Chapter 2

Lounge lizards busted

TIM TOLD Jenny that he wasn’t able to attend the Jones’ barbecue he had been invited to because he was too busy on that day, but it was more that he was initially worried about her flirting with him. He was less worried about fending her off, if that was the case, than the temptation to break one of his golden rules. Whether it was toys or women, he just couldn’t bring himself to share.

So it was to Tim’s surprise that a couple of Saturday nights later he saw Abbey Jones again. Tim walked from the car park into the Crystal’s lounge bar and night club about 10.00pm, to meet his friends Pete and Simon, and he noticed Abbey sitting at a table with a bunch of her friends.

He’d not seen her in Crystal’s before, he was certain of it. She didn’t notice Tim’s arrival. The place was starting to fill up at that time of night and most of the tables and booths were taken, although the bar area was free. Crystal’s doesn’t have bar stools, as they like to discourage patrons from gathering round the bar; it probably makes serving drinks easier. Pete and Simon prefer drinking standing up to sitting down, so they usually hung around the bar at least for their first couple of drinks and then stand at one of the circular counters around the columns holding the roof up. Tim knew the owner of the lounge club and his girlfriend who runs the place for him, and certain regulars are tolerated to stand at the bar until the place gets too busy.

Tim’s two friends were in their early- to mid-30s, each respectively six and three years younger than him, both scarred by previous failed marriages, Pete twice bitten, and were currently regarding themselves as long-term confirmed bachelors. Both would mellow out with a couple of drinks and some stimulating male conversation, before moving onto the dance floor in search of potential female company for stimulation of a different kind later. They were nice easy-going guys and were often more successful in their hunt than not. That change of objective by his friends was usually Tim’s cue to head on home. His days of hunting females still enjoying the single life no longer had the appeal for him it once had. He would go home between midnight and 1am, get up fairly early on Sunday and, after an invigorating jog around the estate or thorough workout in his home gym, followed by work on cleaning and polishing his classic E-type Jaguar in his garage for a couple of hours. After that, more often than not, he would visit his favourite sister’s home for lunch and playtime with his adored niece Tina in the afternoon.

Tim rarely drank much alcohol. This lounge bar served tea and coffee at all hours, so he usually chilled out with a couple of light beers, followed by a couple of shots of espresso, then perhaps a final light beer before he headed home. This particular evening, though, Tim kept an eagle eye on Abbey’s table, wondering if she had driven herself down to the club. He hadn’t noticed her distinctive yellow car in the car park when he had arrived. He always parked in a far corner away from the crowded rows and usually noticed any interesting vehicles as he walked through to the entrance of the bar. She had clearly been drinking for a time and was very animated in her movements, waving her arms about and chattering away cheerfully to her companions. Tim had no idea how long she had been there but he presumed it was shortly after her parents’ afternoon barbecue had finished. There were six people at her table, a couple sitting opposite her, who sat close together and exchanged the odd kiss with each other; then sat Abbey; the guy sitting next to her plying her with drinks; and finally, sitting the other side of the guy, were a couple of other young men who seemed to Tim to be concentrating on looking at Abbey all the time. The scene set a few alarm bells jangling in Tim’s head.

Eventually, the two girls got up together and walked off to the toilets. Abbey’s date for the night came up to the bar next to Tim’s standing group and ordered two more drinks. Tim guessed they were all students and not into buying rounds for the whole table. The lighter-coloured drink for Abbey was a treble vodka and tonic, Tim overheard, while the youth ordered a plain coke with ice for himself. Tim watched him closely all the way back to the table, where one of the two other guys sitting together took a small sachet out of his pocket and handed it to Abbey’s date. He in turn extracted one tablet from that packet and dropped it into her drink. That was it. Tim spoken briefly to Pete and Simon about what had transpired and they agreed, as he fully expected, that they were more than prepared to cover his back. The trio approached the table and Tim sat down in the bench seat next to Abbey’s date. There wasn’t really enough room for Tim’s broad butt on the bench seat in the booth, so his bum landed on the guy’s left thigh and painfully squeezed him over. The youth gave Tim a dirty look and said, “Who? —”

Tim interrupted him with, “I’m a friend of the Jones family and I really want to know what you think you’re up to?”

“Nothin’!” he replied quickly, rather too quickly, Tim thought.

