Bouncers and Bodyguards (9 page)

The night was running smoothly until some old faces turned up to reclaim their drinking haunt. There were eight of them in the group – all roughnecks who were up for a row at the drop of a hat. Kevin stopped them at the door and in his politest voice explained that tonight was invitation only and they would not be able to gain entry. In addition – as he pointed to the youngest-looking members of the group – it was strictly over 21s, so some ID would be required.

They did not like the polite knock-back and started to argue their case. I then stepped in, redirecting their attention towards me and giving Kevin some manoeuvring space. Three of them were definitely underage and two had trainers on, but the remaining three were OK, and I was willing to let them in. I put the ball in their court and asked them what they wanted to do. The group huddled together and thrashed out their views. They decided that the three youngsters could go off and spend their evening in Kingston town centre, leaving the older ones free to enter. As the three youths begrudgingly walked off towards the town, one of the remaining three asked if the two who had trainers on could go home, change and come back to join them. Kevin told them that would not be a problem, so off they went.

Divide and conquer was the name of the game. Neither Kevin nor I had any real trust in the door team to handle this fight-hungry crew, so dividing them into more manageable numbers seemed a much better plan.

The three guys walked into the club with smug looks on their faces, thinking that they were the dons of East Moseley or something. As soon as they entered, I radioed the Professor and got him to target them. He was to leave it for about five minutes and then ask them to leave. The bar was four deep with people cashing in on the free booze, and these guys didn’t stand a chance of even getting a free beer before they were going to be turfed out. The Professor cut his way through the crowd and told the roughnecks in no uncertain terms that it was time to leave. They kicked up a fuss. It was bad enough being shown the door, but the fact that it was by a black man made it even more insulting in their eyes. They chanced their arm by laying into the Professor, but Kevin and I came in swiftly behind them, and it was on – a few digs and choke holds as we quickly dragged our prey outside to continue the pasting.

The frontage of Pals was made up of French doors that gave the place a Continental feel. The commotion outside caught the attention of the wealthy customers inside, who watched through the glass as the same three doormen who had acted so politely earlier punched the crap out of three scumbags.

When the other two scumbags eventually returned after changing their footwear, they were disappointed to hear that their friends had already left – although they didn’t know how or why – and turned around and started their journey back into town to find the youngsters. The rest of the night was a peaceful affair, and the evening had not been too tarnished by the earlier display of violence.

Overall it was a good grand opening – guests had a great time, friendships had been made, regular customers established, the network system was in place and hopefully word would quickly spread that the old crowd that used to terrorise the place before were not going to be tolerated in the venue any longer. If all was done and dusted on the first night, what was the second night going to be like?

It was a staggered start for the security team at weekends: two started at 7 p.m., two at 8 p.m. and the final two at 9 p.m. The Professor was one of the 9 p.m. starters, due to his regular job finishing late. I made sure that Kevin and I were the 7 p.m. starters – so we both knew that someone trustworthy was there to watch the other’s back, which was just as well because payback from the night before was going to start early.

It was Friday night, and it had just gone 7 p.m. Kevin and I were standing on the door shooting the breeze, greeting the early arrivals and saying farewell to the afternoon crowd as they made their way home from work with probably one or two too many glasses of bubbly flowing around their systems.

The evening had a scent of danger in the air; we all somehow sensed that something was going to happen and that we should be alert and on our toes. It is a strange feeling and hard to explain, but we just felt that something was in the air. It is a feeling experienced door staff know and understand, a feeling that we develop after years in the business. It is a kind of sixth sense, and we are right almost every time. It may have been a wealthy area, but trouble still lurks in the dark corners of almost every aspect of society.

Pals was situated opposite a small roundabout that had fairly light traffic activity during the evening. The local police shop had closed for the night – the need for a 24/7 station was unheard of in Hampton Court, so any call-outs had to be dealt with by the understaffed force at the Kingston nick. All this stood the army of travellers who were blocking up the road outside Pals in good stead. Old beat-up vans and transits screeched to a halt, cutting off all access to the roundabout, and the passengers who emerged from the vehicles were the biggest collection of Desperate Dans I had ever seen. All of them looked like professional pie eaters and all of them were tooled up.

