Danielle Ramsay - Vanishing Point

Brady hazarded a guess the owners would be inside the Hole. Given the desolate location it was the obvious conclusion. Nobody in their right mind would stray down here and if they did, they sure as hell would turn straight back up the embankment to the main road.

Brady nodded as he approached the lumbering, thick-necked, shaven-headed man in his early thirties standing outside the front door of the Hole smoking.

‘It’s shit! muttered the man, staring straight ahead at Conrad’s car.

‘Thanks for the warning,’ replied Brady as he pulled open the door.

‘Just trying to save you money, mate. Better coming back after eleven. That’s when the good acts are on. Got in some fucking gorgeous young tight-arsed girls with big tits. Don’t speak much English but who’s interested in talking? Better than the old trollops that are in there just now!’

The man scowled at the silver Saab as he drew heavily on his cigarette. He then threw it on the ground and turned to go back in.

Brady held the door open for him.

‘It’s your money!’ the man grunted by way of thanks.

Brady let the door swing shut behind them.

The large room was dark. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust. And his sense of smell.

The place was rancid.

It stank of men. The worst kind of men.

Wankers that would come here and throw not only their money around. Forcing girls to do things that their mothers had never taught them.

The smell of stale piss, stale beer and sex – dirty, passionless, perfunctory sex – clung to the air.

Brady watched as the thick-necked critic made his way to the bar. A bartender pushed a coffee towards him.

He grunted in appreciation, sat down and picked up a folded paper and started doing what Brady presumed was a crossword.

It was obvious that he was the club’s hired muscle.

Brady looked around the place. It was virtually empty. It didn’t surprise him. It was just after nine-thirty on a Saturday evening, which was early for this place.

A bleached-blonde, long-haired woman was contorting her body provocatively as she danced in a cage suspended from the ceiling. A glazed look in her eye as she smiled and moaned, head back, mouth open, at the only man watching her.

Towards the back of the room he could make out four men who were drinking and laughing while a lap dancer did what she could to earn money.

‘Black coffee,’ Brady ordered as the bartender raised an eyebrow at him.

The man poured Brady some scalding, stewed coffee into a white cup and saucer and brought it over to him.

Brady took out his wallet.

‘On the house,’ the bartender said.

Before Brady had a chance to object the man had turned and was busying himself unloading the glasses from the dishwasher.

It was clear to the barman that Brady was a copper: he wasn’t a regular and he wasn’t interested in watching the girl dancing provocatively on the stage to the left of the bar or the young girl with the four men.

‘Trina?’ Brady called over. ‘Trina McGuire. Has she started work yet?’

The bartender looked at Brady.

‘What’s it to you?’ he asked.

‘She’s a friend.’

The bartender gave him a sceptical look.

‘That’s what they all say, mate,’ he replied flatly.

He gestured towards the hired muscle that Brady had met at the door to get rid of him.

Brady realised he was bad for business. A copper questioning one of their girls wouldn’t look good. It would be enough to scare off punters.

‘Look, I’ll make this easy,’ he said, holding up his hand. ‘Where’s her dressing room? I’ll talk to her there.’

‘You having a laugh or what?’ replied the bartender. ‘Toilets is the best they get here! Try the fucking Moulin Rouge if you want dressing rooms, pal!’

Brady quickly scanned the dark room.

‘Hey! Where do you think you’re going?’ asked the hired muscle as he pushed his crossword away and stood up, making sure that his imposing, steroid bulk was felt.

‘I need the toilet,’ answered Brady.

‘I don’t fucking think so. You need a piss, you take one outside like the fucking rest of us! And then you can fucking clear off!’

‘Sure. I’ll disappear but then I’ll be back here with our Narcotics Unit and before you know it this place will be shut down. And that’s before we get onto the illegal trade in sex here,’ Brady said as he made a point of jerking his head towards the four men who were now whooping and cheering the lap dancer.

‘Fuck you and your fucking threats. This place is clean!’ answered the hired muscle.

‘What about the foreign workers? All legal, are they?’

Brady was well aware that, like farm labouring and other crap jobs, cheap Eastern European labour would have been brought in. The sex industry was no different.

‘I don’t know what the fuck you mean.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Brady watched as the bartender made a call.

All he could make out was ‘Trina’. Or was that ‘Trouble’?

The hired muscle, no doubt paid the minimum wage to keep trouble out, made a point of readying his fists. Brady caught sight of the classic, fading bluish-black-ink tattoos of ‘Love’ and ‘Hate’ across the knuckles of each of his large hands.

‘Look, I’m not here to cause trouble. Alright? I need to talk to Trina. So back off, mate,’ Brady said as the hired muscle started to loom in close. Too close.

A second later and Brady heard her voice. Despite the lurid music playing in the background, Brady would recognise her voice anywhere.

A sense of relief flooded through his body. This was a place where he’d be lucky to get out alive if things turned nasty. His beaten-up body would be taken out the back. Shoved into the boot of a car and unceremoniously dumped with a bullet through his head into the cold, murky grey waters of the Tyne.

‘What the hell are you doing here, eh? Looking for sexual favours like your pal, Adamson, are you?’ scornfully demanded Trina McGuire as she strutted over in implausibly high killer heels.

Her scorn for DI Adamson came as no surprise. Brady had heard talk that Adamson liked to exert his status as a copper over women like Trina McGuire.

She shot Brady a look that told him he’d over-stepped the mark coming into her place of work.

‘Davy man, fucking put your fists down, will you?’ Trina ordered as she shook her head at the hired muscle. ‘You’ll get Ronnie pissed off if he hears you knocked out a copper. And a mate of Adamson’s at that!’

Trina’s threat worked.

Davy sulkily skulked off back to his Sun crossword puzzle.

Brady couldn’t blame him.

Trina might have only been five foot four and six stone if that, but she was dangerous. And she had one hell of a temper. Brady had been witness to it once too often when she’d come from work to pick up her street-hardened son from the holding cells at the station.

For such a petite woman she had an amazing power to reduce a grown man to tears. Which effectively is what she used to do to her foul-mouthed, ‘couldn’t give a fuck’ son, Shane McGuire. Shane, a regular at the station, was a hard nut. He’d even landed a blow on Brady once when he’d been arresting the scrawny, sneering juvenile who had been high as a kite on amphetamines and had fought Brady and Conrad with superhuman strength due to the effect of the drug coursing through his cold, sweating body.

Trina McGuire caught Brady’s eye. It was evident that she was unimpressed that he was there. She had the same sneer on her face that her son wore. She threw back her long glossy blonde hair as she scowled at him.

This was Nick’s ex-girlfriend. And half of North Tyneside’s if the local rumours were to be believed. Trina had never forgiven Brady for Nick clearing off to London. But given what had been kicking off in the Ridges at the time of Nick’s youth, Brady had been relieved to see him go and not arrested, condemned to a life in and out of prison like his mates.