It was shortly after midday, but there was already a girl gyrating on a small stage at the far end of the pub. Bathed in red light and standing in front of angled mirrors so that every inch of dimpled flesh could be appreciated, she was removing her bra to the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.” A grand total of four men were sitting on high stools, one to each elevated table, dividing their attention between the girl now swinging clumsily around a pole and a big-screen TV showing Sky Sports.
Strike headed straight for the bar, where he found himself facing a sign that read “Any customer caught masturbating will be ejected.”
“What can I get you, love?” asked a girl with long hair, purple eye-shadow and a nose ring.
Strike ordered a pint of John Smith’s and took a seat at the bar. Other than the bouncer, the only other male employee on view was the man sitting behind a turntable beside the stripper. He was stocky, blond, middle-aged and did not remotely resemble Brockbank.
“I was hoping to meet a friend here,” Strike told the barmaid, who, having no further customers, was leaning on the bar, staring dreamily at the television and picking her long nails.
“Yeah?” she said, sounding bored.
“Yeah,” said Strike. “He said he was working here.”
A man in a fluorescent jacket approached the bar and she moved away to serve him without another word.
“Start Me Up” ended and so did the stripper’s act. Naked, she hopped off the stage, grabbed a wrap and disappeared through a curtain at the back of the pub. Nobody clapped.
A woman in a very short nylon kimono and stockings slid out from behind the curtain and began walking around the pub, holding out an empty beer glass to punters, who one by one put their hands in their pockets and gave her some change. She reached Strike last. He dropped in a couple of quid. She headed straight for the stage, where she put her pint glass of coins carefully beside the DJ’s turntable, wriggled out of her kimono and stepped on to the stage in bra, pants, stockings and heels.
“Gentlemen, I think you’re going to enjoy this... Big welcome, please, for the lovely Mia!”
She began to jiggle to Gary Numan’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” There was not the remotest synchronicity between her movements and the track.
The barmaid resumed her lounging position near Strike. The view of the TV was clearest from where he sat.
“Yeah, like I was saying,” Strike began again, “a friend of mine told me he’s working here.”
“Mm-hm,” she said.
“Name of Noel Brockbank.”
“Yeah? I don’t know him.”
“No,” said Strike, making a show of scanning the place, although he had already established that Brockbank was nowhere to be seen. “Maybe I’ve got the wrong place.”
The first stripper pushed her way out from behind the curtain, having changed into a bubblegum-pink spaghetti-strapped minidress that barely skimmed her crotch, and was somehow more indecent than her previous nakedness. She approached the man in the fluorescent jacket and asked him something, but he shook his head. Looking around, she caught Strike’s eye, smiled and approached him.
“Hiya,” she said. Her accent was Irish. Her hair, which he had thought blonde in the red light of the stage, turned out to be vivid copper. Beneath the thick orange lipstick and the thick false eyelashes hid a girl who looked as though she should still have been at school. “I’m Orla. Who’re you?”
“Cameron,” said Strike, which was what people usually called him after failing to grasp his first name.
“D’ya fancy a private dance then, Cameron?”
“Where does that happen?”
“Troo there,” she said, pointing towards the curtain where she had changed. “I’ve never seen you in here before.”
“No. I’m looking for a friend.”
“What’s her name?”
“It’s a him.”
“Yeh’ve come to the wrong place fer hims, darlin’,” she said.
She was so young he felt mildly dirty just hearing her call him darling.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Strike asked.
She hesitated. There was more money in a private dance, but perhaps he was the kind of guy who needed warming up first.
“Go on, then.”
Strike paid an exorbitant amount for a vodka and lime, which she sipped primly on a seat beside him, most of her breasts hanging out of the dress. The texture of her skin reminded him of the murdered Kelsey: smooth and firm, with plenty of youthful fat. There were three small blue stars inked on her shoulder.
“Maybe you know my friend?” Strike said. “Noel Brockbank.”
She was no fool, little Orla. Suspicion and calculation mingled in the sharp sideways look she gave him. She was wondering, like the masseuse back in Market Harborough, whether he was police.
“He owes me money,” said Strike.
She continued to scrutinize him for a moment, her smooth forehead furrowed, then apparently swallowed the lie.
“Noel,” she repeated. “I tink he’s gone. Hang on — Edie?”
The bored barmaid did not take her eyes from the TV.
“Hmm?”
“What was the name of yer man that Des sacked the other week? Guy who only lasted a few days?”
“Dunno what he was called.”
“Yeah, I tink it was Noel who was sacked,” Orla told Strike. Then, with a sudden and endearing bluntness, she said: “Gimme a tenner an’ I’ll make sure for ya.”
With a mental sigh, Strike handed over a note.
“Wait there, now,” said Orla cheerfully. She slipped off her bar stool, tucked the tenner into the elastic of her pants, tugged her dress down inelegantly and sauntered over to the DJ, who scowled over at Strike while Orla spoke to him. He nodded curtly, his jowly face glowing in the red light, and Orla came trotting back looking pleased with herself.
“I tort so!” she told Strike. “I wasn’t here when it happened, but he had a fit or sometin’.”
“A fit?” repeated Strike.
“Yeah, it was only his first week on the job. Big guy, wasn’t he? Wit a big chin?”
“That’s right,” said Strike.
“Yeah, an’ he was late, and Des wasn’t happy. Dat’s Des, over dare,” she added unnecessarily, pointing out the DJ who was watching Strike suspiciously while changing the track from “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” “Des was givin’ out to him about being late and your man just dropped to the floor an’ started writhin’ around. They say,” added Orla, with relish, “he pissed himself.”
Strike doubted that Brockbank would have urinated over himself to escape a dressing down from Des. It sounded as though he had genuinely had an epileptic fit.
“Then what happened?”
“Your mate’s gorlfriend come runnin’ out the back—”
“What girlfriend’s this?”
“Hang on — Edie?”
“Hm?”
“Who’s dat black gorl, now, with the extensions? The one with the great knockers? The one Des doesn’t like?”
“Alyssa,” said Edie.
“Alyssa,” Orla told Strike. “She come runnin’ out the back and was screamin’ at Des to phone an ambulance.”
“Did he?”
“Yeah. Dey took yer man away, and Alyssa went with him.”
“And has Brock — has Noel been back since?”
“He’s no bloody use as a bouncer if he’s gonna fall down and piss himself just ’cause someone’s shoutin’ at him, is he?” said Orla. “I heard Alyssa wanted Des to give him a second chance, but Des doesn’t give second chances.”
“So Alyssa called Des a tight cunt,” said Edie, emerging suddenly from her listlessness, “and he sacked her too. Silly bitch. She needs the money. She’s got kids.”
“When did all this happen?” Strike asked Orla and Edie.