Deansgate Locks: a battleground where old industrial Manchester collided violently with the new, a place where the gritty, weather-beaten warehouses and defiant red-brick chimneys stood in contrast to the sleek, towering glass-and-steel monstrosities cropping up like weeds all around them. The skyscrapers were winning, turning the place into an overdeveloped hellscape of looming structures, and in the shadow of one a neon light illuminated two burly doormen clad in black. Sweat on their faces, caused by the crushing humidity of summertime in the city, reflected the bright white of a neon sign: Legs. It was my night off, but I figured me and Red had some unfinished business and I couldn’t avoid it any longer. No one knew what had happened between us. It was frowned upon. It had only been a one-off, no big deal, or so I’d thought.
“You’re not on tonight, Jez.” muttered Faz, one of my colleagues.
“I’m only here for the air-conditioning, pal. Quiet night?”
“Can hardly call it quiet if you show up dressed like that–” Faz replied motioning to my bright Hawaiian shirt. “We’ve had a stag-do in earlier but they were a bit of a reserved bunch.”
“Makes our lives a little easier, at least.” chirped the other doorman with a grin.
“Is Red working tonight? Have you seen her?”
Faz shook his head. “Talk to Sid on the bar. Don’t think she is, but I’ve been out front most of the night.” I nodded and ducked into the club. The music hit me first—a low, pulsating bassline that seemed to reverberate through the floors, through my chest. I could feel the vibrations in my bones.
The lights inside the club were low, dark enough to hide the stains on the seats but bright enough you could make out a face. The air was thick with the scent of stale beer, cheap perfume, and something else, something like desperation. I approached where Sid stood at the bar and asked for a cup of tea. I got a frosted bottle of beer instead. I chugged greedily at it and scanned the room looking for a hint of that unmistakable flame-colored hair in the gloom. Dancers sauntered between customers, batting lashes, touching arms, laughing Botox-fake laughs. Middle-aged businessmen, foreheads creased and sequined with sweat despite the air conditioning, watched the stage. A girl in a black strapless dress was wiping down the pole with a towel. She nodded to Sid and he cued her music and she began her dance. As stage lights flashed, she rolled the dress to her waist revealing large breasts that swung pendulously in time to the music. Disinterested, I turned back to the bar.
“Is Red on tonight, Sid? Faz wasn’t sure.”
Sid glanced up, holding a pint glass to the frothing Carling pump.
“Actually,” he said, his voice low, “I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“Go on,” I replied, draining my bottle.
“Well she’s meant to be in, but she didn’t show up.” he said, putting the pint on the beer mat and taking payment. “Didn’t show up yesterday either. I assumed she’d just fobbed the place off seeing as she’s not returning my calls or any texts off the girls.”
“That’s not like her,” I replied, picking up my bottle and remembering I’d just finished it.
“No, it’s not. Beginning to think she might be in trouble.”
“Trouble?” I asked, my mind drifting back to our last conversation. There had been something off about her, something I hadn’t been able to put my finger on.
“Well, she was acting all strange last week. Pestering for extra shifts, asking for an advance like I’m bloody Wonga. I mean, she’s my best girl, I can’t really afford to lose her to another club, but you’ve got to draw a line. How ‘bout you go check if she’s moved on? You two are pretty tight, right?”
I nodded, my stomach twisting with a mixture of guilt and worry. Red and I had been tight once, maybe even more than tight, but that was a while back. I hadn’t seen her much since that night, hadn’t wanted to. But something in Sid’s voice made me think that whatever was going on was more serious than just moving on to another club.
I picked Sugar out in the crowd as she hungrily eyed up a bunch of bankers who’d strayed away from upmarket Spinningfields. I approached and tapped her arm, feeling the tension in her shoulders before she even turned around. When she did, the look of malice in her eyes would have turned anyone else to stone.
“Ooh here’s trouble,” she said, her thick Mancunian accent dripping with mockery. “You know you’re not supposed to be working tonight, or are you begging for extra shifts too?”
“ ’ello, Sugar.” I replied with a wink. “Got a minute?”
“You can have five for fifty quid,” she winked back sarcastically.
“Where’s Red tonight? Sid’s asked me to check in on her.”
