That much had been visible, even in the crappy light. ‘I’m telling you Frank. I swear on my nan’s life. I haven’t seen nowt. It’s just O’Brien lads working the club. As far as I know.’
‘You don’t know your arse from your elbow, you!’ Frank had let go of Degsy’s collar, contemplating his next move. He hadn’t wanted to call Conky for backup. Not again. Every time he’d dialled the henchman’s number, he had felt like one of his balls had been snipped loose. ‘Get them dealers out of my club. Get the bouncers to help you. Find out who they’re working for. Report back to me. Right?’
‘Chill out, man.’
‘Don’t chill out, man me, you twat. Get out there and earn your cash. Or would you prefer to explain this to the Loss Adjuster? Don’t make me call Conky.’
Degsy had held his hands up. ‘All right, all right. Keep your wig on.’
As he’d accompanied the hapless Degsy to the edge of the dance floor, the reverberation of the bass and beat had felt like warning tremors beneath Frank’s feet, heralding a seismic shift of the club’s karma in the wrong direction. The atmosphere in M1 House that Saturday night was distinctly off.
He’d grabbed Degsy by his shoulder. ‘Be careful. Right? You’re not packing are you? I said no more guns or knives.’
The memory of his son, Jack, already growing cold and bleeding out on an empty dance floor, had hovered like an unwelcome spectre above the reality of hot, hedonistic youngsters having the time of their lives. It had been joined by the recollection of Asaf Smolensky, creeping in through the open back door, bearing a Bren gun and the bloodlusty intentions of criminal-insanity-on-the-payroll. For a peace-loving temple to dance and music, M1 House had seen more than its fair share of violent death back in the spring. Frank had been keen not to let the grim reaper defile his altar to the beat ever again.
The crowd had parted reluctantly to absorb Degsy. Frank had watched as the other O’Brien muscle had appeared from the sidelines, all given the order. The spotlights had shone on the bouncers’ bald pates as they too merged with the revellers from front of house.
‘I can’t see a bleeding thing,’ Frank had muttered, wringing his hands.
He’d shooed some kids off a sofa in one of the seating areas then, scrambling onto the sticky leatherette seating to see what was going on.
Degsy had made for the black guys. The entry-fee-paying clubbers had scattered around them, sensing danger like a herd of antelope at the water’s edge where hyenas lurk in the tall reeds. The bouncers had rounded on the white guys.
It had started with a scuffle. A little pushing and a testosterone-fuelled hokey-cokey where neither had conceded ground to the other.
‘No guns,’ Frank had prayed quietly to a God that never seemed to listen. ‘Please don’t let them have sodding guns.’
The transition from minor altercation to full-on fisticuffs had taken less than a minute. Otis, his burliest bouncer, had taken a right hook from one of the guys with dreads that had sent him flying backwards into a podium like an ungainly clown.
Now, Degsy had pulled a gun to best the Asian lad’s knife in an underworld rendition of rock, paper, scissors. Shit, shit, shit. The lying, lanky arsehole was armed to the teeth. Should he stop the music? Should he call Conks, after all?
Frank withdrew a baggie of coke from the pocket of his jeans. Took a hefty pinch of the white powder and deposited it on the back of his sinewy hand. Snorted what he could. Rubbed the rest around his gums. The effect was instant. Pharmaceutical Columbian courage followed soon after.
‘Right, you bastards,’ he said to himself, pulling the sleeves of his old James T up in some deluded act of strong-arm bravado. ‘Nobody messes with an O’Brien.’
Ignoring his racing pulse and the feeling that his legs were liquefying, he crossed the club, heading towards the scrum. No need for that big Northern Irish bollocks. Not tonight. Remember Jack. Don’t make this all for nowt. He approached one of the white rogue dealers from behind.
‘Get out my sodding club!’ he screamed in the man’s ear, grabbing him tightly by the scruff of his neck. Turning his collar into a garrotte. Kneeing him in the sweet spot on the backs of his legs so that they buckled.
Frank was a warrior, now, posthumously defending his son’s honour. Heard his own voice, hoarse and venomous above the music.
‘Who’s your boss? Tell me or I’ll rip your bleeding head off.’ Fingers in the man’s kidneys.
‘Fuck you!’ the dealer shouted, elbowing Frank in the stomach.
There was a flash of metal as the Asian lad stabbed one of the bouncers. Fists flew. It was carnage.
‘Back off, or I’m gonna blow you all into next Wednesday!’ Degsy yelled, waving his piece at the interlopers.
But the guy with the dreads and bad acne scarring was suddenly upon Degsy, waving a semi-automatic. ‘Drop the gun, Manc twat, or I’ll put a bullet in your ugly head!’ His death threats were levelled in a sing-song accent like some nightmarish nursery rhyme.
Degsy and Dreads both clicked their safeties off. A stand-off. Not good.
Frank was dimly aware of the shrieking of the clubbers on the fringes of his ill-fated dance floor and of the speed-daters who were clattering up the iron staircase from Jack’s Bar below, fleeing the scene. Gloria Bell’s face in among them, somewhere. An overwhelming sense of déjà vu and fear that his club-owning days were finished bore down on him. But his melancholy musings were interrupted by the unmistakeable growl of Conky McFadden, striding through the phalanx of onlookers.
‘Hands in the air, you scabby wee turds or I’ll take the lot of yous out!’
Who the hell had called the Loss Adjuster? The bouncers, almost certainly.
Upon them now and casting a long shadow over the interlopers like an avenging dark angel, Conky held a SIG Sauer before him. The music had stopped, as if to pay respectful tribute to the fabled Loss Adjuster’s appearance on the charged scene.
‘Do you remember me?’ he bellowed, bearing down on dreads-with-a-gun. Striding right up to him, as though his opponent clutched a child’s toy weapon. Pressing the nose of his gun right into the dealer’s jaw. With his free leather-gloved hand, he removed his shades with a flourish. His bulging eyes shone with obvious professional glee. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Dreads dropped his pistol. Held his hands up. Swallowed visibly. ‘Yeah.’
‘Get out of this club and get on a train back to Birmingham, like the yokels you are,’ Conky said, encasing Dreads’ throat in a large hand. ‘Tell your eejit boss Nigel Bancroft that if any of you set foot in South Manchester again, you’ll be going home in Tupperware stacking boxes. And you make sure he understands fully that if I see his ponce’s bake in O’Brien territory again, I’ll shoot some fucking wrinkles in him that Botox will never remove.’
Realising that he had been holding his breath all the while that Conky had been speaking, Frank straightened himself up. Inhaled. Exhaled. He acknowledged with some bitterness that he’d been unable to control what went on in his own environment. He felt the humiliation neutralise the bravado in his body. But his pulse thundered on apace and for a moment, as pain travelled
