made a brushing gesture to my nose and after a moment’s hesitation she glanced in the mirror and dusted away the frosting of white powder that lingered round her nostrils, breathing in sharp, as if trying to inhale any stray grains that had caught in the air.
'You know that’s the Old Bill down there?'
She resumed her position, her expression blank. 'What’s it to do with you?'
'As little as possible.'
The other girl glanced at me through the mirror, stroking a fluffy pink makeup brush against her cheekbone.
'The Old Bill sent young Bill up with it.'
The tall girl flashed her a sharp look and I wondered if they really were sisters.
I smiled.
'Very nice.'
Jacque turned back to the mirror, wetting her finger and smoothing an imagined ruffle in her eyebrow.
'Hadn’t you better tell us what it is you want?'
I opened my arms like an old-time ringmaster and said, 'Which one of you lovely ladies would like to be my assistant?'
Jacque laughed. Shaz shook her head then reached over and took the bottle from me, tilting it to her lips.
'You must be mad.' She passed it to Jacque, who tipped a measure into her glass. 'Bill would go crazy if we came down early. It’d spoil the big surprise.'
'Is he your manager then?'
The word ‘manager’ came out wrong and both girls shot me a frown. Jacque’s voice was flinty.
'We manage ourselves.'
'I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I’m in a bit of a bind. The trick I want to do relies on the help of a lovely lady and the audience seems to consist entirely of ugly coppers, so there’s no point in asking for a volunteer.'
The blonde girl aimed a weary look at me.
'You rely on a pair of tits to stop the punters noticing if you make a balls-up?'
'Not quite how I would have put it…'
'But, yes?'
'Glamour’s an element of the show, yes.'
'Ask chubby downstairs, I bet she’ll do it for fifty.'
Shaz laughed.
'She’d do it for twenty.'
Shaz giggled again when I asked if they were related and put her arm around the blonde girl, posing as if they were about to have a portrait painted.
'You might not have noticed, but we look a bit different from each other. Ebony and ivory together, sometimes in harmony.'
She ruffled the blonde girl’s curls and I thought maybe I understood what they were to each other.
'Hey, multiethnic Britain, no reason why you couldn’t be related.'
'Only through drink.'
Jacque slapped Shaz’s hand lightly and set to repairing her hair. I gave the room a last glance, taking in the scattered clothes and makeup, the rumpled bed with its tired candlewick and said, 'If you ladies want to make a quick escape I’d recommend you pack up your gear and leave it at the door.'
Shaz had started painting her nails the same flame red as her lipstick. She looked up at me.
'Don’t worry. You may be the magician, but there’s not much you could teach us about vanishing acts.'
I could tell from the rumble of male voices that reached me as I went down the stairs that the lounge had grown busier. I searched out the door girl; it turned out her name was Candy, though I doubt she’d been christened that. The girls had been right. She was eager to help me in a surly kind of way. I explained what I wanted her to do, then went back through to the lounge. Bill wasn’t the only one required to mingle with the invited guests.
The disco lights glowed hazily through the sheets of cigarette smoke that shelved the air. The room smelt of alcohol, testosterone and sweat. There were about twenty of them.
They’d ignored the booths that lined the walls, choosing to congregate in the centre of the room, knotting together like a fragile alliance that da break ranks for fear of treachery.
I sloped over to the bar, ordered a double malt and looked for Bill. I soon spotted him talking to a small man seated at a centre table. Bill was angled away from me, but he had the peripheral vision of a sniper. He turned and met my look, holding up three fingers, indicating he’d be with me soon. I nodded and raised my glass to my lips, letting the whisky do its slow burn down my throat, surveying the crowd.
A casual observer would have got an impression of cohesion, a solidarity of spirit. But as I slid amongst them the divisions started to come into view like the fractures in a jigsaw.
They showed in the tilt of the men’s bodies, a half-turned back, the block of a shoulder.
