head. House parties weren’t his thing these days. Full of bad home-brew and dope-fuelled epiphanies.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Jed looked like he too could crawl into his bed, but old habits died hard, and he whipped his jacket over his shoulder and led the girl away.

  ‘That’s all right, I didn’t want to go anyway,’ muttered Frankie, turning to Tommy. ‘Lift?’

  ‘Aye, cheers, mate.’

  ‘Right, I’ll just have a slash.’

  Frankie stood, hiking up his already high-waisted jeans and heading to the gents’ while Tommy sunk back onto the stool, resting his arm on the wooden bannister that enclosed the dance floor. A club like this would be perfect – a little goldmine. The flock wallpaper would have to go, the sound system replaced, the bar reconfigured. He could fill this place to the rafters, no bother.

  The club’s houselights flickered on, revealing Tucker, one blood-red Doctor Marten boot flat against the scuffed panel of the bar, his eyes on the door of the gents’. Tucker had beefed up in the last couple of years; he trained hard and fought easy, the steroids and fights making his eyes shrink to mere buttons.

  With an ominous glance at Tommy, Tucker pushed himself away from the bar with his foot, the flash of the blade making an appearance once more as he made a beeline for the men’s toilets.

  Tommy flew from his seat, running to Tucker’s side. ‘What you doing?’

  ‘What I’m told.’

  Tommy stuck with him, and they stopped at the toilet door, where Tommy pushed his way ahead of Tucker, arms held out, barring access to Frankie. ‘Howay, Tucker, he’s not done anything,' he said.

  Tucker raised his chin aggressively. Nobody said “no” to Paul Smart, the man that now had Tucker’s undying loyalty.

  Tommy’s eyes flicked towards the door behind the bar and the man it harboured. ‘What does he want?’

  ‘It’s business,’ said Tucker. ‘Maybe it’s family business,’ he added with an orphan’s bitterness.

  Tommy thought for a moment too long, and Tucker swirled the knife in his fingers, pushing Tommy to one side, and throwing the door of the gents’ open.

  ‘Wait!’ Tommy pulled on Tucker’s arm and to his surprise, Tucker relented, his hostile eyes taking on a warning. It wasn’t Frankie he wanted. Paul Smart wanted Tommy, and Tucker would never let his boss down.

  ‘Don’t be a dick’ead, Tommy,’ Tucker said, the “ck” rumbling in his throat like gravel. ‘When he wants to see you, he wants to fucking see you.’

  ***

  Paul Smart and half a dozen men played cards, a pile of notes and a bottle of whisky in the middle of a round table. The room was windowless and stuffy, the dense smoke making Tommy cough.

  Paul was facing him, his eyes fixed in concentration on his cards. He raised his hand and Tommy stood still, knowing not to interrupt a man about to play a hand. Four of the men were sitting back in their chairs, arms folded, tumblers empty of their scotch. Tucker took up his post by the door, the greyhound standing motionless by his side, staring at a single point on the floor.

  Tommy put his hands in his pockets and waited, a small trickle of sweat weaving its way down his back. He’d hear what the man had to say, answer his questions, and walk away. Simple, he told himself.

  Paul was dressed in black, his high shirt collar tipped with platinum python heads. The wide pink tie would have looked ridiculous on anyone else, but Paul Smart carried off colour unapologetically. He bore more than a passing resemblance to a clown, Tommy thought. His forehead was wide and high, his nose and chin so close together they squashed his mouth into a pouting line, forcing premature ripples to form around his mouth like rows of brackets. Paul Smart could win any gurning competition hands down.

  ‘I’ll see you,’ said Paul to his opponent.

  A bald man with no neck laid his cards on the table with a self-satisfied expression.

  Paul regarded the full house, knocking back his whisky, and glancing at Tommy before laying down his cards.

  ‘Four of a kind.’

  ‘Fucking hell.’ His opponent pushed the cards away and Paul smiled, revealing short, gapped teeth. He pulled the money towards him as the bald man stood, grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair, and pushed past Tommy, leaving the room in quiet rage. The other men began to file out, shaking Paul’s hand, heading back to their wives with empty pockets and a few lies to think up.

