As I stepped out of the cubicle into the empty washroom, I passed the number on the door almost at eye level. Number seven. I did a double-take.
Seven!
“Go to seven, mate!” Angelo had said. I'd always thought it was a preset channel on the walkie-talkies, but I was wrong. It was just Angelo's way of telling Len that someone wanted to buy drugs from him.
In this case, I didn't think MacMillan's men were interested in a purchase, but Len would know he had to get rid of the stuff. Quickly. Oh shit.
I'd just time for the realisation to hit. Not enough to form a plan of attack, to decide a strategy. I'd just time to whirl round to face the outer washroom door as it burst open.
It flew back so hard on its hinges there was a sharp crack as the wood twanged against the frame and gave way. Len stood in the doorway, chest heaving from the exertion of getting here so fast. There was a sheen of sweat on his face, and his gaze when he caught sight of me was savage.
He advanced into the room, past me, slammed open the door to cubicle number seven. Saw, in an instant, the damage to the panel. Knew, just as rapidly, that it was down to me. He whipped back to face me. Fury and hatred began emanating from him in tangible waves, furring the air like a jet exhaust.
I knew we had a couple of minutes at the outside before MacMillan's boys reached the upper floor. No doubt that was why Len choose this particular place of concealment for his stash. Unless the drug squad had taken to helicopter assaults from the roof tops, any entry at ground level gave him more than enough time to flush the lot.
You don't have to take him out, I told myself as I dropped instinctively into a combat stance, you just have to slow him down until the cavalry gets here.
It wasn't much of a comfort.
It was crystal clear from the outset that there was going to be no chance for negotiation here. Len wasn't interested in any verbal attempt I might make to calm him down. He was too busy winding himself up to explode.
He started to swear. Spitting words bitter as poison, spilling over his teeth in a gush like blood from an arterial wound. If he could have struck me down just with the vitriolic force of them, I would have been dead already.
I wanted to recoil on a reflex, to cringe away from him, but to do that would have been disastrous. I stood my ground, faced him off, watched the chain reaction of his temper form until it was toxic in its intensity.
The stand-off didn't last long, a few seconds maybe. Then he snapped.
Len charged at me with a primeval roar. Two hundred and twenty-five pounds of solid muscle, shaped from years of cracking skulls, backed by a whole supermarket full of dirty tricks, fuelled by a vicious wrath.
I knew I couldn't retreat, knew I had to go forwards to meet his attack, but I daren't lose my control, or I'd lose even the sliver of a chance of winning.
The lessons I'd learned with the Scouser and the smoker in my flat still clung painfully. If I got the opportunity, this time I wouldn't hesitate.
I blocked his first punch as it sliced towards my face, jarring my forearm hard enough to feel the bruises forming instantly. Ignoring the discomfort I kept going forwards, moving in close and grabbing for his neck. Control the head and you control the point of balance. Where the point of balance goes, the body will follow.
The muscles in Len's neck were thick as a Pit Bull's, leading into massive shoulders, but I gouged a knuckle deep into the side of his chin and their resistance simply crumbled. I twisted his head round as though I wanted to rip it apart from his body and slammed him into the nearest pillar hard enough to burst the tiles.
The man's constitution must have been phenomenal. He rocked once, then straightened up, shook his head to clear it, and stormed me again. The blood dripping from the ceramic splinters in his forehead was a minor annoyance to him.
This time when I blocked Len's first swinging right, he didn't make the same mistake twice. He followed it up with a fast left to my ribs that ripped the air from my lungs in an explosive gust. I tried desperately to stay on my feet, allowing myself to reel backwards, absorb some of the impact.
Len sensed first blood. He came in like a dervish then, fists flying. I went down under the onslaught. I had no choice. I crashed backwards into the door frame, bumped past it, and went sprawling onto the floor of the club outside the washroom.
For the moment any attempt to re-group was impossible. I just rolled with the pounding, and tried not to let him hit me anywhere that was going to do me serious damage. The pain was coming from so many different directions it seemed to totally surround and immerse me.
As I fell back, Len pursued, lips drawn away from his teeth in a deadly grimace. His eyes had turned feral. His control was gone, shattered into fragments.
That was what defeated him.
He wasn't bothering to defend himself properly now, didn't feel the need to keep his guard up. As he leant over me, I lashed out for his throat. It was a lucky contact, and lighter than I'd hoped, but it halted his next assault. I twisted onto my side and swept his legs out from under him.
As soon as he was on the floor, I brought my heel down brutally into his exposed groin. Most men would have been out of the fight right there and then. Not Len. He howled like a scrapyard dog, starting to push himself off the ground with one hand, grasping for me.
I kicked his arm out from under him, aiming for the elbow joint, connecting with a dull crack. He folded. It sent a fierce and bitter spike of triumph lancing through me. I knew the feeling was wrong, knew I should feel nothing but a calm consideration of my leading options and next moves. But I couldn't help it.
I reverse scuttled out of range on my backside and was up on my feet in a flash. Len's jaw presented itself, just perfectly aligned and I pulled back my fist to strike, to finish this. It was a punch I knew would knock him cold.
I never got to land it.
With a shocking suddenness, my arms were banded to my sides by hands like mechanical steel clamps and I was hauled away from Len. I could hear someone baying in protest, a primitive shriek of sheer anger and frustration, the pack hunter with the fallen prey, denied the kill. At first I didn't recognise the source. Finally, it registered that it was me.
The policemen who had hold of me didn't so much put me down as throw me onto the floor. I quickly found myself face down without the opportunity to resist, my arms wrenched behind me. I felt cold circles of metal as the bracelets of the handcuffs were ratched tight onto my wrists.
If it took two of MacMillan's men to restrain me, it took four to control Len. They jumped on him with ruthless efficiency, not careful where they put their boots and fists to bring him down. He didn't go without a fight and, in the end, they were forced to settle for cuffing his hands in front of him, just to get him secured.
I let my eyes close briefly, weak with defeat. I was bone tired, my whole body felt pulpy from the beating I'd only been partly successful in dodging. One eye was swollen, my back was giving me hell where I'd hit the door frame and my left knee was on fire. I didn't even remember getting that thumped. Thank God it wasn't the right one or I'd never be able to kick-start the bike.
“Well, well Miss Fox,” said a man's voice from somewhere way above my head. “When I asked you to call me if you had any more contact with him, I was talking about threatening phone calls,” he went on, annoyance making his voice more clipped than usual. “This wasn't quite what I had in mind.”
I opened the eye that wasn't throbbing, leaving the other one to rest. All I could see at my level was a pair of good conservative black leather shoes. I watched them approach another couple of steps with mild interest, following the neatly creased trousers upwards past the suit jacket to the tilted head at the top. It seemed a long way away and much too small for the rest of his body, especially his feet.