It was a nice place, recently decorated, with the emphasis on wood-panelling. The room itself was long and narrow with a bar running three-quarters of its length. Several irregular rows of round tables took up the rest of the available space, and tonight they were filled with a loose collection of drinkers, exclusively white and almost exclusively male, and varying in age from twenties to seventies. Most of them seemed to be facing roughly in the direction of a raised platform in the far corner of the room, which I took to be some sort of stage. At the moment it stood empty. About half the stools lining the bar were in use, but there was a cluster of three spare at the end furthest from the stage, and I took the middle one of these. A couple of punters looked round as I passed, but their expressions registered no interest as I ordered my second pint of Pride of the evening from a barman with a sagging head and a prehensile lower jaw who bore more than just a passing resemblance to a well-built Barbary ape. Not someone you'd want to pick trouble with.
No longer having to worry about impressing attractive female company, I took a huge gulp from the pint this time and sunk about a quarter of it down in one. Now, finally, it was tasting like nectar, but as I drank again, I realized that a vital ingredient was still missing, and I knew immediately what it was.
Two seats down, an old geezer in a grey raincoat and cloth cap, who must have been knocking on the door of his eightieth year, puffed thoughtfully on a Lambert amp; Butler while staring at his reflection in the mirror on the other side of the bar. I watched him for a few moments, following the cigarette out of the corner of my eye as he dipped the tip in his mouth and noisily sucked in smoke, then slowly withdrew it and, with bony soft-veined fingers, tapped the end against the side of the Heineken ashtray, before repeating the process all over again.
It had been three years since I'd last had a cigarette, and for most of that time I hadn't missed having one, but then for most of that time I hadn't been in a smoky London pub drinking Pride. It was, I had to admit, difficult to do one without the other.
I drank some more of the beer, trying to supplant the urge by wondering what Emma Neilson was up to now and whether her efforts would turn up anything of use. But it was no good. The seeds of doubt had been planted. Three years might have gone by, but that was irrelevant. I needed a smoke, and, worse still, I'd already subconsciously made the decision to have one. I could see that, unlike a lot of pubs, the landlord here sold them behind the bar. They were stacked in four separate rows on a shelf beneath the spirit optics – Marlboro, Marlboro Light, Bensons and Silk Cut – like whores beckoning a happily married man. I couldn't take my eyes off them.
I finished my pint, motioned Apeman over and ordered another one, along with a pack of Bensons and a box of matches. It felt like a momentous, life-changing decision, and I hesitated before I removed the cellophane wrapping. People who start smoking again usually justify their decision by saying they're only going to have the one, or that they're only going to do it when they're out socially, or whatever, but this was different. I knew straight away that if I had this one then that was it, I was back on thirty a day. Which represented supremely bad timing, since they cost twenty-five times more per pack here than they did back in the Philippines.
Still, the line had been crossed, and it was a testimony to smoking's long-standing hold on me that as soon as I'd taken the first sip of the new pint, I was ripping off the wrapping and pulling one out. I lit it without further thought and took a short, hesitant drag. There was no lightheadedness, no feeling of sickness from the poison pouring down my throat and into my veins. Instead, there was just an easy feeling of coming home. I took a longer drag and finally found myself relaxing properly for the first time since I'd got back.
A tuneless, half-hearted cheer went up from the tables and I turned to see what it was in aid of. A tall young lady with very long legs had entered the room from a door beyond the end of the bar and was strutting towards the platform. She was wearing about an inch of make-up and not much else – just a glittering gold bra and thong, and high-heeled court shoes of the same colour – and her overall demeanour suggested she thought she was one hell of a lot better looking than she actually was. Not that you could call her unattractive. It was difficult to tell through all the foundation, but I suspected that she would always look better in a pub at night than in bed the following morning.
A song I didn't recognize by a female singer I also didn't recognize started playing loudly as the girl reached the stage, stopping to smile and blow a seductive kiss at a group of half a dozen young drunks at the nearest table, who whooped appreciatively. I had to give her her dues: she was doing a good job of acting like she was enjoying herself, which couldn't have been easy in a place like this. It reminded me of the beautiful young girls in the Philippines you often saw on the arms of older, badly dressed Western men. Always smiling, regardless of how ugly the guy they were with was – and they were usually pretty damned ugly. All part of a woman's natural ability to pull the wool over a man's eyes, I suppose.
She got up on the stage and started doing a slow, supposedly sexy dance routine which involved a lot of swaying and wiggling and not even a negligible attempt to stay in time with the music. Not that the audience seemed to mind. As the bra came off to reveal a pair of small but perky breasts, a louder cheer went up from the audience, and someone at the drunks' table yelled at her to get the rest of it off. I noticed Apeman screw up his face into a scowl when he heard this, as if he sensed that that particular table might give him trouble. Overall the atmosphere in the pub was jovial, but I'd spent enough of my life in this town to know that things could change in an instant, especially when drink was involved.
And they did.
It was after the stripper had removed her thong and was gyrating naked with her back to the audience that it happened. Slowly, ever so slowly, she bent down to touch her toes, her naked arse rising higher and higher in the air as she did so, giving the whole room an eyeful of her nether regions, which were so cleanly shaved they could have featured them on an advert for Gillette. As her fingers touched the floor in an impressive show of physical flexibility and her arse reached its zenith, one of the drunks with impeccable timing blew a loud, dry and very realistic raspberry.
Which was the moment all hell broke loose.
Several older members of the audience jumped to their feet and began remonstrating angrily with the drunks, who were all out of their chairs in an instant. There was the usual pushing and shoving, accompanied by loud threats, and one of the drunks threw a punch that sent the recipient stumbling backwards. Scuffles erupted and a table went over in a cacophony of breaking glass.
But the drunks had made a mistake. They'd turned their backs on the stripper, who, not surprisingly, was none too happy with the way her routine had been hijacked. With a deft movement, she pulled off one of her shoes and turned it round in her hand so that the heel was jutting out like a weapon. Then, snarling and cursing (all pretence of sultry seductiveness now gone), she launched a ferocious surprise attack that I'm not afraid to admit had me wincing.
The nearest drunk got the heel right in the top of his head, the blow landing with such force that I swear it actually penetrated bone. In fact, she had to work hard to get it out again, but it finally came free, and as he shrieked in pain, she let him have it again, although this time her technique for retrieving her weapon had improved, and it was out almost as soon as it went in. The victim went down to his knees, clutching his head, and one of the older regulars took advantage of his state to catch him with a sly kick to the ribs.
'You fucking bastards!' the stripper yowled in a voice so high that one more octave and only dogs would have heard it. The rest of the drunks turned round in unison, and she let the nearest one have it with a scything swipe of the heel that opened up a vicious gash on his cheek. He was hurt but he ignored that fact and lunged forward, trying to grab her by the legs. With a deft movement, she hopped backwards on her bare foot like a naked gymnast, and launched a karate kick with the other foot, the one with the remaining shoe on, the heel catching him right between the eyes. Which was him out for the count.