Rik had only recently been transferred on to the CID and normally worked in Preston, though he lived in Blackpool. He had then been seconded temporarily to the Conference Planning Team at Headquarters, the team specifically dedicated to organising the policing operation of the Labour Party conference held later in the year in Blackpool. Rik was on the vetting team.
Drink, that wonderful stripper of inhibition, ensured that Danny weaved unsteadily across the dance-floor and presented herself in front of Rik like a debutante — but without the class. A naughty smile played on her lips. Rik’s wonderful eyes regarded her with a mixture of warmth and humour. They were definitely ‘come to bed’ eyes.
‘ Hi,’ she said, suppressing a hiccup.
Rik nodded.
Danny briefly cast her eyes back to the table around which the Murder Squad were huddled. They glared back, each one with a face like thunder as they saw their chance of a sexual conquest slip through their fingers like sand.
‘ You with anybody?’
‘ Only my mate,’ Rik replied.
‘ Good,’ said Danny firmly. She took a long drink and handed her empty glass to him. ‘White wine and soda.’
Henry lounged indolently at one of the bars in the night club. He surveyed the action taking place in front of him. In his hand was a pint of lager which he sipped very slowly because it had cost him?4.00. He was going to make it last, even if it had been bought on expenses.
‘ Angel’s Silver’ was a big club with several dance-floors dotted around the ground-floor level, accompanied by a number of themed bars. A huge light, sound and video system hung from the ceiling like a clinging insect, thumping out bass lines capable of mushing brain-matter into pulp. Several sets of stairs led up to the first-floor level where there were more bars, a separate dance-floor playing smoochy music, and a restaurant serving anything from burgers to a la carte; several places offered good vantage points down into the lower disco area.
Then there was another set of stairs which led up to the second-floor offices. Henry was positioned at a bar near to these.
On entering the club he had mooched around the place, unable to see Thompson or Elphick. It was simply a matter of waiting. They would show up sooner or later.
He sipped his drink. It tasted as if it had been diluted by tap water, warm tap water at that. Not that he was a beer connoisseur, but Henry knew enough about the stuff to realise when he was drinking shite.
He was desperately trying to keep on track in the role of Jagger, but he was struggling because of the turmoil he had experienced at home over the last couple of days.
To say that his wife, Kate, had been unresponsive to his flowers and sexual advances as a form of appeasement was an understatement. She had not even been at home for him to try initially and he had waited in all that first afternoon wondering where the hell she was on her day off. He learned when his daughters came home from school.
‘ Mummy has gone into full-time work,’ Leanne, his younger daughter, announced to him. ‘She said she might as well because you’re never home’.
‘ And,’ said Jenny, the elder, now in her first year of A-levels, ‘she’s really pissed off at you, Dad.’
That evening, when Kate landed home, tired and irritated, a major row erupted which Henry did not handle well at all. ‘What about the kids?’ he had demanded at one point. ‘You should be at home when they get in from school.’
‘ Should I?’ Kate said. ‘You never have been.’
‘ And what’s all this about full-time work? We don’t need the money. It’s stupid.’
‘ Stupid?’ Kate picked up on the inadvisable word. ‘You’re telling me I’m stupid, are you?’
‘ No, I didn’t mean that. It’s just not necessary for you to work full-time, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘ I wouldn’t work full-time, if you were at home when you should be. I’ve had enough of this. I’m off out to my dance-class.’
‘ Dance-class?’ Henry had exploded. ‘When did you start that?’
She didn’t even bother to reply and did not come home until gone eleven, by which time Henry was in bed, fast asleep.
And that set the tone for his break at home.
A lump of bile rose in his throat. He took another drink of the weak beer, this time a long draught, and realised he should not be here. He should have been at home, sorting out his domestic problems. And yet, there was something inside him that kept him back from going home, and it wasn’t just the job…
At that moment Gunk Elphick came down the stairs which led up to the offices and beckoned Henry towards him.
Frank Jagger clicked into gear.
Elphick led Henry up the stairs, through a heavy door which closed automatically behind him, on to a landing. The sound of the club became muted. Henry was thankful for that. The reduction in volume assisted him to think more clearly. The landing led to a further set of steps which opened out into a wide, deeply carpeted hallway, off which were several doors.
Gunk signalled Henry with a hand gesture and walked down the hall, turning without knocking into the third door along. Henry followed nonchalantly.
There was a small office behind the door containing a desk and chair. Behind the desk was another door which Gunk shouldered his way through, Henry at his heels.
The inner office was much bigger. Henry’s eyes quickly circumnavigated the room. There was a large, leather-topped mahogany desk with executive swivel chair; on the desktop was a blotter and a laptop. Behind the desk was a large window which, if Henry’s geography was correct, looked out over Cross Street. To one side of the desk were two massive Chesterfield settees in red leather — a style of furniture that never appealed to Henry, who was a G-plan man at heart. The Chesterfields faced each other square on, separated by a glass-topped coffee table. Up against another wall was a filing cabinet and on another were a couple of TV monitors, one which had a screen split into half a dozen images, showing scenes from within the night club below, transmitted from CCTV cameras dotted strategically around the club.
Henry’s eyes returned to the Chesterfields. On one sat Gary Thompson; on the other sat a mean, sleek-looking individual, but rather pasty-faced. He reminded Henry of the 1970’s version of Bryan Ferry.
‘ Hey, Frankie baby,’ Thompson boomed loudly, ‘how you doing?’
‘ I’m doing good,’ Henry nodded.
Less than a second later, Henry was not doing good at all.
Gunk Elphick, who had entered the room ahead of Henry — a good, psychological manoeuvre designed to put Henry subconsciously at ease — spun round unexpectedly, at a speed Henry could not have anticipated, and hit him hard on the side of the head. Henry flew across the carpet on to the sharp edge of a filing cabinet. For a moment he saw stars and moons, and it felt like his brain had become detached from its moorings. He did not have any time to consider this, because Gunk danced across the room after him and followed up the first punch with one to the pit of the stomach, and then another to the opposite side of Henry’s head.
Before Henry could sink into disorientated oblivion, Gunk stepped in real close, head-butted the bridge of the detective’s nose and jabbed his right knee into Henry’s testicles. Henry pitched sideways and slithered down the wall, doubled up with the terrible shocking pain roasting up from his balls, yet with both hands cupped over his face, stemming the blood flow from his nostrils.
Gunk was ruthless.
If Henry thought that was the end of the matter, he was wrong. Gunk’s steel-toe-capped Doc Martens booted him several times in the ribs as he lay squirming in agony. Then he lifted Henry on to his back, grabbed the front of his bloodstained jumper and hauled him to his feet.