Rotten to the Core (37 page)

             
“Pay up, don’t fuck it up and you’ll get your sister back
.
A
ny trouble and I promise you this
,
Billy,
you will never see her again.”

Jay must have fucking lost the plot, picking Goldie’s was the stupidest
location
anyone could have thought of. The door was being manned, there were cameras everywhere, and Jay must have known that
.
He must have known
that both Paul and Billy would be watching for him like hawks
,
not to mention Billy’s guys, who would be all over the place. Jay must be mental if he thought that he would be walking out of
t
here with his legs intact
,
let alone a bag full of cash
, was safe
. Maybe he thought that
there
was safety in numbers or something and that he would be able to just sneak in undetected
,
but there was no way that was going to happen.

Billy was getting the cash, a cool half a million
;
it
would be
t
here any minute
.
Paul knew that Billy had no intention of letting Jay get away with it
,
though. He had been sorting out the plan of action with Jonny and Lee all day, and they had decided that they would have
two
car
s
ready, one at the front entrance
and
one at the back
;
they would let Jay walk in and out without any interference from anyone and when Jay tried to get away they would tail him from a distance
;
once they knew where he was hiding out, they would wait it out for a bit
,
hopefully getting Kate back
. T
hey would give it a bit of time, just enough to l
ull
Jay into a false sense of
security, let him believe that maybe he had actually got away with it, then they would make their move with Billy and Ryan’s help
:
they would ransack the place and
,
more importantly
,
ransack Jay Shaw.

It was only nine o’clock now
;
the clubbers normally
didn’t
start arriving until
after
ten, the night was still young. Hoping that he had enough men in place and praying that the night wouldn’t throw any nasty surprises, Paul wandered up to the gentlem
e
n’s club
;
he had decided he would stay up there and man the security cameras with Joe, his security manager. He had a great team on, and even though everyone was on strict orders not to approach Jay or get in his way whilst he collected the cash,
Paul
wanted all eyes on him. They needed to keep him in their sights long enough to establish where he was going to, otherwise the money would be long gone and Kate’s fate would be left in his slimy
and
untrustworthy hands.

45

Emma had almost bitten her nails down to nothing; her nerves had got the better of her. She had smoked more cigarettes in the last few days than she probably had in her entire life, so many that she felt like throwing up
;
she
thought
it was the fags making her nause
ou
s
but
she was worried for her friend too. Every time she thought of poor Kate and
what s
he might be going through
,
she felt
as if
she would throw up.
Emma
knew that the chances of what
had
happened to her repeating themselves and happ
en
ing to Kate were slim, but that didn’t stop her mind going into overdrive and making her fear the worst. After all
,
she knew Jay better than all of them
;
she had been the one to witness first-hand what an evil bastard he could be.
She knew
Jay
would
want the cash badly,
but
even he wouldn’t be stupid enough not to go through with the deal
:
surely?

Emma was behind the main bar, just like any other Friday night, except this wasn’t like any other Friday night. The time had
passed
so slowly, and every time Emma had had a chance to glance at the clock between serving
people,
it seemed like the clock
’
s hands had barely moved.
The atmosphere was so charged it was like electricity thrashing through the club, everyone was on
tenter
hooks, just waiting.

Billy had looked a state when he had turned up, he hadn’t shaved and his clothes looked like they had been slept in
;
judging by his grey
,
shadowed eyes he had had very little sleep
,
Emma thought. She had been having
trouble sleeping,
too,
and had been grateful that Billy had stayed in the flat with her
;
she didn’t think her nerves would have been up to staying there on her own, not with this crap going on
.
Her
nerves were already shot to pieces
,
and knowing that B
illy had been l
ying on the sofa downstairs had been a huge relief to her.

Billy was upstairs with Paul at the moment, in the
g
entlem
e
n’s lounge and as she looked around at the amount of shaven
-
headed beefcakes dotted around the place she hoped with everything she had, that one of them came through tonight for Kate’s sake
.
H
e couldn’t get away with this. So many things could go wrong tonight.
Emma
hadn’t wanted to work, but Paul had insisted that everyone carry on as normal
: they should
keep their heads down and get on with their jobs no matter what the night brought. It was finally
a
quarter to twelve; there had been no sign of Jay. Emma’s mind was
whirling
and she had been mucking up orders all night
.
T
o make up for it
,
she had been dishing out free shots to keep
people
happy and was now surrounded by
a
pissed
crowd who was
laughing
and
dancing without a care in the world. She was trying hard to concentrate but she kept looking around, scanning the club to see if she could spot his face
like everyone else working tonight seemed to be doing
:
just looking and waiting.