“That’d be a first…” she said cattishly with a shrug. She made to move toward the booth of bankers before any of the other girls could. I grabbed her arm.
“She got another job lined up?” her eyes of ice-blue-malice fixed on mine.
“How d’you know?” she asked. I shrugged, keeping a firm grip on her arm. “Look, don’t tell Sid right ‘cause she was gonna come back if nothing panned out. She’s having a couple of interviews tonight.”
She made to move off again but I gently pulled her back. “Where? The sooner you tell me the sooner you can get your claws stuck into the punters.”
Sugar rummaged through her handbag and produced a book of matches.
“Went ‘ere. DuBarry’s on Deansgate. C’mon, I’ve got money to make.”
“Where else, Sugar?” I felt her hesitate so pulled her a bit closer with a faux smile. “Where. Else?”
“Playboys in the Northern Quarter. Some dive in Chinatown too. Choke. It’s a weird place, bad reputation. They pay big though, which is all she cared about.”
“Never heard of it. Weird how?”
“The girls are like… I don’t know. Not with it. Distant.” She frowned. “I went once ‘cause I’d heard about the pay but the whole place just creeped the fuck out of me.”
“Is Red in money trouble or something? Sid said she’d been pestering him.”
“She just needs to save up for something. Didn’t she tell you? She’s got plans.” I let go of her arm, and she started to move off.
“Plans?” I echoed. “Why’s she want to quit all of a sudden?”
Sugar looked back over her shoulder with a smirk. “You really are thick, aren’t you? You’ll figure it out.” She headed off toward the booth and I walked to the exit with a frown. The penny hadn’t dropped but no one ever accused me of being the brightest spark.
***
DuBarry’s was at the far end of Deansgate, or so the matchbook told me with its illustration of a woman bathing in a Martini glass. It didn’t take me long to spot the same illustration shining in red neon just off the main road. A solitary bouncer stood under the dim light in full evening suit.
“Good evening, sir.” he said, motioning me into the plush scarlet entrance. With its red velvet walls and red velvet floor, it was like walking into a fallopian tube. The doorway to the bar was concealed behind thick crimson curtains at the top of some steps. A woman with creamy skin and dark curls, black and white striped corset cinching her waist, pulled back the curtain.
“Twonty,” she purred, holding out a satin-gloved hand.
“I’m looking for a girl,” I said, mesmerized as her voluminous porcelain breasts rose and fell with each breath.
“Well zen you have come to the right place, non?” Her French accent was all wonky, bringing to mind Inspector Crabtree from ‘Allo ‘Allo. I placed a note in her hand and she dragged the curtain aside. “Aprés moi.”
“Bonnet de douche,” I replied.
1940’s jive music bounced throughout the lavish faux Moulin Rouge room she led me into. The stage had a catwalk lined with small bulbs and a blonde, strapped in a satin pink corset and frilled pink knickers, undulated center-stage while hawk-like men watched and sipped champagne from flutes.
“Any girl,” the hostess purred. “Which you like?”
I looked around for that unmistakable shock of frizzy flame hair but couldn’t see a hint of it. I shook my head. “I’m looking for a girl who came by earlier. For a job.”
“I am Madame DuBarry.” she said, her accent faltering into something more local. “I own zis place you know?”
“Nice name, so you’re not—”
“Look, it gets the point across that we’re a burlesque club and not a fucking strip joint,” she cut in, her voice now thick with a Mancunian twang. She led me to the side of the theater as the blonde on stage continued her dance: a complicated number with pink ostrich feathers.
“She calls herself Red, for obvious reasons: a shock of wild ginger hair. Petite. Pale.”
“Yeah, funny little thing. She was here a few hours ago. I said I’d give her a job if she could dance. She couldn’t dance, so I told her to leave.” I nodded. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could smell her sweet strawberry scent still in the room.
“Honestly, she moved like she was in pain. I almost felt sorry for her. When I told her she was no good she just ran off in embarrassment.”
“She was in pain?” I asked, mopping the sweat from my brow.
“I mean, she said she was fine so I didn’t push it,” she shrugged. “I knew she was no good when she showed up. All Primark: cheap shoes, cheap dress, cheap perfume. Pot belly. But she wanted big money, fast. I can’t afford to hire girls with no style, no substance, no class. I’ve got an illusion to maintain.”
