“You can stick with me for tonight, I suppose,” he said grudgingly. “You can make regular checks on all the ladies' loos, and if Angelo needs you to search anyone on the door he'll send for you. He's not allowed to search the birds.”
At risk of appearing stupid, I chanced a question. “What am I looking for?”
He shrugged. “Nobody gets in if they're carrying a weapon,” he said. “If they've got drugs on them, it depends how much. If it's for their own use, we take it off them and let them in. If it's enough to deal, they're banned.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I said, nodding.
He swung round and glared at me unsuccessfully for signs of insubordination. That meaty finger prodded at me again. “They might offer you something to turn a blind eye. Don't take it – and if you do, don't think I won't find out about it,” he advised grimly. “Nothing – but nothing – goes on in this club that I don't know about. Clear?”
***
The evening started slowly enough. I shadowed Len for the first couple of hours or so as he made his rounds. It was interesting to take note of the reaction he received from the punters in the club. Most people dived out of his way as he strutted past, anxious not to attract his beady eye.
“So, how long have you been in this game, Len?” I asked when we reached a bit of a lull. He'd stopped pacing and we were leaning on a balcony overlooking one of the dance floors. His eyes never stopped moving over the growing crowd below us.
“Ten years, on and off,” he said shortly.
I waited, but he wasn't going to elaborate without further encouragement. “You must have seen quite a bit of trouble,” I ventured.
He glanced at me sharply, then nodded. “Goes with the territory.” I'd seen people give up teeth with less reluctance, but I thought I detected the faintest loosening.
“How does the New Adelphi compare?”
He shrugged. “No better, no worse,” he said. Just when I thought that was going to be the end of it, he decided to expand on the theme, turning towards me. “You'll always get the Friday night heroes when you open a new place. Want to prove how big a man they are by having a go at the doormen, right? Happens everywhere. That's why Mr Quinn brings his own people in, like me.”
He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “Me and Angelo, we've been working for him in Manchester for years. He knows we'll stamp out the trouble before it starts. We've had to crack a few heads up here to begin with, but it doesn't take long before your reputation is enough to keep ’em out. You take on local guys and you don't know who they've pissed off and who they've given in to. You just run the risk of long-running feuds being brought into the club.”
It was the longest speech I'd heard him make. I opened my mouth to ask more, but my earpiece crackled. “Len, it's Angelo. Go to seven, mate.”
Len straightened up. “Keep checking for trouble in the loos, then stay round this area,” he ordered, striding away fiddling with the settings on his walkie-talkie and muttering into the mic.
I did much as I was told for the next hour. Nothing untoward appeared to be going on under my nose on the dance floor. I was quite surprised who I saw at the club, though.
I recognised one face, but took a few moments to put the right name to it. Joy, the brave one from my last class at the Lodge. She looked different away from her baggy track suit and serious expression.
Tonight she was thrashing around on the dance floor with a group of other girls, laughing and joking, with her arms draped round their shoulders. She didn't see me and I was suddenly wary about calling too much attention to myself.
At regular intervals I patrolled the ladies' on each floor. I nodded to Gary who was busy serving drinks in one of the upper bars. He flashed me a quick grin, harassed and sweating.
The loos didn't yield anything much to report. I wandered in, but nobody was actually shooting up over the washbasins. The most I found to complain about was the ladylike way some of the girls stubbed out their dog ends on lipstick-coated bits of sodden tissue in the sinks.
I discovered one couple in a passionate clinch in one of the cubicles and was about to throw one of them out for being in the wrong toilets when I realised they were both female. I made a mental note to ask the club policy on lesbian behaviour and left them to it.
I hardly saw Len again for quite some time. When I did he seemed to spend most of his time checking out the gents'. It was an interesting way to make a living, I supposed.
When I got back to the lower dance floor, Dave was well into his second set of the evening, lording it over his decks. He was biting his bottom lip in concentration, body jerking to the pulse beat of the music.
He had headphones, worn half on so they only covered one ear. More form than function. He looked up and caught sight of me, pulling his mic down to his lips with a wolfish grin. “Hey, it's the Foxy lady!”
I rolled my eyes, ignoring the smirking glances thrown in my direction. “Up yours,” I mouthed, heading for the stairs. I went back up to the next level, and resorted to watching the goings on from the balcony again.
“Don't worry about Dave, he tries to wind everyone up,” said a voice next to me. I turned to see one of the girls from the bar, carrying two fistfuls of empty glasses. She was tiny, not much over five foot, with dramatically spiked white blonde hair. The plastic badge pinned to her boyish chest told me her name was Victoria.
“I can handle him,” I said.
“Oh I don't think you'll have any problems,” she said. She broke into a big grin, the action dimpling her cheeks. She had a silver ring circling into one side of her nose, and two diamond-studded pegs through her eyebrow. “He's like a dog chasing cars, if you know what I mean – wouldn't know what to do with one if he got hold of it. And I should know.”
“He's tried it on with you, has he?” I asked.
She laughed. “Tried being the operative word. Trust me, the only place Dave can keep anything up is on a dance floor! Now Angelo on the other hand . . .” She winked at me, and darted away, somehow managing to pick up another glass as she weaved a careful path through the crush.
I turned back to the floor. Dave was just coming to the end of his shift. He handed over to another DJ and jumped down off the stage. It took him a while to get across the dance floor. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to stop him and give him a thumbs up, or pat him on the back. Anyone would think he'd just picked up a medal.
He jogged up the stairs and spotted me, grinning as he came over. He leaned on the balcony next to me. Sweat was dripping off him, his tight-fitting T-shirt streaked with dark stains.
“Well, Charlie, what did you think of the set?” he asked, although clearly he was already well aware of his own brilliance. He wiped a hand across his face, but he was sweating too much to make a difference.
“It seemed to go down very well,” I said cautiously.
“Very well?” he repeated, his voice almost scathing. “They love me out there. That's real power, that is. And there's nothing like it.” He looked down at himself. “I gotta go change before I go on again,” he said, straightening up.
He saw my sceptical look and fixed me with an intense gaze. “Believe me, Charlie, out there, knowing I've got this whole place in the palm of my hand – well, it's the best feeling I've ever had!”
He swung away. Victoria's scornful words came back to me. “Yeah, Dave,” I muttered under my breath, “for you, I bet it is.”
I was just about to go and make another dutiful tour of the toilets when my earpiece crackled again.
“Charlie? Front door,” came Angelo's distorted voice. “I need you for a search.”
I obligingly made my way to the entrance. Angelo and one of the other doormen were involved in a stand-off with a group of three blokes and their dates. They all looked pretty useful, and the body language when I arrived made it clear a confrontation was almost inevitable, if not already in progress.