I said nothing to anyone about my groupie. Actually, they aren’t unusual around the GWA. Quite a few of the lads have girlie fan clubs, and Sally Crockett, the ladies champ, used to have hordes drooling after her before she married big Jerry. Everett has a simple rule on job-related sex; don’t do anything that could draw down flak on the GWA; I didn’t think for a moment that Ronnie could have, but I was quietly pleased with myself for the way I’d handled it. The truth is that the old Oz Blackstone, the one from three or four years back, would have been right in there. Noosh was right; I’d grown up.
I looked for Ronnie at ringside next night. just before our live event went on air. There was no sign of her in the block where she should have sat, although all the places seemed to be taken. The show itself made me forget all about her. The GWA is a very professional outfit and its standards are consistently high, but the London Arena show was a cracker, highlighted by the return of Daze Everett in his new-look gold outfit, reclaiming the European Title after a spectacular battle with the Black Angel, one of the very few guys in the business who is big enough to look convincing against him.
As always, the crowd was pumped up to a frenzy by the end, and took a while to clear the Arena. We have a cute way of helping them. As the house lights go up, several of the performers appear in the foyer, and invariably are surrounded by autograph hunters, speeding the flow out of the hall. Sometimes I join them, but that night, all I wanted to do was get on to the bus and back to the hotel for dinner.
I changed quickly and stepped out of the stage door, my suit bag over my shoulder. The bus was parked at the top of an alley: a long dark alley. I was about halfway towards it when a man stepped out of the shadows, looking right at me; somehow I knew he wasn’t going to ask me for a light — not that he’d have been on; I don’t smoke.
He stood there blocking my way, then began to move towards me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw, fleetingly, that there was another guy behind me, with the same determined expression on his face. I realised that I was the meat in a particularly nasty sandwich. I backed off from the first man, letting my bag slip to the ground, trying to think myself out of this situation. No one said anything; we all knew what was on the agenda.
I kept backing off, until I felt the man behind me grab my arm. Still I didn’t turn, but dropped my right shoulder, leaned back into him, and swung my elbow into his gut as fast and as hard as I could. I felt as much as heard his gasp, and had a good look at him for the first time as he started to double up.
I had been taught several wrestling moves by the guys, but I had never used any of them for real. In a more confined space, I’d have been dead, but there was room to move in the alley. I picked the first hold to come to mind; clasping my hands behind the guy’s head as it came down, I jammed my shoulder up under his throat and dropped into a sitting position on the ground, pulling him down with me. That is the patented finishing manoeuvre of a very famous wrestler. He knows how to do it without hurting people: I don’t. My sudden stop and the man’s momentum drove the hard corner of my shoulder into his windpipe, putting him out of action for the foreseeable future.
The heavy in front of me hesitated for a second. I guess he’d been told that this job would be a milk run. While he was thinking, I ran at him and smashed a stiff-arm across his chest. He was a bit bigger than me, but then so is Liam Matthews and I knocked him over with that move once. The difference was that Liam meant to fall; this bloke slipped and sat down hard, but he bounced straight back up. I sensed trouble, for I was running out of tricks. He didn’t know that, though, so, while he was still trying to size me up, I poked my fingers into his eyes, then dropped my right shoulder and hit him with another stiff-arm, upwards, straight in the balls this time.
As the bloke hit the deck with a whimper, I felt another hand on my shoulder; God, I hadn’t noticed the third one. I had worked through my repertoire, so I simply spun round and threw a punch. Fortunately, Liam Matthews has seen my right-hander before and he has good reflexes, so he swayed out of the way.
‘Christ, Oz, we should have had the cameras out here,’ he drawled. ‘That was pretty impressive.’
‘How long have you been here?’ I demanded.
‘Long enough so’s you wouldn’t have been hurt. Who are these guys anyway?’
I looked blankly at him. ‘No idea.’
‘Let’s find out then.’ The guy with the sore throat had also bitten into his tongue. Given that he was choking and had blood pouring from his mouth, he wasn’t going to be saying anything for a while, so Liam stepped up to his pal, who was on his knees trying to think about legging it, and kicked him in the ribs. ‘What’re you doin’ here?’
‘Just lookin’ for someone to mug, mate,’ the heavy wheezed.
Liam thought this was hilarious. He roared with laugher, then slapped the man hard across the face. ‘As a general rule, friend, muggers tend to avoid GWA shows.’ He dug his thumb hard into the side of his neck. ‘Now, who sent you after my friend Oz here? Tell me and you can walk away from here. Any more bullshit and you won’t.’
‘I don’t know who sent us,’ the man protested. ‘It was a bloke in a pub, this lunchtime.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I dunno. Just an ordinary bloke. About thirty, I s’ppose; wore a black shirt and jeans. . sunglasses, a pair of them Rayban jobs.’
‘So what did he say to you?’
‘He told us that a pal of his wanted this geezer duffed up, ’cos ’e’d done something ’e shouldn’t. He’d heard we ’andle that sort of stuff. He gave us two hundred quid, and promised us another two once the job was done.’
‘And how was he going to know that?’
‘He’d have known when the guy didn’t show up on the telly. We were meant to break both ’is arms, like.’
‘Sure, ’n you mean like this?’ Quick as a flash, Liam grabbed his right wrist, pulled it up, and twisted it, hard; I heard a crack. The man screamed in pain, as the muscular wrestler pulled him to his feet by his collar. ‘That’s the hardest two hundred you’ve ever earned, pal,’ he murmured, then amazingly, took a ten pound note from his pocket and shoved it into his good hand. ‘You and your mate, get yourselves a taxi to the hospital, and don’t even dream about my pal again.’
As the two hooligans dragged themselves painfully out of the alley, Liam turned to me. ‘So what have you been up to, Oz?’ he asked, with a smile. ‘What have you been doing that you shouldn’t?’
At that moment there was only one thought in my mind. I told him about Ronnie Barowitz’s ambush in my hotel room, and about me giving her the bum’s rush. ‘Maybe she told Richard, her old man, and he took offence; got someone from his factory to find those two clowns.’
‘What? He sent those guys to cripple you for not shafting his wife?’ He bellowed with laughter again.
‘Okay, it sounds weak, I admit. But from what I’ve seen of the two of them, whatever Ronnie wants, Ronnie gets. If she went home and told him that I’d made a pass at her, he’d have believed her, no question. And if she’d said she wanted me sorted, he’d have done it.’ I scowled at him.
‘Anyhow, whatever the truth is, we’ve blown the chance of finding out. If we’d got the name of the pub from those two I could have had it staked it out and caught their client if he came back.’
‘Fat chance of him coming back. Here, how did that fella know you’re on telly?’
‘No trick there. It’s not just kids who watch us.’
Back at the hotel, I opened the door of my room cautiously, just in case there were any more surprises waiting for me. It was clear, but nonetheless, I spent the rest of my time in London looking over my shoulder. By the time we had finished recording the Sunday show, I was feeling pretty paranoid.