“Did she mention anything about where else she was going?” I asked, trying not to bite on her remarks and break the doorman’s code.
“Didn’t care, didn’t ask,” she replied before leaning in close enough that I could smell hints of the strawberry-scent of her vape. “And if she didn’t tell you, she doesn’t want you to know, either. Hmm?”
***
Shop windows reflected the bright streetlamps as dusk turned to dark, the air still heavy and sticky with the humidity. The contradictory nightlife of Manchester began to take shape as I crossed town: the destitute homeless were bedding down in shop doorways as minted drunken revelers meandered from overpriced cocktail bars to exclusive clubs. Playboys was in the Northern Quarter, or so Sugar told me, and it didn’t take long to find it once I’d passed the innumerable hipster bars and artisan burger restaurants that had colonized the district. I weaved my way through the crowd, past packs of lads and lasses with daft haircuts and dafter piercings, their laughter bouncing off the hard surfaces of the old buildings. Tib Street was the last bastion of the ‘old’ Northern Quarter, and nestled between shuttered sex shops and all-night kebab shops which looked like they hadn’t been clean since the 80s was Playboys.
A cracked neon sign at the bottom of the grimy stairs let me know I was in the right spot. I hesitated for a moment, feeling the weight of the night pressing down on me, then paid for my ticket at a hole in the wall and pushed through the beaded curtain into what looked like someone’s living room. An old 80s porno played on a projector, flickering against the wall, as a tired looking middle-aged woman in a satin basque gyrated listlessly on stage.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to face a dominatrix clad in a leather watchmen hat and corset. “Got a ticket?”
“Uh yeah,” I replied, turning away from the woman on stage and handing her the slip of paper.
“Drink?” she asked after inspecting my ticket with all the scrutiny of a train conductor.
“Err, nah, thanks, I’m loo—”
“Look, if you’ve got a ticket you’ve got to have a drink.” She led me to the bar area, the type of at-home mirror-plated thing you used to see Del Boy nip behind in Only Fools and Horses. The barmaid had a wild mane of curly ginger hair and my heart skipped a beat until she turned around. Saggy tits like melted butter poked through a pink vest and she had the same tired look as the woman on stage.
“How much is that?” I asked, watching her pour from a bottle of lukewarm champagne.
“Five quid,” she replied, bored.
“What, after the fiver I just paid to get in?”
“I don’t make the rules…” she muttered with a sigh as I threw a note on the bar and turned back to the room. Playboys was authentically retro, unlike the surrounding bars that tried and failed to recreate the past. This place just hadn’t moved on.
“Do you want someone to join you?” I turned back to the barmaid.
“Got any redheads?” I asked, half-joking.
She smiled mischievously, then peeled her wig off to reveal spiked blonde hair underneath. “Sorry to disappoint,”
I nodded with a smirk and wandered away with my glass of lukewarm piss to scout the room. Not one sign of Red. I found a dark corner and stood next to a signed 8×10 of Linda Lusardi from her page three days. Next to that, in an alcove kitchen area, I spotted the dominatrix pouring a kettle.
“Any chance of a cuppa tea?” I asked innocently enough.
She gave me a smarmy smile. “Piss off…”
“Alright, fine. Do you know a place in Chinatown? Choke?”
She stopped in her tracks and approached me. “You want another club, different girls? Fine,” she hissed. “But Choke’s not for you, yeah?”
***
I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach as I tried Red’s number again, dodging spice addicts and pre-pubescent drug runners on push scooters as I marched across Piccadilly Gardens. Entering Chinatown and its litany of rundown buildings, all-night karaoke bars, and basement restaurants, I felt like I was going to be looking for a needle in a haystack.
I wandered the main square in ever increasing circles from the authentic arch-gateway until, down one stinking back alley, I found a burnt-out shop with windows boarded up and shutters daubed with graffiti. A faint trace of dirt spelt out the word “Choke”: a ghost of the signage that had once boasted the club’s name. I hammered on the shuttered door and tried to peer through the letterbox. The sound of rats skittering beyond my field of vision sent a shiver of goosebumps down my arms. Soon rain began to fall in big, fat drops, the kind that breaks a heatwave and starts it all over again. I ran across Portland Street and into a rock bar and ordered a bottle.
