Brookie. He clenched his fist before he went to the back of the queue and started. ‘If you’ve got anything on your person, hand it over to me now please. No drugs, no knives or other weapons. Spot-checking. Turn out your pockets please, sir . . . Thank you. Turn out your pockets please, sir . . . Because I’m asking you nicely and you know the rules . . . That’s fine, your right to refuse, my right to refuse you entry . . . Not accusing you of anything, sir . . . You, less of that . . . Handbags open ready for checking please, young ladies . . . no drugs, no weapons, knives, scissors . . . Thank you. I don’t know how you’re not freezing to death.’

On down the line which moved slowly forward to the outer door, first check, inner doors, second check, then either in you go or out on your ear.

Vince had a walkie-talkie earpiece and a padded jacket, but they weren’t allowed any sort of headgear, and nights like this he wished for his hair back but he still preferred to be outside, cold or not, because the noise in the club made his ears bleed. They’d all be stone deaf by forty but that never seemed to bother them either. Live today.

‘All right, moving in now, nearly there . . . Handbags ready for checking . . . Plenty of nice hot cocoa inside for you.’

Behind the sooty spider-lashes and the glitter patches, the red lips, the pink and purple hair, they were children. If he worried about his boys, what would he have been like if they’d been girls?

The queue shortened and shortened. Ten minutes and he could go round to the back room for his break.

There were four of them working the queue and the doors in rotation, and then inside and on the cameras and Vince saw himself as the lightweight, given the others were all six foot six and more – in Mo’s case, six eight, and twenty stone of solid muscle. Nobody took on Mo unless they were off their heads and couldn’t see straight. But Vince was fast and light on his feet, a one-time middleweight.

Not that he ever wanted to get into a brawl, he wanted a regular life, hold down his job, retire in safety. He had four boys, one of them wading in troubled water, and if he, his dad, didn’t sort it out, it would be over his head.

He was first into the back room, his job to put the kettle on. The cupboard was kept well stocked, he had to say, they never needed to scratch around for tea, coffee, Cup-a-Soups, decent biscuits, sarnies and cans from the fridge. The pay was as usual, tips didn’t exist, but the extras were handy.

He was sitting with his first brew when Odd came in. It was the name that gave him a nudge. Odd. Fats.

‘All right, Vince?’

‘I am. Where were you last week?’