The Rock: A DCI Ryan Mystery (The DCI Ryan Mysteries Book 18)

by LJ Ross

“I’m thirsty,” Honey said, meaningfully.

  “You must be parched, after all the dancin’ and walkin’ round in those heels,” Phillips sympathised. “Let me get you a glass of water, pet.”

  She stared at him, and then broke into a smile.

  “That isn’t…quite what I meant,” she said, and glanced again at the menu.

  “Oh, aye! Listen, love, why don’t you tell us how much you need to make on the bar tab, tonight, and we’ll see what we can do, so you can just relax a bit?”

  Honey and Sugar looked at each other, then at Frank.

  “Well, we have to hit a thousand each,” she confessed. “I’ve managed seven hundred, and Sugar’s at five-fifty—”

  “How much?” Phillips burst out.

  “We’ll make up the difference,” Ryan said quickly, and handed over his credit card again.

  “Do you want a private dance? You could get a few, for that—”

  “Thanks,” Ryan said. “But, why don’t we just chat?”

  Both women visibly relaxed.

  “My feet are killin’ me,” Sugar confessed.

  “You girls worked here long?” Lowerson asked, keeping his eyes firmly above chest-height.

  “I’ve been here for a year,” Honey said. “Sugar’s only been here for a month, haven’t you?”

  The other woman nodded.

  “I haven’t seen any of you in here, before,” Honey said, and would have remembered the tall, dark-haired one, for sure. She’d have given that one a private dance, for free.

  “Yeah, this is our first time,” Lowerson said. “We heard it’s the place to come to.”

  While they talked, Ryan kept an eye on the door, watching the faces of those who came in and out. He saw men getting handsy, and being thrown out; he watched the girls’ faces when they thought nobody was looking, and saw the cracks in their armour. He watched some of them leading men—and the occasional woman—by the hand to one of a series of numbered doors, before returning again five or ten minutes later.

  “—love?”

  Ryan realised Candy had returned with their champagne, and accepted a glass from her, which he sipped and then put back on the table.

  “Thanks.”

  “You looked miles away, then,” she said, while her eyes catalogued and assessed. “You need somebody to talk to, tonight?”

  She touched a long nail to his hand, and trailed it across.

  “I’ve heard I’m a good listener,” she purred.

  Ryan had seldom felt more uncomfortable in his life, but he couldn’t blame her for that. She was only doing her job, and so was he.

  He pulled his hand away and was about to reply, when he caught sight of Phillips, whose face had turned the same shade as the walls since Honey had decided that she was feeling too hot in her string bikini top.

  “Here! You’ll catch your death—have my jacket,” he blustered, and before she could protest, he’d draped the pinstripe blazer over her shoulders.

  She didn’t know what to say.

  “Er…thanks?”

  “Don’t mention it,” Phillips said, in a fatherly tone.

  Lowerson and Sugar were chatting amiably enough, with the latter telling him all about how she was studying for her qualification in Social Sciences, whilst Candy seemed irritated at having backed a horse who seemed less interested in her than in their surroundings.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked, sharply.

  Ryan shook his head, frowned as he watched a man stumble behind a dark curtain, and then gave her his full attention again.

  “What’s behind that curtain?” he asked.

  She glanced over at it, then at the bouncer who stood guarding all who entered and left.

  “Um, that’s a private area,” she said.

  “For dances?”

  She looked uncomfortable.

  “Yeah, listen, if you’re not lookin’ for anythin’ else, I’ve gotta speak to some of the other customers,” she said quickly, catching the eye of her manager, who tapped the watch on his wrist.

  Ryan raised a lazy eyebrow, and tried a bit of charm, instead.

  “I haven’t been very good company, have I?” he said, apologetically. “To tell you the truth, I was looking around to see if I could find a girl I used to know. She went by the name, ‘Fuchsia’.”

  Something flickered in the girl’s eyes, before her mask fell into place again.