“Hey,” I said, as the thick-armed barman took my money. “Are there any strip clubs around here?”
“Depends. What you after pal?”
“Something specific,” I said, taking a swig and wiping the rain off my face.
“I know the place for you mate,” he said, smiling with a lecherous look. “Tits up to here.”
“Don’t think that’s what they offer in Choke.” He paused for a fraction, and I caught a glimmer of shock or surprise. He smoothed his Motorhead moustache with beefy fingers.
“I’ve heard strange shit about that place,” an old rocker piped up from the other end of the bar.
“Don’t really care what you’ve heard, I’m just after something different, something… unique.” I turned back and the barman motioned with a nod of his head for me to join him at the end of the bar.
“I don’t know if you know what you’re asking for, but they’re an odd crowd. If anyone asks, just tell them I sent you right?”
***
The rain soaked me to the bone as I followed the complex directions of the barman. The alley I found myself in stank of piss and vomit, of rubbish bins that had been baking in the heat. The weather had truly brought out the worst in the ingrained smells of Manchester. Choke, nestled in a maze of abandoned buildings and darkened alleyways, was in the kind of neighborhood that was prepared to get its hands dirty. I pressed the buzzer, and after an unintelligible response, pushed against the corrugated metal door.
I expected a dank and decrepit corridor in keeping with the area, but instead I found a perfectly normal staircase with a grimy plastic shower curtain at the top. A bald-headed monster sat behind a barred hatch, a Swastika tattoo on his neck and 81 insignia on his leather vest.
“Free quid,” he said through missing front teeth. I fingered the change in my pocket and pulled out a handful of shrapnel. I counted out the coins and slid them across the counter.
“You been here before, pal?”
“No. Came from Satan’s.”
“Sa’an’s?” he scoffed, noticing my drenched Hawaiian shirt at the same time. “You know what sorta club this is?”
“Yep.”
He stared at me for a beat before pressing a buzzer under the counter. “Read it,” he said, nodding at a sign by the booth, “then fuck off.”
All transactions are final. No refunds. You touch, you pay.
I walked up the sticky stairs and through the shower curtain. The smell hit me first—stale beer, body odor, and something else, something metallic. I scouted the room: the bar was make-shift, with capless bottles lining up a grimy shelf. A green floodlight covered the stage where a flat-chested girl with a buzzcut grinded against a giant stuffed bear. Her eraser nipples were pierced with silver rings. Despite the smoking ban five or six shifty-looking men sucked hungrily on cigarettes, drinking cloudy amber shots from mismatched glasses as they frothed over the pedophilic display.
I approached the bar and a girl sidled up to me. “He’ll take a shot,” she told the barman. “And one for me.”
I handed over a £10 note and frowned in surprise at getting change.
“So,” she said, fiddling with her ill-fitting bra. Her eyes were baggy, her skin sallow. I searched her forearms for track marks, or bruises, but she was unblemished.
“So,” I replied. “Tell me. You got any new girls?”
“I ain’t seen you before, babe. You can’t be bored of me yet.” She kept her hands to herself, knitted together on the plywood bar. I gazed around the room. In a place as dank and decrepit as this, Red would surely glow. I checked my phone. Nothing. It was 2am. Prime time for Legs, but this place was dead.
“Quiet night?” I asked the girl. She blew smoke across the bar and shrugged at me. So much for the scintillating company. “What’s your name?”
“Dementia.”
“Well, Dementia. I’m looking for a girl—”
“And you’ve found one.” she said, pressing a hand against my groin. “Shall we have another?” I nodded, trying to make sense of how a place like this could even function. It must be a brothel, I thought. A drug-den. A front for a kiddie porn ring. A girl in a skin-tight PVC cat-suit walked by, leading a portly gentleman by the hand. Half of her pixie features were tainted with a berry-stain birthmark which stretched the length of her face. The two vanished behind a second shower curtain. The barman made a motion which I caught out of the corner of my eye and which prompted my companion to come back to life.