  Without looking at Tommy, Paul beckoned him over. Tommy sat on the chair furthest away from him, hands still in his pockets.

  ‘Drink?’ asked Paul.

  Tommy shook his head, wondering how to play this. Friendly? Cocky? He decided on a bit of both.

  ‘Bit low brow for you this, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Thought I might find you here,’ Paul replied, pouring himself a generous drink. ‘I hear you got raided tonight, by Peach himself.’ Tommy’s blank look brought a frown to Paul’s face. ‘You know, big ’tash, googly eyes.’

  ‘I know who he is,’ said Tommy.

  ‘Of course, you do.’ Paul offered a half smile of insight, but he left it there, hanging in the air like a bare bulb. ‘I suppose as long as they’re chasing you, it keeps them out of my hair.’ He tapped his lacquered flat-top and Tommy wondered if it was mowed to perfection daily like a tennis court – it never got any longer, and it never got any shorter.

  ‘I hear there’s money to be made at these parties,’ said Paul. ‘Public-school boys down south, raking it in, eh? Posh kids with university degrees? The rich getting richer?’

  Tommy attempted a bored expression but wasn’t sure he pulled it off. ‘Tucker said you wanted to talk business. What sort of business?’

  ‘Funny business,’ said Paul. ‘Keeps me laughing, all the way to the bank.’ He smiled, and Tucker snorted like a wart hog, the brown-nosing twat. Looking over his shoulder, Tommy noticed that even the greyhound had lifted its head as if trained to laugh at Paul Smart’s jokes. The whole scenario was becoming offensive – Tucker, Smartie, the stink of sweat and whisky, the heat.

  He turned back to Paul. ‘What, lending to people with nowt? Aye, that’s a right laugh.’

  Paul’s face became stern. ‘I offer a service to the community,’ he said, ‘one your old man was more than happy to take advantage of.’

  And just like that, the light bulb sparked into life, and Tommy’s skin prickled. His father, Reggie, had been an abysmal gambler, in debt to Paul Smart for thousands. But still he’d kept on betting, despite his better nature.

  ‘He had a problem,’ said Tommy, his defences up despite his aversion to his father and his crime.

  ‘Oh, so do I.’ Paul put his hand on the pile of notes next to him. ‘Only I win.’

  Tommy wasn’t sure whether it was the h
eat or the memory of his father, long pushed to the back of his mind, that made his lungs tighten.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked, attempting to expedite matters.

  ‘A new venture,’ said Paul, his blue eyes suddenly animated. ‘Something with a bit more – what do you say – panache. I’m expanding my interests.’

  Paul was watching him keenly, waiting for what Tommy would say next, which was nothing.

  ‘Raves, man!’ said Paul. ‘All-nighters! They’re all the rage.’

  Tommy frowned, curled his lip a little. ‘What do you know about it?’

  ‘Nowt,’ said Paul. ‘But you do.’

  ‘Bit out of your league, isn’t it?’

  An intake of breath came from behind him – Tucker, making it clear Tommy had taken the challenge too far. It didn’t do to patronise the likes of Mr Smart, but Paul let out a rumbling laugh that seemed to go on for minutes rather than seconds.

  ‘You should be on the fucking telly, you,’ he said. ‘Now, here’s something you should know.’ The smile was gone, and he was leaning forward, pointing a manicured finger. ‘Nothing, I repeat, nothing, is out of my league, laddie. Now, you’ve got a problem. You’re being shut down, am I right?’ He leaned further over the table and Tommy pushed back into the hard wood of the chair. ‘But,’ Paul continued, his tone beginning to coax, ‘if you can get a few thousand to one of your dos they’d have to leave you to it. Wouldn’t want a riot on their hands – bad for community relations.’

  The trickle of sweat had turned into a river and was running into the crack of Tommy’s arse. The conversation was going in a direction he didn’t like one bit.