  “I don’t know her,” she lied. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  She moved off quickly to speak with one of the other girls, and dipped back inside the dressing room soon after.

  Interesting.

  “Now—stop that—I don’t need any head massages,” Phillips was saying, as Honey trailed her fingers over his balding head.

  “Spoilsport,” she chuckled. “What’s wrong, handsome? Worried your wife will find out?”

  She already knew, and that was bad enough, Phillips thought.

  “Now, here, you were about to tell me all about your plans to train as a vet,” he reminded her, a bit desperately.

  “Who do we ask, if we want to liven the party up?” Ryan said, suddenly.

  “What d’you mean?” Sugar asked. “Shots?”

  “I was thinkin’ a bit more along the lines of…” He passed a finger beneath his nose.

  “Oh,” she said, and found herself surprised. She hadn’t thought he was the type, but it turned out you could never tell. “Yeah, look, we’re not supposed to encourage that. It’s illegal, isn’t it?”

  She didn’t sound sure.

  “Yeah, but we won’t tell,” Lowerson said, playing along.

  “See over there?” Honey said, leaning across the table to point a discreet fingernail in the direction of a young-ish man in a well-cut suit who had stationed himself at one end of the main bar. “He’s the one to talk to about that.”

  “Thanks,” Ryan said, and signalled the other two that it was time to move on.

  There were the obligatory expressions of disappointment but, by the time the three men had made their way over to the bar, Honey and Sugar had moved on to the next table.

  Rather than approaching the dealer directly, they slid onto some free stools at the bar, all of which provided a good view of the man at the other end, as well as the dark voile curtain tucked against the wall behind him, where a steady stream of inebriated or intoxicated men were slipping behind its veil. Unlike the other, more obvious private spaces, Ryan hadn’t seen a single one of them return since they’d been in the club.

  They ordered a round of beers, and Phillips took a grateful chug.

  “I needed that,” he said.

  “Dutch courage?” Lowerson joked.

  “You can say that, again. My blood pressure can’t take all this excitement.”

  Jack grinned, and gave him a manly slap on the back.

  “You’ll survive,” he said, before turning to Ryan. “I thought we were going to have a word with the dealer?”

  “No, I want to watch him,” Ryan said. “There’s another room—maybe a network of rooms—behind that curtain. The men who go in there go in alone, and its entry is guarded, whereas the other private rooms aren’t. What does that tell you?”

  “That’s the bit they keep off the books,” Phillips said, and took another sip of his beer. “You wouldn’t get anythin’ out of him, anyway. His lips look tighter than a fish’s backside, if y’ask me.”

  Ryan almost choked on his beer.

  “Frank, you’ve got a wonderful way with words,” he said, when he was able.

  “I tell it like it is.”

  “One thing I notice about this place,” Lowerson said, glancing around. “All the girls are mostly white.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “In this part of the club, at least.”

  His eyes sharpened as a man of around his own age lurched towards the dealer at the other end of the bar, already fumbling for the wad of cash he planned to exchange for a bag of cocaine.


  He might have been clumsy, but the dealer was slick, Ryan noted. If he hadn’t been looking out for it, he’d have hardly noticed the exchange.

  A moment later, the man made his way towards the dark curtain, where he was stopped by the bouncer.

  Another quick exchange, and he was shown inside.

  “We’re in the wrong part of the club,” Ryan said. “What we need to do is get behind that curtain.”

  “I draw the line at that,” Phillips said, swiping a hand through the air.

  Ryan shook his head.

  “Nobody’s talking, out here, and they’re not likely to. Anyone after the kind of private, specialist service catered to by non-British girls won’t be sitting out here with the mainstream crowd. They’re through there…and I think I’ve found someone who might talk. Come on.”

  But, when they reached the bouncer, they found the way barred to them.

  “Where’s your ticket?” he asked. “You need a special ticket to come into this area.”

  “Where do we get a ticket?” Ryan asked.