Paul was doing his best to keep Billy cool upstairs, they had been glued to the monitors for over an hour and so far no one had seen Jay enter the club. Paul was worried that if Billy saw Jay, he would lose all sense of reason and want to annihilate the fucker, and
Paul didn’t want to risk
an
ything fucking up getting Kate back in one piece. He had told Billy that the best place for them to be was
upstairs
, and it was true. The cameras were on every entrance,
including
every fire door, all the stairs were covered and
,
mo
st
importantly
,
so was the DJ booth. It was ten
minutes
to midnight now, and as they had discussed Paul was
going
to take the bag of cash and place it next to the DJ booth.
In
ten minutes
,
they would finally have a lead as to where Kate was
:
they all needed to stay on the ball.

The dance floor was heaving
;
s
weaty bodies grinding to the music while drunken
people
chatted,
laughed and sang along to the songs pumping out of the speakers.
T
here must have been three hundred people bopping away on it and hundreds more standing at the sides or lounging on the huge comfy sofas or in the secluded booths.

It certainly was the place to
be usually, but maybe not tonight. She was s
ipping from a bottle of something fruity and alcoholic,
which was
too sweet and too cheap, not her usual tipple, but then nothing about her was usual tonight. She
felt she
had surpassed herself, and was feeling very smug once again
, lapping
up every second of it.
E
arlier that day
s
he had gone to a salon and had her long hair chopped off and had it styled into a shaggy bob with a fringe that hung
into
her eyes
; she
had
then
asked them to dye it black. The hairdresser had tried to persuade her to keep her lovely golden locks, but Tanya
insisted
that she wanted a complete re-style
.
T
he hairdresser had reluctantly done the cut, and actually
said
in the end that it quite suited
Tanya
. Some women were lucky that way and could do pretty much anything to their hair
so that
it look
ed
great no matter what
, she had admitted
. With her new hairstyle and racy clubbing clobber, she looked like a completely different girl
:
unrecognisable.
Tanya
had hooked up with a bunch of lads when she had first c
o
me in to the club
:
it had been too easy
.
T
hey looked
as if
they couldn’t believe their luck, drooling at the si
ght
of her dancing up against
them and acting like she was right up for it. She had no time for any of them
,
of course, they looked like a bunch of complete and utter losers but she needed to mingle and not stand out by being
alone
,
which would
draw attention to her.
That was what she didn’t need
tonight.
M
ost of the time she had been there
they had been
plying her with drinks and compliments so it wasn’t that hard a task
,
she figured, to make a tiny effort with them.

She looked at her watch; she had been here for almost half an hour and Jay would be about to kick off the first part of their plan b
y
making an anonymous call to the police. It was
a
fool
-
proof plan, Tanya’s hand
i
work
.
Jay
would
say
that there was an armed gunman in the club and that he was about to open fire
;
any minute now
,
the club would be in complete and utter mayhem. Perfect.

Looking around
,
Tanya could see the security guys, all eyeing the bag that Paul Goldie had placed down carefully by the DJ booth as instructed. Glugging down the last mouthful of her drink for Dutch courage, she whispered to herself that
it was
now or never.
Reaching
under
her very short skirt, she pulled out two very well
-
concealed smoke bombs that Jay had managed to get hold of from some dodgy ex
-
soldier he knew
.
P
ulling off the tops
,
she thr
ew them onto the floor
in front of the stage. The smoke poured out within seconds and people started swinging their arms and coughing.
A few of Paul’s security men looked at each other in alarm before making their way over amongst the coughing people and the now giant smoke cloud that had formed around them all. Tanya quickly threw
herself down and crouched on the floor
;
crawling on her hands and knees to get a better view of the bag, she grabbed it with both hands
then
quickly made her move to the ladies
’
toilets before the smoke start
ed
to clear. Taking her opportunity as she ran through the cloud Tanya screamed
,
as loud
ly
as she possibly could
,