Mark Billingham - Death Message

‘Not going to be easy,’ Holland said.

Thorne shook his head. He looked up at the lighting rig, at the huge mirrors and the rough sea of reflected heads, and for a few disconcerting seconds he lost a sense of where he was and why he was there. It was as though the noise, the pressure of it, was starting to squeeze out the simple thoughts; fuck around with the functions.

He wondered if he’d even know Hendricks if he saw him.

He lost sight of Holland within seconds, as he began to push through the crowd. Ignoring the elbows, and the shoes that scraped his ankles, as he looked at faces and studied the backs of necks.

Christ, it was loud. And hot.

He struggled between two tall men, turned to get a good look at the one with the shaved head. Got glared at by both of them.

The sound pulsed up through his feet and pounded in his head like a hammer wrapped in cotton wool.

Hitting and pressing and sucking away the air.

Shtoompshtoompshtoomp…

Getting smashed over the head, with a hammer, apparently.

Don’t joke about it…

Thorne took off his jacket. Craned his head to look for Holland. Caught light gleaming off the metal in a face, and on a jacket, and stared until the man danced away again.

Shtoompshtoompshtoomp…

Eyes open, eyes closed as they danced. Putting on a show or lost in it. Face after face and body after body; the shape usually more than enough.

Fuck, Phil…

A big man wheeled into the side of him, grinned and mouthed a ‘sorry’.

Fuckfuckfuckfuck…

He could taste his own sweat and other people’s. At the corner of his mouth; diluting the tang of adrenaline.

Salt and metal.

Pushing into warm, wet air and sweaty backs; shoes searching for space on the polished floor; ugly and dull among the Adidas and Nike. What would Phil be wearing?

Trainers, surely; those flashy white and silver ones.

You couldn’t dance in biker boots.

Shtoomp…

A voice behind, a man he’d just struggled past, telling him to watch where he was fucking going. Thorne stopped and sucked in a hot breath; squinting as a beam of light moved back and forth across his face. Fighting the urge to swing round and lay the twat out.

Saving it up.

Instead, he turned and walked quickly past, pushed back through the crowd towards the raised platform at the far end of the room. Plenty of people mouthing off at him now as he barged across the floor. Leading with his head, sending drinks flying and lurching up to the DJ booth.

Reaching up to slap his warrant card against the glass.

‘Turn it off…’

The DJ peered down at him as though he were mad. Thorne moved round swiftly and climbed up the short staircase. Realising that this was no ordinary request, the DJ was already pulling off his headphones as Thorne leaned across the decks to grab a handful of his shirt.

‘TURN. IT. OFF!’

It was odd, that second or more before the dancing stopped. The lights still swooped and wheeled around the floor as all heads turned towards the platform. A few shouts above the hubbub; arms raised as clubbers demanded to know what was happening.

Thorne leaned into the microphone. ‘Phil?’

There was a torrent of abuse from the dance floor. Demands that he be thrown out.

The microphone distorted as he pressed his mouth against it. ‘Phil Hendricks?’

Thorne stared into the light, waiting, his warrant card held out for the benefit of two enormous bouncers who were barrelling towards the platform. Five long seconds had almost become ten when his phone rang.

‘Maybe that’s him,’ someone shouted.

With the phone still buzzing in his fist, Thorne dropped down to the dance floor. He shook off grabbing hands, pushed the heels of his own into somebody’s chest as he rushed to get out. He caught sight of Holland fighting his way towards him, while the music started up again and he drove his shoulder into the door, hurrying outside to take Louise’s call.

‘I’m on my way to Waterloo,’ she said.

‘What’s in Waterloo?’ Thorne crossed over Wardour Street and took shelter in a shop doorway.

While Louise was telling him about the sighting at The Adam, he saw Holland come out and scan the street for him. He raised an arm and Holland jogged across through the downpour.

‘I’ll get to you as quick as I can,’ Thorne said.

‘No point. Anyway, I’ve got Kenny with me. Where are you?’

When Thorne told her, Louise suggested that he and Holland check out every bar and small club on Old Compton Street. None of them were regular haunts, as far as she knew, but she guessed that Hendricks had been into most of them at one time or another. ‘It can’t hurt,’ she said.

Thorne smacked his hand against the shop window then started walking. ‘Waste of fucking time.’

At his shoulder, Holland pushed back his wet hair and asked what was going on. Thorne grimaced, shook his head.

‘What else are you going to do?’ Louise asked.

Porter wasn’t paying, obviously, but she clocked the fifteen-pound entrance fee as she went in. The other places had been cheaper, but not by much. Three or four different clubs, and four quid a pop for drinks, she couldn’t help wondering how much cash Phil Hendricks got through during a typical Saturday night on the razzle.

She and Parsons might have waltzed to the front of the queue and past the ticket office, but there was still an awkward moment when a security guard – with the obligatory long black coat and earpiece – put out a hand to stop them at the door to the club itself.

Porter just stared. Parsons told the man to move.

The bouncer looked awkward, reddened when he spoke to Porter. ‘I’m not sure if I should search your bag or not.’ He stepped back when Parsons put a hand on his arm. ‘I don’t know, you might be carrying weapons.’

‘Several,’ Porter said.

It might just have been the newness, but Vada seemed classier than The Adam. The music was less insistent, and there was more space to move; the dance floor itself took up only a small area of the main room. The atmosphere was not as frenzied, and Porter imagined the place would fill up later, as clubbers looked for somewhere to talk or wind down.

Men danced close, to synthesised voices and a soft beat, as she and Parsons made their way across the room towards the bar. The designers had tried for something louche and late-sixties in the black and red velvet of the furnishings, fibre-optic table lamps, and blown-up portraits of Caine and Jagger on the walls.

Porter got nothing useful from the bar-staff, so she and Parsons split up to explore the rest of the club.

Unfortunately, the lighting was just as moody and atmospheric as the sound. Plenty of dark corners and pools of shadow, as Porter searched; looking for a black, maybe a silver shirt; a cropped hairline, softer at the back of the neck, where a tattoo began. Listening for a familiar, filthy laugh as she moved close to the tables and banquettes, in the areas where the music was deadened by walls of glass bricks.

Trying to stay optimistic.

There was a quieter bar at the top of a small staircase. Porter stalked from corner to corner, aware from some of the looks she received that her expression of frustration was perhaps being mistaken for disapproval. It couldn’t be helped.

The barman here was no more help than the one downstairs, suggesting to Porter that her friend probably hadn’t come in yet.

She felt another rush of anger at Thorne. He would say he hadn’t lied, of course, that he’d been protecting her, but she knew that was bollocks. The anger subsided when a man who matched the description of Marcus Brooks walked past her and smiled; as she found herself wondering how many coppers there might be in the place, aside from herself and Kenny Parsons.