The leader of the pack stepped out of a white Rover. He was a huge figure of a man who bore the markings of a true scrapper – what the size of his hands and his gnarled cauliflower ears did not tell you, his collection of tattoos and sovereign rings did. He was the king of this clan, and he obviously had some business to take care of with me and my team. The thick Irish accent seemed to add to his threatening demeanour as he called out to us standing side by side outside the newly opened club.

‘Are you the two fuckers who be’t me lad?’ Images of the night before ran through my head. Sure we gave out some punishment, but it was to grown men, so why such a heavy response? The angry father pointed to the passengers who were seated timidly in his car. They were the three youngsters who had been knocked back by their own entourage and went off to town to find their evening’s entertainment. I stepped forward away from the door and closer to the menacing man-mountain who was looking for retribution.

‘No, no one here laid a hand on those three. They were turned away last night and took their business into town.’ It took all of my self-control not to show that I was just a little worried by the present situation. There was a look of disgust on the frustrated father’s face at the cheek of the cockney who stood in front of him ‘lying’ about what had happened.

‘Well, big man, me lad sez you and yer banana boy did this for na’ reason. Are ya saying he’s a liar?’ His voice rose an octave, indicating that he was not willing to listen to reason – adrenalin was fuelling his temper. To be honest, I sensed a beating was about to take place and therefore had nothing to lose but to use the most useful tool a professional doorman has – his voice. Over many years of facing violence, I had learned that size meant nothing and your voice could be your strongest weapon. It can control a situation, it can calm a person down or it can incite a revolution. You can throw an opponent off guard by speaking softly, especially when followed by a strong physical attack. Your voice can charm and persuade, it is the source of all solutions and it was all I had to put a stop to the confrontation that was now before me.

‘You are a huge man with a loyal following. It’s obvious you are a man of position. You have their respect, and judging by the turnout you ain’t scared of having it with anyone, but you ain’t no Bartley Gorman [a champion bare-knuckle boxer in the UK and Ireland between 1972 and 1992 and more commonly known as the ‘King of the Gypsies’], and I would fancy my chances in a straightener against ya. Now, no one from this club hurt your boy. We did mix it up with some of their pals, but that was all. Now, if you want to step up, then do so. If your back-up steam in, then know one thing: I will put you down before they even get close enough to stop me.’ I wasn’t a small man in those days, and the truth is I’m still a large-built fella – my seventeen stone, muscular build sat quite nicely on my six feet two inch frame back then, and I was a professionally trained fighter who had lost a fair chunk of my conscience and was brought up to endure pain. If it went off, I would not be going down without taking out that fat sack of shit in front of me. However I
had
changed my school of thought. If the same situation had gone down a year earlier, I would not have said anything and just steamed into all of them. Like I said: extreme situations that sometimes suggested suicidal tendencies. But I had changed, and for the first time in my life the thought of actually dying on the pavement I was standing on seemed a real and possible outcome.

Upon hearing my challenge, Kevin stepped forward. His left hand was in his pocket, and the knowledge that his dusters were resting against his knuckles added a little reassurance that he could be busting some faces of his own before the night was over. The look on the leader’s face turned from disgust to confusion. Was he hearing right? This cockney bouncer was facing down a 20-strong army that could pack up home and disappear from the face of the planet if the need arose. He must have wondered whether I was brave, stupid or just hoping to bluff my way out of all of this. The tension shifted up a gear as the protective father beckoned his son out of the car. The young lad, who was sporting a painful black eye and swollen jaw, stood sheepishly next to his angered dad. The behemoth looked down at his offspring and asked him one last time, ‘Is this ta man who done this to ya?’

