retreated, apart from the one I'd still got on the floor. I was about to ask what to do with him when Angelo ambled up.
Before I could react, he'd kicked the man viciously in the kidneys.
I couldn't keep the shock out of my face. My feet took me forwards on a knee-jerk reaction, not to assist Angelo this time, but to obstruct him. I seriously contemplated taking him down.
Angelo looked all set to go after the guy again, but he caught my intention and stiffened, neck banded with gorged muscle, hands clenched. We stood each other off, my eyes meeting his steadily. I don't know what Angelo thought he saw there, but for some reason he changed his mind about the pursuit.
He exchanged a nasty grin with his colleague. “You gotta deal with trouble hard and fast, Charlie,” he said when his victim had crawled to his feet and staggered away, helped by his mates. “You show any sign of weakness, and they'll rip you to pieces.”
He gave me the once-over, as if making up his mind about something. “You'll probably do,” he decided, his patronising tone putting my back up. “Your reflexes aren't bad. You just don't have the killer instinct.”
He turned away then, clapping the other doorman on the shoulder. They straightened their jackets, looking pleased with themselves. Angelo inspected his knuckles, which were slightly skinned. I could see the fresh wounds alongside the scabs from some previous engagement with the enemy.
He was trying to act calm, but he was still wired, jittery, couldn't keep his hands still.
Len arrived at this point. “You!” he said, glaring at me. “Get back to the lower floor.”
“Suit yourself,” I said as I moved past him. “Angelo called me up here.”
“Trouble?” Len asked him.
Angelo gave him a big smile. He flickered a glance over to me before replying.
“Nothing I couldn't handle,” he said.
When I got back to the lower dance floor things looked pretty quiet down there, if quiet's the word to use for music belted out of a massive sound system at full whack. Still, at least Marc seemed to have fitted decent equipment, and had it set up to perfection. Distortion is very wearing to listen to. At the New Adelphi, there wasn't any.
I made another round of the loos, still without finding anything startling to report. I noticed Len coming out of the gents' again on one of the upper floors. Either the guy was paranoid about the punters getting up to mischief in there, or he needed a good dose of Imodium.
I worked my way back down through the different levels again. If nothing else, climbing all these stairs was going to get me fit.
The club was starting to really fill up now. Getting from floor to floor was more of a push and struggle. My eyes were beginning to ache from constantly scanning the crowd in the smoky gloom. From trying to spot the furtive movement, the sly gesture. The first hint that something was wrong.
In the end I didn't see the trouble going down.
I heard it.
Nine
I was on the stairs down to the lower dance floor when I first heard the screaming. I took a moment to focus on the direction, then started sprinting.
I took the last three stair treads in one stride and tunnelled through the press of bodies on the floor itself. Once I got closer I didn't need to ask exactly where the problem was. The way everyone was scrambling out of the way told me the answer to that one. The more hurriedly they were moving, the closer I was getting to the epicentre.
Finally, I broke through the edge of the dispersing crowd and found the tableau.
There were three players. The girl was doing the screaming, the action revealing her pierced tongue. She was dark-haired and rather plump, in a skirt too short and a lycra top cut too low.
On the face of it, she was an unlikely inspiration for a jealous rage, but from the look of the battle going on around her, she was certainly the prize. She didn't look like an athlete, either, but there was nothing wrong with her lung capacity.
The lad I immediately pegged as the prospective boyfriend was on his hands and knees at her feet, dripping blood from his lacerated cheek onto Marc's polished flooring. The other – clearly the rejected suitor – was still standing, a few feet away.
He was rigid with fury, breathing fast through his nostrils like a hard-run racehorse. He still had the neck of the broken bottle clenched in his hand.
I thumbed the transmit on my walkie-talkie. “Len, it's Charlie,” I said. “Lower dance floor. There's a nasty one going on down here. I need some help. Now!”
The girl carried on screaming, at that high, intensely irritating frequency of small babies and hotel fire alarms. The boy with the bottle was momentarily distracted. As though he couldn't decide if his best next move was to continue the fight with the prospect, or hit the girl just to shut her up. He shook his head suddenly, as if to clear it.
While he was diverted, I took a deep breath, tried to centre myself, and stepped into the fray. At least with the noise she'd been making, Len and the rest shouldn't have any trouble finding us.
It was immediately clear that neither of the two lads really wanted any outside interference. The reject was desperate for the total humiliation of his rival. The prospect wanted the opportunity for revenge, served hot. It was like breaking up two fighting Pit Bulls. I was more likely to find them both turning on me than I was of stopping them ripping each other to shreds.
“Come on now son, put that down and let's finish this the easy way,” I said.
He twisted towards me, mad-eyed so the whites of them showed all round the irises. “I'm not your fucking son,” he hissed. He brought the bottle up towards me, warning. The gleaming blood of his last victim still decorated its wicked edges. “Stay out of it, bitch, or you'll get some, too.”
He was dangerously hyped up for it to be drink, or simple jealousy. It was in his voice, his eyes. The way he held his body, jerkily stiff, uncoordinated. There was a sheen of sweat pearling on his face, but he was shivering. Great! Where was bloody Len when I needed him?
The prospective boyfriend had used the break in the reject's attention to climb warily to his feet. I risked a glance at him. The bottle had been applied by someone who'd had practice. The thrust-and-screw technique had opened up the whole of the left-hand side of his face. The skin hung in ragged peels from the top corner of his lip to just below his eye. It was going to take a micro-surgeon with a special interest in jig-saw puzzles to piece him back together again so he looked anything like the picture on the box.
I flicked my eyes towards the girl. She'd stopped screaming by now, shoving both hands over her own mouth and gagging as though about to be sick. I turned back to the boy with the ruined face. I hoped whatever she'd been offering him had been worth it.
I didn't like the look in his eyes. He didn't need to touch a hand to his face to know what had been done to him. The evidence was splashing down the front of his shirt in a scarlet river.
He started to swear then. Softly at first, but growing in profanity and volume as he launched himself at his attacker, oblivious to the dangers of the slashing bottle.
I couldn't let them come together again. I knew that. I took the prospect first, sweeping his legs out from under him to send him crashing. I only just managed to jump back out of reach of the reject as he sliced the bottle at me, aiming for my stomach.
I caught him a fast blow to the face as I dodged away, bloodied his nose. There was no real weight to it, but a remarkable amount of nerve-endings meet in the nose. It should have been enough to put him down, should have slowed him down at any rate, but he was feeling no pain. He shook it off like a light tap and kept coming, weapon lifted now, like a dagger.
Christ! Now would be a good time, Len . . .
I swallowed hard. I was going to have to hurt him to stop him. My mind shied away from it, but the facts didn't change. I dithered and nearly lost it altogether.
I hadn't heard the prospective boyfriend get back on his feet until he grabbed me round the neck from behind.