  He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Actually, Smartie, we’re not doing any more,’ he lied. ‘So, if you’ll excuse me.’ He made to get to his feet.

  ‘Sit down!’ Paul’s voice cracked like a whip and Tommy’s wet arse cheeks hit the chair hard. ‘And it’s Mister Smart to you.’ His steely eyes remained on Tommy as he bent to pick up a shoe box from beside his chair. ‘Here. Watch these.’ Paul slid the box across the table. ‘Proper raves from down south. And one of yours.’

  Tommy attempted to keep his hands steady as he opened the box and looked down at two videocassettes.

  ‘Had some of my lads at your dos these last few weeks.’ Paul indicated the videos with his head. ‘Thought I’d see what all the fuss is about.’

  Tommy recalled one of his raves at the old Wallsend shipyard – abandoned only a year earlier and still in good nick – some bloke with a video camera who’d been escorted from the premises. Tommy had thought he was police until he noticed the Borstal spot on the fella’s temple.

  ‘Load of fucking bollocks if you ask me,’ Paul said, visibly tetchy. ‘But hey, who am I to argue with a whole generation?’

  Paul Smart was barely into his thirties, and yet he seemed a whole generation away from Tommy. People were getting old before their time. You were lucky if you made it to fifty on Valley Park.

  ‘There’s always money to be made from rebellion.’ Paul smiled, relaxing somewhat, as if the very thought of profit relieved his anxieties. He sat back and crossed his legs, grasping his knee with knitted fingers. ‘Right, so, who supplies your drugs?’

  There it was: the interests that Paul Smart was expanding, the panache he so desired.

  Contempt settled in Tommy’s gut. ‘There’s no drugs at our dos,’ he said.

  Paul snorted. ‘Get away to Gateshead.’

  ‘Everybody’s searched, and if there’s ’owt dodgy they don’t get in.’ He knew what was coming: Paul Smart supplying drugs to his raves. His raves. He’d rather buff the floors of the Metrocentre for the rest of his life.

  ‘Are you taking the piss?’ Paul was scratching at his forehead.

  ‘That’s the policy.’

  ‘Policy? Jesus.’ Paul pointed at the shoe box. ‘They’re all off their fucking heads, man, are you blind?’

  Tommy blinked, hesitated. The drugs were part and parcel of the scene, just as it had been for the hippies twenty years earlier, but for him it was about the music, the integrity of it, the way it brought people together in dance; the rhythm of language without words; musical freedom. And where better to express it than in the city’s forgotten warehouses, monuments of decay, of toil and sweat. He couldn’t control what they took before they got there, and a couple of pills changing hands didn’t bother him but dealing on the scale Paul Smart was interested in was something else altogether. It was seeped in greed and violence, the very things the acid-house movement rejected, and the very things Paul Smart represented.

  ‘We make the money off the door,’ Tommy said, flatly.

  Paul rubbed a hand over his mouth. ‘You’re not a very good business man, are you?’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ Tommy replied.

  ‘That’s fact, laddie. You’ve not even got any shoes.’

  Tommy looked down at his socked feet, the toe bulging, and he felt the heat of embarrassment rising up his neck.

  ‘How much does it cost, to put on one of these all-nighters?’ Paul asked. ‘A proper one. Lights, bouncy castles, Frankie Fucking Knuckles?’

  ‘So, you do know something about it.’

  ‘Not as daft as I look,’ said Paul. ‘Five, ten grand? You’d get a hell of a party for that.’

  He would, there was no denying it. With thousands of punters they’d make tens of thousands of pounds. But Tommy wasn’t daft, he knew what it meant to involve someone like Paul Smart. It would never end.

  ‘I don’t need a loan,’ he said, ‘but thanks for the offer, I appreciate it.’

  Paul stared at him full-on for some moments, and Tommy, unable to read his expression, felt his nerves start to fray. He flinched when Paul rose suddenly from his chair, but the blow didn’t come. Instead, Paul strode over to the dog, getting down on one knee and ruffling its ears, leaving Tommy wondering if the conversation was finally over.

