by James Nally
‘No need to bother,’ I said, hands-up, taking a step back, ‘I can go home and get it, be back in half an hour.’
I took another baby step back and trod on a foot. I turned to apologise, only to nuzzle a great wall of chest belonging to another bouncer – and he wasn’t moving.
‘I’m sure you have nothing to hide from our friend Yulian,’ said Russki with a smile. ‘We do a quick search, you go in.’
My eyes locked onto Fintan’s, relaying the bad news. Through some inexplicable sibling sympatico, he read it instantly.
‘Hang on one minute there,’ he piped up. ‘If he says he wants to go, then he’s free to go. And after this harassment, I’m leaving too.’
Russki’s enormous left hand reached out to Fintan’s chest, shutting him down. Yulian palmed mine like a zombie on a first date. He reached into my inside pocket and whipped out my warrant card. He blankly absorbed the contents before handing over to Russki.
‘Why didn’t you tell us you are an officer-of-the-law?’
‘You didn’t ask,’ I said brightly, matter-of-fact.
‘If I know this, I let you straight in. Why you not show me?’
‘Look at the card,’ I said, suddenly emboldened by the memory of a small detail that I never thought would come in handy. ‘It has my name, photo and number. What’s missing?’
Russki surveyed it, his narrowing eyes dragging his brow into a full-on frown.
Suddenly I felt in control. ‘It doesn’t have my date of birth, does it? That’s what you asked me for. ID for proof of age. That doesn’t provide it.’
Russki handed it back to me nodding.
‘I see,’ he said finally.
‘Besides,’ I added, still a move ahead, ‘we’re not encouraged to broadcast the fact we’re cops, especially on a night out. It can put us at unnecessary risk.’
‘When he says we …’ blurted Fintan, ‘I’m not actually a cop of any sort.’
Russki ignored him.
‘You will be safe here tonight, detective,’ he said solemnly, standing aside, ‘I can assure you of that.’
These words sounded about as reassuring as the last rites.
As I walked through, Fintan turned to Russki and said, ‘You do know that every single ounce of Semtex in the world comes from your old Eastern Bloc. Ironic, isn’t it, that it’s now shitting you all up here in London.’
I floated down the ornate staircase on a current of relief, into the carnal-red, cabaret-style club. Fintan quickly caught up, riding a very different wave.
‘Fucking hell,’ he gasped, ‘I can’t believe you brought your warrant card on a job like this. What were you thinking?’
‘I hadn’t planned on showing it to anyone, Fintan. Did you think we’d get searched? Of course you didn’t.’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t bring my press card. I’d never take it with me on a job like this. Because I’m not a fucking idiot.’
‘We could’ve walked away until you opened your big mouth,’ I pointed out.
‘What?’
‘They could smell your bullshit. That’s when they started getting heavy. Until that point, we could’ve turned around and walked off. Instead they made you produce your driving licence.’
‘Yeah, but if you’d shown them your driving licence, instead of your warrant card, we’d be in the clear now. They’d have our names but no idea what we do for a living. Now they know you’re a copper, they’ll be watching our every move. They’re probably on the phone to Reilly right now, as we speak, telling him about you and some other professional busybody turning up at his club.’
We both stopped dead in our tracks. Until now, neither of us had dared to properly acknowledge what we might be getting ourselves into here. Suddenly Jimmy Reilly felt too real, too close.
‘What if Reilly turns up?’ I rasped, ‘Starts asking questions.’
Fintan’s cheek muscle flickered. He squinted to see things clearer in his mind.
‘We’re safe until the first edition lands,’ he said, ‘but when they see my by-line on that story, then our cover is blown. He’ll realise we came here to check him out.’
‘What time does that happen?’
‘The first batch lands at King’s Cross around midnight. That gives us almost two hours. But we need to be out of here literally on the stroke of 12.’
‘I’ll come and find you Cinders,’ I said.
‘No, you won’t,’ he muttered, ‘we leave separately, and not the way we came in.’
He felt my confused glare.
‘Check out the lenses,’ he said, his eyes shooting up.
About a dozen pillars propped up the ceiling, each one a four-eyed CCTV monster.
