None of the street lights along the far side of the square were working, forming a deep pool of darkness into which he drove and parked his vehicle. He got out and stood by the car, hearing the tick, tick of cooling metal, and listening intently for any hint of activity nearby. The explosion at the Chinatown bank had started a blaze which lit up the night sky beyond the nearest buildings. He could hear sirens and the crackle of gunfire and raised voices echoing around empty streets, and decided that it was safe to move.
He stuck to the network of narrow streets and lanes which fanned out like a spider’s web across Soho to the north of Shaftesbury Avenue. Bridle Lane, Great Pulteney Street, Peter Street. The devastation here was extraordinary. Stolen vehicles discarded and set alight. Almost every building — shops and offices — violated by looters. The pedlars of sex and pornography who sold their wares in the streets and alleys of Soho had been cleaned out. Slinky’s, For the Liberated and Enslaved — Corsets — Rubber — Leather. The lap dance joints and tattooists and cinemas had been stripped bare. Broken glass and discarded merchandise lay in drifts along streets where doors hung off twisted hinges and windows were black holes. Pubs where he had drunk, and restaurants where he had eaten, were barely recognisable. Soho Spice, The Blue Posts.
Dean Street was shrouded in darkness. The explosion at the bank down on the avenue seemed to have affected power supplies. There were no street lights. But the reflection of an eerie, flickering light licked faintly up the walls of its deserted clubs and restaurants from the fire in Chinatown. Broken glass on the pavements sparkled like frost, and a cold wind carried on it the smell of smoke and burning rubber. The cream-painted walls of a piano bar on the corner with Meard Street were streaked black from the blaze which had gutted it.
MacNeil flitted quickly through the dark to the east side of Dean Street and headed north. Fifty yards brought him to the steel-shuttered facade of the Black Ice Club. There had been clear attempts to force an entry, but metal grilles had so far kept the looters at bay. MacNeil was not sure what he had expected to find. If the club was still in operation, it was hardly likely to be advertising itself. He stood perfectly still, listening. And he felt, more than heard, the faintest thump, thump, thump. The monotonous, endlessly repetitive dance music that so characterised the tastes of today’s kids. Not, he supposed, that it had been all that different in his day. It was all a matter of what you grew up with, and grew out of.
He could not have said for certain that the music was coming from inside the Black Ice Club. But he would have risked money on it, if he’d had to. There had to be another way in. At the end of the block, opposite the Wen Tai Sun Chinese News Agency, a narrow lane led beneath overhead offices, into a cobbled courtyard filled to overflowing with wheely bins which hadn’t been emptied in months. Rats scurried in panic around his feet as MacNeil moved warily through the dark of the alley into the courtyard beyond. There were black-painted railings, and steel-barred windows, and fire escapes that zigzagged up the sides of brick-built office blocks. A pencil-thin line of light showed all around a thick steel door. As he approached it, MacNeil sensed the music getting louder. And now he heard it, rather than felt it.
It seemed extraordinary to MacNeil that people would want to be out partying given the dangers of infection, and the lawless, lethal streets that they would be required to negotiate safely after curfew. Never mind the fact that it was illegal. But then, he thought, a restless generation of kids with energy and money to burn simply weren’t going to stay at home and watch telly with mum and dad. He supposed they probably got a kick out of it, living life on the edge. Better than drugs. But he was willing to bet that the patrons of the Black Ice Club, on the other side of that steel door, would be rich kids from Chelsea and South Ken. Kids from privileged homes, with daddy’s money in their pockets. Not the sort of place a crematorium worker from a South Lambeth slum was likely to frequent.
He hammered on the steel door and stood back, waiting. Nothing happened. He hammered again, and this time a small metal hatch slid open. Light and music spilled out into the darkness of the courtyard, and a face peered suspiciously into MacNeil’s. ‘What do you want?’
‘A drink.’
‘Don’t know you.’
‘I’m a friend of Ronnie’s. Ronnie Kazinski. He told me a thirsty man could get a drink here any time. And I’ve got a hell of a drouth.’
‘How did you get through the curfew?’
‘How does anyone?’
‘Most people arrive before it starts and leave when it finishes.’
MacNeil shrugged. ‘I guess I must have been lucky.’
The bouncer looked at him for several long moments before sliding the hatch shut. For a while, MacNeil thought he wasn’t going to open up. And then he heard the scrape of metal bolts being withdrawn, and the door swung in. The bouncer was a big man, but not as big as MacNeil. His head was shaved, and he wore a leather waistcoat over his naked chest. A beer belly hung low over baggy jeans. A grubby-looking white surgical mask covered the lower half of his face, and he regarded MacNeil warily before flicking his head to indicate that he should come in.
‘Cheers, mate,’ MacNeil said. ‘Where’s the bar?’
‘Downstairs.’
II
As he went down the stairwell, the music rose to greet him like a physical assault. A brain-numbing level of decibels. Coloured lights were soaked up by black walls, and when he reached the dance floor, maybe two hundred people moved in one undulating wave of sweating humanity, lost in some primordial trance, swaying to sounds that owed more to distant tribal roots than to a sophisticated modern society. They all wore white surgical masks, like a uniform. And in the ultraviolet overhead strips, the masks glowed weirdly in the dark, like a strange, luminescent sea of floating gulls.
There was a small stage on the far side of the dance floor, and two scantily clad females wearing pointed white hoods with slits cut for eye holes swung their hips and gyrated in slow hypnotic circles. A bar stretched along the length of the wall to the right. Two young barmen wearing army-style gas masks were busy serving customers lined up three deep. People lowered their masks to drink, then pulled them back into place. Used glasses were set in circular racks that slid into huge dishwashers to disinfect them for further use. Steam rose in great clouds from behind the bar into air already thick with heat and sweat. A perfect incubator for infectious disease.
MacNeil shoved his way through the drinkers to the bar. Anyone who objected was likely to get an elbow in the face. Vocal protest was drowned by the music. A dyed blond barman with black roots regarded MacNeil warily. MacNeil was older than the usual clientele, much more conservative, and he still had his coat on, in spite of the heat. Besides which, his face was bruised and lacerated on one cheek with tiny cuts from the glass on the forecourt of the South Lambeth flats. ‘Whisky,’ he shouted. ‘Single malt. Glenlivet if you have it. And a little water.’ It seemed like a long time since he’d had a drink, and now the anticipation of it was almost overwhelming. But just the one. He knew that more than one would weaken resolve and lead him into a downward spiral of sorrow drowning.
A glass with half an inch of amber, and a small jug of water, were banged on the bar in front of him. He handed over a fiver and got no change. He diluted his whisky fifty-fifty and took a sip. He turned to the barman. ‘That’s not Glenlivet!’
‘You said if I had it. I don’t have it.’ No apology.
MacNeil took another sip. It was just some anonymous blend. He was disappointed by the taste of it, but enjoyed its warmth burning all the way down into his stomach. Then he tipped the glass and it was gone in an instant. He thought about all the times he’d had just one more, anything to put off the moment when he would have to go home. Back to Martha. He thought about all the times Sean had been asleep by the time he got back. All those missed moments. All those wasted hours. And he turned and shouted at the barman for another.