They stopped at the first door they came to. There was a bolt on the outside which Rider slid back. He placed his hand on the doorknob and suddenly the door seemed to have a life of its own and exploded open.
A huge form careered out of the blackness, brandishing a chunk of wood which was about the size, weight and length of a pick-axe handle.
The wood swished down into thin air, slicing through the point where a split-second before Rider’s head had been.
Rider crimped himself out of the way and the blow was completely ineffective. In a continuation of the same movement, Rider swung back, and landed an iron-hard punch into the guts of the attacker. The wooden weapon dropped out of his hands and bounced on the floor as the impact of the fist whooshed the wind out of the man, who sank down to his knees, clutching his stomach.
Rider stepped behind the figure, clamped his right hand across the man’s mouth, yanked him upright and growled, ‘Jacko, you dumb stupid bastard, it’s me!’
From what they could see of him in the darkness, Jacko looked a mess. Conroy’s men had not been nice to him. His nose was knocked out of shape, and one eye was cut, swelling and oozing some sort of unpleasant looking greasy substance. A tooth was loose and his ribs and stomach were a welter of bruises and grazes.
The three of them were in the room in which Jacko had been imprisoned. Henry stood on guard at the door, cocking his head down the corridor and half-listening to Jacko who was giving Rider the lowdown. Rider listened without interruption.
‘ Six of them, you say?’ he asked finally.
‘ That’s all I saw. Could be more.’
‘ They came in, took the place and they’re still here. I wondered why we didn’t see our door staff leaving. What d’you make of it, Henry?’
‘ Conroy… the guns?’
‘ Yeah, makes sense, taking the place over. But why, tonight, unless he needs the place now, or later today for something. Jacko, did they mention anything that could give us a clue?’
He wracked his brains. Couldn’t think of anything.
‘ What’re they doing now?’ Rider asked.
‘ Just hanging about, I think. I got dumped here and haven’t seen any of ‘em since. I couldn’t hear anything because we’re so far away nom the front of the club here.’
Rider looked up at Henry again. ‘They’re here for a reason and it’s nothing to do with selling drugs, because there ain’t no one here to sell ‘em to. I think you’re right, it’s connected with the guns. Let’s go and have a look what they’re up to.’
Exhausted, Henry’s heart dropped.
‘ Jacko — you leg it out of the window and stay low. We’ll lock this door and if they check up on you it’ll look like you’re still in here.’
‘ Anything you want me to do?’ Jacko asked.
‘ Yeah — gimme your fags and matches and don’t get involved. Henry
… let’s go looksee.’
‘ This place used to be a casino, closed early sixties. When I bought it, though it was being run as a club, it was in a pretty dangerous condition once you got beyond the public areas. So were some of the public areas, come to that. The ceiling over the dance floor is not the most secure in the world. I keep expecting the rotating silver ball to crash to the floor and kill some poor bastard underneath.’
‘ Any electric up here?’
‘ No, only on ground level.’
Rider was leading Henry along an endless maze of dark, dusty corridors populated by spiders’ webs, dust, planks and other miscellaneous pieces of rubbish which made quiet progress difficult and walking hazardous. The lack of lighting made it all much worse.
‘ What you see downstairs is only a fraction of what there is,’ Rider continued. ‘There’s two floors over that. Lots of rooms have been bricked off for whatever reason. It’s just incredible, really. You don’t appreciate what there is until you start looking.’
Rider struck a match which flared briefly, lighting up his face and also what he wanted to see — a door.
‘ I think we’re here.’ He extinguished the match, but before he threw it down ensured its tip was cold. ‘It’s so dry in some places, wet in others, don’t want to chance a match anywhere. The place could go sky high. Fire hazard, really.’
‘ Sounds a peach of a building.’
‘ It will be, it will be,’ Rider said, seeing his dreams for a moment. ‘We need to be real quiet now. If I’m right we should be over the main part of the club once we go through the door. I think the floor’s… not good, shall we say?’
‘ So I could drop through.’
‘ Distinct possibility.’
Henry thought about two broken legs. It would round things off nicely.
‘ Why are we going in here?’
‘ I’ll show you. Tread carefully.’
Rider pushed the door open and edged into the room. It was large and expansive. There were windows but all were boarded up and blocked out any light. Henry stuck behind him but found that he could see quite well; his eyes were taking advantage of all available light.
Rider went down onto his hands and knees in a movement so swift that Henry thought he’d gone through the floor.
‘ Look at this.’ He had found a trapdoor which he hauled open. Henry bent down onto one knee and peered into the hole.
‘ This room is directly above where the main part of the casino used to be. There’s a few of these trapdoors in this room. I think the management used them to keep tabs on the tables below, using one-way glass.’
‘ Bit primitive.’
‘ Before the days of CCTV.’
Henry looked into the void. It was black. ‘Can’t see anything.’
‘ No, you won’t be able to. That’s a false ceiling you’re looking at, and below that there’s another suspended ceiling. If we’re careful, we could remove a panel from this ceiling and try to move a panel from the suspended one, then maybe we could see down into the club, find out what’s going on.’
‘ Risky, but what the fuck.’
Rider reached into the space and fumbled about. ‘Got it.’
Henry fully expected Rider to come back with a ceiling panel in his hand, but he got the shock of his life when the other man produced a revolver which had been hidden in the space between floor and false ceiling.
‘ We may need this.’
‘ I suppose you shot Munrow with that, did you?’
A beat passed between the two men which sent a tingle of apprehension down each one’s spine.
‘ Thought so,’ said Henry, feeling sick.
‘ There’s two bullets left…’
After a whispered debate they decided that the best time to do any messing with the ceiling would be round about 4 to 5 a.m. From Henry’s experience, this was when people were at their lowest ebb. In the meantime, they tried to get some sleep — after Henry had set the alarm on his Casio wrist-watch.
Completely drained though he was, Henry could not sleep on the dusty, uncomfortable floor. His mind whizzed and banged as it thought through his predicament from every angle.
He made one incontrovertible decision. In the morning he would seek out Karl Donaldson and with his protection he and Rider would go to Police Headquarters and demand to speak to the Chief Constable. She was his only hope of salvation and fairness. Karl was his only hope of staying alive.
He knew he could not go on the run. No doubt Rider would be able to guide him through the low-ways and