‘Forty-eight cameras. I bet there are 48 tables, one trained on each,’ he said.
‘Makes sense,’ I agreed.
‘They can watch us all night. If we both get up to leave suddenly, they could intercept us in the foyer for another chat. No thanks. Don’t look now but there’s a fire exit about 50 feet to the right of the toilets. Before it gets to 12, tell the lady you’re with that you’re going to the loo. On the way, veer right, go through that door and don’t stop.’
‘Until …’
‘We’d better not hang around the West End. All the nightclub and taxi radios are on the same bandwidth. The goons here could have every bouncer and cabbie in Soho looking out for us in seconds. Head to Tottenham Court Road but keep north of Oxford Street. Those roads will be quiet by then. I’ll see you at the Troy on Hanway Street, about 12.30.’
‘Why don’t we just scarper right now?’
‘Will you quit staring at that fire exit? Check out the stage instead. Everyone else is. Then let’s try to look like we came here for a good time.’
The club’s focal point was a glass platform about the size of four snooker tables, shimmering three feet above a sparkling blood-red floor. Little red circular tables, each dimly lit by a single lamp, jostled hungrily around it, like piglets around a sow’s nipple board. Silhouetted men sat alone in scarlet retro armchairs, waiting for the next floor show, studious, smoking and bereft.
‘10.09pm and not a cock in the house stiff,’ announced Fintan. ‘Bit gynaecological sitting that close, wouldn’t you say, Donal? Jesus, they might as well put them in stirrups.’
‘Ringside, quite literally.’
‘I think we’ll do better over here.’
He led me around the island of ground-level tables and chairs, up two steps to an elevated area, also wall-to-wall red velveteen.
‘Good job we didn’t wear red,’ he quipped, taking a seat at a front table, ‘they might never have found us again.’
I took the chair next to him as a waitress swooped in. ‘What can I get you gentlemen?’
‘The house champagne will be fine tonight, thank you,’ said Fintan, trying to sound like he usually quaffs the Dom Perignon.
‘Anything to eat?’
‘Just a portion of fries please, for now,’ he said, uncharacteristically frugal for a man who loved nothing more than splashing out on expenses.
‘Jesus, look,’ said Fintan in wonderment, nodding towards a dark corner behind the stage, ‘the livestock, in their holding pen.’
Inside a roped-off zone, a dozen or so fake-tanned, black-eyed girls sat bored and restless in their scanties, waiting to splay their orifices to the assembled pervs.
‘They all look orange, like Sooty puppets,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘By the looks of it, tan isn’t the only fakery going on.’
‘Hey, looking on the bright side, you still get to ram your hand up their holes later.’
‘Jesus, Fintan! They might just be dancers. Maybe that’s all Liz did here.’
‘Why do you always have to idealise women? It must be because you’ve never actually known any, not properly. Listen, if dancing is all Liz did, then she must’ve been better than Anna fucking Pavlova, to rent a flat like that.’
‘Why didn’t she scale down, re
nt somewhere cheap, then she could’ve stopped working here?’
‘They get hooked on the lifestyle. A lot of these women have several properties, kids at private school, membership to Chelsea health clubs, all achieved without a husband or a partner. Once you get used to earning a thousand pounds a night, how do you give all that up?’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing: ‘A thousand a night, for dancing and sleeping with one person?’
‘Some of the Arabs leave with three or four girls, and don’t even fuck them all. They still pay the ones they don’t touch just for sitting in their tent.’
‘In their tent! Jesus, Fintan, you can’t say things like that.’
‘What?’ he protested. ‘In the weeks before and after Ramadan, wealthy Arabs flood into London to shop, eat and shag, get it all out of their systems. Some of the poshest hotels erect tents on their roofs, supposedly so that the Arab men can enjoy their traditional shisha pipes without smoking out the hotel lounges and bars. At least that’s how the hotel explains it away to the other guests. The tents are for smoking alright, smoking hot hookers and drugs and booze, but well out of sight of their devout Muslim mums, wives and families. These men are the wealthiest in the world. It is almost a matter of honour that they party harder than the next richest man in the chain.’
He frowned and turned to me: ‘You have brought some money here with you, Donal? Or a credit card?’