“Then you don’t mind if I watch you while you drink down Abbey’s drink in one go then, do you?”

“Wha’d’ya mean?”

“I mean that I saw you put a tablet in Abbey’s drink. If that tablet was harmless, then you won’t object to drinking it, will you? Don’t worry, I’ll get Abbey a replacement drink, if she still wants one.”

“What tablet?” he said.

Tim leaned into him until their faces almost touched each other, the youth backed off a little, as far at the bench seat would let him. Tim reached across him and slammed his left fist into the lad’s face sitting next to him, knocking him out cold. Then Tim reached across and fished out the little bag of pills from the unconscious kid’s inside jacket pocket and waved them in front of Abbey’s date’s face.

“This tablet. Now drink, but if you spill a single drop I’ll make sure you swallow your front two teeth as well before I stuff the rest of these pills down your neck all in one swallow. Now, what’ll it be Sunshine, drink, teeth, or what?”

The boy hesitated for a moment as Tim clenched his left fist again in front of his nose. The youth picked up Abbey’s glass and sank the contents in one go, spluttering at the end.

“What’s going on, Toby?” came an agitated female voice.

Tim turned, taking in what he expected to see, that Pete and Simon were stood behind the other two players with hands resting lightly but positively on their shoulders. Then he saw Abbey, with a tense face and hands on her hips. She turned her head towards his face as he looked up and, when she saw that Tim was smiling, recognised him and returned his smile.

“Hi Tim,” she said, much more calmly now and with a smile on her face, “What are you doing here?”

“Hi Abbey,” he smiled back at her, then answered a question with another question, “How’s your new car going?”

“It’s brilliant, I absolutely love that car,” Abbey grinned, “But then you knew all along that I would.”

“Brought it with you tonight?”

“No, Sarah and I are having a final drinking night out before going to Uni next week,” Abbey smiled sweetly down at him, “Toby’s my designated driver tonight, which is why he should be on coke on its own and not drinking my vodka and tonic.”

“I am afraid Toby might have to leave his car here tonight.”

“Why’s that, Tim?”

“Well, Rip van Winkle here,” he indicated the youth slumped in the seat next to Toby, “Passed this,” he waved the sachet of pills in front of the now heavy-lidded Toby, “To your friend Toby here, who slipped one of these pills into your drink. So I asked him very nicely to consume your drink for you, just to check to our satisfaction that it was perfectly safe.”

They all looked at Toby, who was now fast losing consciousness, his eyelids already at half-mast.

“You bastard!” Abbey cried, reached over the table and smacked Toby round the face. He hardly felt the blow; he just slumped back against the rear cushion of the bench seat, completely out of it, his head resting on the shoulder of his unconscious pal with the busted nose.

Abbey said, “These tossers have gone and completely ruined our evening.”

“Hey!” popped up the lad sitting opposite Toby, the one who had earlier kissed the girl Tim now knew as Sarah, “I had nothin’ to do with this!”

“Only you just sat there watching Toby put the Mickey in Abbey’s drink and you said absolutely nothing, so you are also a party to this,” Tim pointed out. This time it was Sarah who smacked the lad around the ears. He got out of his seat and stood next to Sarah, looking somewhat embarrassed.

“What do we do now?” Abbey asked Tim, “We came out for a good time, have a few drinks, a meal more drinks and a lot of dances. Might be our last chance to let our hair down for a few months, probably Christmas break.”

“Well, I can offer you a couple of reasonable alternatives,” Tim said to the pair of ladies, “My good mates Pete and Simon here, may be a little bit long in the tooth for you young ladies, but they can dance up a storm, well, a whole lot better than me anyway. We will happily keep you supplied with enough drinks to give you a nice warm buzz without losing control, while I will hang around as your designated sober driver and get you home safe. Mind you, I think we could all do with some food inside us first. Or, alternatively, if you don’t think we can keep you entertained to the level you are happy with, I can safely drive you both home now.”

Abbey and Sarah looked at each other, both of them 19 or 20, a couple of bright and beautiful baby-faced girls, deciding on whether to have a disappointingly early night or a possibly slightly less-than-exciting time on the town with a couple of tough-looking 30-somethings and a near 40-year-old chaperone. They both whispered to each other before turning to Tim and grinning, saying, “OK, we’re in!” in unison. Abbey added, “We’re hungry, thirsty and bursting to get in some dancing, but that’s just as far as we had planned on going tonight.”