  “Speak to the boss,” he advised them, and pointed out a man of around sixty, who was working his way around the room, checking everyone was having a good time.

  “Or, we could speak to you,” Ryan said, and took out a wad of notes.

  The bouncer eyed up the cash, checked nobody was watching, and then palmed a hundred.

  “Alreet, get yourselves inside,” he said.

  “Which room did that last bloke go into?” Ryan asked.

  “Can’t tell you that,” the bouncer said. “Now, piss off.”

  “Can you tell me for another hundred?”

  He could, and it was door number four.

  Behind the curtain, they found themselves in a long corridor, each marked with a brass number on it, and they made directly for the fourth on the left.

  “Why don’t we try a different persona?” he said to the others. “Let’s be three murder detectives, on the hunt for a band of ruthless killers, eh?”

  “I like that one,” Phillips said.

  “Let’s start by making a drugs bust,” Ryan said, putting his ear to the door of Room Four. “Lowerson? Watch the corridor. Frank? You’re with me. On three…”

  Two…

  One…

  Ryan gave the door one good shove and it flew open to reveal a boudoir, of sorts, with a large round bed in the middle and mirrors on every wall.

  And there, in the centre of it all, was the man he’d recently seen purchasing cocaine—only, now, he was in the middle of snorting it off the rounded backside of a nude woman.

  She screamed…he screamed…and promptly fell off the bed in a cloud of white smoke.

  “Northumbria CID,” Ryan said, holding out his warrant card. “Stay exactly where you are.”

  He reached across to pluck a robe from a peg on the wall, which he threw across to the woman who was presently trying to cover herself in black satin sheets.

  “You can go,” he told her, and she hurried from the room before he could change his mind. “As for you—”

  He walked around the edge of the bed to find the man hiding on all fours, his trousers around his ankles.

  “Get up,” Ryan told him, firmly. “We’ll be arresting you for possession…maybe with intent to supply—”

  “No! Oh, God, please, no…you don’t understand, my wife…this will kill my wife, if she finds out.”

  “Perhaps you should have thought of that sooner, Mr—?”

  “Smith?” the other tried, hopefully.

  Phillips reached inside the man’s pocket and pulled out his wallet.

  “David Sean Hopper,” he read. “There’s a business card here, too… well, look at this. He’s the headteacher of a local primary school.”

  “Tut, tut, Mr Hopper,” Ryan said. “Caught with your pants down. This won’t look good at the next Governors’ meeting.”

  “Please! I’ll lose my job, if this gets out…”

  His bottom lip began to tremble, at which point Ryan decided to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

  “Tell us a bit of information, and perhaps we’ll rethink whether it’s in the public interest to charge you for possession of Class A drugs.”

  “That’s up to seven years in prison,” Phillips put in, helpfully.

  The man began to sweat.

  “What—what do you want to know?”

  “For starters, I want to know why you still haven’t pulled your trousers up,” he snapped. “For God’s sake!”

  Hopper tugged his trousers back up his legs, apologising profusely.

  “That’s better,” Ryan said. “Now, I want to know where people go for the hard stuff. The really specialist girls, you know what I mean? Not the mainstream stuff. Younger girls—Thai and Oriental, mostly.”

  “You’re thinkin’ of The Dragon,” Hopper said, slowly.

  “The Dragon? Who’s that?”

  “I’ve never met him,” Hopper said, quickly. “A couple of months ago, I got chatting to one of the other regulars in here, and he said The Dragon runs the best girls out of the Golden Triangle. He brings them over, fresh, like—every couple of months.”

  Ryan and Phillips said nothing, so he carried on talking.

  “He told me to ring a number and they’d give me the address—”

  “What number?” Ryan asked.

  “I can’t remember—it was a mobile number, and I threw it away, after.”

  “You threw it away?” Phillips said. “Why would you do that, son? Didn’t the idea appeal to you, after all?”

  Hopper swallowed, and shook his head.

