Dance With the Dead: A PC Donal Lynch Thriller

He felt my confused glare.

‘Check out the lenses,’ he said, his eyes shooting up.

About a dozen pillars propped up the ceiling, each one a four-eyed CCTV monster.

‘Forty-eight cameras. I bet there are 48 tables, one trained on each,’ he said.

‘Makes sense,’ I agreed.

‘They can watch us all night. If we both get up to leave suddenly, they could intercept us in the foyer for another chat. No thanks. Don’t look now but there’s a fire exit about 50 feet to the right of the toilets. Before it gets to 12, tell the lady you’re with that you’re going to the loo. On the way, veer right, go through that door and don’t stop.’

‘Until …’

‘We’d better not hang around the West End. All the nightclub and taxi radios are on the same bandwidth. The goons here could have every bouncer and cabbie in Soho looking out for us in seconds. Head to Tottenham Court Road but keep north of Oxford Street. Those roads will be quiet by then. I’ll see you at the Troy on Hanway Street, about 12.30.’

‘Why don’t we just scarper right now?’

‘Will you quit staring at that fire exit? Check out the stage instead. Everyone else is. Then let’s try to look like we came here for a good time.’

The club’s focal point was a glass platform about the size of four snooker tables, shimmering three feet above a sparkling blood-red floor. Little red circular tables, each dimly lit by a single lamp, jostled hungrily around it, like piglets around a sow’s nipple board. Silhouetted men sat alone in scarlet retro armchairs, waiting for the next floor show, studious, smoking and bereft.

‘10.09pm and not a cock in the house stiff,’ announced Fintan. ‘Bit gynaecological sitting that close, wouldn’t you say, Donal? Jesus, they might as well put them in stirrups.’

‘Ringside, quite literally.’

‘I think we’ll do better over here.’

He led me around the island of ground-level tables and chairs, up two steps to an elevated area, also wall-to-wall red velveteen.

‘Good job we didn’t wear red,’ he quipped, taking a seat at a front table, ‘they might never have found us again.’

I took the chair next to him as a waitress swooped in. ‘What can I get you gentlemen?’

‘The house champagne will be fine tonight, thank you,’ said Fintan, trying to sound like he usually quaffs the Dom Perignon.

‘Anything to eat?’

‘Just a portion of fries please, for now,’ he said, uncharacte‌ristically frugal for a man who loved nothing more than splashing out on expenses.

‘Jesus, look,’ said Fintan in wonderment, nodding towards a dark corner behind the stage, ‘the livestock, in their holding pen.’

Inside a roped-off zone, a dozen or so fake-tanned, black-eyed girls sat bored and restless in their scanties, waiting to splay their orifices to the assembled pervs.

‘They all look orange, like Sooty puppets,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘By the looks of it, tan isn’t the only fakery going on.’

‘Hey, looking on the bright side, you still get to ram your hand up their holes later.’

‘Jesus, Fintan! They might just be dancers. Maybe that’s all Liz did here.’

‘Why do you always have to idealise women? It must be because you’ve never actually known any, not properly. Listen, if dancing is all Liz did, then she must’ve been better than Anna fucking Pavlova, to rent a flat like that.’

‘Why didn’t she scale down, rent somewhere cheap, then she could’ve stopped working here?’

‘They get hooked on the lifestyle. A lot of these women have several properties, kids at private school, membership to Chelsea health clubs, all achieved without a husband or a partner. Once you get used to earning a thousand pounds a night, how do you give all that up?’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing: ‘A thousand a night, for dancing and sleeping with one person?’

‘Some of the Arabs leave with three or four girls, and don’t even fuck them all. They still pay the ones they don’t touch just for sitting in their tent.’

‘In their tent! Jesus, Fintan, you can’t say things like that.’

‘What?’ he protested. ‘In the weeks before and after Ramadan, wealthy Arabs flood into London to shop, eat and shag, get it all out of their systems. Some of the poshest hotels erect tents on their roofs, supposedly so that the Arab men can enjoy their traditional shisha pipes without smoking out the hotel lounges and bars. At least that’s how the hotel explains it away to the other guests. The tents are for smoking alright, smoking hot hookers and drugs and booze, but well out of sight of their devout Muslim mums, wives and families. These men are the wealthiest in the world. It is almost a matter of honour that they party harder than the next richest man in the chain.’

He frowned and turned to me: ‘You have brought some money here with you, Donal? Or a credit card?’

‘I don’t have a credit card. I took out 70 earlier. I’ve got about 50 left.’

‘Fifty quid?’ he whispered, eyeing me in disbelief, ‘Jesus, Donal, I’ve just ordered the cheapest bottle of plonk on the menu and that was £120. You’re expected to buy two of these before a woman will even sit with you.’

‘I’ll just eat then.’

‘The chips are another 50.’

‘Fifty pounds! For a portion of chips? You can’t be serious.’

He pushed a menu towards me. I scanned it without bothering to disguise my disgust.

‘This is … obscene. We still have time to buy perfectly adequate £2 pints in any pub down the road.’

‘For fuck’s sake, you can’t go now,’ he muttered, reaching into his inside jacket pocket and whipping out a black wallet.

He set to work beneath the table, then tapped my knee and hissed: ‘Five hundred quid, fully sanctioned by accounts.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Like I said, it’s been signed off by accounts. Relax and have some fun.’

‘How would this look to anyone on the outside? A cop taking 500 pounds cash off a reporter, who is also his brother, to spend on hookers? I could get the sack just for having this conversation with you.’

‘I’m a little more concerned about us getting our legs broken if you try to leave after ten minutes,’ he growled. ‘I’ve had my hand under this table now for fully two minutes. In the name of all that is holy, will you take the fucking cash?’

I took the fucking cash, pocketing it seconds before the waitress bounced a wine bucket, two glasses and a bowl of fries off the cloth-cushioned table top. The fries remained steadfastly rooted to their receptacle because they were soggy McCain oven chips costing three pounds each. The champagne failed to fizz enough to flow out of the open spout, because it was lukewarm sparkling wine from Kwik Save. I suddenly didn’t feel so bad about taking the newspaper’s money. This felt about as luxurious as Ryanair.

‘Here,’ he said, pushing the wine bucket towards me, ‘take this, go sit over there, and get your enormous Rolex out for the girls.’

By 11pm, foreign businessmen flooded the Florentine; wealthy wallflowers coaxing out the honeybee hostesses in their black leather mini-skirts and orange tans.