“L-let’s sink these and get started…” Dementia said, swallowing the shot and standing up. I followed her, my mouth tingling and my head buzzing. She parted the grimy plastic and the girl with the berry-stain walked back, alone and pale and clammy. Dementia ignored her and took me into a small cubicle which resembled a toilet stall. Behind us I heard the gentle bolting shut of the door. She turned to a window ledge on which two pre-prepared shots sat and passed one to me. Her hand shook.
“Ladies first,” I said, eyeing the glass suspiciously.
“T-together,” she stammered nervously. “Then I’ll see if we’ve got what you’re looking for…” We tipped our drinks simultaneously. I held the sharp liquid in my mouth as she swallowed hers. I spat the liquid onto the floor and rammed her against the scummy breeze-block wall, my forearm against her throat.
“I’m looking for a girl,” I said, pinning her there. “She’s worth a lot to my boss. To me. Right?”
“I don’t… know…”
“She has wild ginger hair. Has she been here or not? Don’t fuck about.”
She gasped for breath, smiling sexually and grabbing for my cock. Her body was sagging as her eyes flickered, exposing the vein-threaded whites. I lowered her to the floor gently and picked up her discarded shot glass. It didn’t smell any different to mine, but there was a small black mark on the bottom. They’d tried to drug me and the dumb bitch had picked up the wrong glass. Shaking, and looking around the room in a panic, I tried the window. With a heave it slid up in a shower of dust and splinters of lead paint. Sweaty, dizzy, I hoisted myself onto the window ledge and dropped onto an old, rickety, industrial fire escape. I stopped at another window to steady myself on my way, certain I was going to throw up. It was difficult to make sense of the scene I witnessed through the grimy window. I saw a surgical steel post-mortem table with washing up bowls catching splashes of vivid vermilion. The portly gent who had been escorted by the birth-marked pixie lay face down, out for the count. A thin, Asian, bespectacled man leant over his topless torso, spidery hands stained lipstick red. He was moving something soft, something brown, something wet, from the rigid figure on the table into a kidney dish. I watched the pseudo-surgery for a second or two before tripping over my own feet down the fire escape. Sweat cascaded down my back as I spat a mouthful of sour sick.
Back on the street, I leaned against a lamppost trying to get my bearings. I checked my phone distractedly just to get the image out of my head. One missed call: Red.
***
She was sulkily resting her chin on one hand, a cigarette pinched between her fingers. An apparition, a hallucination, from shock or from the remnants of whatever I’d drank at Choke. Had to be. Her flame-red hair hung limp, and her eyes were bloodshot like she’d been crying for hours. A full glass of wine sat in front of her. She massaged her abdomen and jumped at the sound of the dressing room door closing.
“You…” she said as her face hardened into a sneer. I couldn’t speak. I stared at her perfect petit features smudged with streaks of mascara. The sweat running from my temples cocktailed with tears.
“Sugar says you were following me,” she said, tears glittering the wet line of her eyes. She pressed a hand against her stomach again. “Did Sid send you, or was it off your own back? Not that you give a shit, obviously.”
I stared at the protective hand on her belly as her bitter tears broke. The penny from the beginning of the night didn’t drop, that fucker plummeted. “Christ,” I said, blowing through my mouth loudly and running a hand over my stubbly head.
“Don’t worry,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “It’s gone.”
“It’s gone…” I echoed, taking her cigarette and inhaling a lungful of bitter smoke distractedly. It jigged precariously between my fingers.
“It’s gone.” she said again, squirting cream onto a cotton pad and dabbing away her smeared make-up. “I was going to save up,” she said, her hands trembling. “Save up and then quit.”
“Red…” I began, but the words caught in my throat.
“Sugar says it’s your body’s way of saying something’s wrong. Like when a patient rejects a transplant. Your body knows… it knows when something’s not right.”
I slumped into a chair, the weight of the evening crashing down on me. She took a sip of wine, her eyes distant, lost in thought. A tear splashed onto her dress, leaving a dark spot, but she didn’t seem to notice.
— Neil Thomason is a resident of Greater Manchester, and the themes and tropes of urban grit and the hardboiled unconventional investigator are ones he returns to again and again thanks to the influences of James Ellroy, Dashiell Hammett, James Crumley and Raymond Chandler. He lives with his wife, demanding daughter, and very demanding cat.