The boy looked ashamed, embarrassed and a little scared. He shook his head. His ability to speak had left him, because he knew what his father’s reaction would be for causing this situation to happen. Without warning, the man slapped the boy across his good cheek and motioned for him to get back into the car. He then returned his attention to me. ‘Yer right. I ain’t no Bartley Gorman, but I would have given ya a decent stand-up. I’m a big a’nuff man to admit I was wrong. I will speak to the boy and get ta the bottom of it all.’ He then held out his hand in a gesture of respect. ‘No hard feelings?’

‘Not at all. You are a good father who wanted revenge for his son’s injuries. I respect that, and I respect you for taking the time to make sure you had the right bastards. It could have been a nasty mistake.’ The two of us stood and chatted for another minute or so – the rest of the clan were already driving off. I told my very large opponent that it went without saying that his boys were not welcome but that anytime he wanted to come down, perhaps taking the missus out for meal, he could come in as my guest. Thanks were given, and the big man got back into his white Rover and drove off.

As I said earlier, I am a big fella – I am also big enough to admit that I was shit scared when facing that gang down. It was evident that at any given moment my angry opponent could have figured that the time for talking was over and that it was time for retribution. As handy as Kevin and I were, the odds were severely against us, and we would have gone down hard – there was no two ways about it. But in the muscle game, perception is everything in moments like those and bravado carries you through. I had got lucky, and as a result both Kevin and I were still standing.

I turned to Kevin with a sigh of relief, and as we walked back to the door we saw that everyone in Pals had their faces stuck to the French doors like Garfield’s on a bird’s car window. They had witnessed the whole thing, and the police had been called, although they were obviously in no rush to face 20 or so gypsies. The fact that no blood was spilled meant they would not be breaking any speed limits to take statements, either.

We entered the bar to a thunderous round of applause and cheers; men came up to shake our hands, and some of the women rushed over and kissed our cheeks. A new sheriff and his number-one deputy were in town. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday basked in the glory for a little while longer, grabbed a mug of tea and returned to the front door of the OK Corral.

Respect had been earned that night, and whispers of the tale of the two doormen who had been outnumbered ten to one but had stood their ground soon began to spread throughout the land. By the time Allison and the other 8 p.m. starter turned up, the story had already escalated to it being a fifteen-to-one ratio and the opposition all had guns. I actually dreaded to think what it would be by closing time. Everyone who ventured in that night was told the tale: some believed it; others didn’t care. Capabilities had been put to the test, and no further proof of what me and my team were about was needed.

Even Allison went up in my estimations that night. When some punter didn’t want to stand in line with the other waiting masses and tried to gain entry to the upstairs club – he wanted in and no girl was going to stop him – Allison head-butted him clean on the bridge of his nose before (wo)manhandling him down the stairs and out of the side fire exit. And in her brief absence, no one took advantage and jumped the queue to get into the club. She too got cheers on her return. Personally, I was just glad when the night was over and I could make my way back to Walthamstow.

The next night, neither Kevin nor I wanted a repeat of the night before, so we came a little more tooled up. Hampton Court and its surrounding residential area were easy pickings for ‘Chinese Whispers’. The escapades of the previous night’s entertainment had been doing the rounds all day among local shopkeepers and their customers, and every time the story was told the odds and details were increasingly exaggerated. This kind of response could actually push a volatile situation into overdrive.

By showing restraint and tact, the main man of the local band of travellers showed why he was the leader. He was an angry father who wanted blood for his son’s assault, but he still waited to confirm that the events told to him were true. In front of his clan, who turned out in full force to back him in taking retribution on those responsible, he walked away after being faced down by a cocksure bouncer. Now, to some people that might have seemed weak, but he knew that right was right and attacking an innocent man was not going to do him and his clan any favours. He showed real class that night by getting to the truth and leaving the situation with the best possible outcome. But when the gossipmongers got going, he might have felt that he should put the record straight and destroy me and my colleague, and even Pals
, just to save face and restore fear in the locals. Thankfully, that was not to be.