“Hey,” said Sarah’s boyfriend, “What about me? I never done nothink.”

“Push off Stewie,” said Sarah, “You’re an arsehole and I don’t want to see you ever again!”

“But you prom-” started Stewie, until Pete pulled him up by his coat collar and hissed, “Scram! And take your buddy with you!”

Simon pulled the fourth boy up from his chair and pushed him away. The two made themselves scarce, leaving their unconscious mates slumped together in the booth seat to await their fate.

Tim stood up and went up to the bar to talk to Melanie, the club manager, actually a corking 40-year-old. She was the owner’s girlfriend, and a long-time pal of Tim’s.

“Mel, in the booth over there where Pete and Si are, there’s a couple of unconscious guys that need medical attention, one I’m afraid I flattened his nose with a left jab, the other has taken one of these ruffies, you might want to pass them on to the paramedics so they know what particular recreational drug he has taken. They can dispose of these pills safer than I can.”

“Sure thing, Tim,” she grinned as she took the package, as if this kind of thing happened in her bar all the time. Seeing Tim’s friends and the two girls behind him getting ready to go, she continued, “You coming back later, Hon? You know you’re always welcome, honey.”

“Yeah,” he grinned back, “Give us an hour to settle the dust, have a bite to eat, and we’ll be back. The girls want to dance!”

“I’ll keep those seats nice and warm for you then, Tim.”

By the time they all got their coats on and were stood outside, the ambulance for the two youths was already parked out front. Billy, one of the two bouncers who was a regular down Jim’s Gym, saw the three older guys with the two young girls and said, hooking his thumb towards the ambulance, “Your handiwork, Tim?” with a grin on his face.

“I’m not admitting to anything, Billy,” he grinned back, “We’re just going to get something to eat and we’ll be back in a little while.”

“If there’s a queue when you return, come to the front and we’ll let you in.”

“Thanks Billy.”

It was Pete who asked the girls what they wanted to eat, offering, “Burger, Pizza, Chinese, Indian, Italian or Steak?” Tim’s first choice would have been between the Italian and the Steakhouse, but the girls both requested Chinese, so they headed to Chang’s, just a short walk away and the best of the Chinese Restaurants in the town. Tim was quite well known in there and knew they would get a table easily, even though it was getting quite late. The meal gave the three men a chance to get to know the girls better and vice versa. Tim asked Abbey how the barbecue had gone earlier. Sarah replied first, saying that it was boring, while Abbey conceded that it was because it was mostly Mum and Dad’s friends there.

Then she brightened and said, “Mum’s friend Wayne brought her old MGB with him and Mum had said how disappointed she was that you couldn’t be there to see it.”

Tim agreed with the sentiment, he would have liked to have seen that.

“Oh,” she added, “Mum passed on your Monroe’s business card to Wayne so he could contact you and arrange to bring it over to the showroom, perhaps leave it on display for a few days. He only takes out in the summer months. Mum loves that old car. It looks so tiny and ... old!” Tim realised then that his fears about Jenny’s motives were unfounded; she was probably just one of those people that liked to touch and tease without realising it could be misinterpreted as flirting with intent.

Sarah seemed a very bright girl, so what she had seen in the now-rejected low-life Stewie, Tim really didn’t know. She seemed to latch onto Simon, who was a nice guy and probably the better looking of Tim’s two friends. He had married when he was far too young; probably about Sarah’s age and had a baby girl before he was 21. Young Samantha “Sammy” Bailey was 10 and a very cute kid, still living with her mum, who had remarried following the relatively non-acrimonious divorce. Simon was manager of one of the smaller but very busy supermarkets in the High Street and Sammy stayed with him every other weekend. This was one of his free Saturday nights when he could go out and let his hair down. He had become a bit of a pussy hound admittedly, since his divorce three years previously, but he knew when to behave himself and he wasn’t about to cross Tim, especially after the way the stocky car salesman had already punched one person’s lights out tonight. While the girls went off to the toilets at the Chinese restaurant, Tim had made it very clear to the two guys that all tonight’s expenses were on him and that the two friends were to be on their very best behaviour to the two girls. They both agreed readily, saying that they knew as soon as he’d pointed out the date drug that they were going to be white knights for the evening and show the girls a good, albeit innocent time.