The Devil You Know

The big man threw open the BMW’s rear door and I climbed in, with a small assist from his mighty right arm. He climbed in after me, making even a car of this weight and build rock slightly on its wheelbase. There were two other men, both in the front of the car. The one in the passenger seat, who looked like he numbered weasels among his close relations, glanced round at me and gave me a nasty smile. The driver was a stolid blond with a face that looked a bit like Tom the cartoon cat’s face after it’s been hit with a frying pan. He peeled away from the curb with a flick of his hand on the wheel and the breathless sigh of German engineering.

They drove me back into town again, down through Stamford Hill and Dalston, then veering west through the back streets of Shoreditch—a meandering route that had us dipping down past Old Street only to swing back and cross it again, going north. Finally the car pulled up somewhere off Myddelton Square in Clerkenwell, in a street so narrow you could hardly get the doors all the way open.

I stepped out into the rain, now a heavy downpour, with another encouraging push from Scrub to get me moving. The weasel from the front passenger seat alighted, too, and the car drove off again as soon as our feet hit the ground.

We were standing in front of a club with blacked-out windows and a gaudy sign. KISSING THE PINK. The brickwork around the windows was painted dark blue, though, and there was a gilded eagle on a rock done in haut relief above the door—the universal secret sign of old Truman Hanbury pubs bought up on the dead-cat bounce and converted into strip joints—which, of course, was Clerkenwell’s boom industry these days.

I glanced up at Scrub, who caught my look and nodded brusquely. We went inside.

There was a foyer, of sorts. It was a corner room with walls slightly off the true, converging toward the street side. Polished bare boards bore the muddy paw prints of early-evening punters. A man sitting at a desk in a shallow recess off to the right glanced up as we walked in and then, seeing Scrub, ignored us completely. We passed through unmolested into the club.

It was bigger than it looked from the street, with a semicircular stage against one wall, a bar opposite, and a dozen or so circular tables in between. There were also booths around three of the walls, the lighting carefully arranged to leave them in shadow so that from inside them, you could see without being seen.

On the stage, a blonde woman who was more or less naked already was finding some tiny items of clothing she’d missed on an earlier pass and taking them off. A polished silver pole extending from stage to ceiling was her constant support and occasional stage property. A dozen or so guys in tailored suits, relaxing no doubt from a hard day in the City, and a half-dozen more, who looked like tourists, were staring at her gravity-defying breasts with a willing suspension of disbelief. Most were absorbed enough not to notice our passing, but a few who found themselves in or close to Scrub’s lumbering path drew their feet in hastily and then stared at me with a slight comic double take. I didn’t blame them—my torn shirt, now soaking wet, was sticking to my chest, and there was probably still a little blood on my face from where I’d bitten my tongue. I had the sartorial élan of Robinson Crusoe.

Scrub was still pushing, so I kept on moving. We walked right across to the far side of the room, to one of the booths that I now realized was occupied. A short, heavy-featured man who looked to be in his early fifties was sitting there alone, facing us, reading and scribbling in a ring-bound notebook. As far as I could tell in this light, his complexion was both florid and pockmarked. His eyebrows were the heaviest I’d ever seen, and his eyes were scrunched up and tamped down underneath them like two miniature worlds with Atlas’s hairy arse-cheeks sitting right on top of them. He was wearing a royal blue suit over a shirt in some kind of paisley design, and his tie was as wide and as bright as a centurion’s shield. Having been watching Man from U.N.C.L.E. repeats on cable TV recently, I was inescapably reminded of Mr. Waverly.

“So you’re an ass man?” he said to me, glancing up. The blunt words contrasted oddly with the smooth, cultured voice; it was a voice that ought to have been introducing guest speakers or proposing loyal toasts. But that suggests a certain po-faced solemnity, and this was also a voice that smiled at its own pretensions. There was the faintest hint of an accent in it—or rather, maybe, the complete absence of an accent that only comes with learning English from a book.

I just looked at the guy with a solemn frown—as though I was considering the philosophical implications of the question.