  “I rang the number, and they gave me an address in Killingsworth,” he said. “I—I went, but, when I got there, I just—”

  He trailed off, and ran nervous fingers through his hair.

  “Look, please, does my wife have to find out about this?”

  “That all depends on you, Mr Hopper,” Ryan said. “You were telling us you went to the address.”

  “Yes…yeah, I did.”

  “What was the address?” Ryan demanded.

  “I can’t—”

  “Don’t bother tellin’ us you can’t remember, lad. It’s written all over your face,” Phillips warned him.

  “All right. Okay. Um, maybe I can remember.”

  He told them a house number and street name, which Phillips made a note of.

  “What happened, when you went?” Ryan asked him. “Did you meet The Dragon there?”

  “No, like I say, I never met him…there was a woman running the place.”

  He could picture himself now, knocking at the front door.

  “She asked me what I liked, I had a drink, and then she brought out this line of girls…”

  He scrubbed a hand across his eyes, feeling suddenly tired, and dirty.

  “They—they were too young,” he confessed, and couldn’t meet their eyes. “I swear to you, I decided to leave. I never went through with anything. They were just too young.”

  They’d reminded him of his nieces, who lived three doors down, and who often babysat for his own children.

  “I have some standards,” he said, and realised how that must sound, for a man in his position.

  He looked between them.

  “Is that all you need to know? Can I go now?”

  Ryan looked at Phillips, who nodded at his unspoken question.

  “Thank you, Mr Hopper, that’s been very helpful,” Phillips said, and then drew in a deep breath. “I am arresting you on suspicion of possessing Class A drugs. You do not have to say anything—”

  “What? But—you said, you said—”

  “That we’d consider whether it was in the public interest to charge you. After due consideration, Mr Hopper, I can tell you it’s definitely in the public interest. On your feet.”

  They finished reading him his rights, then Phillips took him by the arm.

  “Time to go, bonny lad.”

  CHAPTER 34

&nbs
p; By the time the clock struck midnight, Ryan, Phillips and Lowerson had made a total of twelve drugs arrests, including booking the dealer for intent to supply and the owner of the club for causing or inciting prostitution, as well as running an illegal brothel.

  That was all they could manage, before the remainder of the club’s clientele scarpered like rats.

  “Not bad for a night’s work,” Phillips said, with a yawn. “Makes me wonder whether it wouldn’t be better to just make these brothels legal, then you wouldn’t have folk like Hopper slippin’ behind closed curtains, hoppin’ from one arse to the next.”

  The image of that was more than Ryan could stomach, at that time of night.

  “There’s an argument on both sides,” he said, and left it at that.

  “At least we got an address out of him.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “We’ll go there, first thing tomorrow,” he said, and turned his collar up against the wind. “Tonight was…an experience. How are you holding up, Jack?”

  Lowerson pulled a face.

  “Knowing what we know about how some of the women are trafficked into the industry…it takes the edge off, doesn’t it? When I was chattin’ to that girl, you could almost start to believe she was enjoying my company…but I could tell she didn’t really want to be there. Who wants to have to pay for company, like that?”

  “There are a lot of lonely people in the world,” Ryan said. “Not everyone is as lucky as we are.”

  “And on that note, I’m off home before the boss gives me my marchin’ orders,” Phillips said, roundly. “Night, all.”

  Ryan waved them both off, then began to make his own way home through the dark streets, the pitter-patter of the rain and the sound of the windscreen wipers keeping him company on the journey while his mind was far away, thinking of all they’d seen and heard that evening, and, perhaps more importantly, of all the things they hadn’t. He wanted to pretend that was all there was to it; to wash his hands of the whole, seedy world and go back to his own happy home.

  Then he thought of the woman on the beach, and of the woman lying in hospital, fighting for her life.

  He could not turn his back on the darker parts of the world, no more than he could turn his back on them. He would continue to peel back the layers, to lift each new veil, until he found the people responsible, no matter how uncomfortable it made him and no matter how ashamed.