Sutty was laughing again. ‘An appointment with Guy Russell? That’s not a little black book I want my name appearing in.’ The doorman still didn’t move. ‘Come on, you know the bloke. Personality like a contraceptive. Hairpiece that could place runner-up at Crufts. I know he’s here and I know you haven’t been ID-ing those girls tonight, so best we talk to him off the record, eh?’
‘Pat,’ said the doorman to a colleague. ‘Work the line a minute, yeah?’ He gave us a dull, gold-toothed smile that sent the veins pulsing across his skull again. ‘Right this way, gents.’ We went inside, across the sticky, fly-trap floor and up the stairs. The doorman walked ahead, easing people out of our way with one arm. The blending smells of perfume and alcohol felt intoxicating, and the air throbbed with bass and thick, numbing heat. We emerged next to the bar, in a half-lit loft space with around a hundred people in it.
‘Wait here,’ said the doorman. I looked at Sutty, his eyes caressing the men and women in the room. It was almost an even split between them. Most stood separately, some cautiously mingled, and one or two had paired up on the dance floor, grinding into each other with the music. The real action took place in the booths lining the room. You’d see four or five girls crammed into one side and two men on the other. Nothing between them but gleaming steel buckets, filled with cheap bottles of prosecco and ice.
The doorman emerged from the dance floor. ‘Mr Russell can see you now.’
‘I’ll wait here,’ said Sutty, eyes bobbing from table to table. ‘Secure the bar.’ When the lights caught his face he looked like a spoiled, sweating chicken.
The doorman led me across the dance floor, to a booth in the corner. A man in his mid-forties was sitting beside a young girl. He was staring at me while she scrolled idly through her phone with one finger. The man perfectly matched Sutty’s description. Carefully dressed, but strangely out of time. His black shirt was tight and had the top four buttons open, creating a long V shape beneath the neck. He gave me a practised, peroxide-white smile and motioned to the seat opposite him. I slid into the booth. The girl, who hadn’t looked up from her phone, wore clothes that seemed designed for the room. Wild colours that caught ultraviolet lights at suggestive angles. She wore frosted eye-liner and atomic pink lipstick, and she must have been twenty-five years younger than the man beside her.
‘Someone looks thirsty,’ he said, over the music.
I didn’t say anything.
‘Alicia,’ he said to the girl. ‘I’m thinking … two Jack and Cokes.’
There was an ice bucket with a bottle of Dom Pérignon on the table but apparently I wasn’t worth it. Alicia stood without looking at either of us. I saw that she was wearing UV contact lenses. They made her seem vacant, dead behind the eyes. The man watched her go, glowing through the crowd, before he spoke again.
‘Name’s Guy Russell,’ he said. ‘And you’ve got until she gets back.’ Russell was sitting facing the dance floor, and a dull red light washed across his face. I guessed it was his regular seat, a look he cultivated.
‘There’s a customer of yours I want to talk to.’
‘Yeah?’ He leaned forward, smiled into the light. I could see the seams of several, overlapping plastic surgeries. ‘What’s her name?’
‘His name,’ I said. ‘Ollie or Oliver.’
‘Don’t tell me it’s work-related?’ I nodded. His smile was like a strobe light, flicking on and off continually, and I assumed he’d snorted his dinner. ‘Ollie or Oliver, you say?’
‘Mid-thirties, going to fat, light red hair losing its colour.’
‘Not a lot to go on …’
But I thought he was stalling. Backing away from a name he recognized.
‘He’s a regular,’ I said. ‘He was high-rolling it here last week.’
He beamed at me through his lidless, unblinking eyes. ‘As you can see, I have a lot of regulars, Mr …’
‘Detective,’ I said. ‘Aidan Waits.’
‘I have a lot of regulars, Detective Waits. Most of them “high-rolling it”. Can I ask what this is about?’
‘No.’
He shifted in his seat. ‘But you’re not flinging shit at Incognito?’
‘Who’d notice?’ I said. His smile flicked off again. He took a breath to speak but before he could, Alicia returned with our drinks. She set them before us and sat back down again. She looked like she’d stepped in from another dimension.
‘Sorry, mate. Time’s up, can’t help ya.’
I didn’t move and he clicked his fingers at me.
I leaned in. ‘Don’t act like the real thing, Guy, I’ve seen it close up.’ We glared at each other while the girl pretended to concentrate on her phone. ‘Ollie or Oliver,’ I repeated.
‘What do you think the most important part of this business is?’
I looked at him. ‘The condom machine.’
‘I mean to me personally.’
‘Same answer.’
‘Appearances,’ he said, starting to lose patience. ‘And not just mine. Not just Alicia’s. But an appearance of understanding, discretion. Anonymity. A lot of these lads are in relationships. Married even. Would they be coming back if they thought I was passing out their card numbers?’
‘The man I’m looking for’s sexually harassing a teenage girl.’ Alicia stopped scrolling through her phone. ‘She was one of your customers as well.’
‘Look at that bar,’ said Russell. Through the dance floor I could see dozens of men, holding up cash and cards, trying to get served. ‘Teenage girls don’t pay my bills, Detective.’
‘You think those men are here for the music?’
His smile flickered and finally died out. He looked at me for a moment, then picked up my untouched drink and poured it into the ice bucket.
‘Alicia, it looks like our friend’s dry again.’ The girl stood, taking the hint immediately. As Russell craned his neck to watch her go, I saw the fold of skin behind his ears from a facelift. It made him look as though he wore a mask that was slipping. I turned to see Alicia at the bar, talking to the doorman. ‘Eyes back in your skull, Detective.’ Russell was leaning across the table now. ‘I took a girl back last night. She’s on her knees sucking, and I do mean sucking, my fingers. Thought she was gonna dislocate ’em. And I tell her, you don’t get the rest until you’ve agreed …’
‘Agreed to what?’
‘Incognito, baby. No names. The best deal in town, and I’ve cornered the market. Y’know what? In a place where every club’s a front for one fucking thing or another, I think you just can’t take a bit of honesty.’
‘What is it you’re being honest about?’
‘That men want to screw young girls. That, guess what, young girls want to pop men. But that doesn’t suit someone who’s looking for victims, does it? Well you won’t find any here, pal. It’s a room full of people doing what they want, with who they want, when they want. The name of a guy in last week?’ He laughed. ‘Get real, and get the fuck out of my club.’
It was my turn to smile now, and I stood up, happy at least to have seen his real face. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr Russell. Thanks.’ Alicia returned with a fresh Jack and Coke in hand.
‘Take it,’ said Russell. ‘It’s on me.’
I accepted the drink and dumped it on his head. ‘Look at that, you’re right about everything.’ I handed the empty glass back to the stunned girl just as the doorman closed his forearm across my neck, dragging me across the dance floor by the head.
Sutty was laughing like a drain. ‘Tried to tell ya,’ he said. ‘A dog doesn’t know what shit is unless you rub his nose in it.’ We were crossing the road back to the car.
‘Hey,’ someone shouted. I turned around, saw the girl, Alicia, coming towards us. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’
‘Do you collect these girls or what?’ said Sutty yawning. ‘I’ll be in my office.’
I turned, walked into the middle of the road, met her halfway. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You heard. What, you go round fucking people up?’
‘The only thing I fucked up were his hair plugs. Have you got something to say to me?’
She looked at me through those unreadable UV lenses. ‘A few things, actually, yeah.’
‘Come on,’ I said, leading her back to the pavement. ‘How old are you?’