‘I don’t have a credit card. I took out 70 earlier. I’ve got about 50 left.’
‘Fifty quid?’ he whispered, eyeing me in disbelief, ‘Jesus, Donal, I’ve just ordered the cheapest bottle of plonk on the menu and that was £120. You’re expected to buy two of these before a woman will even sit with you.’
‘I’ll just eat then.’
‘The chips are another 50.’
‘Fifty pounds! For a portion of chips? You can’t be serious.’
He pushed a menu towards me. I scanned it without bothering to disguise my disgust.
‘This is … obscene. We still have time to buy perfectly adequate £2 pints in any pub down the road.’
‘For fuck’s sake, you can’t go now,’ he muttered, reaching into his inside jacket pocket and whipping out a black wallet.
He set to work beneath the table, then tapped my knee and hissed: ‘Five hundred quid, fully sanctioned by accounts.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Like I said, it’s been signed off by accounts. Relax and have some fun.’
‘How would this look to anyone on the outside? A cop taking 500 pounds cash off a reporter, who is also his brother, to spend on hookers? I could get the sack just for having this conversation with you.’
‘I’m a little more concerned about us getting our legs broken if you try to leave after ten minutes,’ he growled. ‘I’ve had my hand under this table now for fully two minutes. In the name of all that is holy, will you take the fucking cash?’
I took the fucking cash, pocketing it seconds before the waitress bounced a wine bucket, two glasses and a bowl of fries off the cloth-cushioned table top. The fries remained steadfastly rooted to their receptacle because they were soggy McCain oven chips costing three pounds each. The champagne failed to fizz enough to flow out of the open spout, because it was lukewarm sparkling wine from Kwik Save. I suddenly didn’t feel so bad about taking the newspaper’s money. This felt about as luxurious as Ryanair.
‘Here,’ he said, pushing the wine bucket towards me, ‘take this, go sit over there, and get your enormous Rolex out for the girls.’
By 11pm, foreign businessmen flooded the Florentine; wealthy wallflowers coaxing out the honeybee hostesses in their black leather mini-skirts and orange tans.
Let’s get this straight – every female in the club had been officially rated since birth as ‘way out of my league’. Pretty, slim, lithe and glowing – they were the kind of textbook beauties dangled daily in the media as an example of what all women should strive to look like.
Maybe it was just me who didn’t find them sexy. Over-tanned, over-toned, overbearing – like their rictus smiles, their entire personas seemed dehumanised and robotic, designed for a photo-shoot rather than real life.
But maybe the finer things in life are wasted on me. I’d tried criminally expensive whiskey and chocolate, but found them bland and characterless. I’ve ridden in a Bentley and driven a Jaguar – both felt too smooth and insulated. No fun. As for food, I’d take a carvery over caviar any day.
Beer, bangers and boilers all the way for you then, Donal, I told myself.
My jangling nerves had a thirst on, polishing off bottle one in no time at all. Bottle two came with bottle-blonde Lenka, a Slovenian who proved every bit as bitter sweet as the Margarita she insisted I buy her.
‘So nice to meet you, Dunnell,’ she smarmed, making my name rhyme with Sally Gunnell.
‘You too, Lunka,’ I replied, wondering whether it was the sulphites, sugar or pesticides in champagne that always drove me slightly loopy.
‘Nice watch,’ she purred.
It was all I could do not to whip it off, hand it to her and declare: ‘It’s yours Lunka’ – just for the joy of imagining the chop-slap she’d suffer tomorrow morning when getting it valued at a jewellers.
‘Thanks,’ I smiled, ‘as you can see from my clothes and drink, collectible timepieces are my only vice.’
Her sapphire eyes flashed ‘timewaster’.
‘Apart from beautiful women, of course,’ I bolted on.
She nodded uncertainly. Wow, I thought to myself, I’m actually blowing it here WITH A HOOKER.
To fend off the ignominy of prostitute knock-back, I got down to business: ‘There’s a girl here who I’ve come to see. A brunette called Liz?’
Her face visibly warmed, as if to say: Aw, poor love-struck schmuck.
I pressed: ‘Do you know who I mean?’
