‘What the fuck happened?’ Dickon asked when his companion flung the driver’s door open and fell into the seat.
Rufus slammed the door shut and sat there, blood trickling down his face, one eye scrunched shut.
‘Little fecker got away,’ he gasped, touching a hand to his watering eye. ‘How does my eye look? Hurts like buggery. She hit me. Is it OK?’
‘You were meant to grab her – what went wrong?’
‘She was too fecking fast.’ Too fast and too clever. He wasn’t about to say that, though. He had some pride. He was mopping at his bloody mouth with a handkerchief. ‘Shit, I’m bleeding.’
‘She hit you, did she? So you were close enough to grab her.’
‘Look,’ snarled Rufus, ‘it didn’t work out, that’s all. We’ll do it next time.’
‘Yeah, but next time she’ll expect it.’
‘Shut the feck up, will you?’
‘And I tell you, she ain’t going to be happy about this.’
That evening, Layla opened the front door, peering nervously up and down the road before venturing on to the steps. No one ran at her, no one shouted. She sprinted down and grabbed the trainer, shook the rain from it. As she did so, a tiny green paper four-leaf clover fell out, and fluttered to the ground. She picked it up. Stared at it. And then she raced inside, locked the door and put the chain on.
Annie Carter’s old friend Dolly Farrell was in her flat above the Palermo club, court shoes kicked off, pale-pink suit jacket with the big shoulder pads flung aside, skirt unbuttoned, feet up on the sofa, taking a well-earned mid-evening break when she got the call.
‘Damn that thing,’ she said as the phone started ringing.
She loved her job and she’d been doing it for a long, long time. Back in the day, she’d managed all three of the Carter clubs, but these days it was just the Palermo. Her old mate Ellie Brown was in charge at the Shalimar, with her husband Chris, while Gary Tooley was overseeing the running of the Blue Parrot.
The clubs had seen their fair share of re-inventions over the years. They’d gone from old-world nightclubs to discos, and now they were lap-dancing venues. Trade was good. Because the prices were high, the punters were, on the whole, very well behaved. But Jesus, couldn’t a girl get a moment’s peace…?
Dolly swung her legs to the floor, patted her big blonde (just a little grey in there now) up-do and picked up the phone. And heard Layla telling her something unbelievable. So maybe she hadn’t heard her properly.
‘What did you just say?’ Dolly clamped the phone more firmly to her right ear and covered her left to stifle the din coming up from the club below, where Whitney was belting out ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’. ‘Speak up a bit Layla, can’t you? The line’s bad and the music’s doing my head in.’