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.
“
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
“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