She scrunched up her face in thought – her first spontaneous act in our five-minute relationship, and the first time she looked beautiful, at least to me. She shook it finally: ‘I can’t think of a Liz.’
‘Looks like Juliette Lewis, you know, the actress. I think she said her surname was Little.’
Her bottom lip dropped a fraction, almost imperceptibly, but her eyes remained icy, impenetrable.
‘I don’t know her,’ she said quietly, shaking her head gravely. Her gaze lowered, her pupils twinkling red, reflecting the crimson floor. ‘I don’t know anyone like you describe,’ she said blankly, getting to her feet. ‘Sorry.’
‘Lunka!’ I called after her, ‘what about your 75-pound Margarita?’
Black-haired, green-eyed Belarussian ‘Kate’ could’ve doubled for Betty Boop – if she put on two stone, shed 20 years of wear and tear and learned to smile. Her autumnal green eyes immediately triggered memories of Eve – my ex, the One, until she cheated on me with a man she subsequently killed. Cue a grape-fuelled outpouring about my disastrous love life. Kate’s eyes grew bigger, kinder, sadder as I ran her through Eve’s cheating, sundry rejections and my recent failure to ‘get it up’ during what should have been my first one-night stand.
I wrapped up to find her eyes inspecting me with a mixture of pity and contempt.
‘Jeez,’ declared the 40-something, emaciated, trafficked East European hooker, ‘yer life is fuuucked.’
That sobered me up. I ordered a pint of tap water, took a trip to the loo. Time to straighten myself out. On the way, I took a good look at that fire exit and asked Paul Newman the time; still only 11.20.
The kindly toilet attendant let me borrow a flannel. An ice-cold cat lick to face and neck coaxed my sobriety up off its stretcher to stumble. As I headed back to my table, I failed to pick out Fintan from the sharp-suited throng. A paranoid certainty slapped me back to pin-sharp lucidity; the fucker had already scarpered.
Ah well, I thought, as I sat back down, may as well be hanged for a sheep as a Lambrusco; I’d be ‘doing a Cinders’ and quaffing criminally over-priced bad plonk rig
ht up until the twelve bells.
‘Hey, I’m Tammy,’ boomed a typically nasal American female voice, and I cringed instinctively, ‘like the harlot from the Bible.’
‘Hey, I’m Donal.’ I smiled, vowing that if she started banging on about her Irish roots, I’d wordlessly get up and walk straight out the nearest door.
‘Thanks for not making a wisecrack about standing by your man,’ she said, taking the seat next to me. ‘Trust me, Donal, that’s refreshing.’
‘So is having someone pronounce my name properly.’
‘Donal like Zonal right? Or Bonal? Can’t our erstwhile conquerors manage that?’
‘Apparently not,’ I said, thinking what’s Bonal … the plural of Boner, perhaps?
Everything about Tammy seemed tiny. Five two tops; fine, almost pinched nose, chin and cheeks; girl-next-door brown hair. The exception: her all-ball, no-snow, brown Bambi eyes, whip-smart, knowing, a little dirty. Think Sandra Bullock in Demolition Man.
‘What’s Bonal?’
‘Oh it’s like a sickly sweet wine. What the French call an aperitif, which makes it okay to get pissed before dinner.’
‘You seem very cultured, Tammy.’
‘Lord no! I was a bartender, you know, a proper one. Got kind of obsessed with cocktails.’
Great, I thought, now she’s going to hit me for one of the £90 ‘Florentine specials’.
‘I wouldn’t bother here though,’ she said, leaning forward conspiratorially. ‘They’ve got a couple of kids decanting supermarket spirits into expensive bottles. They’re charging Japanese businessmen £300 for a bottle of £6 supermarket Scotch. That’s how they make the real money.’
Tammy’s willingness to share this dark Florentine secret suggested she was her own woman, ballsy and indiscreet. If anyone was going to spill about Liz Little tonight, it had to be the gobby yank.
‘You know, Donal, this is like a really expensive place to be bored.’
‘I’m not bored,’ I protested, way too much.
She smiled. ‘The second I saw you I thought “he doesn’t fit here”. I’ve been watching you. You seem determined to finish your overpriced drink and escape.’