  ‘Bought this beauty from Hadgy Dodds,’ Paul said. ‘She’s going to make me some serious cash.’

  Tommy thought he spotted worry on the dog’s face, as if she knew her fate if she didn’t live up to expectations. ‘I wouldn’t buy nowt off Hadgy Dodds,’ he said, the attempt at banter signalling his relief at being able to stand; at still having his legs.

  Paul was looking into the dog’s eyes. ‘I’m calling her Peach Surprise, just for you.’

  The door and Frankie beyond it beckoned, and Tommy felt like a child in the headmaster’s office, wondering if he should wait to be dismissed.

  ‘And tell your friend with the bonny hair that I’ve bought the debt for the dodgy trainers,’ Paul said.

  Tommy’s mind wandered to Jed and the shoe boxes that lined the walls of his bedroom.

  ‘Tucker’s collecting the money from now on, and he’ll be wanting five hundred quid in the next two days.’ Paul grinned up at Tommy. ‘See? Diversification. Don’t forget your videos.’

  Tommy snatched the videotapes from the box and walked to the door, grasping the handle. He wasn’t quite sure how he’d done it, but he’d got away with saying “no” to Paul Smart; a tiny triumph on a night of failure.

  But his foot was barely over the threshold when he heard Paul’s voice at his shoulder.

  ‘If you don’t do it for me, do it for your family.’

  ***

  Tommy’s garden wall was cool and damp with dew as he sat next to Frankie, sharing a cigarette, the first signs of dawn visible over the chimney tops of Valley Park. Across the road, a burnt-out car still smoked from last night’s mischief. The estate was quiet now, the daylight tranquil enough. It was the nights that came alive, the estate holding its breath during dusk until the fire, the bottles, and the joy-riders took control.

  Tommy slouched and bounced his heels off the wall, his trainer and Paul Smart’s videos next to him. ‘Look, Frankie, if you couldn’t get cars, it wouldn’t bother me. I’d get a taxi.’

  ‘You can’t afford taxis.'

 
‘Nar, but I would, if I could.’

  Frankie was rubbing at his palm with the thumb of his other hand.

  ‘What?’ asked Tommy.

  ‘Well, sometimes I feel like, you know … I don’t fit in.’

  Frankie was the butt of everyone’s jokes, especially Jed’s, but Tommy liked him. He was loyal and protective, and at twenty-eight years old, he was like the big brother Tommy never had but knew existed out there somewhere. He’d failed to extricate the right information from his mother, always frightened he’d bring on the tears and the days – sometimes weeks – in bed the boy’s memory seemed to induce. She’d given the child up before Tommy was even a glint in her eye, and now she was gone the information would lie forever unknown. His father had similarly remained silent on the issue, and he could hardly ask Reggie about it now. Tommy hadn’t seen his father in five years, and nor did he want to.

  He straightened his back and put a hand on Frankie’s shoulder. ‘What the fuck are you on about? ’Course you fit in. It’s good you can get cars, but you’re a mate first, right? Hundred per center.’

  Frankie rubbed at his mouth, trying to hide a small smile. He’d been a regular attender at Tommy and Jed’s Northern Soul revivals back in ’87. Frankie had the moves down to a fine art despite his short, round stature, and his spins had become not only renowned but expected. He’d worked cash-in-hand for Honest Jim’s Motors for ten years, and Jim trusted him with the array of his customers’ bangers and classic cars. The odd lift to their venues had turned into a regular chauffeur job, Frankie happy to talk for hours about his favourite music and spend more time doing something he loved even more than dancing: driving cars.

  Tommy handed the cigarette back to Frankie, and they both looked to their right at the sound of scraping. A young boy walked towards them, dragging a stick across the walls and garden gates. It was one of the Logans – the youngest one, Carl - naked bar a pair of dirty Y-fronts, his brown eyes, massive in his gaunt head, cast down to the pavement, and snot caking his upper lip. Tommy kept his eyes on little Carl, wary of any of the Logans, even the seven-year-old.