The Sudden Dark

Five

So it came to Kings Cross and the Shooting Star—I had an expectation of what kind of place it would be, but hoped I'd be mistaken. There were a lot of times in my life I'd hoped I'd be mistaken, but never had good enough luck.

It was a club tucked away up the tight staircase of a dark arcade passageway, cramped and dim and clandestine. There were men in business suits at tables and girls in mean expressions across the stages. Buried over all of them was the thump of aggressive music that raved hard and said nothing.

At the few moments I'd spent in the doorway of the place, a slim girl wearing the neon crimson light and not much else sidled unenthused by my side and asked if I wanted a private show.

'I'm looking to talk to a girl named Maddie, does she work here?'

The girl chewed a lip. 'I'm not allowed to give out any information like that—if you wanted a dance, I'm sure I could...'

'I'm with the police,' I said, lying only a little and keeping my voice low enough to not cause a panic amongst the patrons. 'I need to talk to her about a matter of inquiry.'

She turned her eyes around and stiffened her posture. 'Sorry, I don't think...'

'Can I help you with something, mate?'

It was a solid voice to my other side; he was coming from the bar area, in a blue Hawaiian shirt louder than the music and with a heavy mound of thick black hair tied back from his thinning scalp.

'You're the manager of the establishment?' I asked.

He was taller than me, and put every extra inch above my eyeline. His face was stark pale and moled down to his neck. 'You're a cop, huh?—Can I see a badge?'

I paused; I was sure there wouldn't be a moment so soon in which I'd be outed as badgeless. How could I say that my badge had been withdrawn at my suspension, pending completion of mandated therapy?

So I made a swift dodge. 'I'm just following a train of examination relating to a separate inquiry,' I said. 'No crime has been committed yet, so we're only doing preliminary checkups. I don't want to come down official on this place yet, but to do that all I need right now is to know whether a girl named Madison Reed works here. Can you help me with that?'

The manager was nodding skepticism. 'What's your name, pal?'

'Hendricks,' I murmured, and didn't say anything more.

He kept a firm gaze down at me, and hoisted his broad palms across his hips. 'Even if I believed you, mate, nobody by that name works here anyway. Now how about you shove off and quit making my customers nervous, huh?'

And with that, he was out of my face. In a way, I was thankful that he put himself back at the bar, because it removed any desire I had to put myself down and have a drink of the blazing liquors lit at the back wall. I was out of the club in a second, already feeling content that I would never be back, and would never track down the bush-league Bonnie & Clyde I had already lost the trail of.

As I was going back down the stairway toward the searing light of the living world, I heard a clack of heels coming quickly down the stairs after me. I turned and found the girl from the club coming quickly to a stop toward me.

'Hey—are you really a cop?' she said in a quiet voice.

She was turning back nervously at the door, having made a quick and secret exit.

'Listen,' I said, 'I can't save you from whatever shit that idiot is doing to you or those girls in there. This isn't an action movie.'

She waved it off impatiently. 'That girl you're looking for—she does work here, I think.'

'Maddie Reed?'

'She had another name. She worked here as Kathie. Kathie Moffatt. I mean, that's not unusual in work like this, I just figured I should tell you—in case she's in trouble.'

'And how do you know it's the same girl?'

'I saw her phone once backstage when she got a message; it was some boy texting her, calling her Maddie.'

I rose a step to her. 'Was it from someone called Kit? What'd it say?'

'I don't know, I only saw it for a second when it lit up before she took it and messaged back. But it called her Maddie—I saw that.'

I nodded. 'So is she working today?'

The girl shook her head. 'She hasn't shown up for any shifts for about a week now. Frank—the manager—he says she's fired if she ever does show up. I don't think she will. I think she took the money she made here and ran. I know I would.'

I didn't doubt her, but before I could ask anything else she said she had to go back before she raised suspicion. She scrambled back up the stairs and disappeared into the land of neon-red desire.