Jasper whined, “You could disable this man with a twitch of your wrist.”
“I don’t want to draw attention to us,” she said.
“You can’t leave me out here.” He contemplated his pale, almost hairless legs and shivered. “Not like this.”
Barbara gave him a look of sardonic dismissal, turned her back and vanished into the club. As I followed, she spoke quickly into her earpiece. “We’re at the club, sir. Near the targets. We’re going dark.”
Dedlock’s voice in both our ears. “Understood. And good luck.”
At the door, we both paid ten pounds to a woman who sat slouched on a stool chewing gum, who then grudgingly invited us inside.
Diabolism turned out the be a large concrete space packed with several hundred people swelling and roiling in an ocean of sweaty desperation. There seemed to be a vaguely festive theme, and I recognized the song which was making the floor thump and quiver as a dance remix of Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland,” which had climbed alarmingly close to the top of the chart that year. There were firemen’s poles fixed around the room, about which the uninhibited could cavort. It was the kind of place that served Bacardi Breezer by the pint, and I’m afraid I hated it on sight.
Every single person was dressed the same. They were literally in uniform. Tiny skirts, ties draped suggestively around bare necks, scarves knotted round heads like bandanas. The club insisted the minimum age of entry was eighteen and I can confirm that everyone present appeared very comfortably over that limit. A good many, in fact, looked as though they had not seen eighteen for several decades, a fact unflatteringly revealed at intervals when the strobe lighting illuminated their faces, accentuating every crease and wrinkle, each pockmark and pimple. The floor sucked at my feet and for the first time in years I felt again the bilious fear of adolescence, the hideous terror of being expected to dance.
As Earth, Wind and Fire segued into Europop, Barbara took me by the hand and hoiked me through the crowd toward the bar, where she fetched me a drink in a plastic cup. When we spoke we had to shout in order to be heard.
“Eee shred shred tout!”
“What?” I yelled.
She leant close to my left ear and shouted: “We should spread out!”
I nodded in response and, clutching my drink, walked away from her, slaloming between gyrating couples.
It turned out to be easier than I could have hoped. A few minutes later I saw them, recognizing them at once from the backs of their heads, two men sipping cocktails at the bar, one burly and ginger-headed, the other slim and dark. I looked around for Barbara but she had already disappeared into the crowd, and I knew that if I were to go for back-up now I could lose the Domino Men all over again and we’d have to start from scratch. So (I think not unheroically) I did the only other thing I could. I walked up behind Boon, intending to administer a brisk tap on his shoulder, but as I was almost upon him a tubby redhead dressed for hockey practice blundered my way and I tripped forward, slapping the Prefect hard on the back of his head.
When the little man turned to face me I saw immediately that he was not Boon. Nor was his companion — a tall pugilistic-looking man with an interesting scar on his left cheek — Hawker. Both appeared incensed.
I tried a weak smile and mouthed a “sorry” but neither of these improbable clubbers seemed swayed by my contrition. The smaller one grabbed my shirt and yanked me close enough to smell the beer on his breath.
“Sorry!” I shouted again. “Thought you were someone else.”
The ginger-haired man pinched my nose between his forefinger and thumb and forced me up on tiptoe. I squeezed shut my eyes in expectation of a thorough pummeling when my nose was suddenly released and I was able to place both feet flat on the ground. The men were pointing at me and laughing. I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying but I could guess.
Don’t blame me… Blame Grandpa!
Not for the first time, I felt a warm surge of gratitude for Worse Things Happen at Sea.
Somebody else seized my hand and I was dragged away from my admirers. Barbara’s face was close to mine and she was shouting. “Henry! Stop clowning about!”
She gave me a look which, if not actually outright contemptuous, at least bedded down somewhere in the lower reaches of derision. She strode back into the crowd and I was about to do the same when I felt an angry buzzing in my left pocket. I pulled out my phone and tried to answer, but conversation proved hopeless and I was forced in the end to retreat to a stall in the gents’, where the music at least subsided to a tectonic rumble.
“Hello?” I said for what must have been the sixth or seventh time in a row.”
“It’s Abbey.” She sounded infuriated.
“Sorry. Couldn’t hear you out there.”
“Henry, your friend’s turning the flat upside down. She’s been in our bedrooms. She’s chucked half the fridge out onto the floor. She’s in the corridor right now, tapping on the walls to see if they’re hollow. What the hell’s going on?”
I swallowed hard. “I know it must seem strange. But, please, let Miss Morning do whatever she needs. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
Abbey still sounded profoundly irritated but I thought I could detect at least the beginnings of a thaw. “Listen, about our conversation earlier. About Joe. I want you to know that I don’t have any feelings for him anymore.” It was obvious that this wasn’t easy for her to say. “I’m not on the rebound.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Thank you for saying that.” Someone blundered into the toilet, bringing the antic roar of the dance floor with him.
“Where are you anyway? I thought you were working late.”
“I’m at a club.”
“You’re where?” The thaw was retreating now and a new ice age had begun.
“In a club,” I repeated. “Diabolism.” Adding quickly: “It’s for work.”
“Well, who are you there with?”
“Just a colleague,” I said, trying to sound meek and innocent.
Abbey’s voice seethed with barely suppressed fury. “And what’s her name?”
“It’s complicated… But I suppose you could say I’m with Barbara.”
“Unbelievable! We have one tiny disagreement and you’re out with another woman.”
“Abbey, please. It’s not really like that.”
“You’d better hope you’ve got a really, really good explanation for this.” There was a strange shattering sound from the other end of the line. “Christ.”
“What was that? What’s happened?”
“Your friend. She’s just put her foot through our TV.”
“What?”
“Goodbye, Henry.”
I suppose she just have put the phone down then.
I left the stall and stepped over to the sink. There was a man there, a Diabolism employee who squirted soap at my palms before guilt-tripping me into paying him a pound for the privilege.
“You chatting to your lady?” he asked, and I realized that he must have overheard the whole of my conversation. “You talking to your woman?”
“Yes,” I said stiffly. “I suppose I was.”
“Giving you grief, was she?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“You want my advice?”
“Not particularly,” I said, but the man didn’t seem to hear me.
“Forget her. Have a good time. What your lady don’t know won’t hurt her. What happens in Diabolism stays in Diabolism.”
“Thanks for that,” I said, and, just about resisting the urge to snatch back my pound, strode back out into the heart of the club.
The hours which followed were amongst the longest of my life. I patrolled every inch of the dance floor. I scrutinized the faces of lip-locked couples. I stepped over pools of vomit, drank three cocktails, two bottles of beer and a pint of tap water into which I’m certain I saw the barman spit. I tried to blend in by dancing.
It was late, well into the small hours of the morning, when I saw them. After the inaugural chords of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” were greeted by whoops of delight from the regulars, I’d retreated to the bar, where I stood half-watching a couple overenthusiastic young men whirl themselves around the firemen’s poles. Then, caught in a lightning flash of strobe, I saw their faces and my insides turned to water. I started to move across the floor and searched around desperately for Barbara but she seemed to have disappeared. When I looked again at the pole, the Prefects had vanished, their places taken by a couple of paunchy men who I’d never seen before in my life. I was starting to wonder if I hadn’t imagined it when someone slapped me hard on the back.